The Rake’s Progress, Southbank Centre, 3rd November
Igor Stravinsky and WH Auden’s operatic collaboration is witty, wilful and dazzlingly original. Inspired by Hogarth, The Rake’s Progress follows Tom Rakewell as he leaves his country home and sweetheart Anne for the temptations of London. Tradition and modernity, satire and sincerity, pastiche and experimentation all collide in an opera that takes Hogarth’s black-and-white images and fills them with colour. Don’t miss this concert performance by Vladimir Jurowski and the LPO that brings together an all-star British cast including Patricia Bardon as the bearded Baba the Turk. Tenor Allan Clayton sings Tom and Matthew Rose, above, the slick-tongued Nick Shadow.
War Requiem, ENO, London Coliseum, 16th November to 7th December
English National Opera marks the centenary of the end of the First World War with its first staging of Benjamin Britten’s War Requiem. Combining the text of the Latin Mass with poems by Wilfred Owen, this is a powerful statement of the composer’s pacifism. ENO’s music director Martyn Brabbins and artistic director Daniel Kramer join forces with Turner Prize-winning German artist Wolfgang Tillmans to stage this concert piece, with soloists Roderick Williams, David Butt Philip and Emma Bell.
Baibe Skride & Ulster Orchestra—Music of America, Ulster Hall, 2nd November
Fearless, direct and energetic, Latvian violinist Baibe Skride is a musician who offers no easy answers or pretty performances. Here she joins Jac van Steen and the Ulster Orchestra for Bernstein’s tender and lyrical Serenade after Plato’s Symposium. It’s the centrepiece of an evening of American-themed music that also includes Dvorak’s New World Symphony with Charles Ives’s The Unanswered Question.
Igor Stravinsky and WH Auden’s operatic collaboration is witty, wilful and dazzlingly original. Inspired by Hogarth, The Rake’s Progress follows Tom Rakewell as he leaves his country home and sweetheart Anne for the temptations of London. Tradition and modernity, satire and sincerity, pastiche and experimentation all collide in an opera that takes Hogarth’s black-and-white images and fills them with colour. Don’t miss this concert performance by Vladimir Jurowski and the LPO that brings together an all-star British cast including Patricia Bardon as the bearded Baba the Turk. Tenor Allan Clayton sings Tom and Matthew Rose, above, the slick-tongued Nick Shadow.
War Requiem, ENO, London Coliseum, 16th November to 7th December
English National Opera marks the centenary of the end of the First World War with its first staging of Benjamin Britten’s War Requiem. Combining the text of the Latin Mass with poems by Wilfred Owen, this is a powerful statement of the composer’s pacifism. ENO’s music director Martyn Brabbins and artistic director Daniel Kramer join forces with Turner Prize-winning German artist Wolfgang Tillmans to stage this concert piece, with soloists Roderick Williams, David Butt Philip and Emma Bell.
Baibe Skride & Ulster Orchestra—Music of America, Ulster Hall, 2nd November
Fearless, direct and energetic, Latvian violinist Baibe Skride is a musician who offers no easy answers or pretty performances. Here she joins Jac van Steen and the Ulster Orchestra for Bernstein’s tender and lyrical Serenade after Plato’s Symposium. It’s the centrepiece of an evening of American-themed music that also includes Dvorak’s New World Symphony with Charles Ives’s The Unanswered Question.
