Music and Opera

Our curation of music and opera reviews

The 40-part challenge

Embedded somewhere in the Christmas story no doubt is the idea of much being contained in a small space — or Multum in parvo as the restored road signs leading into Rutland have it. The opposite, which I will leave you to chisel into Latin for yourselves, presumably gets less attention in the Bible, yet nicely sets up any discussion of the current interest in writing choral music for 40 voices. A performance of any 40-part piece is likely to guarantee a big crowd. Like dinosaurs, they attract attention merely on account of their size, though unlike these forebears they need a quite exceptionally large brain to control their bulk.

Spotify Christmas: Joy to the World

We normally run these Spotify playlists on Sundays, but, as it’s Christmas tomorrow, we thought we’d make an exception for Adrian’s selection of festive music. Don’t forget Pete Hoskin’s selection of more recent Christmas songs, from a couple of weeks ago, too. Distilling your Christmas favourites into a succinct playlist is like trying to cram the creator of the universe into a manger – not entirely impossible, but it needs a bit of thought and planning. Just as the Christ-child had to surrender aspects of divinity, a playlist must compromise somewhere. But kenosis is traumatic. What goes? The Pogues? That’s easy enough. Mariah Carey? That’ll upset Fraser. Cliff? Oh, steady

Another top ten albums of 2011 list

Picking my favourite albums this year reminded me of three things about the current state of music. First, the obvious point of how everything is driven by single tracks rather than albums, making the task harder each year. Second, how so much of the most interesting and innovative art is being made by women right now. And third, how the future of music is increasingly found in places such as Kinshasa and Johannesburg as much as in the traditional stomping grounds of London and Los Angeles. Anyway, here’s my list. And since any of these lists are an exercise in self-indulgence, can I cheat and give mentions in dispatches to

Silent night

There is one carol that has particular resonance for Londoners: ‘Silent night, holy night’. Just the idea of it can bring on an involuntary shiver of pleasure. In the 36 or so hours between Christmas Day and Boxing Day, after a solid month of the eldritch screeches of office parties and Westfield shopping, we city slickers are suddenly granted something more valuable than gold. The profound quiet — both in the darkness and the daylight — gives us a glimpse of the unsuspected soul of the city. The silence also tells us something about our everyday lives that, even subconsciously, some of us might want to change. On Christmas morning

A star at Christmas | 17 December 2011

As soon as Thanksgiving is over, the Beverly Hills bitches are out and about in full force and full maquillage. Driving their Beemers and Mercs with maniacal intent, they hit the department stores determined to put a dent in their hubbys’ credit cards. Black Friday is what the day after Thanksgiving is called, as all the retailers hold their breath and pray that the huge mass of Christmas shoppers will magically turn their red losses into black profits. This year was better than usual. The weather was good and so were the bargains. The queues outside the doors of the major stores looked like refugee camps, with shoppers putting up tents days in

Heavenly voices

It seems that Christ was born with the sound of choral music in his ears. That, at any rate, is what is to be deduced from many of the works of art that the manger scene has subsequently inspired. There is the holy family gathered round the crib, gold and lapis lazuli everywhere, beneficent animals kind of smiling at the smiling Christ child and, raised rather above all this, angels singing. Perhaps officially they are sexless — Wikipedia isn’t very discursive on the gender of the cherubim and seraphim — but as far as I can see they look like girls and are meant to be men. This makes for

Sounds for a cool Yule

One of the unwritten rules in our house is that Christmas should never be mentioned until a few days before the big day. Mrs Spencer gets into a state in the run-up to the festive season, not least because, as a teacher at the Royal Ballet School, she has rehearsals of The Nutcracker to attend at Covent Garden, in which the school’s pupils always appear, as well as end-of-term reports to write. When she is in the thick of all this, the idea of writing Christmas cards, buying presents and planning the catering brings on acute anxiety attacks, and if I so much as mention how much I am looking

Spotify Sunday: The new Christmas classics

There are, as they say, only thirteen more shopping days until Christmas. And that, unless you don’t much care for seasonality, means only thirteen more days of Christmas music. But what to listen to? There are the old standards, of course: the carols, the hymns, that Slade song. But I thought I’d delve into my collection for a few more recent numbers that you might enjoy. So here’s a selection of ten Christmas tracks recorded in the past decade. As always, you can listen to the playlist by following the Spotify link at the bottom of this post. On a Christmas Day — C.W. Stoneking I’m amazed that C.W. Stoneking’s

Singing siblings

The Unthanks couldn’t have chosen a more fitting venue for the first night of their current tour than St James’s Church, Piccadilly; just as it’s all too easy for passers-by, eyes glued to the bright lights, to overlook this relic of the 17th century, one could be forgiven for missing The Unthanks’ distinctive breed of folk music amid the barrage of predictable tales of nightclub romance filling the airwaves. But sisters Rachel and Becky Unthank still managed to pack the pews. Where does our nationwide fascination with singing siblings come from? The Gallaghers had us on tenterhooks every time they bickered; Jedward seem to be building a career on nothing

The joy of Spotify

Like a few who have ploughed through the Steve Jobs biography, I am now heartily tired of early adopters, those strange men who are always at the front of the queue at the Apple shop when some dismal new gewgaw is coming out. I myself am a classic late adopter, discovering the new and exciting only when it’s old and worn out. I had a CD player years after everyone else; a tribesman in Papua New Guinea was the only person to have an iPod after me; and now I am faintly obsessed by Spotify, the music-streaming service out there on the internet, wherever that is. For a mere £9.99

Brain gain

The arrival of the composer Eric Whitacre and his family in London as permanent residents brings a ray of Californian sunshine to our cloud-bedraggled lives. American musicians who have chosen to move to Europe to work have always made an interesting group, headed by jazz players of the calibre of Josephine Baker and Sidney Bechet. Of course they had reasons for seeking work elsewhere which do not apply to the very white Whitacre. But, given that at a casual glance the US appears to offer so much opportunity to everyone, why come all this way? In Whitacre’s case I get the impression that he really likes the UK. Since he

Sound and vision | 19 November 2011

The 20th century was a century of musical revolutions. One of the last and most audacious ignited 50 years ago on the east and west coasts of America. And in a small but significant way The Spectator played a part in fanning the flames. In 1968 a young critic and early-music specialist by the name of Michael Nyman was sent out by the magazine to review a new work by Cornelius Cardew, a little-known British maverick. What struck Nyman about Cardew’s new piece, The Great Learning, was how different the musical language was from that of the complex and angsty European avant-garde. ‘It was very gentle, it was very modest,

Pump up the volume

It occurs to me sometimes that this column is, essentially, one long and painful confessional. I admit to enjoying all this unfashionable and uncool music so others don’t have to. ‘Ah, the man who likes Supertramp,’ someone once said to me at a party, just before he was stabbed by an unknown assailant. No one would say anything so sneering or discourteous to an actual member of Supertramp, current or former, which suggests that their fans must suffer on their behalf. My own suffering includes the purchase of their double live album, Paris, in or around 1980. In this they play note-perfect renditions of their hits, with added applause. If

Patrick O'Flynn

Spotify Sunday: Going underground with The Jam

The Jam were once described as the ‘last great English singles band’. For a group that released such classic chart-toppers as ‘Going Underground’ and ‘Town Called Malice’ that might seem fair enough, but it grievously underestimates their musical canon. The quality of their output on LPs, B-sides and even on recordings that were never released while the band existed is stunning.   So today I wish to take you beyond the obvious Jam anthems, glorious though they are, and present some neglected gems.   Away From The Numbers The finest song on the debut In the City album sees the 18-year-old Weller ponder one of the major themes of his

What’s in a name? | 5 November 2011

There was a time when ‘classical music’ meant something you could put your finger on. It denoted the musical period between roughly 1750 and 1800, when Haydn, Mozart and many others wrote symphonies, concertos and instrumental pieces with a sense of form and grace that were likened to the art and architecture of Classical Greece and Rome. And it sat happily between two other important musical periods, the Baroque and the Romantic. Everybody knew where they stood. Not any more. Nowadays, for some people, ‘classical music’ probably means the same as ‘highbrow music’ — something that’s not for them. Otherwise it has become a catch-all phrase or term that nearly

Let’s hear it for elitism

Last month, on the most glorious of autumnal days, the world of music paid its last respects to Robert Tear. St Martin in the Fields was packed and the singing, as you can imagine, was magnificent. Sir Thomas Allen gave us Kurt Weill’s ‘September Song’, Sir John Tomlinson contributed Sarastro’s aria from Zauberflöte, and Dame Janet Baker read a poem by Emily Dickinson. It was some send-off. Bob deserved no less. As well as being one of the finest tenors of the past half-century, he was a man of many accomplishments, not the least of which, as his agent Martin Campbell-White said in a splendid address, was being ‘effortlessly friendly’.

Box of delights | 22 October 2011

I don’t know about you but I have to steel myself these days to turn on the Today programme in the morning. There is always the terrifying prospect that an infuriatingly overexcited Robert Peston will come on, barely able to contain his glee as he reports that one’s own bank or pension fund has just gone spectacularly bust. And when that dire day comes, as I increasingly fear it will, Peston will doubtless be followed by a sanctimonious government minister who will inform us that we are all going to have to work until we are 80 before we can receive our meagre state pensions. What’s scariest of all, I