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When you go to a concert you may hope for moments of delight but you do not expect the hairs to stand up on the back of your neck. Yet this is what happened to many of us in this concert by the Gesualdo Six when the voice of the counter-tenor, Guy James, thrilled from…

In 2015 two young prize-winning musicians, the British cellist Cecilia Bignall and the Russian classical accordionist losif Purits met to form Duo Bayanello, now described as one of the most exciting ensembles in the London chamber music scene. Their mission was not only to combine two instruments as far removed from each other chronologically and…

This concert, called Caledonian Connexions, proved full of contrasts, twists and turns.  Choral music that intrigued and enlightened at one. Obviously the theme was Scotland – mostly by association. As lndex Cantorum’s founder and director Mark Williams described in the programme, through the evening we’d hear anything from Scottish composers and those inspired by Scotland,…

This is the fourth time Sansara have performed for Stockbridge Music. The choir has grown fast in stature here and abroad, and it’s difficult to avoid endless superlatives about their singing. Here are three prestigious plaudits: the composer Sir James McMillan ‘truly special, a brilliant new choir’; the Observer ‘perfect intonation, clean pure sound, choral…

They have thrilled us before in the ideal acoustic of Stockbridge Town Hall. Remarkably, three years on, the make-up of this superbly gifted youthful group has seen only one change, the viola player. Remarkable, because by now such very young players might have disbanded their group to forge individual careers. They have to an extent. One of them is…

  By James Montgomery Had Jean Mouton been in St Peter’s Church Stockbridge for this additional Stockbridge Music concert (he was born around 1459 and lived for at least sixty years) a warm glow would have infused his spirit. Quite simply, Sansara’s performance of his Nesciens mater, one of the evening’s items, was divine. This choir,…

By James Montgomery Does Professor Norris ever sleep? He must be the most energetic and prodigious musician alive today. You name it, he’s done it, does it, plays it, and will tell you anything about it. A walking, talking, broadcasting, teaching, instrument-playing encyclopaedia of music. A flag bearer too for a 19th century musician who…

By James Montgomery Thomas Weelkes was described by the authorities at Chichester Cathedral as a ‘comon drunckard, notorious swearer and blasphemer’ and sacked in about 1615 for being inebriated while playing the organ, but not before he’d written ground-breaking music – forty anthems, at least ten church services and yes, a hundred or so madrigals, sad…

  By James Montgomery With attack, that’s how these young players began their performance. This was the spirited first of four movements of Haydn’s String Quartet Opus 76, written in his twilight years at the same time he was working on The Creation. In this quartet’s Adagio, Haydn used the similar complex, adventurous and inventive harmonic…

By James Montgomery What other instrument played these days possesses more than four thousand years of beguiling musical pedigree? I suspect hardly any. The ancient Egyptians would have marvelled at how their single stringed legacy would become multi-stringed and enable a vast variety of key changes and sonority. To show us how, Francs Kelly with…