Tag Archives: Wagner

Opera at the V & A

Posted on March 1, 2018 by vhk10

I caught the V & A’s exhibition Opera: Power, Passion and Politics 10 days or so before it closed (which it has done now – sorry), and found it thought-provoking though not in the ‘unmissable’ category. The exhibitions centres on … Continue reading →

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Why I’m like Lohengrin

Posted on February 19, 2014 by vhk10

There was a mildly embarrassing moment at the beginning of our opera gala concert last weekend: as usual, we were all lined up in rows to process on and the names of those on the end of each row (including … Continue reading →

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My 13

Posted on February 18, 2014 by vhk10

The new Op13 music shop in Bristol has some posters inside, each showing 13 composers chosen by local musicians, some known personally to me. I couldn’t see them without thinking of what my own list would be and have used … Continue reading →

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Prom 57: a sprint from Ely

Posted on October 13, 2012 by vhk10

Somehow I managed to get away after 4 p.m. evensong at Ely Cathedral, made it to the railway station, leapt onto another train at Cambridge and then arrived at the Albert Hall around 7 o’clock to be there for the … Continue reading →

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a Cathedral organist in a village church

Posted on September 11, 2012 by vhk10

The small village of Rumengol in Finistère has no amenities other than a bar and a church. However it’s no ordinary church, as twice a year it holds a pardon (religious festival with processions). The Assumptiontide pardon co-incided with our … Continue reading →

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Prom 66: Mahler’s 11th

Posted on September 7, 2010 by vhk10

One of my great regrets with regard to singing came back in 2002 when I was for a short time in the Cambridge University Musical Society (CUMS) chorus. Members were invited to join a performance of Mahler 8 later that … Continue reading →

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LPs: batch 19 – trying to finish Shostakovich

Posted on June 15, 2010 by vhk10

I realised I’d been neglecting chamber music, so I moved on to an LP of Mozart’s piano quartets with the Beaux Arts trio, followed by a couple of string quartets performed by the Quartetto Italiano. Representing solo piano in this … Continue reading →

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a Wagnerian pizza

Posted on August 19, 2007 by vhk10

Earlier this month in Sicily I consumed a ‘Parsifal’ pizza at a restaurant which for some reason had an Arthurian theme. Among the ingredients were rocket, prosciutto and mushroom, but it wasn’t a great success, being on the soggy side. … Continue reading →

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Composers in the British National Corpus

Posted on October 15, 2004 by vhk10

I have recently come across this intriguing graphical representation of the frequency of words in the British National Corpus, a corpus of spoken and written British English dating from the early 1990’s. As it includes proper names, I tried various … Continue reading →

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secular gringing

Posted on February 3, 2004 by vhk10

This item of news appeared on the BBC website yesterday. Of course it’s not really news because organists have been sneaking secular themes into their improvisations for as long as they’ve been able to improvise in church. I once spent … Continue reading →

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