Première after Première: BBC Singers at the Cheltenham Festival

By Alexandra Hamilton-Ayres, 09 July 2012

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Reviewed at Cheltenham College Chapel, Cheltenham on 5 July 2012

Wood, From the Pisan Cantos LXXXI (premiere)

Supponen, The Dodrecht Humaphone

Harvey, Marahi

Bingham, London Haiku (premiere)

Swayne, Magnificat

Tavener, Unto the End of the World (premiere)

Rautavaara, Mass (UK premiere)

Endymion

BBC Singers

David Hill, Conductor

Oliver Lowe, Percussion

The BBC Singers at full throttle at Milton Court

Nick Boston, 26th February

Powerful Herbert Howells, together with affecting Shaw and engaging MacMillan from the BBC Singers, with the BBC Concert Orchestra conducted by Sofi Jeannin.

****1

UK premiere of Julia Wolfe’s unEarth impresses on scale, not substance

Susannah Moody, 23rd January

Wolfe's climate-change oratorio, performed by the BBC Symphony Orchestra, already feels out of date.

**111

Ermonela Jaho gives a tragic twist to Puccini's La rondine

Peter Quantrill, 5th December

A new edition of Puccini's score springs to life in a meticulously prepared Opera Rara concert performance at the Barbican.

****1

ENO, BBC join forces in stunning Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk

Mark Valencia, 1st September

David Pountney's vernacular translation and Ruth Knight's vivid staging lent a thrilling immediacy to Shostakovich's chilling opera.

*****

BBC Symphony and Josep Pons at the Proms: a dextrous dance

Dominic Lowe, 8th August

A programme heavily skewed to the balletic saw the BBC Symphony Orchestra under Josep Pons dispatch difficult passages with ease.

****1

Yunchan Lim plays a starring role in the CBSO’s Prom

Leighton Jones, 1st August

Adams, Rachmaninov and Berio are not three easy bedfellows, however Kazuki Yamada and the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra pull these strands together remarkably.

****1

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Alexandra Hamilton-Ayres

Alexandra Hamilton-Ayres is a Bristol-based film composer and classical electronic artist. Alexandra's passion in scoring and as a performer lie in the duality between the classical and electronica worlds, moving picture and her love for the piano. Her music has been described by The White Room Magazine as “majestic, at times monumental…the force and vastness of nature”.