By turns illuminating & compelling: the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra on terrific form in Britten & Vaughan Williams at the BBC Proms

Britten: Violin Concerto - Simone Lamsma, Andrew Manze, Royal Liverpool Philharmonic - BBC Proms (Photo: BBC/ Chris Christodoulou)

Vaughan Williams: Fantasia on a theme of Thomas Tallis, Britten: Violin Concerto, Carmel Smickersgill: A Brick Thrown with Love, Vaughan Williams: Symphony No. 9; Simone Lamsma, Royal Liverpool Philharmonic, Andrew Manze; BBC Proms at the Royal Albert Hall
Reviewed 4 September 2026

From early Britten and Vaughan Williams through to RVW's last symphonic utterance, an evening that was by turns illuminating and compelling, with the RLPO on terrific form and a finely focused yet emotional solo from Simone Lamsma in the Britten

In 1938, Ralph Vaughan Williams (then aged 66) began writing his fifth symphony whilst in the USA, Benjamin Britten (then aged 25) was beginning his Violin Concerto. Britten's concerto would be premiered in 1940, whilst Vaughan Williams's symphony premiered in 1943. But the senior composer showed no sign of slowing down, and his symphonies continued right through to the Symphony No. 9 which he composed during 1956/57, and it premiered in 1958 when he was 86.

It was this fascinating confluence that was at the heart of Andrew Manze and the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra's BBC Prom at the Royal Albert Hall on Friday 4 September 2026. They began with Vaughan Williams's Tallis Fantasia, then came Britten's Violin Concerto with soloist Simone Lamsma, the premiere of Carmel Smickersgill's A Brick Thrown with Love and finally Vaughan Williams's Symphony No. 9 in E minor. Another link in the programme is that both the concerto and the symphony conclude with a passacaglia.

When it comes to Vaughan Williams's output, his Fantasia on a Theme of Thomas Tallis which premiered at the Three Choirs Festival in Gloucester in 1910 is very much an early work even though the composer was then in his late 30s. Something of a late starter, the piece is his first major work that is unquestionably his. It is hard to regard the work as revolutionary now, but in 1910 after the premiere the young composers Herbert Howells and Ivor Gurney were so shaken by the piece they spent the night roaming the streets of Gloucester talking about it.

Andrew Manze, Royal Liverpool Philharmonic - BBC Proms (Photo: BBC/ Chris Christodoulou)

The Royal Albert Hall certainly is not Gloucester Cathedral so we lacked that building's distinctive ambience. But Manze presented the work using the same large body of strings that he used for the Britten and the Vaughan Williams symphony. The result was an opening that was lush yet barely there, leading to a big tune with a fine sense of rubato and orchestral tuttis that were full of rich details. The nine players in Orchestra II (placed behind the main body of strings) seemed to be performing with minimum vibrato, to striking effect, and the solo quartet produced some sweet violin and mellow viola sounds. The ending, when it came, was wonderfully effective and the fine string sound only lacked that extra glow from Gloucester Cathedral's acoustic.

A new way of listening to the harpsichord: Katarzyna Kowalik's Meditations for Harpsichord

With Meditations for Harpsichord, British-Polish harpsichordist Katarzyna Kowalik will gather together nine newly commissioned works by five British and four Polish composers.

The project will receive its world premiere at Colet House in London on 20 October 2026, followed by the Polish premiere on 24 October in Hashtag Lab, Warsaw, as well as performances in the UK and Poland throughout 2026–27, including events for the New College, Oxford, National Centre for Early Music, The Confraternity of Polish Artists in Great Britain & POSK, Warsaw Music Encounters Festival, among others.

Written for harpsichord, Tibetan singing bowls, gongs and electronics, the works explore the instrument from radically different perspectives, incorporating contemporary techniques, resonance, silence, improvisatory elements and immersive sound. The programme will be framed by an unmeasured prelude by Louis Couperin and Froberger’s Méditation sur ma mort future. The nine contemporary composers featured are Rolf Hind, Janet Oates, John Palmer, Kevin Raftery, Nicola LeFanu, Anna Ignatowicz-Glińska, Andrzej Karałow, Dariusz Przybylski and Anna Maria Huszcza.

The October performances coincide with the release of the project’s recording on Prima Facie Records. An accompanying book, co-edited by Katarzyna Kowalik and John Palmer, published by Vision Edition, will feature contributions from all nine composers, offering further perspectives on the music, the commissioning process and the ideas behind the project.

Tickets for 20 October from TicketTailor.

ORA Singers' Graduate Composers: five young composers have their work showcased at Royal Welsh College of Music & Drama

ORA Singers' Graduate Composers' scheme forms a core part of their Composers' Pathway - their work to support composers at any stage in their careers. The Graduate scheme champions early-career composers by offering them a professional commission with ORA Singers and regular mentorship with Artistic Director, Suzi Digby. 

The third Graduate Composers' scheme culminates in a Graduate Composers Showcase at the Royal Welsh College of Music & Drama on 2 October 2026. The five Graduate Composers - Evie Atkin, Eluned Davies, Marcello Palazzo, Sarah Henderson, and Harry Rees -  have been set the task of 'reflecting' a renaissance original, in line with many of ORA Singers other commissions featured in their 100 Commissions Catalogue. The Showcase will see ORA Singers premiere each new work alongside its renaissance counterpart at the Dora Stoutzker Hall at the Royal Welsh College. 

• Evie Atkin is a composer, musical director, and performer based in London. She studied at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama with Julian Phillips, Laurence Crane and Hollie Harding
• Sarah Henderson is a freelance composer, cellist and soprano based in London. Her formal training in composition began at the Junior Department of Trinity Laban Conservatoire of Music and Dance, and she later studied with Masahiro Ishijima when she was a student at Toho Gakuen School of Music in Tokyo
•  Marcello Palazzo is completing a doctorate at the Royal Academy of Music, and graduated the University of Oxford (MPhil, Composition). He has written music for the London Symphony Orchestra, Oxford Philharmonic Orchestra, Sir Thomas Allen, CHROMA Ensemble, Ligeti Quartet, Merton College Choir (Oxford), Britten-Pears Contemporary Ensemble
• Eluned Davies is a Welsh composer currently based in London, with a background in singing as well as a passion for poetry and words. She is currently completing her MA in Opera Making at The Guildhall School of Music and Drama as Jane Ades scholar, under the tutelage of Julian Philips. Davies also studied with Laurence Crane and Paul Newland in her MMus in Guildhall and with Jonathan Cole and Catherine Kontz in her undergraduate studies at the Royal College of Music
•  Harry Rees is an emerging Irish composer from Enniskillen. They graduated from the Royal Welsh College of Music and Drama in 2025 studying under Ceri Tippetts, Mark Boden, Michael McCartney, Owen Lloyd, and Tic Ashfield. In 2024, Harry was shortlisted by the BBC National Orchestra of Wales for Composition: Wales 2025, culminating in March 2025 with a recorded performance by the orchestra of Harry’s original work, Nine Times to Die, conducted by Jac van Steen. 

Full details of the Graduate Showcase from the RWCMD website. 

moon landing: composer Helen Caddick & textile artist Margo Selby's immersive cross-genre piece

Composer Helen Caddick and textile artist Margo Selby collaborated on an immersive cross-genre piece, moon landing, for Collect 2024 at Somerset House. [see my article] 

As part of the exhibition at the Saatchi Gallery (which closes on 8 September), The Sun and Moon - Art inspired by the Celestial the work has been on display again.

Margo Selby and Helen Caddick had long been fascinated about the crossovers between music and textiles, mathematics and science which sparked their initial conversations and desire to collaborate. The music of moon landing is inspired by the little known story that it was Navajo women and women at the Raytheon Plant who wove the integrated circuits and memory cores on the Apollo 11 which enabled the moon landing. By creating moon landing Helen Caddick wish to bring their story to greater public consciousness. 

Caddick's moon landing is written for 2 harps, 2 cellos and 2 violins and the music can be downloaded from Bandcamp. But hearing the piece in the context of Selby's astounding piece of weaving is definitely worthwhile. 

Further details from Saatchi Gallery.

Inside the Orchestra: the chance to find out what an orchestra sounds like when you are sitting inside it.

Just as the Philharmonia Orchestra is using VR to enable people find out what it is like to join a live orchestra [see my article]. Another project is doing something similar but with a real live orchestra. With its event Inside the Orchestra, the Pavel Kushnir Scholarship is offering audience members the chance to find out what an orchestra sounds like when you are sitting inside it. 

On Wednesday 16 September 2026 at Annunciation Church, Marble Arch, W1H 7AH, conductor Bogdan Skrypka lead the Willow Orchestra in a live rehearsal of Beethoven’s Symphony No. 1. For the first part of the evening, audience members will be invited to sit inside the Willow Orchestra, among the musicians. Rather than hearing the orchestra from the conventional distance of a concert hall seat, the audience will experience the rehearsal from within the ensemble to observe at close range how an orchestral performance is created.

The rehearsal is deliberately presented as a working process rather than a polished performance. Then after the interval the audience will return to traditional seating and hear the complete Beethoven's Symphony No. 1, experiencing the finished performance from the outside after having witnessed its creation from within.

The project aims to bring audiences closer to the process of orchestral music-making and to offer an experience that goes beyond the traditional relationship between performer and listener.

The Pavel Kushnir Scholarship was established in London in memory of a brilliant pianist and educator. Arrested for speaking out loud against the Russian invasion of Ukraine on his YouTube channel with only five subscribers, Pavel Kushnir died in a Russian detention centre [see my article]. The scholarship is aiming to help students from Ukraine, Russia and Belarus to begin or continue their music studies across the UK, Europe or the US.

Full details of Inside the Orchestra from EventBrite. 

 

A highly intelligent & rather imaginative recital: Handel's Italians - Italian castrati in the London oratorios from Carlo Vistoli on Harmonia Mundi

Handel's Italians: Italian castrati in the London oratorios - music from Handel's Esther, Deborah, Athalia, Belshazzar, Messiah, Theodora; Carlo Vistoli, Giulia Semenzato, Le Concert d’Astrée, Emmanuelle Haïm; Harmonia Mundi
Reviewed 1 September 2026

This rather imaginative recital focuses on music from Handel's oratorios sung by Italian castratos, including arias specially Italianised for them, here benefitting from suavely stylish performances from Italian countertenor Carlo Vistoli 

Handel's move from writing Italian opera to English oratorio did not happen immediately, and for some ten years the two genres ran almost simultaneously in Handel's output. So, whilst we might emphasise the role of English singers in oratorio with names like Anastasia Robinson, Susannah Cibber, John Beard and others, Handel's Italian singers also played an interesting role in oratorio's genesis.

This new disc from Carlo Vistoli, Handel's Italians: Italian castrati in the London oratorios on Harmonia Mundi (release 4 September 2026) sees the countertenor join with Le Concert d’Astrée, conductor Emmanuelle Haïm, and soprano Giulia Semenzato, for a programme exploring the music from Handel's oratorios written a range of Italian castratos. Vistoli is no stranger to Handel's English oratorios having recently performed in Semele at Covent Garden. [see my review]

Handel presented a new version of Esther at the King's Theatre in 1732, hurriedly assembled in order to keep Handel's interest in the work after rival performances (following a gap of some 12 years since Esther's previous outing). The cast inevitably included a selection of Italian singers who had given Flavio, re de’ Longobardi just a few weeks earlier including soprano Anna Maria Strada, the castrato Francesco Bernardi, known as ‘Il Senesino’, contralto Francesca Bertolli, and bass Antonio Montagnana. From then on, oratorio would be presented with a mix of nationalities, depending on who was available. When presenting Athalia in 1733, Handel had an all-English cast except for Strada and his later oratorios would also use Italian sopranos Giulia Frasi and Caterina Galli alongside other English singers.

Celebrating the eclectic life of pioneering crystallographer Dame Kathleen Lonsdale: Electric Voice Theatre at Conway Hall for Bloomsbury Festival

"For a married woman with children, to become a first class scientist she must first of all choose, the right husband" 
        Dame Kathleen Lonsdale

Crystallographer Dame Kathleen Lonsdale (1903–1971) was the first female professor at UCL and the first female Fellow of the Royal Society. Her pioneering science led to breakthroughs in organic chemistry and medical treatments. Beyond science, Lonsdale was a prison reformer, women’s rights activist and pacifist, warning of the dangers of nuclear physics and wealth inequality in her book Is Peace Possible? 

As part of the 20th Bloomsbury Festival, Electric Voice Theatre will be returning to Conway Hall on 15 October 2026 for The Peaceful Crystallographer - and other songs celebrating the life of Dame Kathleen Lonsdale.

Electric Voice Theatre will be joined by UC8 - young acappella singers from University College London, and Clerkenwell Community Choir to perform music which reflects Lonsdale’s eclectic life, ranging through Irish folk song, music-hall, stirring anthems and ethical hymns, including works by Judith Weir and Cheryl Frances-Hoad, Lonsdale’s contemporaries like Elizabeth Maconchy, Shena Fraser and Clara Novello Davies and Conway Hall’s radical thinkers, Eliza Flower and Emily Josephine Troup.

There will be a post-performance discussion featuring science historian Dr Patricia Fara and Zoë Waller, Professor of Drug Discovery, Pharma & Bio Chemistry at University College London, and some of today’s women in science at UCL in the year of its 200th anniversary. 

Full details from Electric Voice Theatre's website. 

 

Manuel de Falla, Bell's telephone, rockets & Winnie the Pooh: The London Song Festival is 'Reaching Out...'

E. H. Shepard - Illustration to page 3 of Winnie-the-Pooh (1926) 

Nigel Foster's London Song Festival is back this autumn with nine concerts from 5 November to 11 December under the banner of "Reaching Out to...." or "Reaching Back to..." a place or time in which imagination and longing flourish.

Anniversaries celebrated include the 150th anniversary of Alexander Graham Bell’s patent for the telephone, the centenary of the publication of A. A. Milne's Winnie the Pooh, the centenary of the launch of the first liquid propelled rocket and the 150th anniversary of the birth of Manuel de Falla. Other themes include Ancient Greece, Fantasy & Magic, The Seven Ages of Man, and the Mystic East

Performers at the festival include Ellen Pearson (mezzo-soprano), Laurence Kilsby (tenor), Rachel Munro (soprano), Lotte Betts-Dean (mezzo-soprano), Harriet Burns (soprano), George Robarts (baritone), Katie Bray (mezzo-soprano), Archie Inns (tenor), Lorena Paz Nieto (soprano), Michel de Souza (baritone), Erika Baikoff (soprano), Jonathan Eyers (baritone), Natalka Pasicznyk (soprano), Sian Sulke (mezzo-soprano), along with winners of the 2025 London Song Festival Schubert Song Prize, Siri Bengtsson Marklund (soprano) and Bohdana Ravliuk (piano), and the winners of the inaugural SWAP’ra Rebecca Clarke Pianist Prize, Jasmin Alpress and Alfred Fardell who curate a programme with the singers with whom they won the prize, Gabriella Noble (mezzo-soprano), Archie Inns (tenor).

Music included moves between the known and the unknown, including Erich Wolff, Arthur Somervell, Florence Price, Harold Fraser-Simpson, Nadia Boulanger, Albert Roussel, Marguerite Canal, Armande de Polignac, Rebecca Clarke, Constant Lambert, Granville Bantock and Charles Griffes, along with contemporary composer Edward Picton-Turberville. 

A particular highlight is the focus on Manuel de Falla on 26 November, when his songs will be paired with songs inspired by Spain, but written by non-Spanish composers including Wolf, Schumann, Adolf Jensen, Ravel, Jacques Ibert, Honegger, Louis Albert, Delibes, William Walton, Frederick Keel, Tchaikovsky and Shostakovich.

Full details from the London Song Festival's website.

The virtual orchestra: the Philharmonia's new VR game allows participants to join the orchestra in a live performance of Rossini's William Tell

Philharmonia Orchestra's Virtual Orchestra: Play Along (Photo: Marc Gascoigne)

The Southbank Centre's Creative Intelligence festival (11 to 13 September 2026) takes its inspiration from the Festival of Britain 75 years ago by exploring how artists, digital innovation and AI are reshaping the world we live in as part of a celebration of art, imagination and technology.

The Philharmonia's contribution to the festival will build on the orchestra's digital innovation to present Virtual Orchestra: Play Along, a virtual game which allows users to pick up a virtual instrument, learn through guided tutorials, and perform as part of the orchestra. Designed with children and young people in mind, participants can choose percussion instruments including cymbals, timpani and triangle, building skills before joining a full orchestral performance in a packed concert hall setting.

Through a series of interactive challenges and tutorials led by Philharmonia musicians, participants wearing VR headsets learn to read their part in the score, rehearse, and then “join the orchestra” in a live concert for the exhilarating finale of Rossini’s William Tell Overture.

The live performance in the experience was filmed at the Royal Festival Hall in April 2025 and conducted by Principal Conductor Santtu-Matias Rouvali, using an array of 3D 360 cameras for ultra-high 12.5k resolution and cinematic quality. Live audio was recorded and mixed using object-based spatial audio techniques and converted to higher-order Ambisonics, to render the full acoustic depth and geometry of the performance space. Every instrument occupies its true position in three-dimensional space, captured at the highest spatial resolution currently possible.

The Philharmonia Orchestra was among 272 recipients to benefit from the Innovate UK/ DCMS Create Growth Programme in 2025. The £99,284 grant enabled research and development and the pilot programme with a Year Seven cohort from 11 schools from Leicestershire, Derbyshire and Lincolnshire. Alongside the VR experience, the Philharmonia has developed a curriculum-linked programme for Key Stage 3, with resources and CPD support for teachers. The project responds to growing concerns around declining music participation in schools, with GCSE Music entries falling significantly in recent years.

Marta Génova, the Philharmonia Orchestra’s Head of Digital Product and Experience, says, "For over a decade, the Philharmonia Orchestra has pioneered immersive musical experiences, and Virtual Orchestra: Play Along takes that work into a new phase where we ask audiences to participate rather than observe. For the first time in our VR work, users can take up a virtual instrument, develop skills through guided practice, and perform with the orchestra onstage, among the musicians, in concert. Through R&D collaboration with percussionist Tom Edwards, Meta Camera and Schallgeber, we have developed new ways to connect artists and audiences, reducing barriers to engagement and making cultural spaces more welcoming to participants."

By turns ravishing & spine-tingling: period instrument orchestra Les Siècles is the star of the show in Berlioz's La damnation de Faust at the BBC Proms conducted by Jakob Lehmann

Berlioz: La Damnation de Faust - Les Siècles - BBC Proms (Photo: BBC/Mark Allan)

Berlioz: La Damnation de Faust; John Osborn, Véronique Gens, Gerard Finley, Chœur de Radio France and Maîtrise de Radio France, Les Siècles, Jakob Lehmann; BBC Proms at the Royal Albert Hall
Reviewed 30 August 2026

A welcome visit from Les Siècles allows us the luxury of a period instrument performance of Berlioz's quirky masterpiece, with Jakob Lehmann and his players holding us spellbound with the orchestral detail

The French period instrument orchestra Les Siècles has gone through some significant changes in the last couple of years. Founded by François-Xavier Roth in 2003, the orchestra found itself in a similar position to the Monteverdi Choir and Orchestras when their relations with their founder soured. Allegations of inappropriate behaviour on Roth's part led to his stepping down from Les Siècles last year and the orchestra introducing a new management structure. In June this year (2026), Italian conductor Antonello Manacorda was announced as their new artistic director and conductor. Manacorda won't be working with the orchestra again until December 2026, but in the intervening period a range of conductors have been stepping up to the podium, including Jakob Lehman who directed Beethoven and Dvorak with them last month.

Last autumn, Les Siècles and Jakob Lehmann [see my 2025 interview with him] presented Berlioz's La Damnation de Faust at the Théâtre des Champs-Élysées in Paris in a staging by Silvia Costa. Rather luxuriously, the orchestra brought the whole performance to the BBC Proms on 30 August 2026. At the Royal Albert Hall there was no staging and a new group of soloists: John Osborn as Faust, Véronique Gens as Marguerite and Gerald Finley as Méphistophélès, but we still had the Chœur de Radio France and Maîtrise de Radio France along with a very large orchestra (though 'only' four harps rather than the eight to ten that Berlioz asks for!)

Berlioz never did get the great Parisian theatrical success that his talent and temperament seemed to deserve, probably because Berlioz's distinctive genius led him to run on different lines. None of his theatrical works quite fits the norm and La damnation de Faust is a case in point. Originally written as Eight Scenes from Faust in 1829, Berlioz decided to rework the material and in 1845 created his légende dramatique as he called it. Berlioz did not envisage the work being staged, it was a concert piece which of course meant that his imagination could run free. The first performance at the Opéra-Comique was not a success, and it was only following the first successful complete performance in concert in Paris, in 1877 that the work took off.

Berlioz: La Damnation de Faust - John Osborn, Jakob Lehmann, Les Siècles - BBC Proms (Photo: BBC/Mark Allan)

The complete work was only heard at the Proms in 1962, when Colin Davis conducted the London Symphony Orchestra. Prior to that, the work had been reduced to orchestral excerpts - the Hungarian March, the Dance of the Sylphs etc. The performance this year brings the total to eight full Proms performances (including one conducted by Mark Elder in 1985 which featured me in the chorus, and that one did have a ridiculous number of harps!).

Drawn to stories that intersect the political & cultural worlds: Anthony Davis's opera The Central Park Five released on disc by Long Beach Opera

Anthony Davis: The Central Park Five - Long Beach Opera 2022 (Photo: JJ Geiger)

I first came across the case of the Central Park Five when I read Joan Didion's essay Sentimental Journeys first published in the New York Review of Books in 1991 and collected in her book After Henry. In the essay she considers the case of the Central Park jogger from 1989 to examine the way the city's sentimentality for the narratives it tells about itself, whether they are true or not. No-one reading the essay could have doubted that those indicted for the crime, the Central Park Five, were innocent. Though it took time for justice to truly be served.

It might seem a strange subject for an opera, but then operas have been long fascinated with the excesses of human emotion and frailty. The Central Park Five by composer Anthony Davis and librettist Richard Wesley premiered at Long Beach Opera (LBO) in 2019 and won the Pulitzer Prize for Music in 2020. And the work was released by LBO this week on Platoon. 

LBO is Southern California's oldest opera company, founded in 1979. Under artistic director James Darrah Black and music director Christopher Rountree, LBO creates immersive work that blends film, dance, new music and more. 

The assault and rape of a woman who was jogging in Central Park took place in 1989 and five teenagers were sentenced. It would only be in 2002 that another perpetrator entirely, a serial rapist, confessed to the assault and said he was the only actor, with DNA evidence confirming his confession.

Composer Anthony Davis explains what drew him to the drama:

"1989. A group of predominantly Black and Hispanic teenagers enter Central Park in New York City. They turnover garbage cans, throw rocks, harass people on bicycles. A young woman is sexually assaulted in the Park and six teenagers are detained and questioned about the assault. Five of the teenagers, Kevin Richardson, Raymond Santana, Korey Wise, Yusef Salaam and Antron McCray become the center of a criminal case that would polarize New York City. The Exonerated Five were falsely accused and convicted of the crime with no physical evidence. Condemned publicly by the press, the Exonerated Five were victims in a culture war waged against  Black and Hispanic communities.  A politically ambitious real estate mogul condemns the teenagers with a full page add, proclaiming “Bring Back the Death Penalty. Bring Back Our Police!” The persecution of the Central Park Five marks the beginning of Donald Trump’s political career, built on racial animus and the exploitation of the deep rooted racial divide in America."

As a composer, Davis seems to be drawn to stories that intersect the political and cultural worlds. His operas explore political moments and movements that are reflected in the dynamic of music. X: The Life and Times of Malcolm X, premiered by New York City Opera in 1986, is based on the life of the civil rights leader Malcolm X. A new production starring  Davóne Tines premiered at Detroit Opera in 2022 and was performed at New York's Metropolitan Opera in 2023 and Seattle Opera in 2024. Amistad, premiered by Lyric Opera of Chicago in 1997, is about a case of an 1839 slave mutiny on a Spanish ship that reached the US Supreme Court, which ruled in favour of freeing them. The Chicago performance was released on disc by New World Records. Davis revised the work in 2008 creating a leaner version which was premiered at the Spoleto Festival USA. Wakonda’s Dream premiered by Opera Omaha in 2007. The opera is about a contemporary Native American family, affected by the historical events and court case of 1879 in Nebraska, in which American Indians were recognized as “human beings under the law” for the first time in U.S. history.  

The Central Park Five traces the five protagonists' arrests, coerced confessions and unjust trials against a backdrop of racial prejudice – weaving an intimate, nuanced and deeply human portrait of justice and perseverance. Musically, Davis draws on jazz, contemporary classical, R&B, and hip-hop to underscore the drama and create a portrait of Black American music that stretches across time and genre. 

Davis was born in New Jersey and studied at Yale. He has received acclaim as a free-jazz pianist, a co-leader with various ensembles. His music incorporates several styles including jazz, rhythm 'n' blues, gospel, non-Western, and African, as well as European classical and Indonesian gamelan. He is professor of music at the University of California, San Diego.

Davis's interest in The Central Park Five began with his and Wesley's opera Five, premiered by Trilogy: An Opera Company in New Jersey in 2016 [see YouTube]. In 2019, Long Beach Opera commissions The Central Park Five which develops out of Five and the opera is premiered by LBO, with Davis winning the Pulitzer Prize the following year. In March 2022 Portland Opera presents The Central Park Five, then LBO returned to the work in June 2022 with a new production. Following this, cast and conductor are brought into the studio to create the recording which is issued by Platoon. In March 2025, Detroit Opera presented Davis's expanded orchestration of The Central Park Five.

LBO's recording of The Central Park Five features Cedric Berry (Yusef Salaam), William Powell III (Antron McCray), Bernard Holcomb (Kevin Richardson), Orson Van Gay II (Raymond Santana), Ashley Faatoalia (Korey Wise), Justin Ryan (The Masque), Lacey Jo Benter (District Attorney), Todd Strange (Donald Trump), Joelle Lamarre (Ensemble / “Antron's Mother” / “Kevin's Mother” / Others), Lindsay Patterson Abdou (Sharonne Salaam / Others), Corey Estelle (Ensemble), José Luis Maldonado (Ensemble / Raymond's Father / Matias Reyes), conducted by Anthony Parnther.

Further information about The Central Park Five recording from LBO's website. [streaming links]

The power of music: Christopher Glynn, Rowan Pierce & Julia White in concert in aid of Music in Hospitals & Care

St James Garlickhythe Church

On Thursday 24 September at St James Garlickhythe Church in central London, pianist Christopher Glynn will perform and host an evening of live music in support of the charity Music in Hospitals & Care, being joined by soprano Rowan Pierce and oboist Julia White.

Music in Hospitals & Care is a charity that improves the health and wellbeing of children and adults through the healing power of live music, and funds raised from the event will help the charity continue reaching people in hospitals, care homes and community spaces across the UK, where live music can make a meaningful difference.

The programme brings together classical works and film music, with Purcell's Music for a while alongside Schubert’s An die Musik, Howells’ King David, Morricone’s Gabriel’s Oboe from The Mission, and music from The Sound of Music and Amélie.

Christopher Glynn explains: “The programme is a celebration of music in its many different roles, moving between songs and melodies in which it is praised, imagined, remembered and shared. We begin and end with ‘Music, for a while, shall all your cares beguile’. The opening line of one of Purcell’s most famous songs gives this programme its starting point: the idea that music can console, delight, stir memories, lift spirits and bring people together.”

Music in Hospitals & Care believes live music needs to be part of everyone’s health and social care. Why? Because research shows that live music heals. It helps people feel relaxed and confident, and can relieve frustration, stress and isolation. Music can also reduce the perception of pain. It brings back memories and helps create new ones. When you move your body to music – even just tapping a finger – it’s natural physiotherapy.

Further details and tickets from their website.

The first ever turbaned Sikh conductor? Jashandeep Reehal & Holland Park Sinfonia in Rachmaninoff

The Adagio from Rachmaninoff's Symphony no. 2 performed by the Holland Park Sinfonia and conductor Jashandeep Reehal.

Jashandeep Reehal, Holland Park Sinfonia
19 June 2026 (Photo: Marc Tunguz)

Jashandeep Reehal is a self-taught musician from Punjab, India who moved to London three to four years ago. He never studied music and taught himself how to play guitar, piano, compose and arrange. Growing up in a small town in India, classical music was never something that existed and as a culture, Sikh people never ever ventured into that world, and he speculates that he is most probably the first ever turbaned Sikh conductor.

After moving to London, Jashandeep went to see an orchestra performing for the first time, the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra and Vasily Petrenko in February 2024. He decided he wanted to be a conductor. With absolutely no knowledge, skill, or network, he managed to convince an amateur orchestra last year to let him do a concert, performing Nielsen's Helios Overture, and he went on to conduct two more concerts with them.

Needing to find a way to stay in the UK to study conducting (his visa runs out next year, and he needs to apply for the Global Talent visa), Jashandeep decided to take risks and started his own orchestra—the Holland Park Sinfonia. 

Their first concert was in February 2026, performing Korngold's suite from Private Lives of Elizabeth and Essex, Warsaw Concerto, Casablanca suite, and more. They returned for their second concert on 19 June 2026 with a programme including Rachmaninoff's Symphony No. 2 and Barber's Violin Concerto with soloist Charlie Lovell-Jones.

Read more about Jashandeep and the orchestra on their website. 

 

I don’t think though that I have ever let go of words & thoughts: mezzo-soprano Camilla Seale on her role in Vache Baroque's modern recreation of the 17th century semi-opera The Tempest

As part of Vache Baroque's 2026 summer opera festival they are performing a version of Shakespeare's The Tempest based on the 1674 show produced by Thomas Betterton, what has become known as a semi-opera but which in the 17th century was referred to as a dramatick opera. Singers Stephanie Hershaw, Isabelle Peters, Camilla Seale, Conor Prendiville and Ross Cumming will be joining forces with actors from Out of Chaos, directed by Paul O'Mahoney with Jonathan Darbourne directing the Vache Baroque Band.

Dorset Garden Theatre depicted in 1673
where The Tempest was presented in 1674

Much of the music included in Vache Baroque's production was originally composed by Henry Purcell, Matthew Locke, Pelham Humfrey, and others for the 1674 version of The Tempest. To this has been added works by other European composers of the period as well as shanties, improvisations, and a full masque by Purcell. 

In this article we chat to mezzo-soprano Camilla Seale who will be playing Stephano in the production.

You are currently rehearsing for Vache Baroque’s new production of Shakespeare’s The Tempest as a semi-opera which opens at the Vache on Saturday 29 August and runs to 6 September.  This hybrid version of Shakespeare’s play has seen you collaborate with Paul O’Mahony’s theatre company.   How have you found working with Paul and the actors from Out of Chaos? What are the synergies and tensions in the difference of approach between the actors and the singers, and what effect do you feel this has had on the rehearsal process?

It’s such a pleasure to be in a room with open, curious performers from different creative backgrounds - from the actors, to the band, to the singers. I can’t really say that any one person is only really of one discipline, and that’s how it should be. The actors bring so much intelligence and authenticity, and I think the music brings them a different kind of emotional input that has definitely provided some surprises in rehearsal. 

In your role as Stephano in this semi-opera, do music and words have equal prominence? How are they melded together so that music and words intermingle seamlessly?

Yes, the role definitely feels like it’s 50:50. Even within the (musical) masque, Purcell as a composer has a very text-led musical imagination, so even for the instrumentalists, they are speaking and dancing rather than just playing beautiful musical lines. I don’t think though, even when singing pure opera, that I have ever let go of words and thoughts. Specifically in The Tempest, music has a clear role as magic on the island, so it fits like a glove here.

What do you want audiences to take away from this production and the experience of watching The Tempest by the lake on a summer night?

Shakespeare loves a metatheatrical reference; Prospero tells Ferdinand ‘Be cheerful, sir. Our revels now are ended. These our actors, As I foretold you, were all spirits and Are melted into air […] And -  like the baseless fabric of this vision […] shall dissolve’. Everything that we conjure together, players and audience, on Prospero’s island is created inside a bed of nature in the Vache grounds. The way the stage is constructed allows the audience to see across the lake and the surrounding trees through the back of the stage, as characters stumble through the island trying to find their way, with the second half gorgeously lit in the tent as the sun sets. It’s Shakespeare’s last play - he was thinking a lot about legacy and what we leave behind. And I think he was concerned with what it means to be mortal, and where joy can be found, and I hope that the audience catch something of that when they come to see the play. 

Last year you performed with Barokksolistene singing the role of Dido in Purcell’s Dido and Aeneas at Longborough Opera Festival. This was a production complete with audience participation in true Barokksolistene form. How does baroque repertoire allow more flexibility to experiment and create more innovative productions?

Something that Barokksolistene do so well is traverse between baroque and folk music, and both forms by their nature are meant to be shared within communities - whether through communal singing or dancing. Baroque music at its core comes from dance, which is a shared activity, expressively and socially. Personally when I go to see baroque concerts, I enjoy the grooviness in a way I don’t quite experience with later periods of classical music. And maybe other people are experiencing the same thing. 

As part of the New Renaissance Collective, you co-created and performed in productions including an adaptation of Shakespeare’s Venus & Adonis. How did that prepare you for this production at The Vache?

I think the time I spent with friends in research and development with New Renaissance Collective and putting on the shows allowed all of us to fearlessly and idiotically explore and create theatre in a way that I’ve surely held on to in every creative environment I’ve been in since. I can remember laughing so hard in some workshops that it hurt. I’ll be forever grateful for those experiences and friendships and perhaps both the empowerment and fearlessness it - and those people - inspired in me. 

Purcell: Dido and Aeneas - Camilla Seale as Dido with Barokksolistene at Longborough Festival Opera, 2025

Vache Baroque's production of The Tempest opens at The Vache, Chalfont St Giles, on 29 August with further performances on 30 August, 5 and 6 September 2026. Full details from Vache Baroque's website. 

Beautiful music, beautiful places - Lammermuir Festival 2026

The Lammermuir Festival returns for 13 days of intimate and ambitious music-making in East Lothian from 8 to 20 September. It continues to be a festival shaped by place and by long-standing relationships, and builds its reputation through thoughtful programming, deep artistic relationships and a setting in which music feels inseparable from place. 

Royal Northern Sinfonia return to the festival, providing a significant thread. Dinis Sousa and the Royal Northern Sinfonia are bringing their first concert performance of a Mozart opera, Così fan tutte to Lammermuir with soloists Christina Gansch, Alexandra Oomens, Jonas Hacker and Cody Quattlebaum as the lovers, plus Rebecca Evans and Neal Davies. Pianist Jeremy Denk also joins Royal Northern Sinfonia, directed by Maria Włoszczowska for a three concert series of Mozart piano concertos exploring the full range of the composer's output with concertos nos. 9, 14, 17, 20, 24, and 25 alongside music by Janacek, Stravinsky and Britten. The concert series also highlights Denk's strong relationship with the festival.

Scottish Opera also have an ongoing relationship with the festival and this year, Douglas Boyd and the Orchestra of Scottish Opera are joined by sopranos Charlotte Kennedy and Charlotte Clapperton, and mezzo-soprano Avery Lafrentz for three of Britten's works for solo voice, Les Illuminations, Our Hunting Fathers and Phaedra. 

On a smaller scale but no less dramatic, tenor Nicky Spence and mezzo-soprano Victoria Simmonds are joined by Jeremy Denk for Janacek's Diary of One who Disappeared. Denk also joins forces with tenor Nicholas Mulroy for Schubert's Winterreise.

Another exciting thread in the festival is the residency from Concerto Copenhagen with sequence of programmes exploring Haydn’s symphonic world, including the vivid triptych of the ‘Morning, Noon and Night’ symphonies.   

Pianist Javier Perianes makes his festival debut with a Chopin recital and then directs the Scottish Chamber Orchestra in Ravel, Haydn and Beethoven's Piano Concerto No. 3. Violist Timothy Ridout makes a welcome return to the festival for a programme centred on Brahms's Viola Sonata No. 2 and Bloch's Suite for Viola.  Other visitors include Scottish-Indian guitarist Samrat Majumder and the Fibonacci Quartet. 

Lucy Crowe sings Strauss's Four Last Songs, soprano Ailish Tynan joins the Hebrides Ensemble for music by Judith Weir, Thea Musgrave, Helen Grime, and Stuart MacRae, soprano Claire Booth and violinist Tamsin Waley-Cohen perform Kurtág’s intense Kafka Fragments, Matthew Brook joins Dunedin Consort for solo cantatas by Buxtehude and Bach.

Choral contributions include Tenebrae, The Marian Consort, and The Binchois Consort, whilst the female voices of National Youth Choir of Scotland’s Chamber Choir join Scottish Ensemble in a programme which includes David Fennessy’s Blood, based on a vocal melody by Hildegard of Bingen.

Full details from the Lammermuir Festival website. 

 

Charpentier's tragédie en musique David et Jonathas, staged in London & the South for the first time by New Sussex Opera

New Sussex Opera's (NSO) 2026 autumn touring production will be Charpentier's tragédie en musique David et Jonathas. In five acts and a prologue, the work was written in 1688 for the Jesuits at the Collège Louis-le-Grand, Paris. This dark jewel of the French Baroque opera with its achingly beautiful score will be staged in London and the South for the first time, performed in a new English translation by Christopher Cowell. 

NSO will collaborate for the second time with the period-instrument Bellot Ensemble, the New Generation Baroque Ensemble for 2025-27, a scheme run jointly by BBC Radio 3, the RCM and the National Centre for Early Music. This follows their celebrated production of Lampe's The Dragon of Wantley in 2024 [see my review]. The production reunites the creative team responsible for NSO’s acclaimed staging of The Dragon of Wantley and The Silver Bell in 2025, director Paul Higgins, designer Mollie Cheek, choreographer Namiko Gahier-Ogawa, and dramaturg Benjamin Poore.  

A cast of promising singers with burgeoning careers stars includes tenor Harun Ellis Tekin and countertenor Tom Lilburn in the title roles, with baritone Massimo Modoni as Saul, bass Daniel Chomiak as Achis and Samuel and Ukrainian mezzo Nadiia Chaichenko as the Witch. The principals will be supported by the New Sussex Opera Chorus, who remain at the heart of the company's work.

Dance and movement, which play an essential role in French Baroque opera of this kind, are choreographed by Namiko Gahier-Ogawa, who will also appear onstage. As a celebration of the ingenuity and spectacle of Baroque stagecraft, the opera will be punctuated by dramatic use of stage percussion.

The tour sees the launch of the Chalk Cliff Trust NSO Emerging Artists programme, and is supported by funding from the Laidlaw Opera Trust. NSO's Emerging Artists will play the many smaller named roles in David and Jonathan, and support the singing of the chorus elsewhere in the opera; this professional development programme will also include one-to-one coaching with NSO's Music Director and Director. This programme is an exciting further step for NSO in its longstanding aim of supporting artists at the start of their careers and of acting as a bridge between the world of community-run opera and the professional one. 

The production opens at the Windmill Theatre Hove on October 11 and tours to Holy Trinity, Cuckfield, The Devonshire Park Theatre Eastbourne, and The Theatre Royal Winchester. The performance at Cadogan Hall on 20 October is preceded by a pre-concert talk from the creative team with broadcaster Donald Macleod.

Full details from the New Sussex Opera website. 

Drawing you into the drama: David McVicar's production of Mozart's Die Entführung aus dem Serail returns to Glyndebourne

Mozart: Die Entführung aus dem Serail - Franck Saurel, Liv Redpath - Glyndebourne (Photo: Bill Knight)

Mozart: Die Entführung aus dem Serail; Liv Redpath, Anthony León, Michael Mofidian, Julie Roset, Thomas Cilluffo, Franck Saurel, director: David McVicar, Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment, conductor: Evan Rogister; Glyndebourne Opera
Reviewed 25 August 2026

This was one of those performance which drew you into the drama whether it be orchestral music, singing or spoken word. The joy of this production was that it welded all three into a whole in a way that does not happen too frequently

The surprising thing about Mozart's Die Entführung aus dem Serail is the way productions of the work seem to adhere more or less to original period setting. This applies to Stephen Medcalf's 2019 production of English Touring Opera [see my review], John Copley's 2018 account for the Grange Festival [see my review] or Elijah Moshinsky's production with its Sidney Nolan designs at Covent Garden which was last seen in 2001, right back to David Pountney's 1978 production for Scottish Opera which introduced me to the work.

The work's politics are complex and whilst aspects of the story chime with the modern world, producers seem to find the period setting allows the best exposition of the issues, which is fascinating considering the fondness for putting other Mozart operas into modern dress.

So, it is no surprise to find that David McVicar's 2015 production of Die Entführung aus dem Serail for Glyndebourne to be gloriously picturesque. We caught the 25 August performance of this summer's revival of the production (assistant director Greg Eldridge). Evan Rogister conducted the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment with Anthony León as Belmonte, Michael Mofidian as Osmin, Thomas Cilluffo as Pedrillo, Franck Saurel as Pasha Selim, Liv Redpath as Konstanze and Julie Roset as Blonde.

Mozart: Die Entführung aus dem Serail - Michael Mofidian, Julie Roset - Glyndebourne (Photo: Bill Knight)

What distinguishes the production, perhaps, is the sheer picturesque beauty of Vicki Mortimer's sets and costumes. Though, as a 2015 interview with her in the programme explains, these do have a purpose as the production presents Pasha Selim's household, with its harem, as a genuine alternative. Konstanze's dilemma is real. We see Selim's wives and his children, including his own warm relationship to the children. Mortimer's set, made up of myriad screens and walls, successfully allows the setting to move swiftly and provides lots of opportunities for eavesdropping and overlooking.

The Breaking Point: worlds connected by questions of pressure, identity & the forces that shape human behaviour. Contemporary opera from Royal Academy of Music composers at Tête à Tête

Four worlds connected by questions of pressure, identity and the forces that shape human behaviour: The Breaking Point brings together four distinct works in a single evening of contemporary music theatre. Created by Royal Academy of Music composers working with emerging librettists, the four operas are being presented as two double bills at The Cockpit Theatre on 19 September 2026 as part of Tête à Tête: The Opera Festival 2026.

The cycle grew out of a shared sense among the artists that many of the pressures shaping contemporary life — ecological anxiety, cultural erasure, media saturation, ambition and isolation — are often discussed in political or intellectual terms, but less often experienced directly through performance. The Breaking Point asks what happens when these forces cease to be distant ideas and enter personal relationships, private spaces and individual lives. Drawing on international perspectives and distinct musical languages, the four works bring contrasting operatic styles and different theatrical approaches together under a shared theme.

• Broken Ivy: music by Florence Lloyd, libretto by Viv Bayliss. Florence Lloyd is a British composer whose work centres on vocal writing, electronics and cross-disciplinary performance, drawing on their interests in theatre, dance, poetry and fashion. Recent commissions include works for CHROMA Ensemble, ADW Trio and Leeds Song.
• Fence Off! music by Ruben Doda, libretto by Rebekah Ann King. Ruben Doda is an Italian composer and multi-instrumentalist based in London. His music has been performed internationally, including Antigone by PHACE Ensemble at the Vienna Contemporary Composers Festival and The Forge, inspired by Goya’s painting, at The Frick Collection, New York, in 2026.
• Sing4 Nok6, and Other Broken Things: music by Kwun Ho (Jerry Fryderyk) Ng, libretto by Courtney Cousins. Kwun Ho (Jerry Fryderyk) Ng is a Hong Kong composer and new-music conductor whose work explores cultural and cross-cultural identity through contemporary approaches to Classical traditions. His particular interest in Cantonese vocal music culminates in the chamber opera SING4 NOK6, and Other Broken Things, which interweaves Cantonese and English within a spatial musical setting.
• Meet the Philips:  music by Alessandro MacKinnon-Botti, libretto by Wilkie Robson.  Alessandro MacKinnon-Botti is a British composer, conductor and keyboard player whose work spans concert music, opera and theatre. In 2024, he won the Oxford Philharmonic Orchestra Composers’ Competition, leading to the premiere of Voice-leading for solo beatboxer and orchestra. The orchestra subsequently commissioned King of Kings, a companion piece to Schoenberg’s Ode to Napoleon, in 2025.

Further information from the Tête à Tête
 website. 

CBSO in the City: removing all barriers, bringing people together & reminding us music should be about having fun, CBSO presents 20 free performances across the city

CBSO in the City 2025 - New Street Station (Photo: Jonathan Ferro)

This weekend (27-31 August) the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra (CBSO) goes beyond its home at Symphony Hall for five days to deliver 20 free performances in public spaces in and around the city. CBSO in the City sees members of the orchestra presenting music in unexpected places.

There are family friendly performances of The Wind in the Willows at Birmingham Library, solo harp at Birmingham Children's Hospital, harp and flute duo at Birmingham Library, a string quartet plays in The Exchange’s Banking Hall café alongside the University of Birmingham’s breathtaking Helios installation by British artist Luke Jerram, and there will be string trio and string quartet performances at Birmingham Museum & Art Gallery alongside Joe Lycett's exhibition, Everything Must Go. CBSO Music Director, Kazuki Yamada, will also be performing piano on a CBSO- branded tram

CBSO Brass perform at Touchwood’s Summer Sessions at the Beach in Theatre Square in Solihull playing a selection of popular works arranged for brass ensemble, including Disco Inferno, Sweet Home Alabama, Total Eclipse of the Heart. CBSO Woodwind Ensemble will be in Birmingham Botanical Gardens and saxophonist Jess Gillam (CBSO Collaborative Artist) will lead Saxophones in the City, a mass ‘come and play’ clarinet and saxophone event at Brindleyplace with over 60 participants ranging from age 12 to 89.

Infinite Opera, Grand Union and the CBSO present Open for Business, an ambitious community operatic performance unfolding across nine venues in Digbeth. Open for Business is a walking opera that features four fictional characters built from real conversations with local workers and residents. The opera follows these characters through snapshots from a year in their lives, whilst their connection to Digbeth shifts and develops through past, present and future simulations.

The CBSO and CBSO Chorus will take over the concourse at New Street Station under conductor Jack Lovell-Huckle performing everything from Gershwin and Copland to Rossini and Beethoven to The Phantom Menace and Pirates of the Caribbean, and the weekend ends with further performances of this programme in the Bullring.

CBSO in the City 2025 - Birmingham Library (Photo: Jonathan Ferro)

Emma Stenning, CBSO Chief Executive, commented: “CBSO in the City is about us doing something special to celebrate our home city and sharing the gift of free music to people of all ages and from all walks of life. Thousands of people will experience live orchestral music for the first time, and the range of music programming and exciting locations will both play a part in making the performances exciting, fun and accessible. We also appreciate that the cost-of-living crisis has been a worry for so many people, and our £1 golden tickets will give many people that see us this coming weekend the bonus of a great night out to look forward to in the autumn. Music is for everyone and there should never be barriers to this. CBSO in the City fully opens up the world of orchestral music – removing all barriers, bringing people together and reminding us that music should ultimately be about having fun.”

All public performances are free (except for admission fees for some host venues) and residents that
experience a CBSO performance will have to chance to pick up a golden ticket – which means that for
just £1, they will be able to book a CBSO concert of their choice in the 2026-27 Season at Symphony Hall which starts in September.

Full details from the CBSO website.

Despite his double anniversary this year, we seem to be missing out on the music of Albert Lortzing, so hurrah for Deutsche Grammophon's historic reissues

Lortzing with his friend Philipp Reger, 1844. Daguerreotypie.

The year 2026 marks a double anniversary for the composer Albert Lortzing. The creator Spieloper, German comic opera, was born in Berlin 225 years ago and died there 175 years ago, although he spent much of his life travelling. Best known for Zar und Zimmermann (1837), Der Wildschütz (1842) and Undine (1845). Yet if you check Operabase, there are no performances of his works planned for the UK.

Fifteen years younger than Weber, Lortzing developed the Spieloper out of the Singspiel tradition, with spoken dialogue in the lineage of Dittersdorf and Mozart and became the German counterpart to French opéra comique. As recently as the 1980s, Lortzing remained one of the most frequently performed composers on German opera stages. Lortzing comes at a dividing point in the German operatic stage: in one direction Weber then Mozart, in the other either Wagner (who would base a comic opera on the same subject as Lortzing's Hans Sachs) or Johann Strauss II.

Like Weber, Lortzing was brought up in a theatrical family. He made his first stage appearance aged 12, and would become an audience favourite. He and his wife (also an actress) would be members of the Hoftheater in Detmold and then Leipziger Stadttheater. It was here that he wrote Zar und Zimmerman (Tsar and Carpenter) based on a story about Peter the Great (in disguise of course). It had trouble with the Leipzig censors. Lortzing sang the carpenter role but the opera did not make an impact till it was performed in Berlin in 1839. 

He was kapellmeister in Leipzig and then at the Theater an der Wien in Vienna, and finally in Berlin at the newly opened Friedrich-Wilhelmstädtisches Theater. But there were gaps when he had to return to being a touring actor, and you get the impression he was not the easiest of people! Yet luminaries from the musical world, including Meyerbeer, attended his funeral in 1851.

Der Wildschütz oder Die Stimme der Natur (The Poacher, or The Voice of Nature) was another comic opera premiered in Leipzig (in 1842) and this is the other work that went on to give him currency in the operatic world. It is a comedy adapted from a play by August von Kotzebue. Undine, premiered in Magdeburg in 1845, is a more serious piece, described as a romantische Zauberoper ('romantic magic opera'). Based on Friedrich de la Motte Fouqué's novella, other composers would explore the subject including Tchaikovsky, ETA Hoffmann (in 1816) and Henze (in his ballet for Frederick Ashton). Lortzing drew on Fouqué’s original tale, adding the comic characters Veit and Hans and concluding the story with an ambivalent happy ending. Romantic orchestral writing is combined with folk-inspired songs, dramatic scenes, masterful ensembles and effective ballet music.

There was a surprisingly political side to him too. At the behest of the Freedom Movement he wrote his opera Regina in 1848. It is named for his wife and he wrote the libretto. Written in Berlin in 1848, the year of revolutions in the German states, the plot concerns a factory with workers who strike and chant freedom songs! Not surprisingly, it did not premiere till 1899 (in heavily edited form) and the original did not see the light of day until 1998 in Gelsenkirchen directed by  Peter Konwitschny. There is now a critical edition of the opera from Ricordi, and 2011 recording on CPO conducted by Ulf Schirmer (which received a rather temperate review on Musicweb International - 'Not the unknown masterpiece we always hope for but pleasant enough'). Goodness knows whether we might get to see it in the theatre!

To mark the double anniversary the good news is the Deutsche Grammophon is making four historic opera highlights recordings of major works by the composer – Der Wildschütz, Der Waffenschmied and Undine – available digitally for the first time, or for the first time in complete form. Featuring artists such as Rita Streich, Irmgard Seefried, Wolfgang Windgassen, Gundula Janowitz and Josef Greindl, these releases document a significant era of German-language operatic performance. The recordings were conceived and produced specifically as opera highlights recordings for LP release – a publication format that was widespread at the time and brought together key scenes and musical highlights from a work.

Undine has just been released, see the Deutsche Grammophon website, and Der Waffenschmidt came out last month [link] with Der Wildschütz to come [link]