Tim Ashley

1 week ago | theguardian.com | Tim Ashley

Opera Holland Park opens this year’s season with a new production of The Flying Dutchman, directed by Julia Burbach and conducted by Peter Selwyn. The company’s first ever Wagner staging, it aims high and doesn’t always succeed, though the best of it, both musically and theatrically, is unquestionably impressive.

1 week ago | theguardian.com | Tim Ashley

Conducted by Mark Elder, the final concert of the BBC Symphony Orchestra’s season opened with Franz Schreker’s Chamber Symphony, a work we don’t hear as often as we might, though it is a thing of often extraordinary beauty, sensual yet elusive, its sound world to some extent like no other. Dating from 1916 and written for 24 solo players, it is cast in the form of a ceaselessly evolving single movement, though its four sections echo and approximate conventional symphonic structure.

1 month ago | theguardian.com | Tim Ashley

Innovative as always, Britten Sinfonia joined forces with Sinfonia Smith Square for a programme of music for wind ensemble by Messiaen and Stravinsky, alongside Stravinsky’s Mass and 20th-century French motets (Poulenc, Duruflé, more Messiaen) sung by the choir of Merton College, Oxford. There were two conductors, Nicholas Daniel for the wind ensemble music, and Benjamin Nicholas (Merton’s director of music) for the a cappella works.

1 month ago | theguardian.com | Tim Ashley

The Southbank Centre’s cross-genre Multitudes festival opened with a double bill of Ravel’s ballets Daphnis et Chloé and La Valse, played by the London Philharmonic Orchestra under Edward Gardner, and performed by the Australian company Circa with choreography by their artistic director Yaron Lifschitz. Circa’s style amalgamates circus and acrobatics with contemporary dance, and the combination of athletic beauty, agility and strength suits Ravel uncommonly well.

1 month ago | theguardian.com | Tim Ashley

William Christie and Les Arts Florissants marked Holy Week at Wigmore Hall with a selection of Tenebrae Lessons and Responsories by Marc-Antoine Charpentier, written for liturgical use on the evenings before Maundy Thursday, Good Friday and Holy Saturday. The Lessons take their texts from the Lamentations of Jeremiah, while the Responsories use brief extracts of passion narratives from the gospels.