Gilbert & Sullivan: Ruddigore - Peter Benedict, Charli Baptie - Oracle Productions at Wilton's Music Hall (Photo by Mark Senior) Gilbert & Sullivan: Ruddigore; Madeline Robinson, Charli Baptie, Rosemary Ashe, Joe Winter, Kieran Parrott, Peter Benedict, Graham Stone, Steve Watts, director: Peter Benedict, musical director: Tom Noyes; Oracle Productions at Wilton's Music Hall Reviewed 17 March 2023 An engaging take on the G&S classic with winning individual performances and the sheer energy of the dancing chorus, you could not help but be won over. It is rather apt that Gil ..read more

Quatuor Hanson (Jules Dussap, Simon Dechambre, Gabrielle Lafait, Anton Hanson ) Having already released discs of quartets by Haydn (All Shall Not Die), Ligeti, Bartok, and Dutilleux (Not All Cats Are Grey) as well as George Crumb's Black Angels, the French ensemble, Quatuor Hanson, joined forces with soprano Marie-Laure Garnier and pianist Célia Oneto Bensaid to release Chants nostalgiques on the b records label, featuring music by Chausson, Faure and Charlotte Sohy. The centrepiece of the disc is composer Franck Villard's transcription of Ernest Chausson's Poème de l’amour et de la m ..read more

SongEasel's 2020 project, MiniWinterreise with Nigerian soprano, Francesca Chiejina Pianist Jocelyn Freeman's SongEasel, tag-line 'Bringing song to South East London', is celebrating its fifth anniversary (and the achievement of charitable status) with Quintessential Song, a series that presents seven recitals across South East London. Quintessential Song is launched by baritone Stephan Loges and pianist Jocelyn Freeman on 22 April 2023 at Blackheath Halls where they will be performing Brahms, Robert & Clara Schuman, plus Marie von Kehler and Ethel Smyth. Also at B ..read more

St Andrew’s Church, Aldborough The Northern Aldborough Festival takes place in the picturesque Roman village of Aldborough, just half an hour from York or Harrogate. The festival offers audiences the chance to experience fine performances in a rural village setting. This year, the festival runs from 15 to 24 June 2023. It opens with Bampton Classical Opera in a double bill of one-act comedies by Haydn, La Cantarina and The Apothecary. Keeping the Italian opera theme, trumpeter Matilda Lloyd and her ensemble will be presenting a programme of music from Italian operas. The Arm ..read more

There is a Latin American theme to the 2023 Leeds Opera Festival. Taking place in over a dozen venues across Leeds and organised by Northern Opera Group, this year's festival runs from 19 August to 10 September 2023 and features the UK premiere of Robert Rodriguez' opera Frida, about the artist Frida Kahlo, and a new production of Astor Piazzolla's Maria de Buenos Aires. Since its premiere in 1991, Robert Rodriguez' opera Frida has been enormously successful in the USA, but is only now making its way to the UK. It was commissioned by the American Music Theater Festiv ..read more

Elgar: Cello Concerto, transcribed for viola by Lionel Tertis, Bloch: Suite for Viola and Orchestra; Timothy Ridout, BBC Symphony Orchestra, Martyn Brabbins; Harmonia Mundi Reviewed 10 March 2023 A gorgeously poetic account of Tertis' viola transcription of Elgar's Cello Concerto that completely captivates on its own terms, accompanied by Bloch's fascinatingly exotic contemporaneous suite Lionel Tertis seemed to be rather proud of his transcription for viola of Elgar's Cello Concerto, at least he devotes some pages in his autobiography to an anecdote about playing it through to Elgar for the ..read more

St Stephen Walbrook Architect and polymath,  Sir Christopher Wren died 300 years ago this year. In addition to the various celebrations of Wren's achievements, architectural and otherwise, the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment (OAE) is joining forces with St Stephen Walbrook to present a festival of music commemorating Wren, who designed the church following the Great Fire of London in 1666. The three concerts aim to provide a snapshot of musical life at the time of Wren's death.  A recital of music by Purcell interspersed with atmospheric readings from the period will ..read more

Bath Festival in 2022 - Steve Reich's Drumming with Colin Currie Quartet at Bath Abbey The Bath Festival is running from 12 to 21 May this year, and features a diverse mix of music, literature and other events. The Bath Festival Orchestra, conductor Peter Manning, is in residence over the opening weekend, presenting a concert in Bath Abbey, featuring music by the 18th-century Viennese composer Marianna Martinez, Bruckner, Hans Andre Stamm and Mozart plus Mozart's Requiem with local choir Bath Camerata and an appealing line-up of soloists Nadine Benjamin, Kitty Whately, Thomas Wa ..read more

Buxtehude: Membra Jesu Nostri - Figure at the Swiss Church Dietrich Buxtehude: Membra Jesu Nostri; Figure, Frederic Waxman; The Swiss Church, Covent Garden Buxtehude's intense seven-cantata sequence reinvented as an imaginatively engaging communal experience Dietrich Buxtehude's Membra Jesu Nostri is a seven-cantata sequence, described by the composer as a sung devotion, written in 1680 and dedicated to the Swedish organist and composer Gustaf Düben (Buxtehude was himself Swedish) whose collection, now in Uppsala University Library, is an important source for Buxtehude ..read more

The Old Courthouse in Cheltenham, venue for two late-night electronic sets at Cheltenham Music Festival (Photo: Mark Watkins, from Gloucestershire Live) This year's Cheltenham Music Festival will feature the world premieres of works by James B Wilson, Soosan Lolavar and Aileen Sweeney plus performances of newly commissioned works by James MacMillan, and Laurence Osborn. At the opening concert, the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra premieres a work by James B Wilson which is a response to Vaughan Williams’s ideas and philosophies in works such as The Lark Ascending. James B Wilso ..read more