In Conversation With Khanh Nhi Luong
Remember the “piano trails” around Leeds and Bradford last September? A plethora of upright keyboards seemed to adorn every street corner, inviting those passing to sit down and play. It was all designed to advertise the coming to town of the prestigious Leeds International Piano Competition. Alongside the Tchaikovsky in Moscow, Chopin in Warsaw and […]
Les Miserables: at Leeds Grand Theatre Until 12 April
“Theatre of the highest quality – beautifully played music, tear-jerking performance, slick scene changes: spectacular.” Performed by Leeds Amateur Operatic Society. There is an oft-quoted adage in music that the amateur practises to get it right and the professionalpractises never to get it wrong. Whilst, on the face of it, this truism might not seem […]
Review – Opera North’s The Flying Dutchman: at Leeds Grand Theatre 8, 11, 14 and 21 February
” … (the sea) … now as a fathomless abyss, now as a steep mountain peak … filled me with mortal dread.” Wagner’s experience of a protracted and terrifying sea crossing in 1839, from Riga to London,remained a mind-etching memory in the intervening two years before he began to compose hisfourth opera, Der Fliegende Holländer. […]
Opera North – Britten: a Midsummer Night’s Dream at Leeds Grand Theatre
“It was a joy setting those heavenly words,” Britten was to write shortly after the June 1960 premiere of A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Though having to make cuts to create a manageable musical evening from the source play, he and partner Peter Pears had not tampered significantly with the original Shakespeare text. Indeed, the pair, […]
Tom Tollet Reviews: Johns’ Boys Welsh Male Voice Choir – at Leeds Grand Theatre on 14 September
Next touring Wrexham, Llandaff Cathedral, Bristol, Dorking until 03 November. I expect, in the West at least, vocal harmony began with a monk’s first-ever mistake and over a millennium on from what must have been a shocking, ear-opening plainchant blunder, with extraordinary close four-part harmony, we now have Johns’ Boys Welsh Male Voice Choir charming […]
