Concert Reviews
Songs for a Summer Evening – Concert Review
In the grounds of Olantigh House, Kent – August 2003 Friends of Canterbury Festival newsletter (October 2003) On a perfect August evening, 160 patrons strolled among the water channels in the landscaping and the beautifully kept lawns that sweep up to the Queen Anne style frontage of Olantigh (described more accurately in the English Heritage Register […]
Parry ‘Song of Farewell’ and Brahms ‘Ein deutsches Requiem’ – Concert Review
St John’s, Smith Square – 10th May 2003 Inspired pairing is great musical treat It might all too easily have sounded like a rehearsal. The Brahms Requiem with piano duet? It may have been this thought that kept the audience rather meagre. The repeated low F at the start certainly shocked the senses: the percussive effect […]
Françaix, Massenet, Poulenc – Concert Review
Hamstead and Highgate Festival – 14th May 2002 The FT Compared to some big cities London has relatively little arts activity in the suburbs. Smaller music festivals like the City of London, Spitalfields or the Lufthansa Festival of Baroque Music, all cluster around the same area as the city’s main concert-halls and opera-houses – a […]
Gala Concert to celebrate 75 years of UMP – Concert Review
St John’s, Smith Square – 15th April 2002 The Evening Standard, 15th April 2002 Catalogue of successes for entente cordiale IT BEGAN as a venture to disseminate French music in the United Kingdom and what was then the British Empire. Now, 70 years after its founding, United Music Publishers has expanded its roster of composers […]
Dupré ‘De Profundis’ and Fauré ‘Requiem’ – Concert Review
Holy Trinity, Clapham Common – 3rd February 2001 An exciting taster for the Vasari Singers’ forthcoming CD Dupré remains all too shadowy a figure in the awareness of concert-goers: organist at Saint-Sulpice but a widely travelled concert soloist, particularly in America, he developed a highly individual compositional style. This, whilst it may prefigure Duruflé or Messiaen […]
Bach Motets – Concert Review
St John’s Smith Square, 6th May 2000 Singers on great form! The Vasari Singers’ latest concert at St John’s, Smith Square in London was a splendidly ambitious programme of the sort that we have come to expect from this expert team. Performing all six Bach motets in a single evening is a daunting task, but […]
David Fanshawe’s ‘African Sanctus’ – Concert Review
St John’s, Smith Square 8th May 1999 The Mirror, 15th May 1999 Songs worth praise I CONTACTED the Arts Council this week, asking for sponsorship for my latest musical project. What with all the voice-mail around nowadays, I’m planning to form my own mail-voice choir, with thousands of answering machines playing in the Royal Albert […]