Author Archives: Arcana

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About Arcana

My name is Ben Hogwood, editor of the Arcana music site (arcana.fm)

In concert – Laurence Kilsby, Christopher Parkes, Sinfonia of London / John Wilson: Serenade @ Barbican Hall, London

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Laurence Kilsby (tenor), Christopher Parkes (horn), Sinfonia of London / John Wilson

Vaughan Williams Fantasia on a Theme by Thomas Tallis (1910)
Britten Serenade for Tenor, Horn and Strings Op.31 (1943)
Bliss Music for Strings B66 (1935)
Delius arr. Fenby Late Swallows (1916, arr. 1962)
Elgar Introduction and Allegro Op.47 (1904-05)

Barbican Hall, London
Wednesday 22 October 2025

Reviewed by Richard Whitehouse

One can only commend John Wilson and Sinfonia of London for, in addition to an ambitious recording schedule for Chandos, frequently taking its programmes on tour – as has been the case with this judicious selection of works for string orchestra tonight being heard in London.

There could hardly be an acoustic less suited to Vaughan Williams’s Tallis Fantasia than that of Barbican Hall, yet Wilson went a good deal of the way toward making it succeed by having the main string body – and solo quartet – to the front of the platform with the subsidiary group arrayed along its rear. The outer section were taken slowly and almost impassively, but there was no lack of impetus or fervency as the central phase built cumulatively towards its climax.

The relatively modest number of strings seemed ideally suited to Britten’s Serenade. Laurence Kilsby (who made a fine contribution to Bliss’s The Beatitudes at this year’s Proms) brought real tenderness to Pastorale and ardour to Nocturne, while Christopher Parkes was suitably plangent in Elegy and dextrousness itself in Dirge. Tenor and hornist joined delightfully in Hymn, then Wilson drew playing of fastidious poise in Sonnet. Just a little unsteady in the Prologue, Parkes excelled in the offstage Epilogue with its ethereal reprise of that opening music – so rounding off a performance that proved affecting and unaffected in equal measure.

Live and in the studio, Wilson has affirmed a commitment to the music of Bliss which could hardly have been more evident than in Music for Strings which formed the centrepiece of this concert. It had been written for the Vienna Philharmonic to premiere at the Salzburg Festival and, if its formidable technical demands no longer sound forbidding, there can have been few performances of this virtuosity or insight. Trenchant and impulsive, the opening Allegro was followed by an Andante whose sustained eloquence never excluded lightness of touch – with the speculative transition into the final Allegro as deftly handled as the Presto with which this work surges to its headlong close. Not merely a timely revival, this was no less a vindication.

Introducing this second half, Wilson had remarked how Delius’ music needs to be coaxed into yielding up its secrets as surely as it needs selling to the musicians. Late Swallows succeeded on both fronts. As arranged by Eric Fenby from the composer’s only mature string quartet, it takes its place among the latter’s most haunting evocations, and not least in a central section whose rapt intensity brought an emotional frisson that tangibly held its listeners spellbound.

Elgar’s Introduction and Allegro may, by contrast, be a piece that plays itself but it still calls for interpretive input of a high order. Wilson responded with an unusually swift reading such as emphasized its nervous intensity and often volatile changes of mood, though there was no lack of cohesion or underlying momentum in a performance that took such testing passages as the central fugato assuredly in its stride prior to a glowing apotheosis then decisive close.

A performance, moreover, as set the seal on a memorable evening’s music-making. All these pieces, save the Britten, have been recorded by Wilson and Sinfonia of London for Chandos, their advocacy of Bliss hopefully continuing well beyond this 50th anniversary of his death.

Click here to read Arcana’s review of English Music for Strings, the Chandos album containing the Bliss and Vaughan Williams works performed in this concert.

Click also on the links for more information on the Sinfonia of London and their conductor John Wilson, along with soloists Laurence Kilsby and Christopher Parkes. For more information on Bliss, you can visit the Arthur Bliss Society

Published post no.2,697 – Friday 24 October 2025

New music – Tycho & Paul Banks (Interpol): Boundary Rider (Ninja Tune)

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adapted from the press release by Ben Hogwood

Tycho – project of celebrated San Francisco songwriter, musician and producer Scott Hansen – announces Boundary Rider, his new collaboration with Paul Banks of Interpol. 

With Interpol cited by Hansen as a key touchstone on his own productions Boundary Rider sees Tycho in a decidedly post-rock mode, with Banks’ yearning vocals delivered over crisp percussion, swirling guitar riffs and fleeting synths. Watch below:

“Interpol has long been one of my biggest influences so I jumped at the opportunity to collaborate with Paul on a song,” explains Hansen. “Boundary Rider started life as an atmospheric instrumental song titled “Forge” that I had been working on here and there for a couple of years. When I met Paul and started thinking about what songs might connect with his voice, Forge immediately came to mind.”

“I sent him a demo along with the prompt “Boundary Rider”. I had been reading about the lives of Boundary Riders during the 1930’s, people who patrolled and maintained fences in the vast expanse of the Western Australian outback. There was something about this solitary existence that I felt resonated with the song and the deep sense of isolation in Paul’s lyrics brought this into focus.”

Published post no.2,696 – Thursday 23 October 2025

On this day 300 years ago – the death of Alessandro Scarlatti

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Picture: used courtesy of Wikipedia

by Ben Hogwood

A confession: I know very little of the music of Alessandro Scarlatti, but I did not want this significant anniversary to get passed over, for it is 300 years to the day since his death in Napoli.

Alessandro was renowned primarily as a vocal composer, but also made a number of innovations in instrumental music – picked up by his son Domenico, a prolific composer in this area.

Opera and church music were Alessandro’s main forms of musical currency, but we begin with an invaluable guide to his music from Brilliant Classics, presenting a sequence of concertos, sinfonias and sonatas:

Following this is one of Alessandro’s principal compositions for the church, his Dixit Dominus in a fine performance with Trevor Pinnock conducting the English Concert and a starry team of soloists:

Finally, here is a link to what some regard as Alessandro’s best opera – the three-act drama Telemarco:

Published post no.2,695 – Thursday 22 October 2025

New music – Jamie Lidell & Luke Schneider: New Land (Northern Spy Records)

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adapted from the press release by Ben Hogwood

Jamie Lidell and Luke Schneider have created a kind of sonic tool to navigate a liminal state of mind. Their new collaborative LP, A Companion For The Spaces Between Dreams, is due for release on 31 October on Brooklyn experimental imprint Northern Spy Records, designed as a reverent companion for psychedelic journeys born from Lidell’s own ketamine therapy sessions, which deepened his belief in art’s healing power.

“A mind is often found more exposed during psychedelic experiences,” Lidell explains. “Specifically in a therapeutic setting, where trust is key to approach issues and work through events in the way of growth. This is music to support and guide the listening with or without psychedelic sensory heightening.”

From the album, and released today, New Land travels the distance, shape shifting with sparkling, pulsating textures and vast drones that stretch for miles. Brent Stewart’s accompanying film for New Land combines three simple ingredients- expired Super 8mm tri X black & white film, sunlight and pure water from a hidden Tennessee creek.”

Neither Lidell nor Schneider is a stranger to brain-bending timbres. UK-born Lidell cut his teeth as a member of the microhouse duo Super_Collider and later released genre bending solo albums on Warp Records, spanning abstract techno to neo-soul. His prior 2025 album, Places of Unknowing, was Lidell’s first in nine years, exploring symphonic arrangements indebted to David Bowie and David Sylvian. As a pedal steel guitarist, Schneider has worked with artists including Margo Price, William Tyler, and Orville Peck. He has issued cosmic solo LPs on Third Man Records and Leaving Records, which meld instrumental shoegaze, outlaw country, and new age.

Their partnership emerged unexpectedly while working on a promotional video for Moog. Two days of freewheeling collaboration in the studio sparked A Companion For The Spaces Between Dreams, a collection of five long-form pieces that are almost suite-like. Lidell uses modular synths, Fender Rhodes, tape effects, and percussion to weave a fathomless tapestry from Schneider’s improvised pedal steel swells. 

Lidell later returned to the sessions in a window of heightened neuroplasticity, refining the material through layers of sonic micro‑detail. The result is tactile and transportive. Prickly textures and sinewy drones call to mind dewy flowers at dawn. Whispers of krautrock flicker, echoing Lidell’s preference for jagged sonics during treatments. A Companion For The Spaces Between Dreams evades the pitfalls of clinical sterility, inducing a vulnerable inner voyage.

Published post no.2,694 – Tuesday 21 October 2025

Arcana at the Opera – Verdi: Le Touvère @ Wexford Festival Opera

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Reviewed by Tom Hardwick


If the Wexford Festival is known and acclaimed for its commitment to reviving obscurer corners of the operatic repertoire, how could it also manage to open its 2025 season with one of Giuseppe Verdi’s best-known works? The instant success of Il Trovatore after its première in Rome in 1853 encouraged the financially astute composer to revise it for the lucrative Paris market, which preferred operas in French, before pirate versions of the score could deprive him of rights and royalties.

Verdi transformed Il Trovatore into Le Trouvère, revising the score to take account of the French text, adding a ballet to conform to the format of the Paris Opera (and justify his fee), tweaking the final scene, and overseeing the first performance in February 1857. Le Trouvère enjoyed a long reign in France and its colonies, before falling from favour by the 1930s. Musicological research led by David Lawton has encouraged revivals and the production of a critical edition of Le Trouvère. If Wexford could have its cake and eat it with this very familiar rarity, there’s an eeriness in hearing unanticipated words to very familiar melodies – who would have guessed “di quella pira” rendered down to “bûcher infame” – which remains slightly disconcerting.


Director Ben Barnes brought forward Verdi’s plot, originally set in medieval Spain and encompassing love triangles, civil war, burnings at the stake, and a gipsy’s curse, to the Spanish Civil War. The rebellious troubadour Manrique is now a dashing bicycle-mounted leader of an Anarcho-Syndicalist detachment; the Comte de Luna, his rival for Leonore, is a smartly uniformed Nationalist, albeit one who seems very happy to break into convents (shouldn’t it have been the other way round?). Liam Doona’s single set, with lofty shuttered openings upstage, flexibly suggested bivouacs, cafes and prison cells, as well as the bedroom where Leonore and Manrique finally manage to spend some time before fate and duty tear them apart.

The major difference between Il Trovatore and Le Trouvère is the ballet sequence at the start of Act III. Although rarely performed, the music showcases Verdi’s talent for orchestral writing, and the Wexford Festival Opera Orchestra sparkled under conductor Marcus Bosch. In 1857 the ballet illustrated the colourful life of a gypsy encampment, but it presents a problem for contemporary directors lacking the huge corps de ballet and budget of the Paris Opera. Ben Barnes used newsreel footage of the Spanish Civil War, and three rifle-toting dancers, to turn the ballet into the Comte de Luna’s uneasy dreams, but it remained one of the slacker parts of a production that usually kept the action belting along; in the last act the imprisoned Manrique and the gypsy Azucena (his mother – or is she?) even rose rather squeakily through the floor to avoid a scene change and keep the melodies unfurling.

The Wexford Festival Opera Chorus convinced as revolutionaries, soldiers, monks, and (especially) nuns, but the grand scenes only serve to outline the relationships between the four leads. Kseniia Nikolaieva sang Azucena powerfully but with few consonants, while Giorgi Lomiselli grew into the Comte de Luna and put some depth into one of Verdi’s less engaging baddies. Lydia Grindatto as Leonore showed no signs of the illness that was announced at curtain up, and Eduardo Niave, whose French accent was the best in the cast, was a young and charismatic Manrique. A solid – and sold out – start to the 2025 Festival.

You can watch this production of Le Trouvère below: