Stan Graham's Leisure Guide for North and West Yorkshire
There are two consolations to make up for the end of the lunchtime concert series at Dewsbury Town Hall; the first is that the next one begins on 11th September, so only a month’s off-season, a bit like the football and the second, that the big finale was the incredible sitarist Jasdeep Singh Degun. Since…
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Now here was a concert to gladden the heart of any Yorkshireman, it was a buy one, get one free offer. As well as the advertised work, Clarinet Trio Op. 114 by Brahms, we were treated to a second, this time from Beethoven, namely his Clarinet Trio in B flat major Op. 11. Not only…
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After my first visit to see a full ballet, Romeo And Juliet, I was wondering whether they were all as good as that. Beauty And The Beast has convinced me that they probably are! Once again I was in awe of the performers, the orchestra and the creatives. Not being a regular ballet buff, I…
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The May performance in the Lunchtime Concert Season at Dewsbury Town Hall comprised a violin and a piano playing half a dozen pieces of romantic music, as usual a mixture of the familiar and the obscure. Today, however, we had the privilege of being entertained by two of the upper echelon of musicians from the…
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Regular readers will know how much I enjoy Opera North’s lunchtime concerts at Dewsbury Town Hall – the next one is The Romantic Violin on Wednesday, 15th May – well, here we had a bonus edition at Howard Assembly Room in Leeds. The starting time was a little earlier, being 11.00am and instead of sandwiches,…
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Well, this was a surprise. Normally the lunchtime concerts at this venue comprise small groups of musicians but today the Orchestra of Opera North pulled out all the stops and fielded a team of seventeen players. I was really pleased as this is one of my favourite pieces of classical music. In fact, it was…
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March’s lunchtime offering in the Kirklees Concert Season was a set played by Blair Sinclair on trombone and Darius Battiwalla, piano. Not your normal combination, but you know by now that I don’t do normal. The other thing which was not quite conventional was that Guilmant’s Morceau Symphonique, refered to in the title of the…
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This was a night to remember in so many different ways. First, I finally broke my duck, insofar as full-length ballets are concerned, after three hospital confinements coincided exactly with previous invitations from Northern Ballet to their productions of Nutcracker (twice) and The Great Gatsby. Thank you for sticking with me. Second, I met some…
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In the words of that esteemed philosopher and New York Yankees baseball catcher in the 1940s, 50s and 60s, Yogi Berra, ‘It’s like déjà vu all over again.’ My last visit to a lunchtime concert at Dewsbury Town Hall was to see ‘Baritone, Soprano and Piano’ during which we were treated to a vocal version…
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As a Yorkshireman I do like a bargain, and here we have a buy one, get one free from Opera North. Cavalleria rusticana is only a short opera, lasting just over an hour, so it is usually twinned with another concise work, normally Pagliacci, but tonight it was given a change of partner and performed…
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Tyke It To The Limit 