Gramophone Online

Four Alumni Honoured by Wells Cathedral School.

Four young alumni of the Wells Cathedral School were honoured by their former alma mater for their outstanding contribution to music. Countertenor Iestyn Davies, soprano Meeta Raval, cellist Jamie Walton and recording engineer Sam Okell were awarded Foundation Fellowships.

 The Independent

Xerxes/ The Fairy Queen, English Touring Opera, Britten Theatre.

The Handel aria which everyone knows – ‘Ombra mai fu’ – is the Persian King Xerxes’s paean of praise to a generously-spreading plane tree. Trust director James Conway to come up with a different take.

The New York Times

Rap in and of Brooklyn, with the Rumble of the Subway

Restoration Rocks Music Festival, with the rapper Most Def and members of the Brooklyn Philharmonic, conducted by Alan Pierson.

 BBC Music Magazine

Piano duet version of Brahms’s First Piano

Brahms’s own arrangement of his Piano Concerto No. 1 – for piano duet – is to receive its UK premiere almost 150 years after he wrote the transcription.