Following training as a singer and conductor, Andrew is now completing a doctoral thesis on the life and songs of Sir Granville Bantock. Interests include English and American music, with an emphasis on opera, choral music and song. Andrew has been published in MUSO, Early Music, and by BBC Radio 3 and the BBC Proms.
John Wilson directs the National Youth Orchestra directs the National Youth Orchestra of Great Britain in a staggering performance of unbridled enthusiasm.
2014 marks the centenary of Rutland Boughton’s record-breaking score, The Immortal Hour. Here, it was squeezed into a small room above the Finborough Pub.
Remarkable commitment from the RNCM Vocal Department in an entrancing Gluck double bill, of the forgotten L’ivrogne corrigé and the famous Orfeo ed Euridice.
Gaetano Donizetti’s L’Elisir d’Amore is perhaps one of the most delightful operas ever written; full of romance and comedy underpinned by a witty and charming score makes it the perfect light-hearted entertainment. The RNCM presented an excellently compelling production.
Hooray for John Wilson and the magnificent musicians of his orchestra, for this programme of classics from Hollywood's golden age performed at Manchester's Bridgewater Hall.
Celebrating the Wagner centenary in 1913, the Hallé Orchestra gave a concert performance in Manchester of Acts II and III from Wagner’s epic final masterpiece Parsifal.
Princess Ida holds her court amongst the rarer Gilbert and Sullivan operas; their eighth collaboration, it opened at the Savoy Theatre on 5 January 1884, running for 246 performances.
Over the centuries, the Three Choirs Festival has developed a commendable trait in presenting the very best in English choral music; in more recent years the Festival has been committed to resurrecting once popular works that have been considered worthy of reassessment and, following on from last year’s performance of George Dyson’s Canterbury Pilgrims, this year the lot fell to Samuel Coleridge-T
Gilbert and Sullivan’s Iolanthe made history twice over on its opening night of 25 November 1882: in the first instance it was the first G&S production to play at the recently completed Savoy Theatre; and in the second, it was the first to open (almost) simultaneously at the Standard Theatre, New York City, beginning barely an hour after the conclusion of the London performance on the same d
The Pirates of Penzance is without a doubt one of the most popular and most successful of the G&S canon, containing some of Gilbert’s most amusing lyrics and characterisations, alongside examples of Sullivan’s best music.
There can be little doubt that two principal draws of the Buxton Festival are the annual opportunity to experience little-known and sometimes totally unheard-of repertoire and composers, and forgotten repertoire by familiar composers; the co-operation of such a festival committee, patrons and backers that supports the production of rare works is a gift to any artistic director – especially one as
Since the death of conductors like Isidore Godfrey, Malcolm Sargent and Charles Mackerras, all of whom feature heavily in the Gilbert and Sullivan discography with many excellent soloists of the last century, there has been no mainstream conductor that has really given the work of Gilbert and Sullivan its due; countless amateur dramatic societies and a few professional opera houses have done their
Sibelius is an extraordinarily well represented composer in Manchester and, ever since Sir John Barbirolli’s conductorship of the Hallé, all his symphonies have been presented here many times by both native and visiting orchestras – even within the last decade a Sibelius symphony cycle has been undertaken by the Hallé, and tonight marks the third and final concert of the BBC Philharmonic’s 2013 Si
