Verdi’s
La Traviata. Conductor: Giacomo Sagripanti, director: Simon Stone. With Pretty Yende, Juan Diego Flórez, Igor Golovatenko, and Margaret Plummer. Register for free and view here. LIVE
2 pm ET: London Symphony Orchestra presents Rattle conducts Stravinsky. Sir Simon Rattle conducts the LSO in Stravinsky’s Octet for Wind Instruments,
Symphonies of Wind Instruments (1920),
Four Norwegian Moods, Suite No 1, and Suite No 2. View here.
2 pm ET: VOCES8 Live from London, Spring presents
Joanna MacGregor. To celebrate International Women’s Day, pianist Joanna MacGregor curates a journey from the Deep South to New York, from Russian poetry to an African paradise. The program includes Florence Price’s spiritual arrangements, Margaret Bond’s
The baritone is back
Credit: Henry Bourne
Everything about the world-renowned bass-baritone Bryn Terfel is big: his voice, his burly 6ft 4in frame, his reputation and – following the birth of his fifth child, Alffi, last year – his family. Yet the 55-year-old’s first UK opera appearance after lockdown will be in one of our smaller, newer houses – as Verdi’s Falstaff at Grange Park Opera in Surrey in June.
‘As you can see, it’s tiny,’ he booms, gesturing at the rotunda, its 700-seat auditorium modelled on La Scala, which impresario Wasfi Kani erected in the grounds of a crumbling country house at blinding speed in 2017. We’re in his bare dressing room during a period of lockdown relaxation, windows and doors open, Terfel dominating the small space in jeans, tweed jacket and boots.
Classical CDs: recorders, fishermen, Spanish nightlife and waltzes | reviews, news & interviews Classical CDs: recorders, fishermen, Spanish nightlife and waltzes
Classical CDs: recorders, fishermen, Spanish nightlife and waltzes
Six of the month s best, including a British opera and beguiling new music from Canada
by Graham RicksonSaturday, 30 January 2021
Michala Petri (recorder), Hille Perl (viola da gamba), Mahan Esfahani (harpsichord) (OUR Recordings)
Michala Petri (recorder), Hille Perl (viola da gamba), Mahan Esfahani (harpsichord) (OUR Recordings)
That these sonatas were originally composed by Bach for flute is surely of no consequence; Michala Petri’s affectionate, idiomatic performances on alto and tenor recorders convince from the outset. Importantly, she doesn’t attempt to impersonate a baroque flute, playing these sonatas as if they were written for her instrument. Petri’s sparing use of vibrato feels just right and she’s marvellous in
And the bands played on: the best classical releases of 2020 Andrew Clements
Opera and concert life has been forced into suspended animation for much of this year, but the classical recording industry has pressed on regardless, with little obvious slowing in the rate of new releases. By and large, the trends of the previous few years continued: the proliferation of smaller niche labels continued to come up with the more interesting repertoire while the output of leading brands became steadily less adventurous.
Studio recordings now tend to be much rarer than those taken from live performances for opera. The re-emergence of Naive’s survey of Vivaldi’s operas will have pleased baroque enthusiasts, but the year’s most notable mainstream releases were Britten’s Peter Grimes conducted by Edward Gardner (studio-made), and Strauss’s Die Frau ohne Schatten under Christian Thielemann (from the Vienna State Opera). The most hyped new opera set of the year, Verdi�