I would go a lot further than the Wigmore to hear Lucy Crowe singing, so two concerts three days apart were never going to be much of a hardship. The first was with David Bates and La Nuova Musica, his meaty little band (four horns!) who bookended Crowe’s five concert arias with two Sturm und Drang symphonies, the Mozart K183 very hard-driven and Haydn’s Trauer rather more forgiving, with that heavenly slow movement.
Mozart wrote about 46 concert arias, so many of them will always be pleasantly unfamiliar. Some are little exercises (the K78 ‘Per pietà’, probably written as a child in London, an elegantly poised opera seria piece), some pure showoffery, but all with something of considerable interest. At their best they are proper little scenas, almost mini-operas that…
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Opera Now (Digital) - 1 Issue, Summer 2024