Reviews by John Dunston
St Giles Orchestra Concert - Mendelssohn, Arnold, MacCunn, Brahms
John Dunston
The first half of this imaginative programme brought together three works with distinct Scottish connections, which, in all likelihood, have only rarely, if ever, appeared in the same concert. It ...
6 months ago
St Giles Orchestra Concert - Mendelssohn, Arnold, MacCunn, Brahms
Carmina Burana
John Dunston
“The wheel of fortune turns”. With these words, sung by the choir early in Carl Orff’s deservedly popular cantata Carmina Burana, the audience is introduced to one of the simplest yet most ...
a year ago
Carmina Burana
BACH St Matthew Passion – 6pm at Dorchester Abbey
John Dunston
At a time when many choirs marked the 300th anniversary of the first performance of Bach’s St John Passion in St Thomas’ Church, Leipzig, it was important not to ignore the other of his great ...
a year ago
BACH St Matthew Passion – 6pm at Dorchester Abbey
Chiao-Ying Chang & Pei-Jee Ng
John Dunston
There are concerts one simply enjoys. And there are those rare occasions that will remain unforgettable. I experienced one of the latter back in the 1970s, a recital that included Schubert’s ...
a year ago
Chiao-Ying Chang & Pei-Jee Ng
Handel Messiah at SJE Arts
John Dunston
If Handel’s Messiah is among the most frequently performed choral works of the Western musical tradition, the challenge of rendering it fresh and alive today is monumental. The task, perhaps ...
2 years ago
Handel Messiah at SJE Arts
Oxford Opera Society - Le nozze di Figaro
John Dunston
Beaumarchais’ play Le Mariage de Figaro, written in 1773, was not performed in Paris until two years later because of political difficulties. In Vienna, in 1786, the Emperor Josef II initially ...
2 years ago
Oxford Opera Society - Le nozze di Figaro
Vaughan Williams and Delius at SJE Arts
John Dunston
O Clap your Hands: The title of the opening piece in this imaginative programme might just as well have been an exhortation to the audience. Not that one was needed, for there was ample opportunity ...
2 years ago
Vaughan Williams and Delius at SJE Arts
Handel's Messiah
John Dunston
How heart-warming it was to read, in the elegant and informative programme, that Handel had decided to settle in London after the success there of his Italianate opera Rinaldo in 1711, “taking out ...
3 years ago
Handel's Messiah
Dido & Aeneas by Henry Purcell
John Dunston
There cannot be many operas that have remained in the international repertoire after over 330 years that were first performed in a girls’ boarding school in London. Yet such was the initial ...
3 years ago
Dido & Aeneas by Henry Purcell
Oxford Lieder Festival: A Schubertiade – Schubert & Co.
John Dunston
A little under two hundred years ago, Franz Schubert was a torchbearer at Beethoven’s funeral. By then, Schubert was already one of the figures marking the transition from the era of Haydn, Mozart ...
3 years ago
Oxford Lieder Festival: A Schubertiade – Schubert & Co.
Oxford Lieder Festival: Life & Love – Claire Booth
John Dunston
It began with silence. Claire Booth entered, took her seat at the piano, and waited, focused. Then, out of the quiet emerged the pure, unaccompanied voice to recount the ballad of young love, a love ...
3 years ago
Oxford Lieder Festival: Life & Love – Claire Booth
Waterperry Opera Festival 2022
John Dunston
From the opening seconds, it was never in doubt: this was to be a Figaro full of imagination, surprise and delight. The unexpected became the norm – paradoxical yet fitting for an opera whose ...
3 years ago
Waterperry Opera Festival 2022
Waterperry Opera Festival 2022
John Dunston
We like to think that every cloud has a silver lining. When Glyndebourne, in 1991, was marking the bicentenary of Mozart’s death, five composers were commissioned to write wind serenades, each ...
3 years ago
Waterperry Opera Festival 2022
Smorgaschord Festival 2022
John Dunston
Saturday 18 June, New College Chapel George Xiaoyuan Fu, piano Drupadhamar – Kirit Singh and Jasdeep Singh Echéa Quartet with John Myerscough, cello The second SmorgasChord festival, ...
3 years ago
Smorgaschord Festival 2022
Ana Bursac, Piano
John Dunston
Serbian-born pianist Ana Bursac, now a multiple international competition prize winner, made a welcome return to Harris Manchester College to give a recital on the newly-refurbished Steinway grand. ...
3 years ago
Ana Bursac, Piano
Viv McLean
John Dunston
As if the demands of this imaginative programme were not enough, the recitalist in the second concert of the SJE Arts International Piano Series also had to cope with a persistently irritating, yet ...
3 years ago
Viv McLean
Ana Bursac in Concert
John Dunston
This recital was a long time in the making, but more than justified the patience of all who were fortunate enough to have heard it. Harris Manchester College had first invited Ana Bursac to perform ...
3 years ago
Ana Bursac in Concert
Oxford Lieder Festival: A Schumanniade
John Dunston
Sophie Karthäuser, soprano Stephan Loges, bass-baritone Eugene Asti, piano James Way, tenor Natalie Burch, piano The great accompanist Gerald Moore was fond of recounting the moment ...
4 years ago
Oxford Lieder Festival: A Schumanniade
Oxford Lieder Festival: Hark, Hark! The Lark
John Dunston
Ailish Tynan, soprano; Ian Wilson, recorder; Libby Burgess, piano It was billed as “A homage to birds in music” by the Oxford Lieder Festival. Hark! Hark! The Lark was certainly that, but ...
4 years ago
Oxford Lieder Festival: Hark, Hark! The Lark
Oxford Lieder Festival: The Wanderer
John Dunston
A review of three events at the Oxford Lieder Festival: Wandering Winter Poets; Heine, Schumann & Brahms; and The Wanderer (October 12th, 2021)
Every performance of Schumann’s Liederkreis Op.24 ...
4 years ago
Oxford Lieder Festival: The Wanderer
Oxford Lieder Festival: Songs and Moods
John Dunston
It would be difficult, after twenty such successful years, for any individual recital to be regarded as the Oxford Lieder Festival 'at its best', but 'Songs and Moods' at St John the Evangelist must ...
4 years ago
Oxford Lieder Festival: Songs and Moods
Twelfth Night
John Dunston
If you’re seeking a play for today, look no further than Twelfth Night. And as an antidote to the trials and tribulations of the past eighteen months, Tomahawk Theatre’s sparkling production was ...
4 years ago
Twelfth Night
OSJ Summer Festival 2021
John Dunston
Carmina Burana, SJE Arts on 26 June 2021
The universal popularity of Carmina Burana (1935/6) has not quite made its composer, Carl Orff, a one-hit wonder, his creative work encompassing many genres ...
4 years ago
OSJ Summer Festival 2021
Christoph Willibald Gluck: The Crown (La Corona)
John Dunston
Bampton Classical Opera’s concert performance of Gluck’s La corona reminded us of the enduring relevance and adaptability of those Greek myths. And what inadvertently apt timing it was for a work ...
4 years ago
Christoph Willibald Gluck: The Crown (La Corona)
Lunchtime Recitals
John Dunston
Baroque lute recital by John Reeve, ' The Elegy of the French Lute: The music of Robert de Visée' , 29 April 2021 There was an almost surreal quality to this recital on the baroque lute by John ...
4 years ago
Lunchtime Recitals
Lunchtime Recitals
John Dunston
Piano recital by Ana Bursac, 11 February 2021
Schumann: Piano Sonata No. 1 Op. 11
Online from the synagogue of Novi Sad, Serbia
Robert Schumann’s Piano Sonata No. 1 Op. 11, written between ...
4 years ago
Lunchtime Recitals
