It is a standing joke in my family that I didn’t have a typical musical adolescence, as I listened to Wagner rather than the pop/rock music of the day. This is true to some extent, but my enthusiasm for Wagner only really developed in my twenties, so, while I didn’t listen to many chart hits, I was more likely to be focused on Schubert and Britten rather than ‘Parsifal’ and ‘The Ring’. Despite this, I was, inevitably, influenced by the musical taste of my contemporaries, and,

The Prom on Tuesday 20th July had been keenly anticipated, mainly because of the first British performance of Jessie Montgomery’s These Righteous Paths, a ‘cello concerto written for the young South African phenomenon Abel Selaocoe. I shall consider this in detail later. The BBC Philharmonic, conducted by Gian Andrea Noseda began the concert with Bach’s Fantasia and Fugue in G minor, BWV 542 (orch. Andrew Davis). This was an excellent arrangement, very well played, a fitting

So, the idea is that I am going to listen to all of the 2026 BBC Promenade Concerts, and write about each one. Sadly I have already fallen behind schedule but will work hard over the next few days to play catch up. Let’s begin with the First Night of the Proms, Saturday 19th July. The BBC Symphony Orchestra and Chorus and the BBC Singers were conducted by Proms darling Dalia Stasevska and joined by ‘superstar’ Korean pianist Yunchan Lim and New Zealand tenor Thomas Atkins. Th

Voice and Verse (a celebration of poetry in song). Collegium Musicum of London. St James Sussex Gardens. Saturday 11 July 2026. Links between classical music and football are relatively few. Pavarotti was a goal-keeper in his younger days. Shirley J. Thompson (‘Football Concerto’) and Michael Nyman (‘The Final Score’) have written soccer-based pieces, and Elgar (who was a huge Wolverhampton Wanderers fan apparently) composed what is thought to be the first football anthem: ‘H

After the creative maelstrom of William Kentridge’s production of ‘L’Orfeo’ at Glyndebourne (see my recent Blog), the penny plain version of ‘Don Carlo’ at Grange Park Opera, directed by Jo Davies, provided stark, even jarring contrast. This is not to say I did not find it enjoyable, in fact I was profoundly moved and exhilarated by turns, but the main virtues which impressed me were musical ones. Some dramatic aspects worked well: for example, the ‘auto da fe’ scene was surp

My previous Blog concerned tenor singing son Sam (Herman-Wilson). The day after his concert with ‘Cantus’ he was a part of a substantial party who travelled to Glyndebourne to witness his brother Hugo (Herman-Wilson) make his solo debut there as Pastore (Shepherd) II in Monteverdi’s ‘L’Orfeo’. Surprisingly, this was the first time this sublime work had been performed at Glyndebourne. The director was the South African artist William Kentridge, known for his complex and though

My wife and I have just spent an extremely high octane week-end listening to our two singing sons. The circumstances of their separate performances were very different, and I shall record my reactions in two separate Blogs, but our parental pride is a complex synthesis of the singular and plural. On Saturday 13th June, Sam, our tenor singing son, performed with the chamber choir ‘Cantus’ at St Gabriel’s Church in Pimlico. I have heard several performances by this fine choir b

The life of an English teacher is generally not much like that of the eponymous hero of ‘Goodbye Mr. Chips’, or of Hector in Alan Bennett’s ‘The History Boys’, still less like that of John Keating in ‘Dead Poets Society’. A teacher’s life is likely to be far more humdrum, faced with pupils who very definitely do not love the subject, who want to be told what to think and write, who will not behave, and whose main ambition seems to be to go to an ok university and get a ‘good

Amchor (Amersham Choral Society) celebrates its centenary in 2028. I had not heard them before, but my wife’s cousin Kate is now a member, so we made sure a visit to her coincided with a concert. Thus it was we found ourselves in the delightful surroundings of St Mary’s Church in the picture post card perfect village of Old Amersham to listen to a programme of music by Handel, Mozart and Schubert. It was gratifying to see a packed church, a very healthy choir of 70+, and a sm

Nicky Spence is without question one of the most accomplished British singers of his generation. This Scottish tenor is still relatively young at 43, and appears to be building his career with exemplary care and good sense. Starting off as a lyric tenor and singing roles such as Don Ottavio, he has now branched out into what might be broadly called Jugendlicher Heldentenor territory, making something of a specialty of Janacek’s anti-heroes. He has also sung Siegmund and Erik

More American twentieth century song composers. For many years, I have had a disc of American songs, ‘The Cloisters’ performed by Scottish baritone Henry Herford (b.1948) with his regular accompanist Robin Bowman, but have only just listened to it for the first time. Herford is a slightly older contemporary of mine: we took part in a Pierre Bernac masterclass together in the mid-1970s, (Bernac was enthusiastic about him, far less so about me) and sang a couple of concerts tog

I am always on the look out for unusual Art Song repertoire, so was particularly excited to come across the CD ‘In Her Voice’ (Art Song Settings of Women Poets) by American soprano Emily Truckenbrod and her regular collaborative pianist Amy I-Lin Cheng. Of the seven composers represented here I had only heard of one, Muriel Herbert (1897-1984), who studied at the Royal College of Music with Stanford and left a large body of song compositions in a very attractive English pasto

Barry Kosky’s production of Wagner’s ‘Siegfried’ at the Royal Opera House has received such a long series of adulatory reviews that it has become the hottest opera ticket in Britain, if not in Europe. Sadly, our budget did not stretch to forking out £500 a ticket to experience this in the flesh so my wife and I braved the dubious pleasures of central Croydon on an early Tuesday evening and headed to Grants Vue Cinema for a live relay. These tickets (£22.99 a pop) proved less

Our support for singer son Sam took us to the church of St Mary at Hill in Billingsgate London, for an enterprising and most moving concert given by ‘The Cantus Ensemble’. The first half was devoted to the Musikalische Exequien by Heinrich Schutz, which were written for the burial service of the splendidly named Prince Heinrich Posthumus von Reuss. There are three sections: Teil I: Concert in Form einer teutschen Begräbnis-Missa Part I: Concerto in the form of a German burial

After a brief hiatus, I had intended my next Blog to be a return to Michael Raucheisen’s ‘Lied der Welt’ project, and a consideration of the songs of Max Reger. Before I do that however, I must allow freedom to a few bees in my bonnet concerning Ralph Vaughan Williams ‘ opera ‘Hugh the Drover’. This seems to me to be an appallingly, and unfairly, neglected work. I hope my brief words below will encourage you to give it a hearing. As is so often the case, I am initially behold

Monteverdi 'Vespers' and Bach 'St John Passion'. The weekend of 7 th and 8 th of March was spent supporting our sons’ musical endeavours. First up on the Saturday was Sam singing the Monteverdi ‘Vespers’ with the Collegium Musicum of London in the suitably opulent surroundings of Holy Trinity Church Sloane Square. The ‘Vespers’ have occasioned a good deal of scholarly debate, mainly centering around how much of the work Monteverdi published he would have expected to hear i

A brief pause in my survey of Michael Raucheisen’s ‘Lied der Welt’ project to consider Elgar’s ‘The Dream of Gerontius’. This temporary change of direction has been prompted by the thought that my loyal readership might appreciate a change from German lieder but also by the release of two ‘Gerontius’ related items: a new recording of the work, conducted by Martyn Brabbins, and the film ‘The Choral’, written by Alan Bennett and directed by his long-time collaborator, Nicholas

Hans Erich Pfitzner (5 May 1869 – 22 May 1949) was, by all accounts, a rather prickly character. Photographs of him resemble one of the smaller birds of prey in a particularly angry mood, and his uncompromising attitude to music, and life in general, alienated many with whom he came into contact, notable Thomas Mann (who admired his music) and Adolf Hitler (who very definitely did not). Pfitzner eventually come to be regarded as an anti-modernist, although at the start of th