MUSICALS Podcast: Edward Seckerson meets SAMANTHA BARKS
For this Musicals Magazine Podcast, Edward Seckerson meets Samantha Barks, who has travelled far since she and Rachel Tucker went head-to-head in a bid to win the role of Nancy in the reality TV show I’d Do Anything. Unforgettably,…
VOCAL HEROES: BARBRA STREISAND
In 1993 I wrote this piece on BARBRA STREISAND to launch a series called Vocal Heroes in THE INDEPENDENT newspaper. ‘I want it technical as hell and a good read’ said the then Arts Editor. Imagine that…
MUSICALS Podcast: Edward Seckerson meets SAM TUTTY
For this Musicals Magazine Podcast, Edward Seckerson meets Sam Tutty, one of the youngest ever Olivier Award winners for his deeply affecting performance in the London premiere of Pasek and Paul’s Dear Evan Hansen. He journeyed with Evan…
GRAMOPHONE Review: Mahler Symphony No 8 Minnesota Orchestra/Vänskä
The Eighth is often the Mahler symphony that seems to inspire conductors who fall short in the others. That’s a sweeping generalisation, of course, but look no further than a conductor like Solti whose Mahler always struck…
MUSICALS Podcast: Edward Seckerson meets ZACHARY JAMES
For this Musicals Magazine Podcast, Edward Seckerson meets Zachary James, who’s currently hotting up the Underworld on the other side of that wall in Hadestown. James, who originated the role of Lurch in the Andrew Lippa musicalisation of The…
DAME PATRICIA ROUTLEDGE: Facing The Music – A Life in Musical Theatre
Dame Patricia Routledge trained not only as an actress but also as a singer and had considerable experience and success in musical theatre, both in this country and in the United States of America. Her many awards…
GRAMOPHONE Review: Brahms Double Concerto / Viotti Violin Concerto No 22 / Dvořák Silent Woods – Christian & Tanja Tetzlaff, Deutsches SO Berlin/Järvi
The dedication on this album reads ‘In Memoriam Lars Vogt’ – and that gives it a special resonance. Christian Tetzslaff and his sister Tanja Tetzslaff made music with him together and independently on many occasions and in…
GRAMOPHONE Review: Respighi Roman Trilogy – Orchestra Sinfonica Nationale della RAI/Trevino
Respighi’s obsession with the ‘Eternal City’ is writ spectacularly large in his three symphonic evocations and maybe in some subliminal way an Italian orchestra like this one can identify better than most with the mythic elements, pictorial…
GRAMOPHONE Review: Santtu conducts Mahler Symphony No. 2 ‘Resurrection’ – Philharmonia Orchestra/Santtu-Matias Rouvali
Like so much of what I’ve heard of Santtu’s work of late this Mahler 2 is decidedly hit and miss – with the emphasis, I regret to say, very much on the latter. It’s strange how the…
GRAMOPHONE Review: Rodgers & Hammerstein’s Oklahoma! – Soloists, Sinfonia of London/John Wilson
This is important. Oklahoma! was a big moment – perhaps the big moment – in musical theatre’s ‘coming of age’. Granted that sixteen years earlier Oscar Hammerstein II and Jerome Kern had already called time on the…
