A spectacular new waterside home planned for Hamburg State Opera, designed by BIG architecture studio

BIG - designs for Hamburg State Opera, renders by Yanis Amasri (images: BIG)

Hamburg State Opera is on the move, or at least plans to be. The architecture studio BIG (Bjarke Ingels Group) has unveiled plans for a waterfront home for Hamburg State Opera to replace the company's existing 1950s theatre. To be built within the German city's HafenCity quarter, the 45,000-square-metre venue will contain production and performance facilities for the State Opera and Hamburg Ballet, and the building will sit close to another architectural showpiece, the Elbphilharmonie.

Gardens and terraces wrap around the main volume, with visitors being able to move along the facades and glimpse performance and rehearsal spaces. Of course, the big question is, will the theatre be any good?

Jakob Sand (partner BIG) commented: "The main hall is the heart of the project - a space with state-of-the-art acoustics and perfect sightlines to the stage. Immersive concentric wooden rings shape the hall and its balconies, dissolve the boundaries between spectators and artists, between reality and fiction." 

Full details from the BIG website.

The Sixteen Ignite, a new, fully-funded, dedicated talent pathway for young singers

The Sixteen has announced a new strand to its Learning & Participation programme which seeks to support young singers in finding a pathway into choral music. The Sixteen Ignite features a new Academy, an extension of the existing Talent Development Programme and a set of digital resources.

The Sixteen Ignite: Academy is a new fully funded programme for singers aged 14 – 18 to gain experience in working in training environments, and to prepare them for working in programmes designed for young singers, such as Genesis Sixteen. The Academy will support 44 young people who show exceptional potential but who have faced barriers in accessing training in choral music. 

The Sixteen Ignite: Inspire will build on The Sixteen’s Talent Development programme, a collaborative partnership between The Sixteen and youth choirs across the UK. This partnership sees The Sixteen provide workshops to support young singers in established youth choirs. The Talent Development programme will continue to partner with new and existing choirs, with a new influx of funding to enable the programme to reach as wide a demographic of young people as possible. 

The Sixteen Ignite: Digital is a set of free digital resources which will be distributed to primary and secondary schools across the UK, allowing students the opportunity to sing virtually with the renowned choir. 

Agnes Baltsa, Marina Rebeka, Asmik Grigorian, Nicholas Brownlee, Adèle Charvet, Hugh Cutting & many more rewarded at the 2025 International Opera Awards in Athens

Agnes Baltsa, Lifetime Achievement Award winner
International Opera Awards 2025 - (Photo: GNO/Simopoulos)

'Tis the season for awards. Hot on the heels of the Ivors Classical Awards [see my article] comes the International Opera Awards whose ceremony, this year, was held in Athens at the Stavros Niarchos Hall of the Greek National Opera. The event featured performances by soloists Marina Rebeka and Nicholas Brownlee, winners of the Readers’ and Male Singer Awards respectively, along with performances of works by Greek composers Spyridon Samaras, Paolo Carrer, Theofrastos Sakellaridis, Nikos Skalkottas, Mikis Theodorakis and Giorgos Koumendakis from Greek National Opera forces. 

The evening was live-streamed and is available on OperaVision.

A concert celebrating the legacy of the legendary classical guitarist, Julian Bream, at Wigmore Hall promises a great night for guitar aficionados.

Thibaut Garcia,

Continuing the legacy of the brilliant and pioneering British classical guitarist, Julian Bream, the equally brilliant French-born classical guitarist, Thibaut Garcia, joins forces with the award-winning ensemble, Quatuor Arod, to perform the world première of Leo Brouwer’s new guitar quintet, Cuban Landscape with Danzas, at the Wigmore Hall on Friday 21 November (7.30pm).  

Founded in 2013, Quatuor Arod enjoy a good working relationship with Garcia while enjoying a blossoming and globetrotting career. For instance, in the present season, they’re quartet-in-residence at the Mendelssohnhaus, Leipzig and with La Belle Saison (a French chamber music network that organises concerts and fosters young artists) and clarinettist, Pierre Génisson, they’ll be performing at the Théâtre des Bouffes du Nord, Paris, whilst also visiting Brussels, Tenerife, Den Haag and Hamburg. 

They are also participating at the String Quartet Biennales in both Paris (Philharmonie) and Amsterdam (Muziekgebouw) where they’ll team up with Klaus Mäkelä, chief conductor of the Oslo Philharmonic. They’ll also team up with Quatuor Danel for concerts at London’s Southbank Centre and Amsterdam’s Concertgebouw. Recently, the Danels took part in a series of celebratory concerts in Paris marking the centenary of Valentin Berlinsky, founder and cellist of the Borodin String Quartet. 

Prize-winners all the way, too, they took full honours by winning First Prize at the ARD International Music Competition of Munich in 2016 while a year earlier they were awarded the First Prize at the Carl Nielsen International Competition of Copenhagen and the First Prize at the European Competition of the FNAPEC Concours a year before. They participated in the BBC New Generation Artists scheme from 2017 to 2019 and became an ECHO Rising Star for the 2018-19 season.  

Signed to Warner Classics, Garcia’s celebrated for his poetic artistry and refined technique while Quatuor Arod - Jordan Victoria (playing a violin by Francesco Goffriller), Alexandre Vu (violin by Giovanni Battista Guadagnini), Tanguy Parisot (composite viola by Carlo Ferdinando Landolphi, Pietro Giovanni Mantegazza, 1775) and Jérémy Garbarg (cello by Giovanni Battista Ruggieri, circa 1700) - offers a delightful programme at the Wigmore Hall traversing centuries of guitar music ranging from classical masterworks to contemporary innovation. 

2025 Ivors Classical Awards: Anibal Vidal, Anna Clyne, Helen Grime, Jonathan Dove, Luke Mombrea, Nneka Cummins, Anne Dudley, Anoushka Shankar and Debbie Wiseman

Jonathan Dove and April de Angelis, winners of the Award for Best Community and Participation Composition at The Ivors Classical Awards [Photo: Hogan Media - Shutterstock]

Last night, 11 November, The Ivors Academy presented awards to the winners at The Ivors Classical Awards. The celebration of outstanding new compositions by British, Irish and UK resident composers. BBC Radio 3 will broadcast the ceremony on 15 November in a special edition of the New Music Show and the episode will also be available on BBC Sounds.

Three special Gift of the Academy Awards were presented to Anne Dudley, Anoushka Shankar and Debbie Wiseman, and a further eight composers and librettists were recognised across six categories, with Ivor Novello Awards going to composers Anibal Vidal, Anna Clyne, Helen Grime, Jonathan Dove, Luke Mombrea and Nneka Cummins, and librettists April De Angelis and Zoe Gilbert. 

Poetic exploration: Ensemble Près de votre oreille in an engaging exploration of chamber & vocal music by William Lawes

Lighten mine eies - William Lawes: selected psalms & harp consorts; Ensemble Près de votre oreille, Robin Pharo; Harmonia Mundi
Reviewed 11 November 2025

For their debut on Harmonia Mundi, the young French ensemble give us a poetic exploration of the music of William Lawes putting his imaginative Harp Consorts alongside his intimate psalm settings and theatre music 

Whilst 17th-century English composer William Lawes is best known for his viol consorts and music for lyra viol, his elder brother Henry Lawes is known for his vocal music with little instrumental music surviving. This new disc, Lighten mine eies from Ensemble Près de votre oreille and Robin Pharo on Harmonia Mundi sets William Lawes instrumental works against his vocal pieces in an attractive programme that mixes movements from the Harp Consorts, psalm settings and songs.

Henry, Willliam and their younger brothers Thomas and John were born to Thomas Lawes and his wife Lucris. Thomas senior was a church musician who became a lay vicar at Salisbury Cathedral. The family lived in the Close and it is presumed that the boys all sang in the choir. Thanks to a patron, William Lawes was apprenticed to English composer John Coprario (Cooper). By 1635 William had a Court appointment but had been writing music for the Court before this. William remained at loyal courtier, writing music for King Charles and Queen Henrietta Maria both for public and private use.

Ensemble Près de votre oreille features Maïlys de Villoutreys (soprano), Anaïs Bertrand (mezzo-soprano), Alex Rosen (bass), Fiona-Emilie Poupard (violin and viola da gamba), Pernelle Marzorati (harp), Simon Waddell (theorbo), Loris Barrucand (harpsichord and organ) and Robin Pharo (viola da gamba and direction). The ensemble was founded by Robin Pharo in 2017 and previous discs have included two devoted to Elizabethan song, Come Sorrow and Blessed Echoes.

Shimmer: the National Youth Orchestra launches 2026 with impressions of Spain and Anne Clyne's dancing cello

The National Youth Orchestra (NYO) launches 2026 with Shimmer, a three-date tour where the orchestra will be conducted by Alexandre Bloch in a programme with a distinctly Spanish theme. The evening begins with Debussy's Ibéria and ends with Ravel's Rhapsodie Espagnole and in between there is Karim Al-Zand's City Scenes and Anna Clyne's DANCE with cellist Inbal Segev. The tour begins at the Barbican Centre (4 January), followed by Warwick Arts Centre (5 January), Nottingham Royal Concert Hall (6 January) and free schools concert at the Elgar Concert Hall, Birmingham (7 January).

There will be around 160 musicians on stage, with over half of this year’s musicians new to the NYO. Demand for places in the orchestra of 2026 was at an all-time high with a record number of applications. Musicians hail from every corner of the country from Bromley to Ballymena and Abergavenny to Aberdeen. NYO’s concerts remain free for teenagers, to ensure there are no barriers for young people experiencing the power of a live orchestra. About half of the Orchestra will stay on in Birmingham to perform in a free schools concert for thousands of secondary school students on 7 January.

This will be conductor Alexandre Bloch's second time working with the Orchestra, he conducted them in in their 2024 Prom.

Anna Clyne wrote DANCE in 2019 for cellist Inbal Segev who gave the premiere of the work at the Cabrillo Festival of Contemporary Music in California. The work is in five movements, each inspired by a line from verse by Rumi: 

Dance, when you're broken open. Dance, if you've torn the bandage off. Dance in the middle of the fighting. Dance in your blood. Dance, when you're perfectly free. 

 Clyne discusses her inspiration in more detail in an article on Boosey & Hawkes's website.

Karim Al-Zand is a Canadian-American composer. His music embraces a variety of interests, issues and influences. It explores connections between sound and other art forms, drawing inspiration from graphic art, myths and fables, folk music of the world, film, poetry, jazz, and his own Middle Eastern heritage.  His City Scenes from 2006 is described as 'three urban dances for orchestra'.

Full details from the NYO website. 

The other brother: music by Galileo Galilei's younger brother on this lovely new EP

It is now moderately well-known that the great scientist Galileo Galilei's father, Vincenzo was a fine musician and there have been music and music theatre projects linking the two such as Clare Norburn's Galileo which premiered at the Brighton Early Music Festival in 2016 [see my review]. 

In fact, the whole family seems to have been musical. Vincenzo was a lutenist and Galileo would play lute duets with his father. As a young man he assisted his father's experiments to prove that equal temperament was better than mean-tone tuning, and as his father was a member of the Florentine Camerata, whose experiments led to the development of monody and to opera, the music in Galileo's life was cutting edge. Galileo was present at, and almost certainly involved in, the creation of the Florentine Intermedi of 1589, a musico-dramatic presentation which was an important pre-cursor of opera.

But Galileo had a younger brother, Michelangelo and he was a musician too though his music is far less well-known. Echo ex iove from lutenist Israel Golani is an EP from Solaire Records (available on BandCamp) which presents six short dances by Michelangelo Galilei (1575-1631). The EP is something of a follow-up to Golani's previous disc for Solaire Records, In the Garden of Polyphony, exploration of the 16th-century French penchant for lute music, notably transcriptions of polyphonic vocal music [see my review]

Michelangelo Galilei was something of a child prodigy. His father, Vincenzo, died when Michelangelo was just sixteen and only two years later he was sent to the the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth, where foreign musicians were much in demand, possibly under the wing of the powerful Lithuanian Radziwiłł family. He tried to come back to Florence, but failed to find employment at the court of the Grand Duke, however in 1607 he moved to the court of Duke Maximilian I of Bavaria where he stayed until his death. Of his eight children, three became lutenists.

Whatever musical success he had, money was clearly tight and much of his surviving correspondence with Galileo is about money. 

Most of his music is for lute, the ten-course lute and his book Il primo libro d'intavolatura di liuto was published in 1620. Israel Golani plays a suite of six dances beginning with a toccata, then corrente, passamezzo, saltarello and volta. There is an engagingly melodic quality to this music, but also a florid quality too. The suite makes a delightful EP with a lovely engaging quality to Golani's playing. I would not want a full-length disc of this music, but it would be lovely to have more.

Michelangelo Galilei: Echo ex iove - Israel Golani (lute) - Solaire Records

A bold, atmospheric work rooted in English folklore, ritual, & superstition: Shadwell Opera & Opera North give the stage premiere of Isabella Gellis' The Devil's Den

Ben Edge: Devil's Den

Last year I chatted to conductor Finnegan Downie Dear (artistic director of Shadwell Opera) and composer Isabella Gellis about Shadwell Opera's semi-staged presentation of Gellis' new opera, The Devil's Den at the Nevill Holt Festival [see my interview]. Now, the opera is getting its world premiere staging when Shadwell Opera joins forces with Opera North to present The Devil's Den at Opera North's Howard Assembly Room on 15 November 2025.

The production is directed by Jack Furness and conducted by Finnegan Downie Dear, with a strong cast featuring ennifer France, Lotte Betts-Dean, Nicholas Morris, and Ossian Huskinson. Also on stage will be Sheffield City Morris as the opera is the first ever to feature a live Morris Dancing Side as part of its dramatic structure. 

Inspired by the painting by British artist Ben Edge, The Devil’s Den tells a haunting story of a child, a rabbit, a druid, and a devil, set in a nameless English village bound by ancient ritual to create a bold, atmospheric work rooted in English folklore, ritual, and superstition.

Audiences are invited to make a day of it: alongside the two performances, the Howard Assembly Room will host folk singing and Morris dancing workshops, and talks with artists and musicians, creating a fully immersive folk-meets-opera day out.

Full details from Opera North's website.

Dramatic Messiah: Wild Arts brings its dramatised presentation of Handel's oratorio back for a third tour

Handel: Messiah - Wild Arts at Smith Square Hall in 2024 (Photo: Steve Gregson)

We caught Wild Arts' dramatised presentation of Handel's Messiah at the Art Workers' Guild in London in 2023 [see my review] in a staging devised by Tom Morris. The company brought the production back for a tour in 2024 and it now returns for a third time. 

Orlando Jopling directs a period instrument ensemble from the harpsichord with eight singers, Sofia Kirwan-Baez and Joanna Songi soprano, Martha Jones and Kate Symonds-Joy mezzo, Guy Elliott and Harry Jacques tenor, Timothy Nelson baritone, and Edward Hawkins bass, with many of the singers having performed in those first performances in 2023. The singers perform from memory, with choruses sung by all eight and solos shared. The results have a palpable sense of dramatic narrative.

This year, the tour kicks off at the Festival Theatre, Malvern (2 December) and then visits Smith Square Hall, London (9 December), New Theatre, Peterborough (11 December), Layer Marney Tower (14 December), Chichester Cathedral (16 December) and Chelmsford Cathedral (18 December). Many venues sold out last year and this year at least one has done so already!

Full details from the Wild Arts website.

An ambitious project that seeks to reimagine one of our great literary giants: Alastair White & Gemma A Williams ask how you adapt Finnegan's Wake for the musical stage

 James Joyce began his novel Finnegan's Wake in 1924 publishing it in instalments with the final book only being published in 1939. Joyce's radical reworking of language in the book was initially received with bafflement and open hostility. Its allusive and experimental style has resulted in it having a reputation as one of the most difficult works in literature. 

Now composer Alastair White is planning to adapt Finnegan's Wake for the musical stage. White has very clear intentions when it comes to the project. He seeks to capture the joyful, multidimensional beauty of Joyce’s text. He explains how "central to the adaptation’s approach is a radical re-reading of Finnegans Wake and the modernist canon: that authors such as Joyce, Eliot and Hemingway continue to be misread through romantic and post-modern analyses that sees them as depths rather than surfaces. The project contends that — like the sparse prose of Hills Like White Elephants —  Finnegans Wake has been ill-used by approaches that attempt to 'decode' it through what is absent: in ignorance of the sheer joy that the language embodies. There is no iceberg, no skeleton key; Finnegans Wake is not a cipher. It is only itself." 

As part of Irish Design Week, Alastair White and his creative partner and wife, Tipperary-born curator Gemma A. Williams, will be in residence at the Thomas MacDonagh Museum, Cloughjordan, Co. Tipperary, Ireland from 17 to 23 November 2025. The week-long residency, selected as part of Design & Crafts Council Ireland’s flagship initiative, invites audiences to see opera in the making and witness how literature, theatre, fashion and music can intersect and redesign one another.  Education lies at the heart of the open studio, which includes talks, practical workshops and an outreach programme. The residency runs in the heart of Cloughjordan: home of the poet Thomas MacDonagh, whose teacher parents taught in the local school.

Further information from the Design & Crafts Council Ireland website.  

Fascinating, distracting & frustrating: Janáček's Makropulos Case gets its first production at Covent Garden in director Katie Mitchell's farewell to opera

Janácek: The Makropulos Case - Act 2: Heather Engebretson, Susan Bickley, Jenry Waddington, Sean Panikkar, Ausrine Stundyte - Royal Opera (Photo: Camilla Greenwell/Royal Opera)

Leoš Janáček: The Makropulos Case; Ausrine Stundyte, Heather Engebretson, Sean Panikkar, Johan Reuter, Henry Waddington, Peter Hoare, Daniel Matoušek, Alan Oke, director Katie Mitchell, conductor Jakub Hrůša; Royal Opera, Covent Garden
Reviewed 7 November 2025

Covent Garden's first Makropulos Case in a fascinating yet distracting and too-complex production that is redeemed by strong musical performances including a mesmerising account of the title role

Leoš Janáček's The Makropulos Case (Věc Makropulos) made its debut at the Royal Opera House this week, nearly a century after the opera was premiered in Brno in 1926. The production represented director Katie Mitchell's avowed final opera production, as well as being Jakub Hrůša's second new production as music director (and his first new production of a Czech opera).

We caught the second performance at Covent Garden on Friday 7 November 2025. Directed by Katie Mitchell with designs by Vicki Mortimer and Sussie Juhlen-Wallen, lighting by James Farncombe and video by Sasha Balmazi-Owen, Jakub Hrůša conducted. Ausrine Stundyte was Emilia Marty, Heather Engebretson as Krista, Sean Panikkar was Albert Gregor, Johan Reuter was Prus, Henry Waddington was Kolenaty, Peter Hoare was Vitek, Daniel Matoušek was Janek, Alan Oke was Hauk-Sendorf.

If you asked, many people familiar with the opera would probably say that its biggest problem was in Act One when Janáček rather gets bogged down in the Jarndyce-v-Jarndyce-like case. It can be tricky to work out who is whom amongst the men (with three lawyers, two litigants plus the son of one) and audiences need some help. You cannot help feeling that Janáček could have done with a figure in the opening scene like Ferrando in Verdi's Il trovatore or Gurnemanz in Wagner's Parsifal, both of whom summarise the plot so far!

Janácek: The Makropulos Case - Final scene: Austrine Stundyte, Heather Engebretson - Royal Opera (Photo: Camilla Greenwell/Royal Opera)

But according to the programme book, the biggest problem for Katie Mitchell is the opera's ending. Why does Emilia Marty (now revealed as Elina Makropulos) hand the formula for eternal (well 300 years) life to Krista, a young woman whom she barely knows. Mitchell's solution is to add an extra layer to the plot, an affair between Emilia Marty and Krista so that Rosenkrantz and Guildenstern-like, Mitchell crafts an entire plot within the cracks of Janáček's existing opera. She does so via a device which is by turns fascinating, distracting and frustrating.

James Blades: Pandemonium of the One-Man Band - James Anthony-Rose on his new music theatre piece on the great percussionist

James Blades

The percussionist James Blades (1901-1999) had a career that not only spanned much of the century but also moved from circus drummer and accompanist to silent movies at the Wisbech Hippodrome, to the international classical concert hall, including a close association with Benjamin Britten, helping the composer with many of his percussion effects. But many remember him as an endearing communicator, touring the country with his lecture-recital-demonstrations.

James Anthony-Rose in James Blades: Pandemonium of the One-Man Band at Snape Maltings

Written by Robin Brooks and James Anthony-Rose, James Blades: Pandemonium of the One-Man Band was a music theatre show performed at Snape Maltings on 11 October 2025. Directed and produced by Fiona McAlpine with music direction by Tomi Rose, the event featured actor James Anthony-Rose with percussionist Sam Wilson in a show which reimagined one of Blades' lectures. Using demonstrations of instruments and techniques, and anecdotes and revelations, James Anthony-Rose told the story of Blades's remarkable life, together with a celebration of the power and mystery of his extraordinary talent and career. The BBC recorded the show, which will be broadcast on Radio 3 on 23 November 2025.

James Anthony-Rose, who co-wrote and starred in the show, is an actor, perhaps best known for his role in All Creatures Great and Small. When I asked what exactly James Blades: Pandemonium of the One-Man Band is, he laughed, said it was a good question that was really up to the listener. He described the show as a drama-documentary, though that term really came from BBC Radio 3, as that was the slot they were going to broadcast the show in. But James found the idea liberating; the show could be anything they wanted it to be.

He co-wrote the piece with Robin Brooks, who has written a lot for Radio 3. They used James Blades' autobiography, Drum Roll, as source material along with archive footage, and the show developed into a one-man show with James playing James Blades with a format not unlike Blades' percussion lectures. 

From bel canto to Harlem Renaissance: Lawrence Brownlee & Iain Burnside's recital at Wigmore Hall

Lawrence Brownlee

Tenor Lawrence Brownlee is on of the premier bel canto tenors around at the moment. And he's rightly busy, his season included a last-minute step-in as Elvino in Bellini's La sonnambula at the Met, where he recently opened in Donizetti's La fille du régiment, alongside Erin Morley, and further ahead there he stars in a new production of Bellini's I Puritani - the Met’s first in nearly fifty years.

The good news is that Brownlee is making a London appearance on 22 November 2025 in recital at Wigmore Hall with pianist Iain Burnside. Their programme is a fascinating showcase of music by Italian and American composers with nary an operatic aria in sight.

Instead, Brownless and Burnside open with a selection of songs by Donizetti before moving onto Respighi. Then they move on to Liszt's Tre sonetti di Petrarca in the virtuosic first version. Arias in all but name, this is music inspired by Liszt's sojurn in Italy in the 1830s and we can almost hear distant hints of Bellini in the vocal line, which makes it all the more desirable having them sung by a bel canto tenor.

The second half of the programme reflects Brownlee's engagement with more recent music. First there is Dominick Argento's Six Elizabethan Song and songs from Ricky Ian Gordon's Genuis Child.

Argento's songs were written in the late 1950s for the tenor Nicholas Di Virgilio. The composer said of them, "The songs are called 'Elizabethan' because the lyrics are drawn from that rich period in literature, while the music is in the spirit (if not the manner) of the great English composer- singer-lutenist, John Dowland. The main concern is the paramount importance of the poetry and the primacy of the vocal line over a relatively simple and supportive accompaniment."

Ricky Ian Gordon's Genuis Child is a cycle of ten songs written in 1993 for soprano Harolyn Blackwell. They set poems by Langston Hughes and the songs were described as "one of the freshest English language song cycles to come along in recent memory". 

Brownlee's project Rising, commissioned six of today’s leading African-American composers to set poetry from the Harlem Renaissance to song. Brownlee recorded their cycles alongside selections by Margaret Bonds and Robert Owens.  

And at the concert Brownlee will be singing Robert Owens' Desire, settings of four poems by Langston Hughes. Robert Owens (1925-2017) was born in Texas and studied in Europe after the War, returning to Germany in the late 1950s where he developed a career as a film and stage actor, composer, and pianist.

Brownlee will also be performing songs by Jasmine Barnes and Joel Thompson from his Rising project.

Full details from the Wigmore Hall website. 

 

A somewhat quirky mood: Stephen McNeff's new violin concerto for Fenella Humphreys & London Mozart Players mixes Baroque inspiration with something more contemporary

The London Mozart Players (Photo: Kaupo Kickkas)

On Friday 21 November 2025, violinist Fenella Humphreys, the London Mozart Players and conductor Jonathan Bloxham will give the premiere of the Violin Concerto by Stephen McNeff at St Martin in the Fields, London. The work is a commission from the London Mozart Players and the John Armitage Memorial Trust and it will receive a further performance at the JAM on the Marsh Festival on Romney Marsh in 2026.

McNeff has scored the piece for strings, harpsichord and percussion and he takes his inspiration from a classic baroque style, particularly in the relatively small forces required - just strings and harpsichord, but with a twist. McNeff has added percussion to the mix: temple blocks, bells, even an ominous quiet bass drum one point. He suggests that the percussion "offers a dimension not encountered in earlier music and suggests perhaps a somewhat quirky mood".

Conductor Jonathan Bloxham is pairing the work with two pieces by Beethoven, Coriolan Overture and Symphony No.3 in E flat Major Op.55, ‘Eroica’ so we can expect drama and fireworks.

Full details from the London Mozart Players' website.

A new solo album from British pianist, Alexander Ullman, features a thoroughly enjoyable and entertaining selection of music by Edvard Grieg - ‘The Chopin of the North’

Edvard Grieg: Songs, Moods and Lyric Pieces; Alexander Ullman; Rubicon Classics 
Reviewed by Tony Cooper (31 October 2025)

The prize of Ullman’s album, though, is his transcription of Peer Gynt Suite, No.1, drawing out the colour of the orchestra from the piano perhaps more so than in the composer’s own version.  

First coming to international attention in 2011 after winning the Franz Liszt International Piano Competition in Budapest, Alexander Ullman has performed at such prestigious venues as Vienna’s Musikverein with the Tonkünstler Orchestra of Lower Austria under the baton of Hans Graf, the Salzburg Grosser Saal with the Mozarteum Orchestra (Patrick Hahn), the Sichuan Symphony Orchestra (Darrell Ang), Kristiansand Symfoniorkester (Julian Rachlin) and the SWR Sinfonierrchester (Joseph Bastian) whilst returning to the Sofia Philharmonic under Jonathan Bloxham.  

Other recent highlights of this globetrotting pianist include making his début at the prestigious Hamburg Elbphilharmonie, the Klavierfest Ruhr, concerto appearances with the Hong Kong Sinfonietta (under Ola Rudner), Sofia Philharmonic and Filharmonie Brno (Dennis Russell Davies), the Symphony of India Orchestra (Mikel Toms), a two-piano recital with Teo Gheorghiu at the Freiburg Festival in Switzerland while undertaken a plethora of recitals in the UK, Italy and the Netherlands.  

However, it was in the spring of 2019 that Ullman cut his first album for Rubicon featuring Tchaikovsky’s Nutcracker Suite and Prokofiev’s Six Pieces from Cinderella as well as Stravinsky’s Petrushka and Firebird suites which received rave reviews. In 2022, the label released a second album featuring Franz Liszt’s first and second piano concertos along with his B minor piano sonata with the BBC Symphony Orchestra under Andrew Litton. 

Portraits of Mind: music by Ian Venables, Ralph Vaughan Williams & George Butterworth in a glorious celebration of Venables' 70th birthday at Temple Music

Temple Church

Ian Venables: Out of the Shadows, Vaughan Williams: Fantasia on Greensleeves, On Wenlock Edge, Love Bade me Welcome, Butterworth: Love Blows as the Wind Blows, Ian Venables: Portraits of Mind; Gwilym Bowen, Gareth Brynmor John, William Vann, Navarra Quartet; Temple Music Foundation at Temple Church
Reviewed 4 November 2025

A celebration of Ian Venables' 70th birthday, a generous programme gave us a chance to hear his wonderful Portraits of Mind alongside the RVW work for which it is a companion, On Wenlock Edge

Temple Music's concert at the Temple Church on Tuesday 4 November 2025 brought together a number of threads. For one, it was a celebration of the 70th birthday of composer Ian Venables with a programme that included two of his song cycles. The evening began with the London premiere of Venables' Out of the Shadows which was commissioned by Robert Venables KC who is a Bencher of Middle Temple and the cycle celebrates Robert Venables' 30th anniversary with his partner Gary Morris. Ian Venables' second work of the evening was Portraits of a Mind which was commissioned by the Ralph Vaughan Williams Society to commemorate the 150th anniversary of the composer's birth and was intended as a companion piece for RVW's On Wenlock Edge. In a generous programme at Temple Church we heard On Wenlock Edge along with George Butterworth's cycle Love blows as the Wind Blows.

The performers were tenor Gwilym Bowen (standing in for Alessandro Fisher at a few days notice), baritone Gareth Brynmor John, pianist William Vann and the Navarra String Quartet (Benjamin Marquise Gilmore, Eva Aronian, Sascha Bota, Brian O'Kane).

Small but perfectly formed: Wexford's chamber version of Zemlinsky's Der Zwerg still thrills and moves

Zemlinsky: The Dwarf (Der Zwerg) - Eleri Gwilym, Charne Rochford Wexford Festival Opera (Photo: Pádraig Grant)

Zemlinsky: The Dwarf (Der Zwerg); Eleri Gwilym, Charne Rochford, Charlotte Baker, Ross Cumming, director Chris Moran, music director Christopher Knopp; Wexford Festival Opera at the Jerome Hynes Theatre
Reviewed 31 October 2025

A scaled-down version of Zemlinsky's drama that retained the work's intensity and vividly held our attention with a title role who really wrenched the heart.

In 1900, Alexander von Zemlinsky met and fell in love with Alma Schindler, one of his composition students. She reciprocated his feelings initially; however, Alma felt a great deal of pressure from close friends and family to end the relationship. They seem to have been concerned with Zemlinsky's lack of an international reputation and by an unappealing physical appearance. She broke off the relationship and subsequently married Gustav Mahler in 1902. The episode inspired Zemlinsky's orchestral fantasy Die Seejungfrau, completed in 1903. In 1907, Zemlinsky married but the marriage was an unhappy one.

This seems to be the background to Zemlinsky's decision to write his opera Der Zwerg with a libretto loosely based on Oscar Wilde's short story, The Birthday of the Infanta. Commentators suggest that Zemlinsky may have felt some sort of identification with the title role in the opera. Whilst it is easy to project the opera's leading characters onto Zemlinsky and Alma Schindler, this can also feel like lazy hindsight.

Zemlinsky: The Dwarf (Der Zwerg) - Charne Rochford Wexford Festival Opera (Photo: Pádraig Grant)

Zemlinsky's The Dwarf, sung in an English translation by Viktor Jugovic was one of the Pocket Operas presented by the Wexford Festival Opera this year. I caught the final performance on 31 October 2025 at the Jerome Hynes Theatre, the studio theatre at the National Opera House in Wexford. The production was directed by Chris Moran with designs by Lisa Krugel. Charne Rochford played the Dwarf with the remaining cast members drawn from the Wexford Festival Chorus. Eleri Gwilym as Donna Clara, the Infanta, Charlotte Baker as Ghita, Ross Cumming as Don Estoban, the chamberlain, Victoria Harley, Olivia Carrell and Erin Fflur as maids, and Cerys MacAllister, Heather Sammon, Eleanor O'Driscoll and Camilla Seal as friends of the Infanta. Music director Christopher Knopp accompanied on the piano.

The Pebbles We Keep: composer Monica McGhee unveils her debut song cycle following her successful battle with thyroid cancer

Soprano, composer and alumna Monica McGhee will unveil her debut song cycle, The Pebbles We Keep, on Sunday 23 November at the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland (RCS) in the Stevenson Hall. McGhee has taken poems penned by Scottish women throughout history – spanning 400 years – and set them to music. They’ll be performed by singers of all ages with a female actor reciting each poem in its original form before each song.

McGhee explains, "The Pebbles We Keep remembers the poets who were often overlooked in their own lifetimes, while offering opportunities for today’s Scottish singers to be heard, in a bid to rebalance the deficit of female roles available within the opera world. It aims to honour Scotland’s cultural roots while creating new repertoire that future generations of singers can perform."

The poems reflect a wide range of women’s experiences, from disability and working-class struggle to loss, resilience and creativity, by writers including Janet Hamilton, Jessie Anderson, Carolina Oliphant (Baroness Nairne), Mary Mackellar and Mary Symon with the oldest poem being Elizabeth Melville’s Ane Godlie Dreame from 1603 – the first published poem by a Scottish woman. Contemporary poet Lisa Kennedy’s The Pebbles We Keep gives the cycle its name.

Monica McGhee began her musical life as a pianist and trumpet player. She studied at RCS’s Junior Conservatoire of Music before embarking on her Bachelor of Music undergraduate degree in Vocal Performance. Monica was diagnosed with thyroid cancer in 2017 which looked like it would put a premature end to her career. As she battled the disease and subsequent treatment to repair her voice following emergency surgery, she spent a number of seasons singing extra chorus at the Royal Opera House, with highlights including a tour to Tokyo in 2019.

Having successfully recovered from her illness, she was accepted as the soprano Young Artist at The National Opera Studio for 2020-2021. Recent roles include the title role in Tosca for Opera Bohemia, Beatrice in Beatrice and Benedict for Mid Wales Opera and the leading role of Iolanta for If Opera. Monica made her English National Opera debut earlier this year, playing Mary Beaton in Thea Musgrave's Mary, Queen of Scots [see my review], on the anniversary of her cancer diagnosis.

The video shows Monica McGhee performing one of the songs from The Pebbles We Keep 

Full details from the RCS website. 

Vivid presence & engagement: Peter Whelan & Irish Baroque Orchestra in Bach's Mass in B minor at Christ Church Cathedral, Dublin

Bach: Mass in B Minor - Peter Whelan, Irish Baroque Orchestra & Choir, Christ Church Cathedral, Dublin

Bach: Mass in B minor; Rachel Redmond, Katie Bray, Hugh Cutting, Anthony Gregory, Matthew Brook, Irish Baroque Orchestra & Choir, Peter Whelan; Christ Church Cathedral, Dublin
Reviewed 1 November 2025

No novelties, simply a desire to present the music in as compelling and engaged manner as possible with just ten singers and chamber forces

Having seen Peter Whelan and the Irish Baroque Orchestra in action at the BBC Proms and at Wigmore Hall, it was a great joy to be able to catch them on their home turf when, on Saturday 1 November 2025, the performed Bach's Mass in B minor at Christ Church Cathedral, Dublin with soloists Rachel Redmond, Katie Bray, Hugh Cutting, Anthony Gregory and Matthew Brook, plus ripieno singers Aisling Kenny, Amy Wood, Laura Lamph, Christopher Bowen and William Gaunt.

Christ Church Cathedral is the elder of Dublin's two medieval cathedrals. Founded in the 11th century and rebuilt in stone in the 12 century, collapse and neglect meant that in the later 19th century George Street was brought in to renovate the building. It is now a handsome mix of surviving medieval and Victorian pastiche, complete with some superb encaustic tiles [see my post on Instagram]. The building was pretty much full for the concert and from my seat in the fourth row the acoustics proved to be surprisingly warm and sympathetic, and chatting to other audience members after the concert their experience was similar.

Like his other great late summation works such as The Art of Fugue, Bach left no clear idea of performance intentions with the Mass in B minor. Certainly, as the admirable article in the programme book by Andrew Johnstone explained, most of the movements are based on pre-existing material. But what did Bach intend? With Bach's passions, musicologists and performers can mine the surviving performance information and debate (usually rather passionately) what was intended, but with the mass performers are more on their own.

Bach: Mass in B Minor - Peter Whelan, Irish Baroque Orchestra & Choir, Christ Church Cathedral, Dublin

Thankfully, Peter Whelan cleaves to the preference for smaller forces. His five soloists were joined by five ripieno singers to create a choir and it was clear we had a vocal ensemble of ten solo singers, not a bland choral blend. They were complemented by an instrumental group of eleven strings, woodwind, trumpets and timpani, plus organ along with harpsichord played by Peter Whelan. In terms of orchestral balance, the organ/harpsichord keyboard contribution felt a little underpowered but that was the only complaint. There were no novelties, simply a desire to present the music in as compelling and engaged manner as possible.

Il viaggio a Reims: members of the Wexford Factory dazzle in Rossini's occasional showpiece despite moving the action to an asylum

Rossini: Il viaggio a Reims - Wexford Festival Opera (Photo: Pádraig Grant)

Rossini's Il viaggio a Reims; Wexford Factory, director Rosetta Cucchi, conductor Manuel Hartinger, Wexford Festival Opera; National Opera House
Reviewed 31 October 2025

A brilliant showcase for the young artists of the Wexford Factory who dazzled and engaged in Rossini's showpiece music, though transferring the action to an insane asylum felt in doubtful taste

Rossini's Il viaggio a Reims was an occasional piece, not so much because of the references to Charles X's coronation in Rheims to which the opera refers, but because the occasion drew forth a cast of 14 distinguished soloists including Giuditta Pasta (for whom Bellini wrote the title roles in La sonnambula and Norma) and Laure Cinti-Damoreau (who would premiere several of Rossini's French operas).

Since the work's modern premiere at the Rossini Festival in Pesaro in 1984, the piece has become more common on stages as something of a party piece, with recent UK performances including at Covent Garden (as a showcase for the Jette Parker Young Artists) and more recently at English Touring Opera [see my review]. These performances demonstrated that the work does have a plot and that it works in situations divorced from the original proceedings.

At this year's Wexford Festival Opera, Rossini's Il viaggio a Reims was chosen as a showcase for the Wexford Factory young artists and to celebrate the 200th anniversary of the work's premiere. The work was performed in an orchestral reduction by the conductor Manuel Hartinger that used around 14 instruments (plus on-stage flute and harp). I caught the final of a series of morning performances at the National Opera House on Friday 31 October 2025. The production was directed by Rosetta Cucchi, the festival's artistic director, with costumes by Massimo Carlotto and lighting by Paolo Bonnapace.

The cast was made up of singers from the Wexford Factory, with five roles being double cast, and from the festival chorus - Maria Matthews, Cerys MacAllister, Laure Aherne, Helen Stanley, Gabe Clarke, Sean Tester, Aqshin Khudaverdiyev, Ihor Mostovoi, Seamus Brady, Tong Guo, Joshua McCullough, Conor Prendeville, Rory Lynch, Meilir Jones and Loughlin Deegan.

Rossini: Il viaggio a Reims - Wexford Festival Opera (Photo: Pádraig Grant)

Perhaps because the performance had originally been planned as a semi-staging, though there was in fact nothing semi about it, Cucchi chose to reject the original scenario and set the opera in an asylum. As Cucchi explains in the programme book, 'a whimsical asylum, where each aristocrat becomes a lovable patient, each with his own delightful obsession'. Whilst she claims that the production is not 'mocking illness' there was something a little uncomfortable about watching these various obsessives.