OTHER cast members in the production of Handel's Samson – part of the Buxton Festival which starts on Wednesday with a Thomas Allen recital – include another fine baritone heard in Sheffield recently, Russell Smythe.
The first of five performances is next Friday, ditto Lortzing's Poacher, which opens on Thursday with another extremely fine cast.
It includes James Rutherford in the title role, Stephen Loges, Imelda Dutton, Judith Howarth and Laura Parfitt, Engl
ish Touring Opera's superb stand-in Anne Boleyn in Donizetti's opera at the Lyceum in March.
A string quartet with a difference, Eclectica! has a well-known face from the Lindsay Quartet days, cellist Bernard Gregor-Smith, and a gifted young violinist who did not have quite as much exposure in Sheffield, Lizzie Ball. The quartet appears on Thursday afternoon.
With two guitars, the group perform a mix of music ranging from classical to jazz, moving via Kodály and Piazzolla, to Latin American folk songs and tangos.
They are at the Palace Hotel where another well-known figure books in next Friday lunchtime, a person many consider the finest Messiaen pianist in the world, Peter Hill.
He offers a concert of Messiaen, not unnaturally in the composer's centenary year.
It consists of what looks like three extracts from Catalogue d'oiseaux: La Merle bleu, Le Tranquet stapazin, L'Alouette lulu; two items from Préludes: La Colombe, Cloches d'angoisse et larmes d'adieu,' plus Morceau de lecture à vue and Le Tombeau de Paul Dukas.
The full article contains 249 words and appears in Sheffield Telegraph newspaper.
