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Australia Tour (Concert Review - Performing Arts Hub, 2016)
★★★★ As optional extras to its concert seasons of chamber music, Musica Viva Australia has for decades past toured some of England’s most famous church choirs, notably the Choirs of King’s and St John’s Colleges, Cambridge. These have been traditional affairs with boys dressed in ruffs and robes joined by male alto, tenor and bass choral scholars, their repertoire drawn mainly from the English cho
Handel: Messiah (Concert Review - Classical-music.com, 2016)
A first Messiah Polyphony and the Orchestra of the Age of the Enlightenment provided new listeners with a thoroughly modern Messiah Charged with taking a teenager to their first Handel Messiah this holidays, the choice was bewildering: should we go for size and splendour, authentic austerity, lofty atmosphere, star soloists or sing-a-long immersion? I plumped for Polyphony – radiant young voices u
Handel: Messiah (Concert Review - Seen and Heard International, 2015)
This performance was the last in the St John’s 13 day-long 30th Christmas Festival. As in the case of the previous evening’s Bach Mass in B minor, it was conducted by the Festival’s Artistic Director, Stephen Layton. In fact all the artists who took part in the Bach also took part in the Handel work, with the exception that the professional group Polyphony, numbering 32 singers, replaced the sligh
Handel: Messiah (Concert Review - Music OMH, 2015)
“The best bleedin’ Messiah in the country” was Heddle Nash’s self-assessment, and the same phrase is right for this now-legendary annual performance by Polyphony and the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment under Stephen Layton. It was the culmination of the 30th St John’s Smith Square Christmas Festival, and it was the best performance of Handel’s great work that we have ever heard. Polyphony ne
Various: American Polyphony (CD Review - The New Zealand Herald, 2015)
* * * * * 5 Stars Some Aucklanders have had the pleasure of experiencing the artistry of Stephen Layton in person when he conducted Bach's Bach's Mass in B minor and St John Passion with Auckland Philharmonia Orchestra in 2012 and 2014. Those familiar with the many CDs featuring Layton with his chamber choir, Polyphony, were not disappointed. Polyphony's celebration of Arvo Part's 80th birthday w
Leighton: Crucifxus pro nobis (CD Review - Classical Ear, 2015)
Wakefield-born Kenneth Leighton (1929-88) left us a wonderful legacy of church music (as a boy he sang in his home city's Cathedral choir), and this superb collection contains some his most powerful and enduring contributions to the genre, not least the ecstatically intense 1961 Passiontide cantata Crucifixus pro nobis (with tenor Andrew Kennedy a gloriously eloquent soloist here) and that magnifi