Gerald Barry's The Importance of Being Earnest at the Barbican

By Arthur Keegan-Bole, 30 April 2012

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Reviewed at Barbican Hall, London on 26 April 2012

Barry, The Importance of Being Earnest (European Première)

Birmingham Contemporary Music Group

Thomas Adès, Conductor

Barbara Hannigan, Cecily Cardew

Peter Tantsits, John Worthing

Joshua Bloom, Algernon Moncrieff

Katalin Karolyi, Gwendolen Fairfax

Hilary Summers, Miss Prism

Stephen Richardson, Lady Bracknell

Pastel-perfect hell: To See The Invisible

Charlotte Valori, 8th June

Emily Howard's new opera, an Aldeburgh Festival commission, takes an ambitiously modernist approach to a dystopian story of loneliness: a tough, but thought-provoking work.

****1

Proms at... Wilton’s: Conference of the Birds

Danny Riley, 2nd September

The Birmingham Contemporary Music Group present an ambitious mixture of experimental chamber music and disquieting monodrama.

***11

A bracing density of musical incident

Roy Westbrook, 3rd March

Oliver Knussen and the Birmingham Contemporary Music Group excel in a cunningly linked group of works from the old (mid 1980s) to the brand new.

*****

Singing from the same Songbook

David Fay, 24th February

John Woolrich's Songbook project provided the vocal material on show at the Birmingham Contemporary Music Group recital at Wigmore Hall, featuring sopranos Gillian Keith and Rebecca von Lipinski.

***11

Birtwistle's early gems mesmerise

Katy Wright, 6th September

Lean yet nuanced performances from Oliver Knussen and the Birmingham Contemporary Music Group in commemoration of Harrison Birtwistle's 80th birthday

****1

Barbican’s Birtwistle at 80 over-eggs the pudding during its exploration of the chamber works

Penny Homer, 25th May

Birmingham Contemporary Music Group are masterful, but chamber works lack context during the birthday celebrations at Milton Court.

***11

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Arthur Keegan-Bole

Arthur is a composer currently focusing on opera. His desire to promote contemporary music led him to set up and co-edit The Octogenarian, a light-hearted classical music review pamphlet distributed in Bristol and to curate the annual CMV series of concerts.