Queen Elizabeth Hall News
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2024-03-25
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2024-02-23 18:56:49
Queen Elizabeth Hall, LondonThe violinist leads an unsparing assault of pieces from Biber’s dissonant Battalia à 10 to Ustvolskaya’s Composition No 2 as sirens bellow and metronomes tick down our existence ‘This piece of theatre without a plot is designed as an assault on our senses,” violinist Patricia Kopatchinskaja writes of Dies Irae, a complex multimedia piece of her own devising, part concert, part installation, that aims to combine a ferocious enactment of the day of judgment with fierce invective against war and the climate crisis as instruments of our own potential self-destruction. It was first heard at the Lucerne festival in 2017. Kopatchinskaja has performed it with multiple ensembles since, including the Royal Scottish National Orchestra, in Glasgow, during Cop26 in 2021. For the London premiere her collaborators were the Aurora Orchestra and Aurora Voices, whose intensity match Kopatchinskaja’s uncompromising vision and the almost dogged commitment of her playing.It’s […]
2024-01-27 13:00:36
The week in classical: La bohème; Family Ties: The Schumanns and the Mendelssohns; Treske Quartet – review
Royal Opera House; Queen Elizabeth Hall; Conway Hall, LondonPuccini’s genius shines through as his centenary year gets under way. Elsewhere, a good week for the Mendelssohns, and a Carrot RevolutionAnniversaries are a boon to the neglected but Giacomo Puccini, who died in a Brussels clinic on 29 November 1924 aged 65, is already kingpin of operatic Elysium. He can go no higher. His works head the opera performance league tables (yes, there is such a thing –
Royal Opera House (The Guardian)
2023-12-09 12:30:19
The week in classical: Cavalleria rusticana/ Pagliacci; OAE/ Suzuki: Christmas Oratorio; The Sixteen: Messiah – review
Royal Opera House; Queen Elizabeth Hall; St Martin-in-the-Fields, LondonHot-blooded double bill Cav and Pag hits home in a fine Royal Opera revival, while the OAE and the Sixteen thrill in seasonal Bach and Handel. Plus, the human cost of ENO’s move to Manchester Good taste, that old killjoy, has done its best to smirch the reputation of the Italian double bill known as Cav and Pag. It hasn’t worked. These operas will never lose their appeal. If anything they have more potency than ever. Pietro Mascagni’s Cavalleria rusticana (1889) and Ruggero Leoncavallo’s Pagliacci (1892), one-hit wonders for their composers, portray crimes of passion in impoverished village communities, with soaring music to match. The novelty of seeing ordinary people on the operatic stage caused a popular sensation when the works were new. The perceived sleaze and crudities of the stories only added piquancy.Damiano Michieletto’s 2015 staging, set in a filmic postwar Italy, […]
2023-12-04 09:01:00
Bach's Christmas Oratorio from Masaaki Suzuki and the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment
Masaaki Suzuki (Photo: Marco Borggreve)Bach: Christmas Oratorio (Parts 1, 2 & 3), Singet dem Herrn; Jessica Cale, Hugh Cutting, Guy Cutting, Florian Störtz, Choir and Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment, Masaaki Suzuki; Queen Elizabeth HallReviewed 2 December 2023The first of two concerts encompassing the whole of Bach's Christmas Oratorio in music making of the highest order, vividly bringing Bach's colourful music to life but also concentrating on the essential narrativeWritten for performance across six occasions from Christmas to Epiphany, Bach's Christmas Oratorio was never designed for concert use and gives performers something of a challenge. Somewhat too long for the average concert, ensembles usually choose to perform a selection of the work's six parts, but for his performances with the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment, conductor Masaaki Suzuki chose a different approach, spreading the entire work across two days and adding extra music by Bach.On Saturday 2 December 2023, Masaaki Suzuki conducted […]
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