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2 weeks ago | 
islingtontribune.co.uk | Michael Church |Jessica Duchen
Myra Hess, the subject of a new book about her lifeTHE high point of my youthful concert-going was a piano recital at the Royal Festival Hall in 1959 by Myra Hess, regarded by some – unfairly in Jessica Duchen’s view – as classical music’s equivalent to the Queen Mother. Her playing was indeed regal, but it had a gracefully expressive profundity that has rarely been matched.
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2 weeks ago | 
westminsterextra.co.uk | Michael Church |Jessica Duchen
Myra Hess, the subject of a new book about her lifeTHE high point of my youthful concert-going was a piano recital at the Royal Festival Hall in 1959 by Myra Hess, regarded by some – unfairly in Jessica Duchen’s view – as classical music’s equivalent to the Queen Mother. Her playing was indeed regal, but it had a gracefully expressive profundity that has rarely been matched.
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Jan 6, 2025 | 
thetimes.com | Jessica Duchen
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Dec 11, 2024 | 
inews.co.uk | Jessica Duchen
Thursday morning in a church hall in Camberley, Surrey: the local Rock Choir members are taking their passion and making it happen. When I arrive with the organisation’s founder, Caroline Redman Lusher, they are singing “Flashdance”. In multi-part harmony. By heart. In tune. With dance moves. And they sound amazing. A classical music critic at Rock Choir? Ho ho ho.
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Nov 27, 2024 | 
inews.co.uk | Jessica Duchen
Throughout 2024 I’ve been feasting on fantastic music. Oddly, though, while I’ve seen a motley collection of male performers little or large, smart or scruffy, I haven’t spotted one female instrumentalist under the age of about 70 who has an extra millimetre on the waistline. Nowhere, not even the warm, fuzzy corner of culture that is classical music, is immune to today’s standardised presumptions about “beauty”. Among these svelte performers are some truly marvellous musicians.
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Nov 11, 2024 | 
inews.co.uk | Jessica Duchen
Is Klaus Mäkelä really the Next Big Thing? Still only 28, the young Finnish conductor has already scooped four of the most impressive music directorships in the world. Some, however, think he’s done much too much, much too young, and is making musical currant buns for tea (per The Specials). His debut with the London Symphony Orchestra was a chance to see for ourselves. First, Mäkelä is good. He has charisma, clarity and technique.
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Nov 4, 2024 | 
inews.co.uk | Jessica Duchen
I still remember the moment I first became aware of Gabriel Fauré. I say “became aware”, because Fauré is not a composer whose music bursts into your consciousness like fireworks or Stravinsky or Metallica. He emanates. He slinks in. He sidles over and before you know what’s happened, he’s scooped out your heart. It’s 1980 and I’m 14, traipsing up the school stairs in my brown uniform and buckle-up indoor shoes, lugging a satchel crammed with lined exercise books.
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Nov 2, 2024 | 
inews.co.uk | Jessica Duchen
John Adams’s Hallelujah Junction for two pianos is a blaze of Californian sunshine, conjuring open vistas pulsating with light. Its title, however, could apply to this entire evening. The unlikely junction of Yuja Wang and Vikingur Olafssón, two of the world’s busiest pianists, would have sparked some hallelujahs of its own. The pianos, with lids removed, were positioned with keyboards centre stage, so that Wang and Olafssón sat almost next to one another.
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Oct 16, 2024 | 
inews.co.uk | Jessica Duchen
The Sinfonia of London and its conductor John Wilson seem to have something for everyone. The right wing loves them because they have no public funding. The left wing loves them because Wilson (who is 52) was a state school kid from Gateshead and did not go to Oxbridge, unlike many other British conductors. But you don’t need any political outlook in order to be bowled over by their music-making.
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Oct 14, 2024 | 
inews.co.uk | Jessica Duchen
Benjamin Britten’s The Turn of the Screw, based on Henry James’s ghost story, is – usually – a taut, tense and terrifying opera, concentrated into just seven singers and an orchestra of 13.
