bbc singers

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Eric Whitacre: Eternity in an Hour – programme note (BBC Proms)

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Eric Whitacre: Eternity in an Hour – programme note (BBC Proms)

Artist, mystic and political radical William Blake is today considered one of the major cultural figures of the Romantic Age. And, although he was virtually unknown as a poet during his lifetime, Auguries of Innocence has become one of his best-loved works. Rich with symbolist imagery and social criticism, the poem meditates on the interconnectedness of all living things, the inherent goodness in nature and the fragility of human innocence …

Stephen Cleobury: A Life in Music (BBC Radio 3)

Stephen Cleobury: A Life in Music (BBC Radio 3)

To the outside world, the conductor and organist Stephen Cleobury could come across as reserved, stoic – unassuming. But his singers knew better: ‘You have to be in partnership with him to see an entirely different world of emotions revealed,’ one of his young choristers told the journalist Richard Morrison. It was through music that Cleobury best expressed himself, and if his many recordings are anything to go by, he had a lot to say.

Unconvincing fusion at the Cutty Sark

Unconvincing fusion at the Cutty Sark

Fusion was the overriding theme of this concert at the Cutty Sark – a night of unrelenting genre-bending that took its audience across Europe and sub-Saharan Africa on a voyage of musical discovery, retracing the steps of the 19th-century vessel poised above our heads.