Keel Watson News
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2024-03-24
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2024-03-15 11:52:14
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2024-03-06 09:14:00
Ian Venables' intense settings of John Clare at the centre of the Dante Quartet's Conway Hall concert alongside Gurney and Elgar
Brinkwells in the Surrey Hill, where Elgar wrote his QuartetBeethoven, Ian Venables, Gurney, Elgar; Dante Quartet, Brian Thorsett; Conway HallReviewed 3 March 2024Venables' quartet of intense John Clare settings for the relatively unusual combination of tenor and quartet at the heart of this concert that often felt like conversation amongst friends On Sunday 3 March 2024, the Dante Quartet was joined by tenor Brian Thorsett for a concert at Conway Hall that featured Beethoven's Quartet in F, Op. 135, Ian Venables' 1997 song-cycle, Invite to Eternity, four songs by Ivor Gurney in arrangements for tenor and quartet by Ian Venables, and Elgar's Quartet in E minor, Op. 38. Before the concert, I gave a talk introducing the works by Venables, Gurney and Elgar, all of whom have West Country links. The Dante Quartet was founded in 1995, and currently features Zoe Beyers, Ian Watson, Carol Ella, and Richard Jenkinson.Beethoven's Quartet in […]
2024-02-20 10:00:00
From Harald en Italie to Le prophète in New York: 2024 Bard Summerscape focuses on Berlioz and his world
Fisher Center at Bard College (Photo: Peter Aaron '68/Esto) The Frank Gehry-designed Fisher Center for the Performing Arts at Bard College in the Hudson Valley, New York City, presents an annual Summerscape festival and this year there are eight weeks of opera, theatre, dance and a music festival from 20 June to 18 August 2024. The theme of the music festival is Berlioz and His World. Alongside wide-ranging concerts of music by Berlioz and his contemporaries, there is a rare staging of Meyerbeer's Le prophète (26 July to 4 August) directed by Christian Räth, with the American Symphony Orchestra conducted by Leon Botstein and featuring Robert Watson (Siegmund in Dmitri Tcherniakov’s new production of Die Walküre at the Staatsoper, Berlin) in the title role plus Jennifer Feinstein as Fidès. Meyerbeer's Le prophète featured at the Metropolitan Opera in 1918 as a vehicle for Enrico Caruso, and returned in 1977 with James McCracken and Marilyn Horne, since then I am […]
2024-02-06 08:59:00
Clarity of musical purpose & remarkable intimacy: Regents Opera in Wagner's Siegfried
[…] range from driven rage and confusion, through bewildered anguish and triumph to final radiant, ardent yearning. Perhaps he began to seem a little tired, a little hooty, towards the middle of Act 3, as he faced off against Wotan, but his energy and power returned, fully renewed, once he emerged through the clouds to the heights of the final scene to encounter Brünnhilde.Stepping into the godly shoes of the late and very much missed Keel Watson (who excelled in this role in the previous two instalments of Regents Opera's Ring, and to who's memory this performance was dedicated) veteran Wagnerian Ralf Lukas was a commanding and powerful presence as Wanderer (the disguised god Wotan). Both vocally and physically he wonderfully encapsulated Wotan's gradual transformation from the confident, domineering sovereign of Act 1, to the defeated, despondent outcast he is reduced to by the middle of the third act. Watson was […]
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