Introducing eight new Samling Artists at a masterclass with Véronique Gens at Marchmont House

Samling Artist Programme masterclass at Marchmont House in 2024

On Saturday 2 August 2025, Samling Institute for Young Artists will be introducing eight new Samling Artists who have been taking part in a masterclass with French soprano Véronique Gens, pianist Susan Manoff, actor James Garnon and Samling Artist staff pianist Ian Tindale, culminating in a performance at Marchmont House in the Borders.

The eight Samling Artists are:

• Soprano Sarah Chae from South Korea who was a National Opera Studio 2022/23 Young Artist
• Anglo-Venezuelan soprano Sofia Kirwan Baez who trained at the Royal Welsh College of Music and Drama and Royal College of Music
• Soprano Georgie Malcolm who has just graduated from the Opera Course at Guildhall School of Music and Drama
• Portuguese mezzo-soprano Claudia Ribas who won first prize at the ‘s-Hertogenbosch (IVC) International Vocal Competition in 2024
• Baritone Patrick Dow who made his debut at English National Opera last year 
• Bass-baritone Michael Ronan whose first experience of opera was through Samling while still at school. He went on to study at Royal College of Music and was a Jerwood Young Artist at Glyndebourne
• Pianist Alfred Fardell who is studying with Samling Artist James Baillieu and Anna Tilbrook at Royal Academy of Music
• Pianist Daniel Silcock who is on a Song Circle and Academy Voices fellowship at Royal Academy of Music and is a 2025 Britten Pears Young Artist.

Full details of the performance from the Marchmont House website.

Thomas Jung, the first recipient of the Constant Lambert Fellowship to be new principal guest conductor of Birmingham Royal Ballet

Thomas Jung (Photo: The Finest Light)

The Constant Lambert Fellowship, a partnership between Birmingham Royal Ballet (BRB) and the Royal Ballet and Opera, was created in 2018 to support the development of young conductors in the dance world. Now, BRB has announced that Thomas Jung, the first recipient of the fellowship, is to be BRB's new principal guest conductor.

Thomas Jung, who will be with BRB for three seasons, will conduct the Royal Ballet Sinfonia at certain performances during the season of Sir Peter Wright’s The Nutcracker at Birmingham Hippodrome and Royal Albert Hall this Christmas.

Jung has also been working as a guest conductor with orchestras such as the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra, Bamberger Symphoniker, Dresden Philharmonic, SWR Symphony Orchestra, Boston Philharmonic Orchestra, and Gstaad Festival Orchestra. From 2013 to 2019 he worked with Bernard Haitink on numerous occasions as Assistant and Cover Conductor. He is the second prize winner of the 2020 International Gustav Mahler Conducting Competition, a recipient of the Eugen-Jochum-Prize and studied at King’s College Cambridge and Hochschule für Musik Köln.

Commenting on his appointment Thomas said: "Every time I have conducted here since 2018, I have been inspired by the artistry on and off stage. I love the commitment, dedication, and vibrancy that the fantastic musicians and dancers of BRB bring. I’m looking forward to sharing our passion and love for music and dance with our audiences in the seasons to come."

Full detail's from BRB's website.

The National Children’s Choir of Great Britain in Bromsgrove and Birmingham

National Children’s Choir of Great Britain’s Senior Choir performing in Bromsgrove in 2024

The National Children’s Choir of Great Britain’s (NCCGB) Senior Choir will perform a free lunchtime concert in St John’s Church, Bromsgrove on Wednesday 6 August 2025. The concert is at 2.30pm and audience members can simply turn up. Dan Ludford-Thomas, NCCGB’s Musical Director, conducts a programme designed to showcase the versatility of the choir. 

The programme includes music from Josquin and Schutz, to Mozart and Debussy, plus contemporary pieces by Cecilia McDowall and Carl Rütti, gospel choir songs and even an arrangement of Starlight by the French electronic music producer The Superman Lovers. 

Children accepted into NCCGB participate in two courses per year, intensive weeks of singing. The NCCGB choirs sing a wide range of diverse repertoire and members learn choral discipline, musicality, vocal techniques and practical skills such as taking care of their voice. They also receive one-on-one singing lessons with a singing teacher. There are performance opportunities in public concerts in prestigious venues in the UK, and on choral tours abroad. 

Auditions are held every Autumn for entry into the next year. Audition dates for 2025 will be announced later this Summer.   

The Bromsgrove concert falls just days before all 200 voices of all four of NCCGB’s choirs take to the stage at the Royal Birmingham Conservatoire for their annual Summer Concert (Saturday 9 August, 3.30pm). Tickets for this concert may be booked via the Conservatoire's website.

Gavin Higgins to be inaugural Associate Composer at the Three Choirs Festival in Gloucester in 2026

Gavin Higgins (Photo: Yusef Bastaway)

The Three Choirs Festival has announced Gavin Higgins as its inaugural Associate Composer, marking the launch of a major composer development programme. Higgins will launch his three-year residency with a commission for a new setting of the Magnificat and Nunc Dimittis to be premiered at the 2026 Festival in Gloucester, the city of his birth. The work will be premiered by the combined three cathedral choirs of Gloucester, Hereford and Worcester at Choral Evensong on Wednesday 29 July 2026, and will be broadcast live on BBC Radio 3. Higgins' cantata The Faerie Bride was performed at the Three Choirs Festival in Gloucester in 2023 [see my review]

Unusually, the new Associate Composer programme will involve multiple composers, each year, a new composer will join the programme, building a cohort of three composers in residence by the third year. Over the course of their residencies, Associate Composers will engage with audiences and contribute to the artistic life of the festival, culminating in the premiere of a major choral-orchestral work in their final year. 

The Three Choirs Festival opens in Gloucester on 25 July 2026 with Walton's Belshazzar's Feast and concludes on 1 August 2026 with Elgar's The Dream of Gerontius. See the festival website.

Passion project that deserves to be enjoyed: Alastair Penman's The Last Tree

Alastair Penman: The Last Tree; Alastair Penman; Meadowbank Music
Reviewed 23 July 2025

Impressively multi-tracked, Alastair Penman's new album is a passion project about climate change, yet also a remarkably engaging suite of Michael Nyman-esque music that deserves to be enjoyed

Saxophonist Alastair Penman's latest disc, The Last Tree, is his fifth studio album and the third on his Meadowbank Music label. The disc features his suite for saxophone orchestra, The Last Tree. The Last Tree is Penman’s second project inspired by Climate Change, following on from his 2020 EP Do You Hear Me? The suite was originally written for the Guildhall School of Music Saxophone Ensemble and was premiered on 22/11/2024, conducted by the composer. In this studio recording, Penman has multi-tracked all fourteen parts of the ensemble.

The suite is in eight movements, each based on a quotation about climate change from a range of sources - a Cree proverb, Voltaire, Ernest Hemmingway, Donald Trump, Antonio Guterres, Robin Wall-Kimmerer, Gandhi, Barack Obama.

To honour the women by giving voice to their experience: pianist Deirdre Brenner introduces The Magdalene Songs which she brings to the Oxford International Song Festival

Deirdre Brenner (Photo: Andrej Grilc)

From 1922 to 1996 more than 10,000 women and girls were incarcerated in Ireland's Magdalene Laundries. Operated by four religious orders, these for-profit punitive institutions detained individuals against their will, committing serious systematic violations against human rights. 

The Magdalene Songs is an ongoing project initiated by pianist Deirdre Brenner that seeks to honour the women by giving voice to their experience bringing together prominent female Irish composers and the words of individual survivors into a collection of songs. The Magdalene Songs will be given by mezzo-soprano Lotte Betts-Dean and Deirdre Brenner on 23 October at the Holywell Music Room as part of the Oxford International Song Festival.

I recently caught up with Deirdre by Zoom (her in Vienna, me in London) to find out more about the project. Born in Massachusetts, Deirdre earned a Bachelor's degree from Dartmouth College with a double major in Engineering Sciences and Music, and Master's degrees from both the Royal Academy of Music in London and the Konservatorium Wien.

Song is a medium that she has worked in most. With its combination of text and music, there is a lot of opportunity and power in song performances yet the texts do not always resonate with modern audiences, though there is great potential for amplifying stories through song.

Former Magdalene Laundry in Galway, Ireland

Satisfying all round: Opera Holland Park's revival of its 2018 production of Verdi's La traviata showcases a trio of fine principals in a vividly realised production

Verdi: La Traviata - Alison Langer, Ellie Edmonds - Opera Holland Park 2025 (Photo: Ali Wright)

Verdi: La Traviata; Alison Langer, Matteo Desole, Michel de Souza, director: Rodula Gaitanou, conductor: Matthew Kofi Waldren, City of London Sinfonia; Opera Holland Park
Reviewed 23 July 2025

Holland Park's revival of its 2018 production was no seasoned routine, but a vibrantly living and musical performance that was profoundly satisfying with two principals who have grown into their roles

If it ain't broke, don't fix it. Verdi's La traviata returned to Opera Holland Park for the third time in Rodula Gaitanou's handsomely traditional yet intelligent production. Having debuted in 2018 [see my review] with Lauren Fagan and Matteo Desole (with Alison Langer in the Young Artists Performance), it returned in 2021 [see my review] with Lauren Fagan and Alison Langer, sharing the title role, and Matteo Desole. And here we were again, with a cast many of whom had been associated with the production since its outset.

We caught the performance on 23 July 2025, conducted by Matthew Kofi Waldren (who was also associated with the production from the outset in 2018) with Alison Langer as Violetta, Matteo Desole as Alfredo and Michel de Souza as Giorgio Germont, plus Ellie Edmonds as Annina and Laura Woods as Flora. Designs were by Cordelia Chisholm, lighting by Simon Corder and choreography by Steve Elias. The City of London Sinfonia was in the pit (using a slightly reduced orchestration with fewer horns and brass, and no on-stage band).

Verdi: La Traviata - Opera Holland Park 2025 (Photo: Ali Wright)

The Great Toccata: Daniel Moult plays Bach on the Schnitger organ of the Martinikerk, Groningen as part of the Royal College of Organists' Play the Organ campaign

There is a nationwide decline in organists and to try and stem this the Royal College of Organists (RCO) is devoting 2025 to its Play the Organ campaign, aiming not just to increase the number of people learning to play the organ, but also the number enjoying live and recorded organ music.

As part of this, Will Fraser's Fugue State Films has filmed organist Daniel Moult playing Bach’s Toccata and Fugue in D minor BWV 565 on the Arp Schnitger organ of the Martinikerk, Groningen.  

The Schnitger organ of the Martinikerk is one of the largest Baroque organs in Northern Europe and it tooks its present form in the late 17th and early 18th centuries as Arp Schnitger and his son expanded and developed an existing organ. During the later 20th century it was restored back to its 1740 state.

Despite being one of Bach's most famous organ works, little is known of the origins of the Toccata and Fugue in D minor. There is no autograph score and the piece is known from a manuscript created by Johannes Ringk in the period 1730 to 1760. Ringk, a renowned organist and composer, had studied with one of Bach's pupils,  Johann Peter Kellner and it is possible that Ringk's copy of the Toccata and Fugue came from Kellner's collection.

As part of Play the Organ, the RCO has launched a new streaming service, in collaboration with Fugue State Films, devoted to the organ. The first film is a documentary made about the Toccata and Fugue; a 100-minute documentary followed by more than two hours of filmed performances and presentations. Full details from the RCO website.

Will definitely stay in the memory: Gweneth Ann Rand & Simon Lepper in Judith Weir's woman.life.song at Wigmore Hall

Gweneth Ann Rand

Florence Price: Some o'These Days, Bewilderment, Laura Bowler: Glue, Gravity, call it what you like..., Roxanna Panufnik: If I Don't Know, Judith Weir: woman.life.song; Gweneth Ann Rand, Simon Lepper
22 July 2025

Judith Weir's 2000 song cycle for Jessye Norman gets a compelling and direct performance as part of Gweneth Ann Rand's typically fearless programme reflecting of women's music and women's lives from the comic to the tragic

Judith Weir's woman.life.song is an iconic work, huge in scale and aims. As Weir herself commented in a recent posting on her website:

"Without doubt the composition of my own that has brought the most complications in its wake is woman.life.song written in 1999 for the great American soprano Jessye Norman. For a start, the enormous libretto (by Maya Angelou, Toni Morrison and Clarissa Estes) resulted in a 45-minute continuous musical setting, daunting for all but the most powerful of singers. And its 19-piece band (the original idea was to team it up with Schoenberg's Erwartung) is hard to come by."

On Tuesday 22 July 2025, soprano Gweneth Ann Rand presented a typically fearless programme at Wigmore Hall with pianist Simon Lepper. The centrepiece was Judith Weir's woman.life.song in Weir's more recent version for voice and piano in what Weir believes might have been the first performance of the complete work in this form. The accompanying works were all by women composers, setting texts that reflected in various ways on women's lives, with music by Florence Price, Laura Bowler and Roxanna Panufnik.

Polish Baroque: Wrocław Baroque Ensemble present selections from Mikołaj Zieleński’s magnum opus

Gniezno Cathedral and Lake Jelonek, Poland, where Mikołaj Zieleński worked
(Photo by Diego Delso, CC BY-SA 4.0/WikiMedia)

Little is known of Mikołaj Zieleński beyond the fact that he published a major collection of works in 1611. On 14 August 2025, Wrocław Baroque Ensemble, under the direction of its founder Andrzej Kosendiak, will be giving us a chance to hear selections from Mikołaj Zieleński’s magnum opus Offertoria et communiones totius anni alongside Vivaldi’s Gloria RV 589 at St Martin in the Fields.

Wrocław Baroque Ensemble was founded in 2012 and it has specialised in historically informed performance of Polish renaissance and baroque music in particular, under the direction of founder and conductor Andrzej Kosendiak. The Ensemble is now a resident ensemble of the National Forum of Music (Nardowe Forum Muzyki – NFM) in Poland.

Mikołaj Zieleński (fl. 1611) was a Polish composer, organist and Kapellmeister to the primate Baranowski, Archbishop of Gniezno. His only known surviving works are contained in two 1611 liturgical cycles of polychoral works, the Offertoria/Communes totius ann, dedicated to the Archbishop of Gniezno, Wojciech Baranowski - eight part-books and ninth containing the organ accompaniment. 131 pieces in total, written for various vocal and instrumental ensembles, all with organ accompaniment. 

Full details from the St Martin in the Fields website.

Ladies in Bloomers: London Sinfonietta presents Omri Kochavi's site-specific celebration of forgotten female gardeners at the Story Garden in Kings Cross

Women gardeners (Image courtesy of the Garden Museum)

Fiona Davison's discovery of letters written by Olive Harrisson, a talented gardener denied a scholarship by the Royal Horticultural Society "on account of being female", led to Davison's book An Almost Impossible Thing which illuminates the lives of six early female professional gardeners through their personal letters and radical experiences. You can read more about Harrisson on the BBC website where there is an interview with her granddaughter.

Now this celebration of female gardeners has been turned into a 'hortimusical' celebration of forgotten female gardeners as the London Sinfonietta presents Ladies in Bloomers at the Story Garden in Kings Cross on 14 September 2025. Set in a hidden garden in the heart of King’s Cross, this immersive event features the London Sinfonietta, four singers, and on-stage gardeners, an outdoor event that intersects music and horticulture.

London-based Israeli-Canadian composer and guitarist Omri Kochavi's new work Ladies in Bloomers was commissioned as part of the London Sinfonietta’s Writing the Future scheme. Ellie Slorach conducts London Sinfonietta and EXAUDI, with sound projection by Sound Intermedia.

Full details from the London Sinfonietta website.

Style & substance: Ambroise Thomas' Hamlet in Buxton is a rewarding musical & dramatic feast with the festival confidently stepping on the shoulders of its previous production

Thomas: Hamlet - Gregory Feldmann - Buxton International Festival (Photo: Genevieve Girling)

Ambroise Thomas: Hamlet; Gregory Feldmann, Yewon Han, Alastair Mile, Allison Cook, director Jack Furness, Orchestra of Opera North, conductor: Adrian Kelly; Buxton International Festival at Buxton Opera House
Reviewed 20 July 2025

Buxton's return to Hamlet does the work proud with a stylishly minimal production from Jack Furness allowing the two astonishing young principals to shine, all under Adrian Kelly's loving musical direction

Ambroise Thomas was the nearly man of 19th century French opera. His opera Mignon followed Gounod in adapting Goethe, first with spoken dialogue then as full grand opera, and Mignon echoed Faust's popularity. His Shakespeare adaptation Hamlet sat on the cusp between the older grand opera and the lyric drama espoused by Massenet. Hamlet retained a hold on the repertoire, thanks to the spectacular mad scene for Ophélie. But in modern times, neither of Thomas' operas has retained anything like its 19th century popularity.

In 1980, the fledgling Buxton Festival presented a production of Thomas' Hamlet (with Thomas Allen in the title role) in an enterprising Shakespeare-themed season that included Berlioz' Beatrice et Benedict. Since then, sightings of the opera in the UK have been relatively rare. Covent Garden presented it in 2003, for the first time since 1910 (!) and Opera North gave it in 1995, but it remains a rarity, dependent on the right baritone and soprano.

45 years on, Buxton International Festival decided to return to the work in a new production directed by Jack Furness and conducted by the festival's artistic director, Adrian Kelly with the Orchestra of Opera North in the pit. We caught the performance on 20 July 2025 at Buxton Opera House. Adrian Kelly is also head of the International Opera Studio at Zurich Opera of which both the leads, Gregory Feldmann (Hamlet) and Yewon Han (Ophélie) were members. Alastair Miles was Claudius, Allison Cook was Gertrude, Joshua Baxter was Laërte, Tylor Lamani was Marcellus and Dan D'Souza was Horatio. Designs were by Sami Fendall and lighting by Jake Wiltshire.

Thomas: Hamlet - Yewon Han - Buxton International Festival (Photo: Genevieve Girling)

The strange thing about watching Thomas' Hamlet is the way that in each of the play's familiar scenes, the opera responds with standard French grand opera tropes. The libretto was by experienced hands, Michel Carré and Jules Barbier, and if you can forget Shakespeare, then Hamlet makes a striking piece of operatic drama. Some of the differences may be laid at the libretto's source which is not Shakespeare, but the 1847 French version by Alexandre Dumas, père, and Paul Meurice which already has differences to the English. Most of the smaller roles are cut, the libretto focuses on Hamlet, Ophélie, Claudius and Gertrude. Polonius is not killed in the closet scene (he is not present) and the role is reduced to a cipher. Here it was admirably performed by Richard Woodall.

The ennui of modern life: Bernstein & Poulenc's one-act operas from the 1950s in an intriguing double bill at Buxton International Festival

Bernstein: Trouble in Tahiti - Charles Rice, Allison Cooke - Buxton International Festival (Photo: Genevieve Girling)

Leonard Bernstein: Trouble in Tahiti, Francis Poulenc: La voix humaine; Hanna Hipp, Charles Rice, Allison Cooke, Chloé Hare-Jones, Harun Tekin, Ross Cumming, director: Daisy Evans, conductor: Iwan Davies; Buxton International Festival at Buxton Opera House
Reviewed 19 July 2025

Two operas from the 1950s in a clever double bill that does not quite work as a pairing but features some strong individual performances

Both were written in the 1950s and both deal with dissatisfaction with modern life and relationships, yet Leonard Bernstein's Trouble in Tahiti, and Francis Poulenc's La voix humaine would seem to inhabit different worlds. Trouble in Tahiti, which had a troubled debut in 1952 and remains forever linked with Bernstein's later sequel, A quiet place, is imbued with jazz and the failure of the American dream. La voix humaine, which debuted in 1959, was written for (and perhaps partly created by) the great singing actress Denise Duval, yet has an aura of Paris of the 1930s when Jean Cocteau's play, on which the opera is based, made its debut.

Buxton International Festival, in collaboration with Norwich Theatre, made the brave decision to create a double bill from these two. Directed by Daisy Evans and conducted by Iwan Davies, the production also featured the debut of the Festival Orchestra. We caught the performance at Buxton Opera House on Saturday 19 July with Charles Rice and Hanna Hipp as Sam and Dinah, plus Chloé Hare-Jones, Harun Tekin and Ross Cumming (all three from the BIF Chorus) as the vocal trio, and Allison Cooke as Elle. Designs were by Loren Elstein, lighting by Jake Wiltshire.

Bernstein: Trouble in Tahiti - Ross Cumming, Harun Tekin, Chloé Hare-Jones, Charles Rice, Hanna Hipp - Buxton International Festival (Photo: Genevieve Girling)

Loren Elstein's bleak but stylish set caught the essential ennui of Sam and Dinah's (Charles Rice and Hanna Hipp) marriage, and this must be one of the bleakest accounts of Trouble in Tahiti that I have seen. The trio (Chloé Hare-Jones, Harun Tekin and Ross Cumming) were almost modern Commedia dell'Arte figures, highly involved in Sam and Dinah's lives, and playing the other silent figures that Bernstein included in the libretto.

Old-fashioned drama & a modern gloss: Cecilia Stinton's production of Donizetti's Lucia di Lammermoor at Opera Holland Park with Jennifer France's debut in the title role

Donizetti: Lucia di Lammermoor - Tabitha Reynolds (ghost), Jennifer France - Opera Holland Park (Photo: Ali Wright)

Donizetti: Lucia di Lammermoor; Jennifer France, José de Eça, Morgan Pearse, director: Cecilia Stinton, conductor: Michael Papadopoulos, City of London Sinfonia; Opera Holland Park
Reviewed 18 July 2025

Set firmly in the 1840s and full of narrative detail, this was a Lucia that combined immediacy with vivid musical theatrics and a sense of drama.

Opera Holland Park's new production of Donizetti's Lucia di Lammermoor which opened on Friday 19 July 2025 was something of a family affair. It was directed by Cecilia Stinton who first worked for the company as director of the Young Artists' performance of Verdi's La Traviata in 2018 and since then she has directed Bizet's Carmen, Verdi's Rigoletto and Rossini's The Barber of Seville for the company. Similarly conductor Michael Papadopoulos was the repetiteur on the same Young Artists' La traviata and he has worked on the music staff subsequently, conducting his first main stage production last year with Handel's Acis and Galatea.

But Lucia di Lammermoor is nothing without its heroine. Jennifer France made her Opera Holland Park debut in 2015 in Jonathan Dove's Flight and since then has dazzled with Adele in Johann Strauss' Die Fledermaus, Zerbinetta in Strauss Ariadne auf Naxos and as Janacek's Cunning Little Vixen. Whilst tenor José de Eça first sang with the company as Cavaradossi in Puccini's Tosca last year having earlier that year sung in concert with the company. And the Scarpia in that production of Tosca was Morgan Pearse, a baritone known as much for his Handel and Mozart as later repertoire.

Donizetti: Lucia di Lammermoor - Jennifer France, José de Eça - Opera Holland Park (Photo: Ali Wright)

The cast was completed by Joseph Buckmaster as Arturo, Blaise Malaba (who sang in the 2019 Young Artists production of Verdi's Un ballo in maschera) as Raimondo, Charlotte Badham (who was Cherubino in the 2021 Young Artists performance of Mozart's The Marriage of Figaro and subsequently sang Jo March in Mark Adamo's Little Women and Hansel in Humperdinck's Hansel and Gretel). David Webb, who was Richard Dauntless in Gilbert & Sullivan's Ruddigore in 2023 was Normanno.

Designs were by Neil Irish, lighting by Tim van 't Hof and movement by William Byram. The City of London Sinfonia was in the pit, playing a slightly reduced orchestration, the mad scene used the traditional flute, there were a couple of small cuts but it was done substantially complete.

Stinton and Irish set the piece in the early 19th century, roughly at the time of the opera's creation. The political clash that is at the heart of Scott's novel and Cammarano's libretto replaced by an economic one. The Ashtons' declining old money being dependent on Lucia's marriage to a Victorian plutocrat. Paul Hastie's surtitles glossed things, somewhat, but it worked.

A family affair: beginning as a memorial to his father, Andrew Arceci's Winchendon Music Festival has grown into a community enterprise

The Murdock-Whitney House, Winchendon History & Cultural Centre

Andrew Arceci is an American viola da gamba, violone, and bass player who studied at the Peabody Conservatory, The Juilliard School, and at Oxford. His UK performances have included the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment, Oxford Baroque, and Brighton Early Music Festival. Andrew is also the artistic director and founder of the Winchendon Music Festival. 

Andrew Arceci (Photo: Jeffrey Hornstein)

Winchendon is a small New England town with a population of around 10,000, located approximately two hours by car from Boston. Andrew's family is from the area, and though his family moved around a lot when he was a child, Winchendon was the one constant. Ten years ago, Andrew's father, a paediatric oncologist, was killed in an accident while riding his bike and was buried in Winchendon. Andrew organised a memorial weekend of concerts, including one featuring his mother's cousin, a jazz musician. There was sufficient interest for them to repeat the weekend the following year. Since then, the festival has developed and is now celebrating its tenth anniversary.

The concerts are very much a community enterprise; they are free to the community and rely on support. Andrew comments that each year, they have to prove themselves to attract support for the next season. Audiences come not only from Winchendon but also from the surrounding areas, including Worcester. As Andrew works as a professional musician, he tries to coordinate with colleagues and pull them to Winchendon, and performers enjoy the intimate nature of the festival's concerts. Coordinating schedules can be tricky, but he finds it exciting when things pull together. 

Andrew encourages performers to discuss both the pieces they are performing and their travels, sharing information about themselves and their instruments. He feels that the communal aspect of the festival's performance would not work in a big city. In Winchendon, the venues are all intimate, so it is easy for performers to chat to the audience.

Cheltenham Music Festival celebrates its 80th birthday & doubles its audience year-on-year

Mozart's Requiem: David Crown conducts Cheltenham Bach Choir and the Musical & Amicable Society at Cheltenham Town Hall

This year the Cheltenham Music Festival celebrated its 80th birthday [see my review of the closing concert]. The birthday year included two new commissions, four world premieres, large-scale orchestral performances and intimate chamber recitals. Cheltenham’s 80th anniversary proved an opportunity to celebrate the Festival’s heritage – and also look to a promising future.

The festival’s 80th season saw a doubling of its audience year-on-year, capping a vibrant anniversary year that saw the Festival reaffirm its position as a centre for world-class classical music in the UK.

The doubling of the Festival’s audience figures reflects a sense of renewed energy around the Festival in Jack Bazalgette's inaugural year as its Artistic Director. "To see so many thousands attend a programme of this breadth has been genuinely exciting," he said. "Cheltenham is held in both esteem and affection eighty years on, and our mission in our ninth decade is to deepen and broaden that relationship with concert-goers, the classically curious and existing enthusiasts alike."

Further details from the festival website.

Foxtrot: Shostakovich’s Jazz Suite No.1, arranged by Paul Campbell performed by mass orchestra (featuring over 200 young musicians) at Benedetti Foundation's London Sessions with Wynton Marsalis

Following an inspiring weekend at the Southbank Centre for the Benedetti Foundation's London Sessions, the mass orchestra (featuring over 200 young musicians) performed a new arrangement by Paul Campbell of Shostakovich’s Jazz Suite No.1, including an improvised solo from Wynton Marsalis! This performance was the culmination of the weekend’s work.

Led by violinist Nicola Benedetti, the London Sessions bring together young musicians and teachers for high-energy, high-inspiration workshops that explore everything from storytelling and improvisation to sound production and musical expression. This year’s guests included jazz trumpeter and composer Wynton Marsalis, and saxophonist and presenter Jess Gillam.

Further details from the Benedetti Foundation website.

Blossoming: santoor virtuoso Eeshar Singh in collaboration with Royal Northern Sinfonia at The Glasshouse, Gateshead

Eeshar Singh & Royal Northern Sinfonia

As part of GemArts' Masala Festival at The Glasshouse in Gateshead on 18 July 2025, santoor virtuoso Eeshar Singh is collaborating with Royal Northern Sinfonia on Blossoming, a live performance that Indian classical instrumentation with Western orchestration and neoclassical textures.

Musicians from Royal Northern Sinfonia will join Eeshar Singh (santoor), Jeevan Singh (percussion) and multi-instrumentalist Sirrjan Singh for an evening that promises to be an immersive journey of music and storytelling inspired by ancient mythology and Indic folklore. The work is based on Eeshar Singh's EP, Blossoming which came out last year. The Indian santoor is a hammered dulcimer.

Eeshar Singh has also written the score for the Suraj Podcast, a chapter by chapter summary in English of the most famed pre-colonial Sikh historical text The Suraj Prakash, where Singh's work blends modern sound design elements with traditional Raag structures and instrumentation to create a captivating audio experience that merges his passion for music with his love for storytelling,

Full details from The Glasshouse website.

As Genesis Sixteen enters its 15th year, 22 young singers and one conductor are welcomed as the latest cohort

Genesis Sixteen

Now entering its 15th year, Genesis Sixteen is set to welcome a new cohort for 2025/26 with 22 singers and one conductor joining  The Sixteen’s free young artists’ programme for 18-23-year-olds which aims to nurture the next generation of talented ensemble singers. Supported by by the Genesis Foundation, Genesis Sixteen is the UK’s first ever fully funded programme of its kind. 

The latest Genesis Sixteen cohort welcomes singers from across the UK and Northern Ireland, and this year introduces a singer who has been involved in The Sixteen’s Talent Development Pipeline project. The project, now in its third year, sees The Sixteen in partnership with Barnsley Youth Choirs, the Diocese of Leeds Schools Singing Programme, Liverpool Philharmonic Youth Voices and London Youth Choirs, offering young singers the opportunity to develop skills and discover pathways in the industry. The programme also aims to diversify the talent pipeline of singers entering young artists programmes, ensuring that singers from across the country have equal opportunities to take part in the world of choral music.

Over 300 singers have now been involved in the Genesis Sixteen programme, with alumni making waves in the UK and across the world. Matthew Quinn, conducting scholar from the eleventh cohort, now takes on the role of Chorus Director at ENO, in addition to being Principal Conductor of National Youth Choir (15-18 group). Three Genesis Sixteen alumni now also form part of The Sixteen: Elizabeth Paul (third cohort), Oscar Golden-Lee (seventh cohort), Edward McMullan  (first cohort). Jessica Cale, Bethany Horak-Hallett and Matthew McKinney, three singers from the third, fourth and seventh cohort respectively will form the three main roles in The Railway Children – a new opera by Mark Anthony Turnage to be staged at Glyndebourne this Autumn. 

Full details of the new cohort from The Sixteen's website.

Who are these people? Oliver Mears' heavy handed updating of Handel's Semele at Covent Garden fails to convince, even with Pretty Yende in the title role

Handel: Semele - Pretty Yende, Niamh O'Sullivan (Photo: Vincent Pontet)

Handel: Semele; Pretty Yende, Ben Bliss, Alice Coote, Brindley Sherratt, director: Oliver Mears, conductor: Christian Curnyn; Royal Opera House
Reviewed 15 July 2025

A disappointing account of the title role alongside a misguided attempt at updating and relevance, mean Oliver Mear's heavy handed production never quite comes alive

Handel's later oratorios suggest that he was thinking dramatically, but whether he ever considered the works on stage is a moot point. We have little or no record of his thinking on these matters, no long correspondences with his librettists. But oratorios like Semele, Hercules and Susanna suggest he was thinking beyond a simple biblical story. The libretto to Jephtha owes as much to Greek drama as it does to the Bible, and how we would love to have a sample of Handel's discussions with librettist Thomas Morell about that. And then Theodora, though a religious subject, was based on a romantic novel!

But there is no doubt that these works present problems on the modern operatic stage. There are moments when Handel forgets about the on-going drama and concentrates on something more abstract. The large-scale choruses in both Semele and Susanna contrast strongly with the lighter character of the rest of the drama.

When Handel's Semele was first performed, his contemporaries viewed it as a possible satire on the relationship between King George II and his mistress, Lady Yarmouth, and I imagine that Congreve's original libretto, written for John Eccles in 1706 had a similar intent. There is a lightness to much of Handel's writing in Semele and the most successful stagings of the work that I have seen have not taken themselves too seriously. 

At Covent Garden, having giving us an intensely serious version of Handel's Jephtha with a radical subversion of the ending in 2023 [see my review], Oliver Mears returned to Handelian oratorio with Semele given a similarly highly serious makeover. We caught the performance at the Royal Opera House on 15 July 2025, when Christian Curnyn conducted with Pretty Yende as Semele, Ben Bliss as Jupiter, Alice Coote as Juno, Brindley Sherratt as Cadmus and Somnus, Carlo Vistoli as Athamas, Niamh O'Sullivan as Ino, and Marianna Hovanisyan as Iris. Designs were by Annemarie Woods with movement by Sarah Fahie. This was a co-production with Théâtre des Champs-Élysées where the production debuted earlier this year with the same cast (and where the pictures were taken).

Handel: Semele - Brindley Sherratt (Photo: Vincent Pontet)

This was a highly serious take on the story, and though there were comic moments, Mears' intentions were to tell a remarkably disturbing story. Set loosely in the 1960s, the story took place in the very grand mansion inhabited by Jove and Juno (Ben Bliss and Alice Coote), where Cadmus (Brindley Sherratt) and his people are now servants. Jove's intentions are distinctly controlling, and his transactional relationship with Semele (Pretty Yende) ends in her incineration, done in a way that Mears suggests is a cycle, gone through endlessly. Many of Juno's scenes were comic, how could they not be, but there was little comedy or pastoral delight in the relations between Semele and Jupiter. At the end, as the assembled 'populace' watched Semele's incineration, Ino (Niamh O'Sullivan) became highly disturbed whilst Athmas (Carlo Vistoli) went mad.

As Jonathan Bloxham becomes principal conductor, London Mozart Players announces its 2025/26 season

For the 2025/26 season, Jonathan Bloxham steps into a new role as principal conductor and artistic advisor with London Mozart Players (LMP), building on his three-year tenure as conductor in residence and artistic advisor. LMP#'s flagship season opens at St Martin in the Fields with Bloxham conducting an all-Mozart concert featuring soprano Danielle de Niese in arias from Don Giovanni, Il re pastore and La Clemenza di Tito alongside Mozart's Symphony No. 40. 

The season also includes Bach's Brandenburg Concertos directed by Simon Blendis; a celebration of Samuel Coleridge Taylor's 150th birthday in Croydon with the composer's Violin Concerto with Braimah Kanneh-Mason alongside new music by Ryan Morgan and Tunde Jegede; and violinist Fenella Humphreys in Stephen McNeff's Violin Concerto conducted by Jonathan Bloxham. Further ahead there is Mozart, Boulogne and Haydn, Bach's St John Passion, Vivaldi and Piazzolla, and the season ends with Jonathan Bloxham conducting Britten's Serenade for tenor, horn and strings with Laurence Kilsby and Ben Goldscheider, plus Mendelssohn a new piece by Anna Clyne.

LMP's wine-tasting experience, Tasting Notes returns to Smith Square Hall for its 10th edition with four chances to pair wine with music. Family friendly, community concerts in Upper Norwood continue with Christmas brass music, plus musical story-telling in The Penguin who was blown away and The Duck with no luck! And pianist Howard Shelly returns with four instalments of their popular lunchtime series The Piano Explored at St Paul's Knightsbridge with all five of Beethoven's piano concertos being featured. 

Full details from LMP's website.

The Barber in Benidorm: Louise Bakker's 1970s sitcom take on Rossini's Il barbiere di Siviglia with a terrific cast at Longborough Festival Opera

Rossini: Il barbiere di Siviglia - finale of Act One - Longborough Festival Opera, 2025 (Photo: Clive Barda)

Rossini: Il barbiere di Siviglia: Joseph Doody, Lauren Young, Benjamin Bevan, Henry Neill, director: Louise Bakker, conductor Elaine Kelly; Longborough Festival Opera
Reviewed 13 July 2025

It might be described as 'the British Bayreuth' but Longborough's stylishly engaging 1970s take on Rossini's comic masterpiece radiated both musical style and sheer enjoyment

This year's Longborough Festival Opera season does not feature any of the works by Wagner for which it has become known, though in Avner Dorman's Wahnfried: The Birth of the Wagner Cult and Debussy's Pelleas et Melisande, Wagner and his ideas were never far away. In completed contrast, the third opera being presented was far lighter, Rossini's Il barbiere di Siviglia.

We were lucky enough to catch the final performance, on Sunday 13 July 2025. Directed by Louise Bakker, designed by Max Johns and Anisha Fields, and conducted by Elaine Kelly, the production featured Henry Neill as Figaro, Joseph Doody as Count Almaviva, Lauren Young as Rosina, Benjamin Bevan as Dr Bartolo, Shafali Jalota as Berta, Trevor Eliot Bowes as Don Basilio, and Kieran Rayner as Fiorello. The staff for the production also featured a couple of other notable names; the tenor Alessandro Fisher was assistant director and language coach, whilst David Eaton (music director of Charles Court Opera) was assistant conductor, chorus master and responsible for the continuo.

Max Johns' imaginative set provided all the wherewithal for the opera's farcical elements and did service both for the indoor and outdoor scenes. During the overture, we opened on a Spanish square in a tourist destination in the 1970s, judging from the costumes. Itinerant vendors were setting up their wares, and Henry Neill's Figaro was established as being something of a wide boy and completely itinerant, without any fixed workplace. Feeling the need to fill the whole overture, Bakker rather allowed this joke to play for too long, but it provided valuable background for the comedy to come.

Rossini: Il barbiere di Siviglia - Storm scene: Lauren Young & chorus - Longborough Festival Opera, 2025 (Photo: Clive Barda)

The slightly over-done mannerism and over-active action partook of the visual language of sitcom and there was a feeling that Bakker and Johns had reset the opera in Benidorm. Whilst Bakker certainly endeavoured to fill the stage with colour and movement, with a fondness for over emphasis, there was little of the extreme stylisation that directors sometimes resort to when faced with Rossini's large-scale structures. The recitative rattled along nicely, with the cast managing to find a vocal and visual language that gelled. The opera was sung in Italian, nice and clear from my fourth row seats, with Nick Fowler's surtitles giving us a rather casual, demotic take on Sterbini's original.

New music to the fore: Gergely Madaras & BBC NOW celebrate Cheltenham Music Festival's 80th birthday in rousing style with music from the first festival alongside music for today

BBC National Orchestra of Wales & Gergely Madaras at Cheltenham Town Hall - Cheltenham Music Festival 2025

Britten: Four Sea Interludes from 'Peter Grimes'; Arnold: Symphony No. 5, Anna Semple: Fanfare for Cheltenham; Elgar: Enigma Variations; BBC National Orchestra of Wales, Gergely Madaras; Cheltenham Music Festival at Cheltenham Town Hall
Reviewed 12 July 2025

A celebration of the festival's 80th birthday by reflecting its support for new music from the outset, alongside a new commission in temperature-beating performances

The Cheltenham Music Festival has been celebrating its 80th birthday this year, and Jack Bazalgette's first season as artistic director culminated in a celebratory final concert at Cheltenham Town Hall where Gergely Madaras conducted the BBC National Orchestra of Wales in a programme that both looked back to that first Cheltenham Festival concert and  looked forward.

Founded in 1945, the festival began two years before the first Edinburgh Festival and a year before the Arts Council was founded. The first concert included Benjamin Britten conducting the concert premiere of Four Sea Interludes from Peter Grimes, just a week after the opera's premiere, alongside William Walton and Arthur Bliss conducting their own work.

At Cheltenham Town Hall on Saturday 12 July 2025, Gergely Madaras and BBC National Orchestra of Wales began with Britten's Four Sea Interludes, then followed this with Malcolm Arnold's Symphony No. 5 which was commissioned by the festival and premiered there in 1961, part of a sequence of contemporary British symphonies at the festival between 1946 and 1964 including works by Rubbra, Ian Whyte, Arthur Benjamin, Robert Simpson, Alun Hoddinott and Alan Rawsthorne. After the interval was the premiere of the latest festival commission, Anna Semple's Fanfare for Cheltenham, and the evening concluded with Edward Elgar's Enigma Variations which was also in that first festival programme.

BBC National Orchestra of Wales & Gergely Madaras at Cheltenham Town Hall - Cheltenham Music Festival 2025

The Edwardian Town Hall is not the home to the municipal offices but was built as the replacement for the 18th century assembly rooms. The main space is a handsome classical hall with a stage that was filled to capacity by the orchestra. However, the sound had surprisingly clarity and immediacy to it.

Spurred on by the story-telling: conductor Peter Whelan on bringing the Dublin version of Handel's Alexander's Feast to life with the Irish Baroque Orchestra

Peter Whelan conducting Mozart's Symphony No.41 "Jupiter", image taken from video
filmed at the Whyte Recital Hall at the Royal Irish Academy of Music, 9/9/2023. Produced by November Seven Films.

Conductor Peter Whelan is bringing the Irish Baroque Orchestra (IBO), of which he is artistic director, to the BBC Proms this Summer with a performance of Handel's Alexander's Feast. As with their performance of Handel's Messiah at Wigmore Hall in 2023 [see my review], there is an Irish connection, and the ensemble will be exploring the version of Alexanders Feast that Handel produced for his visit to Dublin in 1742. As artistic partner of Irish National Opera, Peter has conducted the IBO in several productions, including two imaginative productions of Vivaldi operas, Bajazet in 2022 [see my review] and L'Olimpiade in 2024 [see my review]. It was recently announced that Peter will be the next artistic director of Philharmonia Baroque in San Francisco.

Peter Whelan (Photo: Marco Borggreve)

During an engaging couple of hours that I spent chatting with Peter, we covered a great deal of ground, but what struck me was not just his passion for the music but the way the story behind the music was important to him. He mentions as a child learning about Handel coming to Ireland and being taken with the story, this seems to have sparked an interest not only in music but in the stories behind it.

With IBO, he has produced a striking series of discs in Linn Records exploring Baroque music in Ireland by focusing on the stories of different characters from Irish musical history, illuminating the 18th-century musical life of the country. The most recent is Rachel Baptist: Ireland's Black Syren, and others include Mr Charles the Hungarian: Handel's rival in Dublin, The Trials of Tenducci: A Castrato in Ireland, and Welcome Home Mr Dubourg.

However, we began our chat with Handel's Alexander's Feast. During August, Peter and IBO will be performing this at Kilkenny Arts Festival, Dublin HandelFest, the BBC Proms at the Royal Albert Hall, and at Snape Maltings in Aldeburgh as part of Summer at Snape. To a certain extent, the choice of Alexander's Feast for the BBC Proms was pragmatic; each year at the Proms, there is usually a big work by Handel and by Bach, and you need a grand work to fit the space. The performance would also be a chance to recreate the 1742 Dublin version of Alexander's Feast, which has never been performed in modern times. And there is the additional benefit that the piece is about the healing power of music. Peter also proudly points out that the IBO will only be the second group from the Republic of Ireland to perform at the BBC Proms (the previous one was in the 1970s).

Handel wrote Alexander's Feast originally in 1736, setting an adaptation of John Dryden's Ode for St Cecilia's Day (originally set in 1697 by Jeremiah Clarke), but Handel revised the work for subsequent performances and it was one of the scores he took with him to Ireland in 1742 when he was invited there. Peter has been working with the Handel scholar Donald Burrows on the 1742 version, which had very particular circumstances behind it. Handel intended to use the singing men from St Patrick's Cathedral for his performance, but the Dean objected. The Dean at the time was Jonathan Swift, who was beginning to suffer his mental decline and had become somewhat cantankerous. The result was that Swift wrote what Peter calls an amazing letter to Handel announcing that none of the singing men could take part in the performance.