Strong team for a Good Friday St John Passion

By Roy Westbrook, 19 April 2025

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“would surely have delighted the recently appointed Kantor himself”

Reviewed at Barbican Hall, London on 18 April 2025

Bach, St John Passion, BWV245

Nicholas Mulroy, Tenor

Dingle Yandell, Bass

Carolyn Sampson, Soprano

Helen Charlston, Mezzo-soprano

Ed Lyon, Tenor

Jonathan Brown, Bass

Academy of Ancient Music

Laurence Cummings, Conductor

Cummings and the AAM win ‘Leipzig's Got Talent’

Nick Boston, 16th April

The Academy of Ancient Music poses the question what might have been in Leipzig with stunning performances of Bach and his competitors to be the new Thomaskantor.

*****

Freudian slip: Handel’s Tamerlano recast as Trumpian tantrums

Mark Pullinger, 26th March

Opha Phelan’s staging presents the action as a grand, Freudian social experiment. It’s a risk – but the production is lifted by outstanding performances from the cast and the Academy of Ancient Music.

***11

Ed Lyon excels in Monteverdi’s Songs of Love and War

Stephen Pritchard, 12th February

Tenor Ed Lyon fulfils a long-held ambition to sing Monteverdi's Eighth Book of Madrigals, conducted by his former teacher, Laurence Cummings at Milton Court.

*****

Academy of Ancient Music delivers a majestic Messiah

Charlotte Gardner, 16th December

Laurence Cummings and the AAM serve up Messiah-shaped serenity at the Barbican.

****1

Actéon and Pygmalion: three transformations for the price of two

Roy Westbrook, 9th October

Ovid’s Metamorphoses makes an ideal curtain-raiser to the Academy of Ancient Music's new season, with works by Charpentier and Rameau conducted by Laurence Cummings... who also sings!

****1

Academy of Ancient Music are inspired in Handel's Orlando

Roy Westbrook, 30th June

“A concert performance with neither scenery nor action would be a sacrilege,” wrote one authority of this opera. Nobody told the Academy of Ancient Music...

****1

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Roy Westbrook

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.

Strong team for a Good Friday St John Passion with Cummings and the AAM