Catherine Carby News
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2024-03-29
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2024-03-25 08:15:00
Lush romanticism was a long way away: an immersive contemporary interpretation of Pergolesi's Stabat Mater from Figure
Our Mother - Rowan Pierce, Emma Kirkby, Alexandra Achillea Pouta - Figure at Stone Nest (Photo: Kristina Allen)Our Mother: Pergolesi: Stabat Mater with interludes by Alex Mills; Emma Kirkby, Catherine Carby, Rowan Pierce, Alexandra Achillea Pouta, Nadya Pickup, Figure, Frederick Waxman, Sophie Daneman; Stone NestReviewed 23 March 2024An abstract, immersive staging, concentrating on dramatising the emotional arc of Pergolesi's work interleaved with impressive new interludes from young composer Alex MillsHistorical performance group, Figure, music director Frederick Waxman, has become known for its fascinatingly staged interpretation of classics and recent work has included Mendelssohn's A Midsummer Night's Dream at Opera Holland Park and This is my Body, an immersive staging of Buxtehude's Membra Jesu Nostri [see my review]. For their latest project, Our Mother at Stone Nest (seen 23 March 2024), Figure performed Pergolesi's Stabat Mater with new interludes by composer Alex Mills. The soloists were Dame Emma Kirkby, Catherine Carby, Rowan Pierce, Alexandra Achillea Pouta and Nadya Pickup, […]
2024-02-08 08:14:00
Sitting in a concert hall is not a great place to have a musical experience: Frederick Waxman introduces Our Mother, Figure's dramatic staging of Pergolesi's Stabat Mater
This is my body Buxtehude's Membra Jesu Nostri from Figure at the Swiss Church in 2023The ensemble Figure, co-artistic directors Frederick Waxman and Philip Barrett, has had some considerable success with its stagings at Opera Holland Park of Handel's Serse (in 2022) and Shakespeare/Mendelssohn's A Midsummer Night's Dream (in 2023), but last year the company also created a remarkable immersive staging Buxtehude's sacred cantata sequence Membra Jesu Nostri [see my review].From 20 to 23 March 2024 they will be presenting Our Mother at Stone Nest. This will be a dramatised staging of Pergolesi's Stabat Mater with additional music by Alex Mills. Directed by Sophie Daneman, the staging will be performed by women of multiple generations, Dame Emma Kirkby, Catherine Carby, Rowan Pierce and Katie MacDonald.When I chatted to Frederick Waxman about the production he commented that whilst everyone knows the first 20 seconds or so of Pergolesi's music, they wanted to […]
2022-08-04 06:48:00
Looking back at the 2022 Three Choirs Festival in Hereford, from Dyson's Quo Vadis to Elgar's The Dream of Gerontius
Geraint Bowen conducts Dvořák’s Requiem in Hereford Cathedral at Three Choirs Festival with Anita Watson, Catherine Carby, Ruairi Bowen, Stephan Loges (Photo: Dale Hodgetts & James O’Driscol)This year’s Three Choirs Festival has drawn to a close in Hereford, after eight days of choral concerts, chamber music, family events, theatre and more. Around 800 performers took part across the week, with almost 150 composers represented, over a third of whom are still alive today.The festival brought a series of firsts including the festival’s first ever mention on Woman’s Hour thanks to Luke Styles and Jessica Walker’s festival commission Voices of Power, a first UK performance for Finnish conductor Emilia Hoving, and premieres of fourteen different pieces across the festival programme.2022 saw revivals of Dyson’s cantata Quo Vadis and Dvořák’s Requiem, both rarely-performed works which were well received by festival audiences. Dyson's cantata was planned for the 1939 Three Choirs Festival, but was cancelled […]
2022-07-21 06:27:00
The Dragon of Wantley: a fine Handelian cast have terrific fun with Lampe's parody of opera seria
John Frederick Lampe: The Dragon of Wantley - Mary Bevan, Catherine Carby, Mark Wilde, John Savournin, The Brook Street Band, John Andrews; RESONUS CLASSICS20 July 2022 (★★★★½)Lampe's delightfully satirical opera combines a crazy English plot with fine Italianate music, performed here with great style to superb effect.Following the success of The Beggars Opera in the early 1730s, there was a renewed interest in the idea of English opera. Few significant works came out of this, but one that had a major success was somewhat in the same vein as The Beggars Opera. John Frederick Lampe's The Dragon of Wantley takes a satirical view of opera by combining a tale that is pure earth English fun and setting it to fine music. This combination of wit and pastiche worked well, and the work was popular. Though since the early 19th century it has rather languished and is certainly not as well known as it should […]
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