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Quite a happening on Saturday night in the hallowed sanctum of the Inner Temple in London. A deep silence in the medieval round church which serves as both baptistry and funerary for the Temple Church. And then, as Tallis’s great 40-part motet, Spem in alium, began its multiphonic journey up into the vaulting, so the audience began to move about the church from east to west, savouring the...
For an object lesson in economy of means look no further than the magical setting of ""Terly Terlow"" accompanied by oboe and cello (from the Carols, H91). The richness of this music belies such meagre resources and while the Holst Singers produce a warmth of tone and range of expression which brings out every ounce of beauty from the song, it is a testament to Holst's skill that this, and its...
Fascinating… The Holst Singers cover themselves in distinction. A gem.
Opera and Lent oppose each other. Opera is frivolous, extravagant, indulgent, irreverent; Lent is austere, abstinent, modest, devout. An awkward moment arose at the opening night of Deborah Warner's production for English National Opera of Bach's Lenten masterpiece, the St John Passion, when a lamb, which had been brought on for the final scene, began to bleat more loudly than the chorus could...
Light and darkness met head on under the fan vaulting, when the Britten Sinfonia and Stephen Layton’s fine choir, Polyphony, gave the first of their two Easter concerts, one in Cambridge and one in Norwich. This was Lenten entertainment with a difference, and a capacity audience, rapt and finally rapturous, seemed to know it.
The cry of “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” was where this...