Books & Arts > Music
Music review: Lux, album by Rosalía
IMAGINE a pop record structured around four operatic movements with arrangements by the Pulitzer Prize-winning classical composer Caroline Shaw. On top of Spanish vocals, add 12 languages. Then immerse each song in female…
The Power of Music at the Foundling Museum, London
WHEN people sing in chorus, their hearts beat in unison. This remarkable fact arises from shared breathing patterns, but is a wonderful metaphor for the unifying effect of music created in community.As a result, in the words…
A Spanish Nativity (St Martin-in-the-Fields), Lassus and other works (Wigmore Hall, London)
SINGING without a conductor, as ever, the 12 members of Stile Antico delivered “A Spanish Nativity” at St Martin-in-the-Fields, London, in December. It was a programme of unaccompanied Christmas choral music written during…
Psalter, album by Tim Boniface
WHAT do you get if you take a multi-talented composer, saxophonist, pianist. and priest, combine him with a band of serious players (in both senses of that word) in UK jazz, and give them all the book of Psalms to riff on?…
Gesualdo Passione (Barbican Hall, London)
CARLO GESUALDO (1566-1613) was not a happy man. His 27 settings of the Tenebrae responsories — verses sung as a response to readings at the service of Tenebrae on the last three days of Holy Week — were his own reaction to…
Requiem A by Sven Helbig (Methodist Central Hall, Westminster)
THE self-taught German composer Sven Helbig wrote his Requiem A in response to his own feelings of powerlessness and horror that conversations about possible and ongoing wars have again become part of everyday life. Given its…
The Great Audition of Leipzig (Les Arts Florissants, Wigmore Hall)
WHEN the post of Town Cantor at Leipzig fell vacant in 1723 with the death of Johann Kuhnau, the city council held a series of auditions for the job. For their concert “The Great Audition of Leipzig”, in the Wigmore Hall,…
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