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PREMIUM

Christopher Morley

Review: Orchestra Of The Swan, at Birmingham Town Hall
Retail & Consumer
A near-packed Town Hall audience struggled through the Frankfurt Christmas market to enjoy a programme which brought us all back to England in summertime
Review: The Fairy Queen, by English Touring Opera, at Malvern Festival Theatre
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Review: The Fairy Queen, by English Touring Opera at Malvern Festival Theatre
Review, Axerxes, by English Touring Opera, at Malvern Festival Theatre
Retail & Consumer
The musical values of this English Touring Opera presentation of Xerxes are extraordinarily high
Richard Tognetti has many strings to his bow
Retail & Consumer
The director of the Australian Chamber Orchestra is keen to expand its repertoire far beyond the purely classical realm, writes Christopher Morley.
Review: Brandenburg Concertos - CBSO, at Symphony Hall, Birmingham
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An immensely stylish all-Bach concert played to a packed matinee audience, playing four of the Brandenburg Concertos and showcasing co-principal cellist Ulrich Heinen in the first Suite for Solo Cello
Review: Chandos Symphony Orchestra, at Forum Theatre Malvern
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Over the years the Malvern-based Chandos Symphony Orchestra has notched up a portfolio of tremendous triumphs, achieved over a rehearsal regime of only two weekends (including the concert one).
Review: The Barber Of Seville, Welsh National Opera, at Birmingham Hippodrome
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Far from creaking after 25 years, Welsh National Opera’s production of Rossini’s The Barber of Seville is in fact one of the most joyous operatic shows I have ever witnessed.
Review: Andras Schiff, at Birmingham Town Hall
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I doubt there can ever have been a better-structured piano recital than that enjoyed by a packed and attentive Town Hall audience on Tuesday.
Review: Birmingham Contemporary Music Group, at CBSO Centre
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For more than 20 years Birmingham Contemporary Music Group has provided an invaluable platform for the newest of music, promoting performances of works by cutting-edge composers both from home and abroad.
Review: Dmitri Shostakovich's, Leningrad Symphony CBSO, Symphony Hall
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The story of how the Seventh Symphony of Dmitri Shostakovich came into the world is a heroic one: written while the composer was firewatching during the near two-year siege of Leningrad during the Second World War, the microfilm of its score smuggled out for performance in the West, this is the real stuff of the triumph of art over adversity.
Finding shared ground
Retail & Consumer
Christopher Morley talks to composer Alec Roth about his collaboration with one of Birmingham's finest choirs
Sticking with the classicals for a good read
Retail & Consumer
Christopher Morley discovers books which would make the perfect gift for those with a love of classical music.
Review: Quatuor Diotima, at Artrix, Bromsgrove
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Bromsgrove Concerts promoted a really enterprising programme last weekend, one which deserved to attract a larger audience of chamber-music aficionados.
Review: Andris Nelsons, Baiba Skride & CBSO, at Birmingham Symphony Hall
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The first Nelsons/Skride collaboration with the CBSO was momentous, in a recording of one of the repertoire’s "biggies", the Tchaikovsky concerto
Adrian Lucas is the choir master
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Christopher Morley speaks to a conductor who had big shoes to fill when he took up the baton at the City of Birmingham Choir.
Review: Santtu-Matias Rouvali conducts CBSO, at Birmingham Symphony Hall
Retail & Consumer
As music critics get older, so conductors get younger and younger.
Review: CBSO Youth Orchestra, at Symphony Hall
Retail & Consumer
And if you’d been listening with your eyes closed on Sunday you would have been convinced that you were hearing one of the finest professional outfits around, with tight ensemble, flawless intonation and limitless depths of tone.
Review: Birmingham Philharmonic Orchestra, at Adrian Boult Hall
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I doubt I’ve ever heard a better concert from certainly one of the finest non-professional orchestras in the land, and I know I’ve heard few better performances of Mahler’s Sixth Symphony than the one the Birmingham Philharmonic Orchestra delivered on Sunday afternoon.
Review: CBSO, at Symphony Hall
Retail & Consumer
Young Armenian pianist Nareh Arghamanyan will have been so excited at the prospect of performing with one of the world’s greatest orchestras, but in the event this proved something of a disappointment.
Review: La Serenissima, at St Augustine's Church, Edgbaston
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A programme of wall-to-wall Vivaldi attracted an encouragingly large audience to the splendid St Augustine’s Church on a very cold night, to enjoy performances from the period-instrument band La Serenissima which were sprightly and lively, crisply delivered.
Traditional schooling for Baibe Skride
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Christopher Morley speaks to violinist Baibe Skride about life at the CBSO and growing up with conductor Andris Nelsons.
Review: Orchestra of the Swan, at Birmingham Town Hall
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It was ironic that the Orchestra of the Swan should have chosen to launch its fourth season at Birmingham Town Hall with two of Delius’ steamily perfumed orchestral miniatures on what turned out to be the coldest day of the autumn thus far.
Review: Dudley International Piano Competition, at Dudley Concert Hall
Retail & Consumer
The finals of the 32nd Dudley International Piano Competition proved a glittering occasion, bringing back the CBSO to the tremendous acoustic, immediate and straight, of what we still remember as Dudley Town Hall, and attracting a crowd of nearly 100 last-minute audience-members queuing to buy tickets atthe door.
Sir John Tomlinson takes Wagner to deeper levels
Retail & Consumer
The industrial community of his childhood brought music alive for the our greatest Wagnerian bass, writes Christopher Morley.