Jean Sibelius Life, Music, Silence by Daniel M.Grimley (Reaktion Books). ‘The evening atmosphere wonderful. As always when silence speaks: a secret pull of eternal silence and – life’s song.’ Jean Sibelius, diary entry August 1910
music
Poetry review – SIEGE AND SYMPHONY : Emma Lee reviews an eclectic collection from Myra Schneider
West Side Story, directed by Steven Spielberg In the new West Side Story Leonard Bernstein’s magnificent music and Stephen Sondheim’s incisive and witty lyrics have all been preserved and bring as much pleasure as before.
Poetry review – SERVICE CANCELLED: Michael Bartholomew-Biggs is impressed by Neil Fulwood’s novel approach to the lockdown poem
Poetry review – RANSOM: Thomas Ovans particularly admires the Olivier Messiaen inspired central section of a new collection by Michael Symmons Roberts
CALLED BACK: Neil Fulwood is impressed by John Hinshelwood’s CD of songs and instrumentals inspired by Emily Dickinson’s poems
WE COME FROM THE SUN: Sue Wallace-Shaddad leads us through an innovative album of poetry, music and sound compiled by Cerys Matthews
L’Heure Espagnole, Grange Park Opera – an hour of escape into Maurice Ravel’s gloriously light opera bouffe that allows a woman to juggle three lovers with impunity.
Even more than an outpouring of passionate pacifism, Benjamin Britten’s Owen Wingrave is a universal exploration of the heroic strength of character required to reject decades of blind allegiance to an unholy cause.
If you can embrace it, lockdown’s shift from the real to the virtual is a liberation that makes anything possible.
Grange Park Opera Interim Season. Simon Keenlyside: An Autumn Walk in Wales (available online). Review by Barbara Lewis: Context is all, says Simon Keenlyside, as for the second time this year he delivers a musical tour of his own personal context – the woods around his Welsh home.
Gianni Schicchi. Review by Barbara Lewis. Gianni Schicchi, the protagonist of Puccini’s only wholly comic opera, was a 13th-century Italian knight immortalised by Dante in the Circle of Impersonators for pretending to be the rich gentleman Buoso Donati and dictating a testament highly favourable to himself.
By Barbara Lewis • music, opera, year 2022 • Tags: Barbara Lewis, music, opera