Past Performance Details
3rd - 5th January 2020, Merton College Oxford
Visit Christmas Choral Music Recording for more details
Handel Samson, Dunedin Consort, Tiffin Boys' Choir, John Butt
Released November 2019
No one can accuse the Dunedin Consort of doing things by halves. For their new recording of Handel’s Samson (Linn), they are offering two complete versions of the oratorio, one on disc and one via download. The arias and recitatives remain the same, but the choruses are completely reworked, with a mixed choir on the discs (the soloists joined by the bright voices of the Tiffin Boys’ Choir) and a soloists-only ensemble on the download. I firmly prefer the tonal contrast and youthful freshness of the mixed choir, but it’s a luxury to have both.
Samson (1743) has always been popular among Handel’s great oratorios, maybe partly the story (with its fine text from Milton’s Samson Agonistes) is so well-known. But early on you begin to question whether the music stands up to Handel’s greatest works of the early 1740s, Messiah and L’Allegro, especially when it is recorded here with totally uncut recitatives. However, towards the end of Act 2, with the superb chorus Hear, Jacob’s God, it suddenly deepens, and Act 3 is a masterpiece.
John Butt directs with vigour: Joshua Ellicott could hardly be a more different Samson from the stentorian Jon Vickers of yesteryear, light and eloquent; Sophie Bevan is a sensual Delilah, while Dunedin regulars excel, including Matthew Brook, Fflur Wyn and Mary Bevan (who gets the famous final hit tune, Let the Bright Seraphim).
Nicholas Kenyon, The Guardian 17/11/2019
Tchaikovsky Queen of Spades
13/01/2019-01/02/2019, Royal Opera House
First seen at Dutch National Opera in 2016, this UK production has the matchless bonus of Antonio Pappano in the pit. The Royal Opera House orchestra blazes and caresses: agitated string attacks on the “three cards” motif; ferocious pizzicatos; woodwind curdling, yowling, seducing; brass sour and menacing. There is, too, top singing from the company’s enlarged chorus, further aided by Tiffin Children’s Choir and Boys’ Choir, confident and well drilled. How could anyone not want to witness such terrific music-making?
The Guardian 20/01/2019
Puccini La Boheme
26/11/2018-22/02/2019, English National Opera, London Coliseum
ENO On Top Form for Welcome Resurrection of Miller’s Popular La bohème
‘ENO’s Chorus and the children (from Tiffin School) were excellent and as good as you will hear anywhere’.
There was tremendous support both in voice and personality from Nicholas Lester’s Marcello, David Soar’s Colline (his ‘Coat Aria’ was wonderful sonorously) and Harewood Artist Božidar Smiljanic’s Schaunard. All three gave charismatic, nuanced and totally committed performances. Another Harewood Artist, Nadine Benjamin, was the chanteuse-like Musetta and was trying too hard to please on this first night and will probably relax more into her role as time goes on. What is not in doubt is the wonderful potential there is in her voice, not only for Puccini and Verdi, but dare I mention, Wagner later in her career should she wish it. ENO’s Chorus and the children (from Tiffin School) were excellent and as good as you will hear anywhere. Simon Butteriss completed the principal soloists and was on comical double duty as Benoît and Alcindoro. His Benoît – Rodolfo and Marcello’s lascivious landlord – might have been a scene-stealing tour de force had not those around him been such good actors too.
Seen and Heard International 28/11/2018
Bizet Carmen
27/11-22/12/2018, Royal Opera House
Gaëlle Arquez - Carmen, Brian Jagde - Don José, Alexander Vinogradov - Escamillo, Eleanoro Buratto - Micaëla, Dominic Sedgewick - Moralès, Haegee Lee - Frasquita, Germán E Alcántara - Dancaïro, Claude de Demo - Voice of Carmen, soldiers, children, cigarette girls, gypsies, smugglers; Barrie Kosky - Director, Alan Barnes - Revival Director, Katrin Lea Tag - Designer, Joachim Klein - Lighting, Royal Opera Chorus, Royal Opera House Orchestra/Keri-Lynn Wilson - conductor, Chorus and Dancers, Streatham & Clapham High School Choir, Tiffin Boys’ Choir.
Britten Spring Symphony
Tuesday 18th September 2018, Barbican
Sir Simon Rattle, London Symphony Chorus, Tiffin Boys' Choir, Tiffin Girls' Choir, Tiffin Children's Chorus, London Symphony Orchestra
Many congratulations to the choir who have recently performed with the London Symphony Orchestra in some very prestigious concerts at the Barbican, being conducted by Sir Simon Rattle. This has been another tremendous opportunity for them, with the Boy’s Choir, the Tiffin Girls’ Choir and our Tiffin Children’s Chorus all performing. “To open his second season as music director of the LSO, Sir Simon Rattle offered a challenging programme of British music. In addition to the London Symphony Chorus, we had here three Tiffin choirs (boys, girls and an outreach Children’s chorus). All sang with gusto and exemplary precision.” (Evening Standard)
Berlioz The Damnation of Faust
17 - 19 September 2017 18:00, 19:00, Barbican
From selling your soul to the devil to finding salvation – Sir Simon Rattle ventures through Berlioz's tempestuous oratorio, The Damnation of Faust.
Berlioz’s The Damnation of Faust is a work born of the composer’s obsession with Goethe's legendary tale. Once a righteous scholar, Faust allows himself to be corrupted by the devil, and drags the innocent around him into desperation and death. It’s a fable that defies definition – both a tragedy and dark comedy, with a central character both wise and despicable, and a play and epic poem in one.
Mystified by this tragic story, Berlioz’s work is, too, an astounding hybrid of opera, oratorio and, in the composer’s own words, ‘dramatic legend’. From tender moments of religious piety to incessant military marches and terrifying flourishes of demonic fury, Sir Simon Rattle leads the LSO in a colossal choral work like none other.
London Symphony Orchestra, Sir Simon Rattle conductor
Karen Cargill Marguerite, Bryan Hymel Faust, Gerald Finley Mephistopheles, Gábor Bretz Brander
London Symphony Chorus, Simon Halsey chorus director
Tiffin Boys’ Choir, Tiffin Children’s Chorus, Tiffin Girls’ Choir, James Day Tiffin choirs director
Berlioz The Damnation of Faust Reviews
Guardian 20/09/2017
LSO/Rattle; Adès Curates review – Berlioz's Damnation polishes halo for star conductor.
5/5 stars. Erica Jeal
Is all the hype justified? It’s looking that way. If the London Symphony Orchestra’s 10-day festival heralding the arrival of its new music director, This Is Rattle, is a kind of coronation, then its second main event, Berlioz’s La Damnation de Faust, ended as a sort of hallowing. The house lights rose slightly and a spotlit Simon Rattle turned to face the audience, nominally to conduct the seraphim chorus – AKA the children of Tiffin School, who had just trooped quietly in down the aisles – but also so that we could all bathe in the Rattle glow, seeing him conduct head on. Impressionable viewers may have imagined a halo around his head – one that is only being polished by these concerts.
Rattle’s rapport with his new colleagues is something you can hear as well as see. It’s not that he is necessarily drawing anything new from the LSO’s players, but he does seem to be getting them all to play at peak form simultaneously; moreover, he is harnessing the orchestra’s existing brightness and coupling it with a scrupulous care for texture and balance. That came over time and again here. Berlioz, the arch colourist of Romantic-era music, provided plenty of orchestral showing-off material in his “dramatic legend” on the Faust story, an opera in all but name. Does the orchestra yet have a pianissimo that’s as mousy-quiet as Rattle would like? Perhaps not – but that will come. The velvety flow of the opening minutes, the electrifying buoyancy of the soldiers’ marches in Part 1, the throbbing double-bass heartbeats underlying Marguerite’s lament – the performance was full of memorable cameos, joining together seamlessly to form a rich and vivid picture.
The Times 20/09/2017
Simon Rattle’s second outing with the LSO hints at thrilling concerts to come.
5/5 stars. Rebecca Franks
As the harps cast their golden glow and a duo of violins soared in sweet song, choirs of children slipped into the hall’s aisles to add their celestial spirit voices to the heavenly music. I don’t think the mezzo-soprano Karen Cargill was alone in shedding a tear or two. Berlioz knows how to tug at the heartstrings, as does Simon Rattle. If this end to The Damnation of Faust sounds sugary enough to send you straight to the dentist, it is a measure of the success of this vivid performance that its effect was natural, genuine and utterly sublime.
When Rattle turned round to conduct the Tiffin Children’s Chorus and Tiffin Boys’ and Girls’ choirs, it felt like a gesture of welcome to everyone.
BBC Prom 29: Mussorgsky – Khovanshchina
18:00 Sun 6 Aug 2017 Royal Albert Hall
Seats £9.50 to £50 (plus booking fee)
Shot through with noble melodies, Mussorgsky's 'national music drama' weaves a darkly tangled political web in which Russia herself is the casualty. Caught between reformists and continuity, the nation struggles to find peace, and the conflict leads only to death in the opera’s shattering climax.
Semyon Bychkov conducts the BBC Symphony Orchestra and an international cast, including mezzo-soprano Elena Maximova as the enigmatic Marfa.
BBC Symphony Orchestra, BBC Singers, Slovak Philharmonic Choir, Cardinal Vaughan School Choir, Tiffin Boys' Choir, Semyon Bychkov
Sea Stories
1:30pm and 7:30pm Thursday 13th July 2017, The Rose Theatre Kingston
Mahler Symphony No. 3 / London Symphony Orchestra / Daniel Harding
25 June 2017 / 19:00 / Barbican
Prices and information / Book tickets / Ticket Info
LSO Principal Guest Conductor Daniel Harding continues to prove why he is one of the leading Mahler interpreters of his generation, with the Third Symphony. ‘This is a work of such magnitude that it actually mirrors the whole world… in my symphony the whole of nature finds a voice’. This was the biggest thing Mahler ever wrote, six movements and 100 minutes of music that lay out a gargantuan ode to the natural world, complete with the arrival of summer, a choir of angels and a vision of man borrowed from Nietzsche’s Also sprach Zarathustra. It’s big, it’s bold, and it needs no accompaniment.
Daniel Harding conductor
Anna Larsson alto
London Symphony Chorus
Simon Halsey chorus director
Tiffin Boys' Choir
London Symphony Orchestra