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13 of the world's best choirs

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13 of the world's best choirs

Which are the greatest vocal ensembles in the world? Jeremy Pound names 13 of the finest choirs (in alphabetical order)

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2024 The Kindergarten & Primary School Music Teachers Summit

More than 4,000 kindergarten & primary school music teachers have already joined us for the Music Summit

Playtime should encompass and enhance the developmental skills kids learn in other areas of their lives. Music education is a distinct feature of many school districts. Music classes teach many valuable life skills, so kids can learn and grow in healthy ways while having fun and developing new talents to share with the world.

All kids can make music, and many kids are excited by the idea of creating their own songs and expressing their creative side through singing or playing instrument. Giving kids of all ages and abilities the opportunity to explore their musical talents at school and beyond can produce a generation that’s creative, confident, collaborative and successful in future academic and career endeavors.

Learning through music in early childhood is an incredibly effective way for kids to develop necessary social and cognitive skills. By creating a playground that incorporates musical elements, you can help the kids in your community further expand on the musical knowledge they gain in school.

Registration

Registration is OPEN for our 2024 Rainbow Workshop Kindergarten & Primary school Music summit ! Visit our Workshops to register for our VIRTUAL sessions this February 27 – 28 and make huge progress in increasing your impact as kindergarten & primary music teacher!

In this summit training, you’ll learn how to:

· Create a Collection of High-Quality Repertoire

· Develop Extension Activities to Increase Student Understanding

· Jd Plan and Implement High-Quality Assessments Ip

· How to Simplify Your Lesson Planning

Check it out: Rainbow Workshop

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Who is Nicky Spence? Everything you need to know about the Scottish tenor, including his best recordings

The winner of the 2022 BBC Music Magazine Personality of the Year award is well-known for his charisma and vocal stature

Who is Nicky Spence?

Nicky Spence is a Scottish operatic tenor known for his vocal and physical stature (right down to his Size 12 feet), his velvety vocal timbre, his open-minded approach to repertoire, and his charisma – qualities that won the 38-year-old singer the 2022 BBC Music Magazine Personality of the Year award.

Where does Nicky Spence come from?

Dumfries, near the Scottish Borders, where he grew up on a farm. He is still a supporter of the town's football team, Queen of the South ('The Doonhamers'), who currently play in Scottish League One.

How old is Nicky Spence?

Nicky Spence was born in 1983.

Is Nicky Spence married?

Nicky Spence is married to his accompanist Dylan Perez.

How did Nicky Spence get into music?

Although Spence originally wanted to play the trumpet - and briefly took it up as a child - his family could not afford to pay for lessons. Luckily a music teacher at his school spotted his talent for singing, which went on to win him the Dumfries and Galloway Young Musician of the Year Award when he was 14, as well as a place in the Scottish Youth Theatre and National Youth Music Theatre.

When did opera enter the picture?

After a neighbour offered the 15-year-old Spence a spare ticket for Mozart's The Magic Flute. He was hooked.

Where did he study?

At the Guildhall School of Music and Drama, where, during his final year, he got his first big break, receiving a five-record contract with Universal Classics. Within the space of just a couple of years, he released his first album (My First Love), was nominated for the 'Young British Classical Performer of the Year' Classical Brit Award, and toured with Katherine Jenkins and Shirley Bassey. He has said that he owes more to Tom Jones than to Pavarotti in finding his voice. Yet, when the time came to record his second album, Spence turned his back on the £1m contract, choosing instead to return to full-time study at the Guildhall to focus on opera.

And since then?

He has sung in opera houses and concert halls all over the world, with regular appearances at the Royal Opera House and English National Opera. Admitting that he has an aversion to the 'rum-ti-tum' operas of Donizetti and the 'sillier' side of Verdi, Spence has specialised in complex, truthful roles, frequently taking on repertoire by the Czech composers Leoš Janáček and Antonín Dvořák. He also has an affinity for Wagner, having appeared in The Mastersingers of Nuremberg, Der fliegende Holländer, Tristan und Isolde and Das Rheingold – and has sung a good deal of 20th century repertoire. But he still casts his net beyond classical music, freely professing his love of musicals and often embracing the sounds of Broadway in his work.

Anything else I should know about Nicky Spence?

Even by A-list singer standards, Spence has a particular talent for keeping busy. Last winter he was one of three mentors appearing on Anyone Can Sing, a TV series in which six would-be singers were given guidance by expert vocalists. During the pandemic he made every minute count, jabbing over 100 people every day as a volunteer in a vaccination clinic.

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He was on our screens during the Coronation (remember the rumours...?). Now Karl Jenkins is back in the news, with a different feat to his name

Recently (and memorably) on our TV screens during the Coronation, the composer Sir Karl Jenkins is back in the news, having broken a unique chart record.

Jenkins broke UK chart records by reaching over 1,000 weeks in the UK Official Classical Artist Albums Chart with his work The Armed Man: A Mass for Peace.

The Armed Man was composed by Jenkins in 1999, commissioned by the Royal Armouries to mark the millennium. An oratorio, it is based on the 15th century French poem, ‘L’homme armé’, and is a powerful and moving reflection on the horror of war and its consequences. It has now occupied the UK classical charts for more than 20 years.

Jenkins captured the attention of the public with his appearance at the Coronation of Their Majesties King Charles III and Queen Camilla at Westminster Abbey. Indeed, his appearance at the event led to some speculation that Karl Jenkins was Meghan Markle in disguise (Prince Harry's wife having not attended the Coronation) and his image went viral.

The Welsh composer was amused by the extraordinary media response to his distinctive look, when it was jokingly suggested that he might have been a heavily disguised Meghan, Duchess of Sussex.

He was at the Coronation because his work 'Tros y Garreg' ('Over the Stone', an arrangement of a Welsh folk song drawn from his eponymous harp concerto) was performed as part of the music programme before the Coronation service, withRoyal Harpist Alis Huws as soloist.

Who performed at the Coronation?

Who composed music for King Charles's Coronation?

The work was commissioned by His Majesty when Prince of Wales, and was included in the Coronation order of service as a recognition of The King’s long-standing relationship and affiliation with Wales. Indeed, the big day also saw the first-ever Welsh-language performance at a Coronation, with Welsh bass-baritone Bryn Terfel performing Paul Mealor's 'Coronation Kyrie' in his mother tongue.

Five of the best...Welsh composers

Seven traditional Welsh folk songs you can't help singing along to

'Tros y Garreg' is now available to listen to on The Official Coronation Album, which was recorded live and released on the same day as the Coronation, and is out now on Decca Records.

The Coronation in numbers: how many musicians, composers, microphones and more

https://www.classical-music.com/news/coronation-composer-karl-jenkins-breaks-uk-chart-record/

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Period ensemble Consone Quartet will participate in Music at Paxton's three-year residency in the Scottish Borders | The group will perform concerts on July 29 and 30, 2023, featuring music by Haydn, Schumann, Fanny and Felix Mendelssohn, Puccini, Mozart, and Sibelius

The period ensemble will participate in a three year residency at the summer music festival in the Scottish Borders

Taking place annually, Music at Paxton was established in 2006 to bring exceptional chamber music to a wider audience. Their Associate Ensemble residency lasts for a three-year tenure and sees the chosen group give two concerts as part of the festival.

Comprised of Agata Daraškaite and Magdalena Loth-Hill (violins), Elitsa Bogdanova (viola), and George Ross (cello), the London-based Consone Quartet will be the newest Associate Ensemble. They will perform concerts on July 29 and 30, 2023, featuring music by Haydn, Schumann, Fanny and Felix Mendelssohn, Puccini, Mozart, and Sibelius.

"We are absolutely thrilled to have been appointed as the associate ensemble for Music at Paxton," the quartet said. "We can’t wait to make music in this incredibly special and historic place, and to meet and connect with the festival’s audience."

"It is inspiring to be given so much artistic freedom and we are excited to share programs over the coming years, featuring rarely-heard music as well as some familiar favorites!"

Formed in 2015 at the Royal College of Music, the Consone Quartet was the first-period ensemble to be selected as BBC New Generation Artists. They are the winners of the Royal Over-Seas League Ensemble Prize, and in 2022, were selected as recipients of the Borletti-Buitoni Trust Fellowship.

The quartet's debut recording covered works by Haydn and Mendelssohn, and their second album — which traverses the entire Mendelssohn quartet cycle — will be released on Linn Records.

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Who is violinist Johan Dalene?

He won the prestigious Carl Nielsen International Competition in 2019, and has been steaming ahead ever since, despite still only being 22 years old. But who exactly is Johan Dalene? Here is everything you need to know about the Swedish violinist

Who is Johan Dalene?

Johan Dalene is a 22-year-old Swedish violinist who made his big break in 2019, when he was awarded first prize at the prestigious Carl Nielsen International Competition. Since then he has won respect for the intelligence of his interpretations, the elegance of his tone and the spontaneity of his performances – not least from the renowned Dutch violinist Janine Jansen, with whom he has taken several classes.

When and where was he born?

He was born in Norrköping, Sweden, on 5 August 2000.

Where has he performed?

Recently selected as a European Concert Hall Organization (ECHO) Rising Star, he has performed at venues ranging from the Musikverein Wien to Het Concertgebouw Amsterdam. From 2019-21, he was also a BBC New Generation Artist, and gave performances with the BBC Orchestras, which were broadcast on BBC Radio 3.

How did he decide to take up the violin?

Born to two musicians - his mother is a pianist, and his father a cellist - Dalene initially wanted to follow in his father's footsteps and take up the cello. Keen however, that the four-year-old Dalene should tread his own path, his father encouraged him to try the violin first and to switch to the cello after a year if he didn't enjoy it. He ended up sticking with it.

What kind of music does he like to play?

Although he is well-versed in core repertoire, he has a soft spot for Scandinavian music. He was widely praised last year for his album of Nordic music for violin and piano, as well as his recording of violin concertos by Nielsen and Sibelius, which was released in 2022. That fine disc earned a five-star review from us - and was also nominated in the Concerto category of the 2023 BBC Music Magazine Awards.

Does he have other hobbies?

Yes, he is a keen footballer; for a while, in his early teens, Dalene was even more enthused about playing football than about playing the violin. He also describes himself as a bit of a foodie and admits that one silver lining about the lockdown was the chance to watch Netflix and learn how to cook

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Over the next few weeks we'll be profiling the various composers commissioned to write music for the #Coronation.

Here's Iain Farrington, whom you may remember from two very innovative contributions to the 2020 and 2022 #Proms

https://www.classical-music.com/composers/who-is-iain-farrington/

Who is Iain Farrington?

Iain Farrington is a pianist, organist, composer and arranger. He has made many recordings, and has been seen and heard on BBC Television, Classic FM and BBC Radio Three.

Read more of our Coronation composers series:

Who is Patrick Doyle?

Who is Tarik O’Regan?

Who is Roxanna Panufnik?

Who is Judith Weir?

How old is Iain Farrington?

Iain was born in Hitchin, Hertfordshire, in 1977. He grew up in Hitchin. Iain later studied at the Royal Academy of Music, London and at Cambridge University.

What is Iain Farrington's musical style?

Iain has a mission to bring live music to as wide an audience as possible. His concert programmes often feature a mixture of classical with pop and jazz elements.

The best living composers

Iain has also produced many chamber orchestral arrangements, which have allowed ensembles to perform large-scale works on an affordable smaller scale. His own compositions, meanwhile, span a wide range of classical and contemporary music, from virtuoso display pieces to smaller works for performers just starting out with their instruments.

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The 15 weirdest and strangest works of classical music

Classical music's strangest, craziest and weirdest compositions

John Cage’s famous 4’33” consists of 273 seconds in which no one does anything at all, yet has enjoyed cult status since its ‘composition’ in 1952. Today, it can be downloaded on iTunes, watched on Youtube and there is even a 4’33” app. Most view it with wry amusement, others (ie men with beards) value it as an important exercise in making us re-think the very concept of music. Whatever, it will always hold a proud place in the list of the strangest music ever written. Cage, of course, was writing in a notably experimental era that produced all sorts of wonderful weirdness, but the boundaries of musical convention have always been there to be tested – composers had been doing daft things for centuries before Cage and co. arrived on the scene. Here, we take a look at 15 pieces of the strangest music, from the engagingly amusing to the downright barmy…What are the strangest pieces of classical music?

1. Heinrich Ignaz Franz von Biber: Battalia

We begin our survey of all things eccentric in the Baroque period. Usually a composer of utmost craft and refinement, Biber went off on something of a tangent with his 1673 Battalia for string orchestra. Depicting life in an army camp, effects galore are employed by the composer to paint the musical picture just as he wanted it. For instance, the section called ‘Die liederliche Gesellschaft von allerley Humor’ has the orchestra playing in eight different keys simultaneously to depict drunkenness, while ‘Mars’ sees the double bass stick a piece of paper beneath the strings to create a rasping sound. It’s an entertaining listen, though quite what Biber’s own audiences would have made of it is anyone’s guess.

2. Johann Georg Albrechtsberger: Concerto for Jews Harp

Nothing much to remark at first about the 1765 Concerto in F major by Johann Georg Albrechtsberger, esteemed Viennese composer, scholar and teacher of Beethoven – a pleasant, if unexceptional orchestral opening is adorned with gentle pluckings on the mandora (a type of lute). But then comes the entry of the other solo instrument. It’s a jew’s harp: basically, a metal spring that one places in front of the mouth and twangs. In the hands of an able player, it can just about be made to produce something vaguely resembling a melody, but no amount of skill, alas, can give it a sound other than ‘boinnnnggggg’. The overall effect? Think of a contented frog leaping from lily to lily, accompanied by a string orchestra. Remarkably, Albrechtsberger wrote not just the one but seven such concertos.

3. Leopold Mozart: Toy Symphony

History popularly depicts Leopold Mozart, father of Wolfgang Amadeus, as something of a po-faced old moose, obsessed by eking every last drop out of his son’s prodigious talent. His Toy Symphony of around 1760, however, hints at a fun-loving side. As well as the normal orchestral forces, there are parts for toy trumpet, ratchet (essentially a football rattle), cuckoo and nightingale (not the birds, clearly, but toy instruments that sound like them…). It’s all a bit of a hoot, and rather charming – so is that why it was initially credited not to Mozart Snr but to the more genial Haydn?

4. György Ligeti: Poème Symphonique

Who needs instruments? Not György Ligeti. The Hungarian’s Poème Symphonique of 1962 – which will be performed in the same concert as Cage’s 4’33” at the Proms this year – simply requires ten players to take to the stage, each in charge of ten wind-up metronomes. All 100 metronomes are wound to their limit, and then set off and allowed to tick away until they have all wound themselves down. In theory, one could also try it out with battery-powered metronomes, though this might mean a performance going on for hours and hours and hours. Talking of which…

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As requested I've put a few tickets on Skiddle.

Click: https://skiddle.com/e/36286205

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When was the first studio recording of Wagner's Ring cycle?

November 1965: The momentous project from Decca, Solti, and the VPO set new standards in the presentation of opera on record

Late in the afternoon of 19 November, 1965 – a Friday – the Hungarian conductor Georg Solti steered the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra through the placid concluding measures of Wagner’s Die Walküre, the final downbeat landing at precisely 5.30pm. It was the end of an epic journey to make the first complete studio recording of Wagner's Ring cycle, a cycle of four operas lasting 15 hours in total.

Who was Georg Solti?

Georg Solti was a Hungarian-British conductor of both orchestral and operatic music, best known both for his opera conducting with orchestras in Munich, Frankfurt and London, and for his long and highly successful spell as music director of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. The complete Wagner Ring cycle still stands as one of his greatest achievements, alongside complete Beethoven, Brahms, Bruckner and Mahler symphony cycles in Chicago.

That journey had started seven years earlier on 24 September, 1958, when sessions to record Das Rheingold – the curtain-raiser to Wagner’s tetralogy – began in the Sofiensaal, Vienna, a converted 19th-century steam bath known for excellent acoustics. The road to that opening session had, however, itself been difficult. Decca, the company making the recording, needed considerable persuasion that a complete Ring cycle made sense commercially. Would enough copies ever be sold, they wondered, to cover the enormous financial investment required to complete the project?

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Wagner: why the music of the brilliant German composer is often misunderstood and considered difficult

When Das Rheingold was eventually released as a three-LP boxed set in March 1959 (price £6), Decca executives got their answer. The critics raved about the new recording and, crucially, it began selling in substantial numbers globally, even becoming a popular hit in the US. ‘There it was in the Billboard charts of the best-selling LP albums,’ reported Rheingold’s producer John Culshaw, ‘surrounded by Elvis Presley and Pat Boone, and without another classical recording in sight.’

Who was John Culshaw?

Culshaw himself was a major reason why Das Rheingold was so stunningly triumphant. Seeing exciting possibilities in the new technology of twin-channel, stereophonic recording, he totally rethought how opera should be presented to the armchair listener. Culshaw’s ‘theatre of the mind’ involved careful placement of singers across the stereo spectrum, mimicking stage positions and movements.

Decca to release new high-definition transfer of George Solti's 'Ring Cycle' recordings

Wagner’s own directions were a crucial point of departure in Culshaw’s calculations. The score of Das Rheingold requires 18 tuned anvils for the Nibelheim episode, a stipulation usually ignored in the theatre. Culshaw took it seriously: 18 anvils were duly found, and 18 players hired to hit them. The thunderclap heralding Rheingold’s final scene also got the Culshaw treatment, and was one of several ‘sound effects’ rendered with unprecedented fidelity on the finished recording.

Decca producer John Culshaw played a key role in the recordings

Decca producer John Culshaw played a key role in the recordings. Pic: Evening Standard / Hulton Archive / Getty Images

What is the best 'Ring' cycle?

The recordings from Solti and the VPO are good candidates for a 'Ring' cycle best recording. Das Rheingold’s commercial success induced Decca to sanction a continuation of the Ring project, and recordings of Siegfried (1962), Götterdämmerung (1964) and Die Walküre (1965) followed. Acclaim for each instalment was again virtually universal, many commentators acknowledging that entirely new standards were being set both artistically and sonically in the presentation of opera on record.

One critic hailed Siegfried as ‘the finest recording, as such, of opera that we have had so far’. In Götterdämmerung, Culshaw had special steerhorns made for Act Two, adding to what one reviewer called ‘the alchemy of Decca's magnificent, stunning, overwhelming new recording’.

Which singers performed in the Solti / Vienna Phil 'Ring' cycle?

Perhaps the biggest factor of all in the Decca Ring’s success was the outstanding quality of the singers. Kirsten Flagstad, Hans Hotter, Gustav Neidlinger, Wolfgang Windgassen, Birgit Nilsson, Christa Ludwig, Régine Crespin, Gottlob Frick – all featured prominently, drawn from a classic generation of post-war Wagner performers. Culshaw’s ‘incomparable engineers’ (as The Times called them), led by Gordon Parry, also played a crucial role in capturing performances which, in their extremes of dynamic and expression, often severely stretched the analogue tape technology of the period

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Andrea Bocelli October 29, Hunter Valley, Hope Estate Winery 🇦🇺

photo: Luca Rossetti

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Worldwide online Children Music Concert by Karen Karana Tse

Join us for the December Worldwide online Children Music Concert.

* Performance is an important aspect of any musician’s life. Throughout the year, there are numerous recitals, concerts and master classes to provide Karen students the opportunity to set goals and develop necessary performance skills. Students are urged to take advantage of these opportunities.

* Student Recitals are generally scheduled on Friday evenings and Saturday afternoons on December 9th - 10th. Student recitals provide an opportunity for students to hone their performance skills in front of an audience of family and friends. Student recitals are free and open to the public. Please check our calendar of events for recital dates and times.

* An annual Student Showcase Concert is held at the end of each school year to recognize the outstanding accomplishments of our students over the course of the year.

Apply Now : Welcome for all worldwide students

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Why the early music revolution of the 1970s was truly a moment to savour

The early 1970s were full of brilliant young musicians determined to overthrow anachronistic, Romanticised approaches to old music, and do so with panache, says Richard Morrison

With some disbelief, I realise that it’s half a century since I attended my first early-music concert – at the 1972 BBC Proms. It was a thrilling night, because the sounds conjured up by that virtuosic pioneer David Munrow and his Early Music Consort of London were so new, so challenging, so revolutionary. So was the music, even though it had been composed four or five centuries earlier. Who then had heard of Hermann Finck, Jacobus Barbireau or Hans Kotter? Come to think of it, who has heard of them now? Munrow, who died tragically and much too early, had a knack for digging out complete rarities from the Medieval and Renaissance eras and bringing them to life so flamboyantly that you felt as if you had been transported to the Field of the Cloth of Gold itself. He wasn’t alone. The early 1970s were full of brilliant young musicians determined to overthrow anachronistic, Romanticised approaches to old music, and do so with panache. In that same Proms season, John Eliot Gardiner conducted Monteverdi’s Vespers in Westminster Cathedral, and even over the radio the lean, incisive singing and playing sounded as daring as Stockhausen or Birtwistle. Nikolaus Harnoncourt’s provocative recordings of German and French Baroque music horrified some but delighted many more. And when Christopher Hogwood (top image) brought out his legendary recording of Handel’s Messiah a few years later – period instruments, boy trebles, lightning speeds and, most mesmerising of all, Emma Kirkby’s laser-like voice soaring through the soprano solos – it was as if someone had put a bomb under the 200-year-old tradition of performing Handel’s choral works with massive forces. Of course, with hindsight we may feel that the performances created by Hogwood or Harnoncourt said more about late-20th-century sensibilities than about how music actually sounded in the 1700s. That didn’t matter at the time. They were different. They shocked. There are some things that I don’t miss about those early years of the early-music movement. One is the fierce polarity between various camps. It wasn’t just that period-instrument players asserted that theirs was the ‘authentic’ and only true way to perform Baroque music (a claim nobody is foolish enough to make any more). Or that, on the other side, players in symphony orchestras regularly caricatured period-instrumentalists as failed musicians who couldn’t play in tune. There were also bitter rivalries within the early-music movement itself.

It was quite fun for a journalist if a leading scholar-performer spent a whole interview telling you why a rival’s version of (to take one infamous example) Bach’s Mass in B minor was misconceived in every possible way. But I’m not sure it was good for those working in the field if they were constantly made to feel like participants in a latter-day Hundred Years War. It wasn’t until the 1990s or even later that a new, more flexibly minded generation of musicians appeared, enabling symphony orchestras to do passable impressions of ‘historically informed’ performances where required and, on the other side, period-instrument bands to bring back some of the lusher expressive devices ruthlessly ditched by their dogmatic forerunners.

Two things, however, I miss a lot. One is Medieval music. It’s not that nobody performs pre-Renaissance dances or vocal music any more, but Munrow managed to bring it into the mainstream of concert life and attract a big following. Nobody does that now. People pay lip-service to the concept of ‘nine centuries of classical music’, but in reality few groups perform anything before Tallis, and most early-instrument concerts are of 18th-and 19th-century music. In other words, the mainstream repertoire has shrunk back to what it was before period instruments came along. The other thing I miss is the thirst for rediscovery and scholarship that infused so many early-music pioneers. How many of today’s ensemble leaders go back to primary sources – composers’ manuscripts or vivid accounts of social and cultural conditions in earlier centuries – to enrich their understanding of the music? How many are prepared to spend days, maybe months, rooting around in dusty libraries to find music that deserves resuscitation? I don’t deny that the technical standards of today’s musicians are, on the whole, streets ahead of what I heard in the 1970s. But I miss today the feeling of new worlds being revealed and old preconceptions challenged. I don’t think that’s just nostalgia talking.

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RETURN TO LONDON TOWN

October 28th – 31st, 2022

www.irishmusicinlondon.org & www.returntolondontown.org

London’s 24th Annual Festival of Traditional Irish music, song and dance ‘Return to London Town’ is due to take place at Cricklewood’s Crown Hotel and other local venues from Friday 28th – Monday 31st October 2022.

This year’s Festival will host four days of concerts, céilís, workshops, sessions and more, featuring:

Jackie Daly and Matt Cranitch/ Bríd Harper, Dermot Byrne and Steve Cooney/ Liz and Yvonne Kane with John Blake/ Bróna McVittie/ Sorcha Costello, Elaine O’Reilly, Catherine McHugh/ Dónal McCague and Tommy Fitzharris/ Máire Ní Chathasaigh and Chris Newman/ Diarmuid Ó Meachair/ Parish Céilí Band/ Paddy Egan. Tickets and more programme information available soon at www.returntolondontown.org

First Sunday of the month set dancing céilís presented collaboratively by Tom Kelleher and IMDLresume on Sunday 4th September (2-5pm) with music by Gleann Catha Céilí Band at Cecil Sharp House, Camden. Weekly set dancing classes, take place in the Kennedy Hall, London Irish Centre on Thursdays, 7.30pm.

Mairéad Ní Mhaonaigh (fiddle/ vocal), Mark Redmond (uilleann pipes) and Cormac De Barra (harp/ vocals) will feature in concert on Sunday 18th September at the Irish Cultural Centre, Hammersmith during the next Music Network tour. Tickets are available at www.irishculturalcentre.co.uk.

IMDL are delighted to announce the upcoming release of the 25th Anniversary album by The London Lasses. The London launch of the album will take place on Friday 2nd December at Conway Hall, Holborn.

Details of all these and other Irish music events in London are available at www.irishmusicinlondon.org

Irish Music and Dance in London - IMDL

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Borodin Quartet welcomes new member

The legendary Russian string quartet has announced the replacement for former first violinist Ruben Aharonian

Nikolai Sachenko will step into the shoes of Ruben Aharonian, the Borodins' previous first violinist, who retired recently.

Founded in 1945, the Borodin Quartet is perhaps best known for its long and close association with Shostakovich, who consulted the quartet members on the composition of many of his string quartets. The Borodin Quartet has recorded the complete Shostakovich quartets no fewer than three times.

The Borodins were also closely associated, for many years, with the great Russian pianist Sviatoslav Richter, with whom they made many noted recordings - including a legendary version of Shostakovich's Piano Quintet. The Quartet has had a traditional affinity with Russian music, performing and recording the string quartets of Tchaikovsky, Glinka, Stravinsky, Prokofiev and, of course, Borodin. They also performed at Prokofiev's funeral in 1953.

The Borodins have a series of European dates during the autumn and winter of 2022/23. Highlights include performances at the BOZAR in Brussels, Berlin Konzerthaus, Liszt Academy in Budapest, Liverpool Philharmonic, Wigmore Hall in London, Amsterdam Concertgebouw, and the Philharmonie de Paris.

Winner of the violin gold medal of the International Tchaikovsky Competition in 1998, Nikolai Sachenko has performed with many acclaimed conductors. He is currently concertmaster of the State Symphony Orchestra ’Novaya Rossiya’ under Yuri Bashmet, and has performed in ensembles alongside performers including Bashmet, Gidon Kremer, Lynn Harrell and others. 'The uncompromising pursuit of excellence in musical interpretations has been an unchanging tradition of the Borodin Quartet throughout its glorious long history,' Sachenko comments. 'I am happy to join my friends and colleagues of the Quartet and, together in our shared passion for the quartet world, I hope to continue this remarkable tradition of musical eminence.'

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How Puccini's Madam Butterfly catapulted Pavarotti to stardom

On the evening of Tuesday 7 May, 1963, an enthusiastic crowd of opera lovers filed into the Grand Opera House in Belfast, Northern Ireland, for a production of Puccini’s Madam Butterfly. In the wings, nervously waiting to make his UK debut as a professional singer, was an unknown young Italian tenor. His name? Luciano Pavarotti.

When did Luciano Pavarotti start performing?

Pavarotti had sung in the UK before, though not as an operatic soloist. Eight years previously, aged just 19, he had travelled to Wales with the Corale Rossini, a male voice choir from his hometown of Modena, to compete at the Eisteddfod in Llangollen. The choir won first prize in its category, and their success fired Luciano with a desire to launch his own career in music.

Eight years of patient training in his native Italy followed, with Pavarotti working as a teacher and insurance salesman to pay the bills. Then bookings started coming – Puccini’s La bohème in Reggio Emilia, Verdi’s La traviata in Belgrade, a Vienna State Opera debut – and the stage was set for Pavarotti to begin looking beyond continental Europe for further opportunities and experiences. The Belfast Butterfly was the first of these, and it proved crucially important.

How did Pavarotti end up performing in Belfast?

Alerted by the buzz about his voice coming from Italy, the Grand Opera Society of Northern Ireland had booked Pavarotti to sing the part of the caddish American lieutenant BF Pinkerton. The Society was by no means a fully-fledged operatic company. Formed six years previously, its ‘Grand Opera Weeks’ mixed local singers with more experienced soloists from abroad, adding heft in key roles and a whiff of international sophistication. To pay the soloists, fund-raising events were organised, and in 1963 the Society took a punt on Pavarotti’s as yet unproved Pinkerton, hoping that the gamble would prove a good one.

How was Pavarotti received?

It was, as from the outset the strapping young Italian made a positive impression. ‘He was like a big rugby player,’ recalled local soprano Margaret Smyth, who played Pinkerton’s American wife Kate. ‘A very pleasant person and easy to work with.’ Another cast member, Nan Murray, was equally impressed: ‘The voice just blew you away, it really did. It just soared.’

Pavarotti ‘wasn’t a wonderful actor’, Smyth added – a complaint that dogged him throughout his career – but for the Belfast audience it didn’t matter. ‘On the first night people heard this magnificent voice, and the place just erupted,’ Murray remembered. ‘The audience became very animated and were clapping and whistling when he came on for his curtain call.’

The rest is, as they say, history. Within months Pavarotti was making his Covent Garden debut in La bohème, replacing an indisposed Giuseppe Di Stefano. Engagements at Glyndebourne and La Scala followed, and in 1965 he toured Australia with soprano Joan Sutherland, a partnership immortalised in the many classic recordings they went on to make together. The path to operatic superstardom was well and truly established.

It was 36 years before Pavarotti sang in Belfast again, in an open-air concert at Parliament Buildings, Stormont. The city had not forgotten him. A sold-out crowd of 11,000 attended, and a few years later the Grand Opera House named its café Luciano’s in his honour.

Pavarotti himself remembered the Belfast Butterfly fondly, and knew that it was pivotal in his professional development. ‘I was appearing with a Japanese soprano who said I was singing too loud,’ he commented. ‘I ignored her. I knew I was making a big impression in Belfast and it was at the Opera House that my career really took off.’

We named Pavarotti one of the greatest tenors of all time

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