Only love can bear the burden of truth: Ben Parry & Garth Bardsley on their new opera that premieres at Snape this Saturday

Ben Parry and Garth Bardsley's My Father Cannot Speak in rehearsals with Roderick Williams at Snape [Photo: Angus Cooke / Britten Pears Arts]

On 24 October, composer Ben Parry and writer Garth Bardsley's new opera, My Father Cannot Speak will be premiered at the Britten Studio, Snape Maltings with baritone Roderick Williams and an instrumental ensemble conducted by Ben Parry in a production directed by Garth Bardsley. The evening will also include Parry and Bardsley's song cycle, Songs For Girls Of A Certain Age performed by Sarah Connolly and Malcolm Martineau.

Whilst Ben Parry and Garth Bardsley have a long history of collaborating, My Father Cannot Speak is their largest work to date. A 70-minute one-act opera, My Father Cannot Speak features a single sung role, taken by Roderick Williams. I chatted to Ben and Garth during rehearsals at the Britten Studio and they were confident that they had created something listenable and watchable, that fits small venues and festivals.

The piece is a voyage into the relationship between a man and his father, as the man realises how little he knows about his father. With the birth of the man's son, he wants to find out more but his father is reticent and does not want to engage. Then the father has a stroke and cannot speak. By the end, the son puts words into his father's mouth as to why he cannot speak. At the beginning of the opera the man has an aria which is only completed at the end of the opera, as the man realises that we cannot know who we are if we don't know where were come from using an analogy of a closed museum.

The work is about the parent/child relationships, and the man undergoes a rite of passage as a middle aged man. His journey during the opera means that we see him maturing, he learns to grow up. He comes to regret that he cannot know his father, and comes to understand that only love can bear the burden of truth.

Ben Parry and Garth Bardsley's My Father Cannot Speak in rehearsals with Roderick Williams at Snape [Photo: Angus Cooke / Britten Pears Arts]

Having collaborated on Songs For Girls Of A Certain Age, Ben and Garth were looking to write a new song-cycle. Garth had started writing poems intended for songs for a male voice. One of them, My Father Cannot Speak resonated with both men. Garth's father was adopted and thanks to a fire all information about his past has been lost, so Garth feels a gap, that something is missing. Ben's father had a stroke and was only able to say 'yes' or 'no', any other response had to be written down.

So in many ways, the new opera is inspired by real events in the two men's lives.

Gamely going where few such companies dare, there is much to enjoy in New Sussex Opera's production of Charpentier's David and Jonathan

Charpentier: David and Jonathan - Harun Ellis Tekin, Tom Lilburn - New Sussex Opera [Photo: Colin Chapman]

Charpentier: David and Jonathan (David et Jonathas); Harun Ellis Tekin, Tom Lilburn, Massimo Modoni, Daniel Chomiak, Nadiia Chaichenko, Ambrose Chiu, director: Paul Higgins, the Bellot Ensemble, conductor Toby Pursuer; New Sussex Opera at Cadogan Hall
Reviewed 20 October 2026

A brave step into 17th century French opera for this ever-daring company. Fine solo performances, enthusiastic choral and strong orchestral contributions bring the music alive though the dramatic temperature was sometimes rather cool

New Sussex Opera has always dared to venture where other companies do not. In the past they have given us gems such as Weber's Oberon and Chabrier's L'Etoile, and in recent years their stagings have included rare Offenbach, from the 19th century, Stanford's final opera, from the 20th century, and The Dragon of Wantley, from the 18th century [see my review]. For their latest offering the company has bravely ventured into the 17th century with Charpentier's David et Jonathas (billed as David and Jonathan).

Charpentier was one of the composers who suffered because of Lully's monopoly on producing opera. Charpentier would write a full scale opera for the Académie Royale de Musique, Médée in 1693, but the majority of Charpentier's operatic offerings are on the fringes. Many were smaller pieces written for the household of the Duchesse de Guise, for whom Charpentier worked, but he also had a link to the Jesuits. David et Jonathas has a curious history. It is a real five-act tragédie en musique, but on a Biblical subject. The libretto was written, in French, by a Jesuit priest and the work was performed with a spoken Latin drama, Saul with the acts of the opera alternating with those of the play! A storytelling device that clearly presupposes pre-knowledge of the plot.

Charpentier: David and Jonathan - Massimo Modoni - New Sussex Opera [Photo: Colin Chapman]

It is important to point out that at the heart of New Sussex Opera is the community-based chorus and unpaid administration and behind-the-scenes team. This year the company has launched The Chalk Cliff Trust NSO Emerging Artists' Scheme to enable six early career singers to take part in the production.

We caught Charpentier's David and Jonathan at Cadogan Hall on 20 October 2026 (following performances in Hove and Cuckfield, with Eastbourne and Winchester to come). The production was directed by Paul Higgins and Toby Purser conducted the period instrument Bellot Ensemble. Harun Ellis Tekin was David, Tom Lilburn was Jonathan, Massimo Modoni was Saul, Daniel Chomiak was Samuel and Achis, Nadiia Chaichenko was the Pythoness and Ambrose Chiu was Joabel. Designs were by Mollie Cheek, lighting by Daisy Hardwick and Namiko Gahier-Ogawa was both dancer and choreographer.

Sisters are doing it for themselves: Wexford Festival Opera's focus in 2027 will be women as creators with operas by Carolina Uccelli, Smetana & Saint-Saëns'

Wexford Festival Opera has announced its 2027 programme. Artistic director Rosetta Cucchi's theme for next year is a tribute to the extraordinary courage, resilience and creative power of women. The three main stage operas will be Carolina Uccelli's Anna di Resburgo, Smetana's Tajemství (The Secret) and Saint-Saëns' Déjanire. An Italian, a Czech and a French composer; a woman composer, a woman librettist and a powerful woman protagonist. Three leading female roles will all be performed by Wexford Factory alumni.

Lucien Muratore as Hercule in
Déjanire by Camille Saint-Saëns

Saint-Saëns' Déjanire had a rather intriguing history, linking to a play by a distinguished French opera librettist. Louis Gallet (1835-1898) was a French writer whose librettos included Djamileh for Bizet, La princesse jaune and several others for Saint-Saens, Le roi de Lahore, Le Cid and Thais for Massenet. In 1898, his play Déjanire was performed in a new outdoor arena in Béziers (used primarily for staging bullfights), with incidental music by Saint-Saens. The composer had been dubious about the venue, but the prospect of conducting huge musical ensemble consisting of a choir of hundreds, massed military bands and an orchestra that included 18 harps and an array of 25 trumpets tempted him. The reception was ecstatic.

Twelve years later, Saint-Saens transformed Gallet's play into an opera (by this time Gallet himself was dead) for the Opéra de Monte-Carlo where it was directed by Raoul Gunsbourg. It was the last of Saint-Saëns' twelve operas, was written for Monaco, coming over 30 years after his best-known opera Samson et Dalila.

Subsequently the work appeared at the Paris Opera, and in 1915 in the USA. Rarely performed today, its last outing might have been the Festival de Radio France et Montpellier in 1985 conducted by Serge Baudo. The plot is based on Sophocles The Trachiniae and follows a similar tragic arc to Handel's Hercules. In Wexford, the conductor and director will be George Petrou who was responsible for Wexford's 2025 production of Handel's Deidamia [see my review].

Portrait of Eliška Krásnohorská
by Jan Vilímek

We tend to forget that Smetana wrote nine operas, seven of them coming after The Bartered Bride (1866-1870). Smetana's Tajemství (The Secret) dates from 1878, it is the second of his four collaborations with librettist Eliška Krásnohorská. Krásnohorská (1847-1926) was a Czech feminist author who wrote lyric poetry and literary criticism, along with children's literature and translations of Pushkin and Byron.

Krásnohorská and Smetana's first, and best-known, opera being The Kiss. The plot idea for The Secret was Krásnohorská's and based on several sources, including Les femmes et le secret by La Fontaine. In the opera, Smetana reverted to a somewhat old-fashioned structure of choruses, duets, arias and ensemble pieces (with a pot-pourri overture). After Smetana's death the work languished but returned to Prague in 1922 and has remained in the repertory there ever since. Jack Westrup conducted the work's UK premiered in Oxford in 1958, and it was performed at the Camden Festival in 1972. At Wexford the work will be directed by Polly Graham and conducted by Sasha Scolnik Browe.

The least-known of Wexford's three operas is Carolina Uccelli's Anna di Resburgo (1835). Carolina Uccelli (1801-1858) was born to a minor Florentine noble family and married a prominent surgeon from Pisa. Her debut was the sacred opera, Saul at the Teatro della Pergola in Florence in 1830 (she wrote both libretto and music). This was followed by Anna di Resburgo in Naples in 1832 with a libretto by Gaetano Rossi which had already been set by Meyerbeer (as Emma di Resburgo) in 1819. Uccelli's version lasted only two performance, and the failure was partly attributed to the similarity of the plot to Donizetti's Lucia di Lammermoor which had had great success in Naples a month before!

Carolina Uccelli (c. 1843)

Uccelli's husband was supportive of her compositional career and there is a third opera, Eufemio da Messina (1833) though no score survives, but she certainly did not have the career that her talent deserved. After Anna di Resburgo she seems to have returned to her aristocratic social circle, composing small-scale pieces and vocal chamber music in Italian and French, published mostly in Paris, where she spent a good deal of time including giving recitals with her daughter, a soprano. But biographical information is rather scarce, and we are lucky that a score of Anna di Resburgo survives in the conservatoire in Naples and the work had its modern premiere in the USA, staged by Teatro Nuovo in 2024. In Wexford the opera will be directed by Rodula Gaitanou and conducted by Sieva Borzak.

In addition the Pocket Operas will be a triple bill consisting of Barber's A Hand of Bridge and Menotti's The Telephone (both with librettos by Menotti), plus Gallantry by Douglas Moore to a libretto by Arnold Shurgard. All three operas date from the late 1940s and 1950s, though the one by Douglas Moore is perhaps the least well-known in Europe. Moore studied with Vincent D'Indy and Ernst Bloch and wrote some 17 stage works including his best known opera, The Ballad of Baby Doe (from 1956). Gallantry, which came two years later, has proved popular with American and Canadian university opera theatre programmes. The librettist of Gallantry, Arnold Shurgard had worked with Kurt Weill on Down in the Valley.

Wexford's Factory Opera and the Community Opera will be joining forces for a production of Mozart's Le nozze di Figaro directed by Rosetta Cucchi and conducted by Karen Ní Bhroin, from Ferns in Co Wexford, who last year became the first Irish woman on the podium of the Royal Albert Hall in London.

Full details from Wexford Festival Opera's website.

A Handel Celebration: 25 years since the Handel House opened - The Brook Street Band, The London Handel Players & Helen Charlston will be there

Amazingly it is 25 years since the Handel House (now Handel Hendrix House) opened in London and Handel Hendrix House is celebrating. There is a concert on 10 November at Handel's parish church, St George's Hanover Square which celebrates his music. The Brook Street Band and The London Handel Players are joining forces for a programme that features the Trio Sonata in B minor (HWV386), the Sonata in A major (HWV361) and the cantata Mi palpita il cor (HWV132c) with mezzo-soprano Helen Charlston.

Rather appropriately, Mi palpita il cor is one of the cantatas that Handel wrote in London, in the 1710s. Similarly the Trio Sonata in B minor was written in the 1720s (and published in 1733) and its final Allegro is linked to the Chandos Anthems, and the Sonata in A Major dates from a similar period.

For those wanting to make the evening that bit more celebratory, there is pre-concert reception at Handel’s home from 5.30pm before making the short walk to St George’s Church for the concert.

Handel Hendrix House's new exhibition, Hallelujah House: Inside Handel’s HQ celebrates both 25 years since Handel's house in Brook Street opened to the public and the way the house was central to Handel's musical life [see my review]

Full details from the Handel Hendrix House website.

Late romantics: Jashandeep Reehal & Holland Park Sinfonia return with Richard Strauss, Korngold & Vaughan Williams

Jashandeep Reehal and his Holland Park Sinfonia will be returning to St Peter's Church, Notting Hill for their next concert on 13 November 2026 which features music written in the 1940s and 1950s by three very different distinguished composers, one German, one Austrian/American and one English. 

The programme features Richard Strauss's late masterpiece, his Oboe Concerto (with soloist Sasha Puller) written in 1945 as a result of a discussion with a US Army corporal who turned out to be principal oboe with the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra. Another late work is Korngold's Theme & Variations, written in 1953 for the American School Orchestras Association and Korngold's last completed original work before his death in 1957. Completing the programme is Vaughan Williams' Symphony No. 5 written between 1938 and 1943. Despite the composer being 71 when the work was premiered, this is hardly a 'late' work as Vaughan Williams would continue writing until his death in 1958, producing four further symphonies.

The orchestra's previous concert in June featured a programme combining Rachmaninoff and Barber and you can catch a video of their performance in my article. 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.

Full details of the concert from the orchestra's website.

36 nominees in 9 categories with 15 first-time nominees: the 2026 Ivors Composer Awards

The Ivors Composer Awards take place this year on 17 November 2026 at Grosvenor House Hotel on Park Lane, London when the winners will be announced from this year's nominees. The Ivors Academy has just announced the 36 composers and librettists nominated for an Ivor Novello Award across nine categories, with 15 first-time nominees including Ailís Ní Ríain, Anselm McDonnell, Deirdre McKay, Ioana Șelaru, Pav Gekko, Richard Collins, Ruth Morley, Sam Slater, Samuel D Loveless, Sasha Scott, Thomas Farnon and librettist Lee Hall.

Best Original Documentary Score is a new category which aims to recognise the creative contribution original music can have to the telling and impact of real stories. Best Original Film Score and Best Original Television Score are categories historically celebrated at The Ivors, which have been moved to join the rest of the composition categories at The Ivors Composer Awards for the first time. These changes either bring all composer activity together - recognising composers working across genres and disciplines, from film, television and video games to concert halls, community engagement and live performance - or, as a cynic might suggest, weaken the impact of the categories focusing on contemporary classical music.

The Awards are being presented in association with BBC Radio 3 and the ceremony will be broadcast across BBC Radio 3’s schedule, in programmes such as The New Music Show (21/11/2026), Sound of Cinema (21/11/2026) as well as on Breakfast and In Tune.

• Best Community and Participation Composition with ABRSM, original music created for voluntary, amateur or youth performers: Samuel D Loveless for his multi-format neurodivergent-focussed work Benches, Ailís Ní Ríain for her brass band piece Holocene, Brian Irvine for How We Stand, How We Breathe, a collaboration with a diverse range of individuals and groups across Northern Ireland.
• Best Large-Scale Composition, works written for 13 or more performers: Anna Thorvaldsdottir for her cello concerto Before We Fall, Robert Laidlow for his tone poem for orchestra Exoplanets, Hania Rani for her piano concerto Non Fiction, Laura Bowler for The White Book – a work inspired by Han Kang’s book of the same name – and Cassie Kinoshi’s [UNTITLED] for ensemble and solo turntables.
• Best Small-Scale Composition, solo or ensembles of fewer than 13 performers: Ben Nobuto for Hope Spiral, Sasha Scott for Night Owl, Ruth Morley for Reef, Alex Paxton for Scrunchy Touch Sweetly To Fall (Kite and Finger Run) and Hania Rani for Shining.
• Best Vocal and Choral Composition: Anselm McDonnell for A Taste of Trapped Sun, written for the BBC Singers reflecting on the 2016 signing of the Paris Agreement, Stephen McNeff’s Ballads of a Bogman – a song cycle for tenor and piano with poems by Sigerson Clifford [see my review], Richard Blackford for The Black Lake, Martin Suckling for Songs of Sleep and Prophecy, and Deirdre McKay for Litany to the Magdalene Dead, a song commemorating the women who died in Ireland’s Magdalene Laundries [see my review and my interview with pianist Deirdre Brenner].
• Best Original Score for Performance,  music written for live performance: Mark-Anthony Turnage and librettist Lee Hall for their opera Festen, Richard Ayres for his theatrical journey into the inner workings of an orchestra No. 59 (Dr Frompou’s Anatomical Study of an Orchestra), and Bushra El-Turk's music theatre work Oum – A Son’s Quest for his Mother.
• Best Original Documentary Score: Richard Collins and Patrick Jonsson for their score for A Gorilla Story: Told by David Attenborough, Thomas Farnon for David Frost Vs..., Benjamin Kwasi Burrell for Grenfell: Uncovered, Jessica Dannheisser for The Last Musician of Auschwitz and Hannah Peel for Underland.
• Best Original Film Score: Ioana Șelaru and Siôn Trefor for their soundtrack to Welsh drama film Effi O Blaenau, combining acoustic instruments, synthesisers and vocals. Daniel Pemberton and Oliver Coates for their scores to Project Hail Mary and The History of Sound respectively. 
• Best Original Television Score: Carly Paradis for her soundtrack to ITVX true crime series Believe Me, Siôn Trefor for the Netflix thriller Legends and Patrick Jonsson for BBC comedy-drama series Mint.
• Best Original Video Game Score: The Flight (Alexis Smith and Joe Henson) for 007 First Light, Sam Slater for Saros and Pav Gekko is for Spirit of the North 2.

Further details from the Ivors Academy website.

One Community, No Exclusions: Music for Change supporting You Are Loved's mission to reduce deaths from suicide and drugs in the LGBTQ+ community

On 20 November 2026 at St Marylebone Parish Church, Music for Change returns for its second edition. The event, presented by Big Gay Out and Song in the City, is a fundraising concert for You Are Loved supporting their mission to reduce deaths from suicide and drugs in the LGBTQ+ community.

All proceeds go to You Are Loved. Last year's concert, at St Giles Cripplegate, drew over 300 people and raised £11,000, and this year they hope to build on that in a larger venue.

This year, under the theme of One Community, No Exclusions, the evening promises music to celebrate a community that includes everyone: lesbian, gay, bi, trans and queer alike. Blending classical and musical theatre performance with heartfelt purpose, the concert raises urgent funds while affirming that the fight for equal rights is one we carry together – as one community, with no exclusions.

Music for Change at St Giles Cripplegate in 2025

The concert falls on Transgender Day of Remembrance, 20 November 2026 – a day to honour the trans lives lost to violence and prejudice. 

Further information and tickets from TicketTailor website.

Deeply problematic, both aesthetically & ethically: Du Yun's Angel's Bone from English National Opera at London Coliseum

Du Yun & Royce Vavrek: Angel's Bone - English National Opera at London Coliseum [Photo: Tristram Kenton]

Du Yun & Royce Vavrek: Angel's Bone; Allison Cook, Rodney Earl Clarke, Matthew McKinney, Mariam Wallentin, Keith Pun, director: Kip Williams, conductor: Baldur Brönnimann; English National Opera at the London Coliseum
Reviewed 16 October 2026 by Saskia Bibb

In the London premiere by English National Opera of Angel's Bone, an “opera-theatre” work exploring slavery and human trafficking, moments of winning music are swallowed up by ill-conceived theatre. The graphic depictions of rape and violence are as harrowing as they are fruitless.

Sasiki Bibb writes: Composer Du Yun and librettist Royce Vavrek tell the story of two angels who fall to earth. The unhappily married couple who find them are overcome by greed and exploit the innocents, clipping their valuable feathers and condemning them to sexual slavery. Yun and Vavrek readily advertise in the programme that the desired effect is introspection; we are supposed to ask the question “when given the means… to exploit those who are vulnerable, how quickly do we abandon our morals?” The answer, for any normal person, is a hell of a lot less quickly than that.

There is no dramatic arc and not a single believable character. This is part due to the libretto consisting of a string of abstract soundbites, and in part due to a poorly paced plot. The programme would have us believe that Mr & Mrs X.E. initially nurse the angels back to health, but “care quickly turns to control”. It is very quick indeed, blink and you’ll miss it. Within minutes of being introduced to the unhappy couple, the angels have landed in the garden, and a heartbeat later they are pinning the angels to the kitchen table and mutilating them. That leaves 99% of the opera left for the unrelenting horrors of their exploitation, and an incoherent coda that confuses the message and takes the focus off the victims. The last thing I wanted was for the show to last any longer, but the descent into amorality was so rushed that it was impossible to buy into the rest of the drama.

Du Yun & Royce Vavrek: Angel's Bone - Allison Cook, Keith Pun - English National Opera at London Coliseum [Photo: Tristram Kenton]

Schubert's Baritone: A celebration of Johann Michael Vogl - James Newby & Joseph Middleton at Wigmore Hall

Vogl and Franz Schubert,
caricatured by Franz von Schober (c. 1825)

Schubert's Baritone: A celebration of Johann Michael Vogl; James Newby, Joseph Middleton; Wigmore Hall
Reviewed 13 October 2026

An imaginative exploration of Schubert's important relationship with baritone Johann Michael Vogl, and a showcase for baritone James Newby's talents in Schubert

The baritone Johann Michael Vogl (1768-1840) is one of those figures who flit in an out of modern accounts of Schubert's life without Vogl himself coming into focus. The baritone was an important figure in the dissemination of Schubert's songs and remained supportive of the younger composer from their first encounter in 1817 right through to Vogl's singing in Schubert's memorial concert and his private rendition of the whole Winterreise a year before his own death.

On Tuesday 13 October 2026 (apologies for the late posting), baritone James Newby and pianist Joseph Middleton brought Johann Michael Vogl back into focus with their programme Schubert's baritone: a celebration of Johann Michael Vogl at Wigmore Hall, singing a wide selection of the songs of Schubert's that Vogl sang and that Schubert wrote for him.

Schubert first encountered Vogl in 1813 when he heard the baritone as Orestes in Gluck's Iphigenie auf Tauris (just eight years before Berlioz's first encounter with Gluck's operas at the Paris Opera had such a stirring effect on him). The following year, in 1814, when Vogl sang the role of Pizarro at the premiere of the final version of Beethoven's Fidelio, it is said that the 17-year-old Schubert actually sold his schoolbooks in order to afford a ticket. And it would be Vogl who was responsible for introducing Anna Milder (Leonora in Fidelio, and a notable Iphigenie in Berlin and Vienna) to Schubert and she would go on to commission Schubert's Der Hirt auf dem Felsen.

Less is more: Elena Langer's Ariadne & Purcell's Dido hit home in finely abstract productions, a real ensemble achievement from English Touring Opera

Purcell: Dido & Aeneas - Michael Lafferty, Samantha Price - English Touring Opera [Photo: Richard Hubert Smith]

Elena Langer: Ariadne; Jessica Cale, Kieron-Connor Valentine, director: Anna Morrissey
Purcell: Dido & Aeneas; Samantha Price, Michael Lafferty, ISabelle Atkinson, Lydia Shariff, director Rebecca Meltzer, conductor: Alex Robinson
English Touring Opera at Hackney Empire
Reviewed 17 October 2026

Two tragic classical heroines in productions set in an abstract mythic present showcasing powerful performances from Jessica Cale and Samantha Price in productions that were a terrific ensemble achievement.

Alongside its version of Gluck's Orpheus & Eurydice [see my review], English Touring Opera (ETO) features another iconic early work as part of its autumn tour, with a double bill of Elena Langer's 2002 opera, Ariadne and Purcell's Dido & Aeneas. We caught the double bill on 17 October 2026 at the Hackney Empire. Ariadne was directed by Anna Morrisey and featured Jessica Cale as Ariadne and Kieron-Connor Valentine as Theseus. Dido & Aeneas was directed by Rebecca Meltzer and conducted by Alex Robinson. Samantha Price was Dido and Michael Lafferty was Aeneas, with an ensemble of eight singers from whom were drawn the solo roles, Isabelle Atkinson (Belinda/First Witch), Alexandra Meier (Second Woman, Second Witch), Lydia Shariff (Sorceress), Kieron-Connor Valentine (Spirit), Guy Elliott (Sailor), Binny-Supin Yang, Daniel Gray, Jonathan Eyers, and Peter Lidbetter. Designs for both operas were by Alex Berry with lighting by Joseph Hornsby.

Elena Langer wrote Ariadne in 2002 as part of her residency at Almeida Theatre and the opera was her first collaboration with poet Glyn Maxwell. The work is essentially a mono-drama performed by Ariadne (Jessica Cale) with four musicians - Hannah Conliffe (oboe), Gary Ngan (violin), Hannah Gardiner (viola), James Heathcote (cello). The action takes place largely in Ariadne's head after she discovers Theseus's (unexplained) absence. In fact, the work forms a modern counterpart to Haydn's Arianna a Naxos.

Elena Langer: Ariadne - Jessica Cale - English Touring Opera [Photo: Richard Hubert Smith]

As JW3's classical music series returns for its 4th year, I chat to artistic director David Waterman

JW3

JW3, also known as Jewish Community Centre London, is an arts, culture and entertainment venue, an educational facility and a social and community hub in north London. It is located at 341–351 Finchley Road, London, and opened on 29 September 2013. Describing itself as "a new postcode for Jewish life", the venue's name is a wordplay on its postal address, situated in the NW3 postcode area.

Whilst this year the centre celebrates its 13th birthday, their classical music concert series returned for its four year with a season opened by Russian-Israeli pianist Boris Giltburg on 30 September 2026. The curator of JW3's classical music series is cellist David Waterman, one of the founder members of the Endellion Quartet. David explains that his brief was for a high-quality classical music series. There is no particular emphasis on Jewish artists or Jewish composers, it is the high quality that counts.

Depending on the line-up of performers, JW3's recital hall seats up to 250 people. It is an intimate space, where people can see clearly wherever they sit, and all feel near the action. The atmosphere is intimate and friendly, with an audience that is often local. David describes the audience as listening extremely well, and being very enthusiastic. David plays in around half of the concerts each season and introduces the others. He enjoys meeting the audience, and finds that artists enjoy playing there.

Modernising Gluck: English Touring Opera's new production of Orpheus and Eurydice puts a distinctly contemporary spin on the work

Gluck: Orpheus & Eurydice (Dance of the Blessed Spirits) - Louis T Partridge & Angus Bartlett - English Touring Opera [Photo: © Richard Hubert Smith]

Gluck/Leo Grant: Orpheus and Eurydice; William Morgan, Galina Averina, Rosie Lomas, director: Jenny Ogilvie, conductor: Iwan Davies; English Touring Opera at Hackney Empire

Bravely essaying the Paris version of Gluck's masterwork, ETO combine a modern tenor hero with composer Leo Grant's interventions to higlight the more emotional intensity of the work in an anti-mythic production that remained curiously sterile visually

At the Paris Opera, opera scores were not stable entities and often underwent subsequent transformations. Lully's operas remained in the repertoire for around a century after his death (in 1687) thanks to the fact that at each revival much of the music was recomposed to suit contemporary tastes. [Hervé Niquet and Le Concert Spirituel recorded Louis-Joseph Francoeur's 1778 version of Lully's Armide in 2019, see my review]. 

And then in 1824 there were plans for the young tenor Adolphe Nourrit (1802-1839) to sing the role of Orphée in Gluck's opera Orphée et Eurydice, which was created for the Paris Opera in 1774 with a high-tenor in the role of Orphée. Nourrit had made his operatic debut in 1821 as Pylade in Gluck's Iphigénie en Tauride (written for the Paris Opera in 1779). This 1821 performance would have a profound effect on the young Berlioz. Nourrit would go on to create the principal tenor roles in all of Rossini's French operas, as well as Halévy's La Juive (1835), and Meyerbeer's Les Huguenots (1836).

In 1824, it was quite obvious that a leading young tenor should sing the role of Orphée. The problem was that the role was too high for Nourrit and transpositions had to be made. This wasn't Nourrit's fault. Roles written for the haut-contre sit high in the tenor register with occasional excursions to the top of the range. Unfortunately for Nourrit, the pitch level in Paris had been rising. Pitch had been a constant battlefield between singers and instrumentalists, with rising pitch often coming about because of the desire for a brighter tone. The end result was the creation of Berlioz's version of Orphée et Eurydice combining the French and Viennese versions into a new synthesis for female mezzo-soprano. Thus was the modern Gluck's Orfeo ed Euridice born! [see my article, 'Berlioz and the creation of Gluck's Orphée et Eurydice as a 19th century masterpiece']

For their new production of Gluck's Orpheus and Eurydice, English Touring Opera (ETO) have leaned into this tradition. The version used is based in Gluck's 1774 Paris version in a new English translation by George Robarts. The title role has been adjusted for a modern tenor (William Morgan), and the work re-orchestrated for smaller orchestra by Leo Grant. But Grant has gone beyond this, adding his own additional music and electronics. The production opened in Sheffield on 10 October and we caught the performance on 16 October at Hackney Empire. Gluck's Orpheus and Eurydice in a new version by Leo Grant was directed by Jenny Ogilvie and conducted by Iwan Davies. William Morgan was Orpheus, Galina Averina was Eurydice and Rosie Lomas was Amor with ensemble of Isabelle Atkinson, Alexandra Meier, Guy Elliott and Jonathan Eyer, and dancers Angus Bartlett and Louis T Partridge. Designs were by Noemi Daboczi.

Gluck: Orpheus & Eurydice - English Touring Opera [Photo: Richard Hubert Smith]

Share the Stage: Massed forces from the North-East join Dinis Sousa & Royal Northern Sinfonia at The Glasshouse in Elgar's The Dream of Gerontius

Dinis Sousa conducts Royal Northern Sinfonia & massed forces from the North-East in Tippett's A Child of our Time as part of The Glasshouse's Share the Stage in 2024

On Sunday 8 November 2026 at The Glasshouse in Gateshead, Dinis Sousa conducts the Royal Northern Sinfonia in Elgar's The Dream of Gerontius with soloists Benjamin Hulett, Sarah Connolly and Roderick Williams. They will be joined by hundreds of non-professional singers and instrumentalists from across the region. The concert is the third event in The Glasshouse's Share the Stage series, which brings professional and non-professional musicians together to rehearse and perform major works.

Previous Share the Stage concerts included Michael Tippett's A Child of Our Time, in 2024, and Verdi's Requiem. For The Dream of Gerontius the 300 performers on stage will include 290 passionate non-professionals between the ages of 23 and 85. Share the Stage is very much driven by Dinis Sousa's ambition to bring professional and non-professional musicians together to perform major works on the same stage. Dinis Sousa comments:

"The Dream of Gerontius is an extraordinary piece of music to perform. It moves between moments that feel incredibly intimate and these huge, overwhelming passages where the orchestra, soloists and chorus come together with enormous power.

"That makes it a wonderful piece for Share the Stage. There is something very special about bringing hundreds of people together to make this music, with Royal Northern Sinfonia and our guest soloists performing alongside singers and instrumentalists from communities across the region. Everyone on that stage has a part to play in creating the performance, and I think the scale and energy of that will be incredible to experience in Sage One."

Singers from the North-East in rehearsal for Elgar's The Dream of Gerontius, 2026

On stage will be families, friends and musicians from different generations are coming together, alongside participants with very different musical experiences. Among those returning this year is 73-year-old Suzanne Shell from Morpeth, who rediscovered singing through Share the Stage in 2024 after more than 50 years away from serious singing. 

Full details from The Glasshouse's website. 

 

What does it feel like to improvise with AI?

Pianist Zubin Kanga returns to the Southbank Centre on 17 October 2026 with a host of premieres in a  double bill of  Ghost in the Machine + After Dark: Club Cyborg. Zubin Kanga is currently based at Royal Holloway University where he is leading a £1.4m grant-funded research project 'Cyborg Soloists,' which explores AI and technology in music. [see Robert's 2024 interview with Zubin Kanga]

In advance of Zubin Kanga's premiere of George Lewis's Blombos Playground on 17 October at the Purcell Room, Southbank Centre, London, he asks the question 'What does it feel like to improvise with AI?'

I’ve often experienced a deep connection with other musicians onstage when playing chamber music or improvising together, like we're having a musical conversation. But how does it feel to have a musical conversation with AI? Does it feel anything like playing with a human musician on stage? And what can it tell us about what makes human creativity unique? These are questions I’ve been grappling with while working with American composer George Lewis on his new work composed for human and AI keyboardists, Blombos Playground, which I’m about to premiere at the Southbank Centre in London.

While many people today think of AI art as being a recent development and associate it with the lazy production of bland results, trained via the internet through unethical means, it actually has a long and much more interesting history in experimental music, going back to the 1950s. Early developers of AI music systems never sought to replace human musicians, but instead to explore new ways for human performers to interact with musical technologies – and with each other.

Beautifully curated: Carolyn Sampson & Joseph Middleton explore all manner of obsession in Reason in Madness at Oxford International Song Festival

Reason in Madness: Gösta Nystroem, Alma Schindler-Mahler, Schubert, Brahms, Schumann, Strauss, Wolf, Duparc, Koechlin, Debussy, Saint-Saens, Chausson, Poulenc; Klara Solén, George Herbert, Carolyn Sampson, Joseph Middleton; Oxford International Song Festival at Holywell Music Room
Reviewed 11 October 2026

All manner of obsession: Sampson and Middleton moved between Gretchen, Ophelia, Mignon and Bilitis with Strauss's Ophelia lieder, Wolf's Mignon and Debussy's Bilitis being particularly highlights in a beautifully curated whole

The Sunday of the first weekend of the Oxford International Song Festival (11 October 2026) was devoted to thematic recitals, albeit three vastly contrasting themes. In the morning we had Immortal Mozart [see my review], exploring Schubert's admiration for Mozart, then in the afternoon we had Britten in Love [see my review], with an interweaving of Britten's music and emotional life, and finally in the evening it was Reason in Madness.

At Holywell Music Room, soprano Carolyn Sampson and pianist Joseph Middleton presented a programme exploring obsession and just how far feelings can go. We heard songs by Schubert, Brahms, Schumann, Strauss, Wolf, Duparc, Koechlin, Debussy, Saint-Saens, Chausson and Poulenc, whilst the characters invoked included Gretchen, Ophelia, Mignon, Bilitis and Cocteau's La dame de Montecarlo.

Reason in Madness - Carolyn Sampson, Joseph Middleton - Oxford International Song Festival at Holywell Music Room
[Photo: Carolyn Sampson's Instagram]

The evening was begun by two of the Festival's Emerging Artists, mezzo-soprano Klara Solén and pianist George Herbert performing songs by Gösta Nystroem and Alma Schindler-Mahler.

Britten in Love: Robin Tritschler & Malcolm Martineau explore the composer's emotional life through his music

Britten & Lennox Berkeley (Photo: https://www.lennoxberkeley.org.uk)

Britten in Love: Lennox Berkeley, Benjamin Britten; Robin Tritschler, Malcolm Martineau; Oxford International Song Festival at Holywell Music Room
Reviewed 11 October 2026

Songs from Lennox Berkeley and Benjamin Britten linking together the emotional and inimate threads of Britten's life 

In 2024, tenor Robin Tritschler's disc Songs for Peter Pears [see my review] explored songs written for Peter Pears by Lennox Berkeley, Britten, Arthur Oldham, Richard Rodney Bennett and Geoffrey Bush. Now, Tritschler has taken a somewhat different look at the same time-period. On Sunday October 11 October 2026, Robin Tritschler was joined by pianist Malcolm Martineau at Holywell Music Room for Britten in Love as part of the Oxford International Song Festival. 

The recital presented a sequence of songs interweaving Britten's love-life in music. The first half included songs by Lennox Berkeley (with whom Britten had a brief romantic relationship), songs setting W.H.Auden (who was a big influence on the young Britten), as well as two of Britten's Sechs Hölderlin Fragmente which hint at Britten's close friendship with Wulff Scherchen, seven years his junior. Britten would dedicate one of Les Illuminations to Wulff, and another to Pears. 

The second half focused on Peter Pears, with songs from Seven Sonnets of Michelangelo (the first song cycle Britten wrote for Pears' voice) and The Holy Sonnets of John Donne, plus some of the folksong arrangements which Britten created for his and Pears' song recitals.

Immortal Mozart: Katharina Ruckgaber, Martin Häßler & Sholto Kynoch bring a light touch to their exploration of Schubert's admiration for Mozart

Schubert's diary in 1816

Immortal Mozart: Haydn, Mozart, Schubert, Salieri; Katharina Ruckgaber, Martin Häßler, Sholto Kynoch; Oxford International Song Festival at Garsington Studios
Reviewed 11 October 2026

Inspired by Schubert's admiration of Mozart, a playful yet informed interweaving of their music to create a delightful recital with a distinctly dramatic feel to it 

Schubert had great admiration for Mozart and age 19 would write in his diary, "O Mozart! immortal Mozart! what countless impressions of a brighter, better life hast thou stamped upon our souls." It is this quotation which is behind pianist Sholto Kynoch, soprano Katharina Ruckgaber and baritone Martin Häßler's programme Immortal Mozart. This playful intermingling of music by Mozart and by Schubert was presented at Garsington Studios, Garsington Opera's performing arts hub - a purpose-built complex of studios, meeting rooms and ancillary spaces - as part of Oxford International Song Festival.

Both composers were Masons and both shared a similar taste in poets. The programme included both setting Goethe and both setting Ludwig Hölty. Other fascinating links include Schubert's duet Misero pargoletto, setting Metastasio and written whilst Schubert was studying with Salieri. In the first version of the duet (which we did not hear), Schubert includes an almost direct quote from the aria 'Ach ich fühl's' from Mozart's Die Zauberflöte. Die Zauberflöte threaded its way through the programme as the second half included two of Pamina and Papageno's duets, whilst in the first half Don Giovanni made an appearance too.

Immortal Mozart: Sholto Kynoch, Katharina Ruckgaber, Martin Häßler (Photo: Martin Häßler's Instagram)

Both singers sang from memory and whilst there was no overall dramatic thread, there was an element of staging with one singer reacting to another, and some songs seemingly in response to something said earlier. It was all done with a light touch, yet it was clear that much thought, research and love had gone into the programme.

Lived experience: Matthias Goerne & Tamara Stefanovich in Schubert's Winterreise at Oxford International Song Festival

Tamara Stefanovich, Matthias Goerne at Salzburg Easter Festival in 2025 [Photo: SF/Marco Borrelli]

Schubert: Winterreise; Matthias Goerne, Tamara Stevanovich; Oxford International Song Festival at Olivier Hall, St Edward's School 
Reviewed 10 October 2026

The further along the journey, the harder the going: Matthias Goerne makes Winterreise a remarkable piece of lived experience bringing a lifetime's work to the role 

It is nearly 30 years since Matthias Goerne made his debut at the Salzburg Festival with Papageno in Mozart's Die Zauberflöte in 1997, and nearly 25 years since his compelling account of the title role in Berg's Wozzeck at Covent Garden (in 2002, the one with the glass tanks!). Much water (and Wagner) has gone under the bridge since then. 

So it was with great interest that a capacity audience gathered at the Olivier Hall at St Edward's School in Oxford on Saturday 10 October 2026 for baritone Mattias Goerne and pianist Tamara Stefanovich's performance of Schubert's Winterreise at the opening weekend of the Oxford International Song Festival. The event was also Goerne's debut at the festival (amazingly!)

The concert was giving with subtitles which is a relatively new innovation at the festival. These help prevent the audience from spending the duration with their heads in copies, but in song like Schubert's where text is repeated and the flow adjusted, you sometimes miss the wider textual context of a line. 

Goerne sang from memory and the entire concert was a remarkable physical embodiment, his expressive physical language becoming as important as his vocal.  From the first notes it was clear that Goerne's expressive legato was limited but his vibrato gave the voice a remarkable fragility. This combined with his restless body language created the structure of his Winterreise. 

Words & music: at Oxford International Song Festival's opening weekend academics & performers combine for Defining Love

Defining Love
Emily Pillinger, Stephanie Oade, Fiona Macintosh, Elenora Pertz, Valerie Eickhoff
Holywell Music Room, Oxford International Song Festival

Defining Love: Satie, Schindler-Mahler, Britten, Schumann, Korngold, Faure, Schubert, Strauss, Mozart, Rodgers & Hart; Valerie Eickhoff, Elenora Pertz, Fiona Macintosh, Stephanie Oade, Emily Pillinger; Oxford International Song Festival at Holywell Music Room
Reviewed 10 October 2026

A colloquium on approaches to love in Ancient Greece combined with a delightful mix of songs expressing the subject to create and intriguing mix of words and music

This year's Oxford International Song Festival has the theme of Love Songs, and the subject of love was to the fore in the afternoon event on the first Saturday of the festival, 10 October 2026, at Holywell Music Room. Defining Love combined a colloquium between three academics, Fiona Macintosh, Stephanie Oade and Emily Pillinger - Fiona Mackintosh is Emeritus Professor of Classical Reception, at Oxford Stephanie Oade is an academic, teacher and former professional cellist, Emily Pillinger is Reader in Classics and Interdisciplinary Humanities at King's College London

We heard songs by Saties, Alma Schindler-Mahler, Britten, Schumann, Korngold, Faure, Schubert, Strauss, Mozart and Rodgers & Hart performed by mezzo-soprano Valerie Eickhoff and pianist Elenora Pertz.

Reinventing the lute song: countertenor Iestyn Davies & harpist Oliver Wass in John Dowland, Purcell, Nico Muhly & Britten at Hatfield House Music Festival

Iestyn Davies & Oliver Wass
at Hatfield House Chamber Music Festival

Sweeter than Roses: Trabacci, Monteverdi, Frescobaldi, Cavalli, Purcell, Dowland, Muhly, Britten, Handel; Iestyn Davies, Oliver Wass; Hatfield House Chamber Music Festival in the Marble Hall
Reviewed 9 October 2026

Performing lute songs with harp accompaniment provides an imaginative solution to problems of scale, whilst Iestyn Davies and Oliver Wass's recital parts Dowland with an imaginative mix from Purcell and Frescobaldi to Britten and Muhly

Countertenor Iestyn Davies and harpist Oliver Wass debuted duo at Wigmore Hall earlier this year and they are touring it to the USA, first stop Hawaii. But en route they stopped at Hatfield House Music Festival to perform in the house's Marble Hall on Friday 9 October. We began with a harp solo by Giovanni Maria Trabacci followed by three Italian baroque arias, Monteverdi's Laudate Dominum, Cavalli's Delizie Contenti from Giasone and Frescobaldi's Se l'aura spira, then Purcell's Strike the viol from Come, ye sons of art. A sequence of seven songs by John Dowland was interspersed with instrumental movements by Bach. The second half began with Nico Muhly, three of his Four Traditional Songs written in 2011 and dedicated to Iestyn Davies. These were followed by Britten's Suite for Harp, Op. 83 (from 1969) and the evening concluded with Purcell's Sweeter than Roses and Evening Hymn, and Handel's Sento Amor from Partenope.