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HKPhil in London
A full house at London’s Cadogan Hall greeted the Hong Kong Philharmonic last week for their performance of music by Fung Lam, Beethoven and Prokofiev as part of the hall’s 2014-15 International Orchestra Series. In London’s crowded concert schedule, the
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LSO/Rattle/Deranged Ligetian Soprano
At a time when rumours of Sir Simon Rattle returning to the UK, no less to head the London Symphony Orchestra, were running thick and fast, it was no surprise that I found myself in a sold-out Barbican Hall, preparing
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Musical Fairytales
New Year’s Concert of the Vienna Philharmonic
In the morning of New Year’s Day 2015, roughly 60 million viewers in 90 countries worldwide will turn on their television to watch the New Year’s Concert of the Vienna Philharmonic. That kind of marketing success is normally reserved for
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The Gospel According to the Other Mary
English National Opera
We’re blasted with the full force of the chorus right from the beginning of the show, accompanying a brutal prison drug search. This was one of many lights in which we saw the English National Opera chorus during ENO’s production
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in vain
in vain Last Friday, a packed out Queen Elizabeth Hall played host to the London Sinfonietta’s performance of Georg Friedrich Haas’ in vain, generating an air of cultist excitement around its London premiere. The piece’s famous use of darkness and
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Mediating between the Sacred and the Secular
Pablo González conducts Berlioz L’Enfance du Christ
Medici Live, 22 December 2013
Watch LSO Colin Davis Hector Berlioz sought gainful employment in the theatre and at the Conservatoire, but he never applied for a church job. His pronouncements about religious music are the views of an unorthodox Christian, but he nevertheless set
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Bach Marathon
This all-day event at the Royal Albert Hall was a celebration of not one but two creative artists – J.S. Bach, and the conductor John Eliot Gardiner. Gardiner is 70 this year, and this Bach Marathon was principally led by
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Let there be Music!
Mostly Baroque: Hong Kong Sinfonietta, Conductor: Geoffrey Lancaster, 14/7/2012 Jean-Féry Rebel Les Eléments, “Symphonie Nouvelle” Many moons ago, the pianist Paul Badura-Skoda — already in his early eighties, frail and bent by the ravages of age that made it difficult
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