Michael White, Author at Catholic Herald

Michael White

Music: Camp Shostakovich and a fake exorcism

November 03, 2016

Bagpipes apart, the Scots are not unmusical, so it’s bizarre that at St Andrews University they have no music faculty: a sad omission in a place so civilised. But there are platforms for performance. And among them is the annual St Andrews Voices Festival, a concentrated dose of singing that sweeps opera, cabaret and choirs

Music: Oxford is entranced by songs of forbidden love

October 27, 2016

There was a time when serious song recitals seemed like an endangered species. Audiences didn’t want to struggle with the usually French or German texts, and stayed away. But last week the impressive Oxford Lieder Festival, a major fixture of the autumn music season, played to sold-out halls. At least, they sold out for the

Music: Bedroom-farce Mozart falls apart on the night

October 20, 2016

Mozart’s Don Giovanni tends to be all darkness and depravity for modern stage directors, but that’s only half the piece. The other half is comedy. And comedy – sharp, smart and startlingly original – is how it comes in the new Richard Jones production made for ENO. As usual with Jones, we’re in a world

Music: Saints and refugees give Verdi an edge

October 13, 2016

There are times in opera when the theatre is effectively the show, as was the case last week in the Italian town of Parma: famous for its ham but also for a Verdi festival, which opened this year with a show in maybe the most stunning theatre-space I’ve ever seen. Parma’s Teatro Farnese is a

Music: Terrific opera, but not for the thin-skinned

October 06, 2016

I don’t suppose even the Vatican stockpiles more crucifixes than you find in the Royal Opera’s new production of Bellini’s Norma. Hundreds if not thousands swarm around the stage like insects frozen in mid-flight. And they’re portentous. This will either be a super-spiritual show or super-critical of the oppressive powers of religion. Unsurprisingly, it proves

Music: Absurdly vulgar, but an organist to watch

September 29, 2016

Six hundred years ago three men rode into what is now the German lakeside town of Konstanz, each claiming to be the pope. The endless wrangling to determine which one had the best claim (it turned out to be Martin V) is known to history as the Council of Constance. And if you went there

Music: Young composers are disappointingly bland

September 22, 2016

An hour’s drive from Vienna into Lower Austria brings you to the Wachau, home of Austria’s best vineyards. Among them is a grand estate owned by the Metternich family. Their name was made famous by the early 19th-century statesman who, as schoolboys learn, divided up the map of Europe post-Napoleon. That founding Metternich was no

Music: Rattle needs to rein in his shining stallions

September 15, 2016

Whenever Simon Rattle brings his Berlin Philharmonic to Britain, there’s a sense of boy-made-good about it that’s infectious. Hearts inflate with pride to see a Briton at the helm of arguably the greatest orchestra on earth, and you can feel the audience onside, willing the concert to be special – as it usually is, because

Handel’s Catholic temptation

September 08, 2016

Georg Frideric Handel was a Lutheran, and a determined one. He resolved, according to his early chronicler John Mainwaring, “to die a member of that communion, whether true or false, in which he was born and bred”. His background on his mother’s side stretched through several generations of Saxon pastors. And the spiritual works for

Music: Where geniuses rub shoulders with judges

September 08, 2016

The divide between professionals and amateurs in music is profound, but it gets crossed at Dartington: the Devon manor house where star performers, college students and the musical equivalent of Sunday painters coexist in harmony during the annual summer school and festival. By night the stars give public concerts, but by day they teach, encourage

Music: ‘Ninja granny’ fires up Proms Liszt concerto

September 01, 2016

Daniel Barenboim and Martha Argerich first met as children growing up in Buenos Aires. And it was like children that they sweetly left the platform hand in hand after their joint performance at the Proms last week: two living-legend pianists side by side in one of the hot-ticket concerts of the season. That Argerich was

Music: British composers come into their own

August 25, 2016

The lunacy of Brexit notwithstanding, Britain isn’t badly off these days in terms of international clout. As I sit writing this we’re wreathed in gold at the Olympics. And no less significantly – though it doesn’t get the TV coverage – we’re generating arguably the best new music being written in the world at large.

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