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Christmas Festival 2012 (Concert Review - The Arts Desk, 2012)
Messiahs of all kinds multiply at this time of year: the meek and the threadbare as well as the proud and polished. On the Sunday before Christmas, it was hard to choose between two potential archangels who could hardly fail given their respective pedigrees. It may have initially come down to a choice between single star soloists, soprano of the year Sophie Bevan at the Wigmore or flawless counter
Howells: Requiem & Other Choral Works (CD Review - Gramophone Magazine, 2012)
Will only male choirs do for Howells's sacred music? So previous commentators have insisted, though only the most rigid epigone would say the same for the cantatas of Bach. By the same token, well-enunciated American English isn't out of place, especially when Massachusetts-based Gloriae Dei Cantores sing a work written for Washington National Cathedral - a late and unfinished Te Deum, at that, an
Christmas Festival 2011 (Concert Review - The Daily Telegraph, 2011)
I don't regard myself as more than averagely sentimental and there isn't too much music that reduces me to tears. But a moment in Britten's St Nicolas does it with press-button certainty, when the pickled boys come back to life and sing their Alleluias. And as usual it had me passing off my snuffles as a cold last night at Smith Square where Stephen Layton performed the piece with combined forces
Christmas Festival 2011 (Concert Review - ClassicalSource.com, 2011)
An aspiration of many years’ standing has been to listen to J. S. Bach’s cantatas following the liturgical sequence. I haven’t progressed much beyond Quinquagesima before getting deflected, but at least the Advent cantatas are beginning to sink in. Their memorable sense of sober reflection and expectation supplies the right context for the eruption of high spirits that opens Bach’s suite of six ca
Britten: A Ceremony of Carols & St Nicolas (Concert Review - The Times, 2011)
Stephen Layton transformed this from an average, middle-class seasonal celebration into a magnificent musical event Mulled wine, mince pies, crackers — and hymn sheets: great excitement at the St John’s Smith Square Christmas Festival when a massive audience met the massed forces of the Choir of Trinity College Cambridge, the Holst Singers, boys from the Temple Church Choir, and the City of London
Various: Christmas Festival (Concert Review - The Daily Telegraph, 2011)
I don't regard myself as more than averagely sentimental and there isn't too much music that reduces me to tears. But a moment in Britten's St Nicolas does it with press-button certainty, when the pickled boys come back to life and sing their Alleluias. And as usual it had me passing off my snuffles as a cold last night at Smith Square where Stephen Layton performed the piece with combined forces