Roy Westbrook gained a diploma in music history at London University (Morley College) and was for some years the head of music day schools at Oxford University, where he also led music summer schools. After some years leading the University's business school he has returned to music teaching and writing, and recently took part in the Arts in Residence courses on Bruckner, Mahler and Bach He is co-author (with Terry Barfoot) of a history of opera, and has taught day schools on Sibelius in Oxford and elsewhere.
A concert performance of a Purcell semi-opera can never fully succeed, but compromise is worth it, if it enables us to hear a significant part of a major composer's output.
Adele Thomas makes a good case for Semele's operatic credentials in her production which makes effective nods towards Baroque opera’s devotion to spectacle.
Marking their 20th anniversary with a celebratory tour, Les Siècles perform French classics at the Barbican under their twinkle-toed founder, François-Xavier Roth.
House debutants, soprano Nicole Chevalier and conductor Lidiya Yankovskaya, excel in Isabella Bywater's Górecki staging to close English National Opera's season.
Rarely does a concert entirely devoted to a big Mahler Symphony later acquire a second half, let alone one containing just twenty minutes of a cappella singing.
Many of Rachmaninov's works were written for himself to play at the piano, but he was also a considerable composer for the voice, covering everything from intimate songs to operas and liturgical choral music.
