John Amis online

Pope's Daughter loves son Difficult not to raise an eyebrow or two when the name of Lucrezia Borgia comes up, recalling naughty things: ...

PIERS AND WITHOUT PEERS Piers Lane is surely at the zenith of his career. The Australian is an artist and a virtuoso as well, provides all t...

The next day in the Queen's Elizabeth Hall the Takacs, resident string quartet on the South Bank, gave one of their regular concerts in ...

AN ANCIENT MARRINER RETURNS Forty, fifty years ago, Neville Marriner and his Academy of St. Martin's were a constant on our musical scen...

Aimez-vous Prokofiev? Reader, do you find nowadays that some folk like everything that the famous composers write, a blanket hurrah for ever...

A Tenor Chairman Wagner tinkered with Tannhäuser after its premiere in 1845, making a new version in 1861 with subsequent emendations as lat...

Since Shura Cherkassky frisked about the keyboard in his eighties we are used to golden oldies and we hear that Methusaleh has booked the Wi...

A Hero’s Baton The programme of the Philharmonia’s concert in the Festival Hall, December 9, looked as if it was put together by a committee...

It was born the Goldsborough Orchestra in 1948 and re-christened the English Chamber Orchestra in 1960; the finest hours of its distinguishe...

A Fine Piano Recital It is always a particular pleasure when an artist one has watched growing, achieves mastery. I knew Leon McCauley firs...

A Fringe Benefit Returns Cilea’s 1904 opera Adriana Lecouvreur was seen again 22 November, forsaking her 18th century Comédie Française sta...

Operatic Rarities One for the head, one for the heart and one for fun seems to have been the watch word for Wexford for the last few decades...

Bliss was it Some like concerts by orchestra, some choral, others opera but for many of us a good concert by a string quartet is our idea of...

It is usually a sinister portent when there is stage business during the overture. So it proved on November 6, London Coliseum, for English ...

A Conductor for All Seasons Charles Mackerras was a conductor for all seasons, certainly for four centuries of music, his range was extraord...

Vivaldi in Bulk Nigel Kennedy brought his Polish chamber orchestra for a short tour in November. Reports from the concert in Birmingham spok...

Where can you go in London any day of the week and be sure of good music, good music-making, comfortable amenities, couple of bars and a res...

November 1926 – October 2010 When she first had her singing equipment examined by Ivor Griffiths, famous E.N.T. specialist, he declared he h...

If there were a prize for the most minimal set, it would undoubtedly go to the one seen in Pimlico Opera’s Madame Butterfly seen on Septemb...

In a mere quarter-of-a-century Gaetano Donizetti (1797 – 1848) managed to compose over sixty operas as well as a quantity of church music, s...