Three decades and twelve albums haven’t offered a single Christmas song from Merseyside psych sorcerers, The Coral, until now. As overdue as the reply from Santa to a lost child’s letter and as cursed as Krampus’ footsteps getting closer in the dead of Christmas night, the filmic five-piece release She Died On Christmas Day, their first new music since 2023’s Top Five album, Sea Of Mirrors.
With a limited edition 7” release available to fans and collectors, titled Christmas On Coral Island, the title track is the last to feature the narration of the Ian Murray, also known as The Great Muriarty. Bringing dramatic poise as narrator on both The Coral’s 2022 album, Coral Island and 2023’s ‘spirit broadcast’ of Holy Joe’s Coral Island Medicine Show, Ian and James’s Skelly’s late-grandfather ably sets the scene on the B-side.
by Ben Hogwood photos courtesy of the ABBA Voyage website
An admission: I used to struggle with ABBA.
Although I loved the tunes to the likes of Money, Money, Money and Super Trouper – the first songs I can ever remember, from primary school discos, I started to see them as a bit too cheesy and found they were getting in the way of the house music I was obsessed with on university student nights.
What I have (so far) learned with age is that music tastes can change either subtly or unexpectedly, like a maturing whisky or a flavour that suddenly and unexpectedly hits the spot. And so it has been with ABBA, a feeling exemplified by a visit to the ABBA Voyage show on Saturday 8 November.
I wasn’t quite prepared for the emotional scale of what was about to come. Sure, the atmosphere in the arena beforehand was expectant, everyone with a ready smile and the wish to shake off the horrible parts of the modern world for a couple of hours. In reality, the ABBA show had done that for us in the first minute.
With lighting (from WHITEvoid) and sonics to justify the expensive price tag, this was a show sat squarely between the best cinematic experience you will ever have and the thrill of a live gig. The Hero Band were simply astonishing, not just for their virtuosity but in their clear love of the music, matching the vocals note for note but adding their own personalities at the same time.
But what vocals we had! Initially the idea that they could be connected with the avatars on stage appeared far-fetched, the distant figures surely incapable of such feats. Yet once the figures of Agnetha, Benny, Björn and Anni-frid had appeared on the big screen, it was time to suspend belief and enjoy the run of incredible music stretching before us.
To any radio listener or disco dancer, ABBA are the stuff of life, unwittingly providing us doubters with a soundtrack to our every move. Each song here had years of history on radio, apart from the well-chosen opening pair, The Visitors and Hole In Your Soul, and the ‘newer’ song Don’t Shut Me Down. The Visitors proved beyond doubt that ABBA have formidable strength in depth, that if you look beyond the frontline singles there is still incredible quality beneath. Don’t Shut Me Down gave strong shots of vulnerability, papered over by an exultant chorus.
Emotions ran high as our lives were effectively played out before us. Inevitably, while Super Trouper was missing, Money, Money, Money gave vivid reminders of that disco aged just six. What I wasn’t expecting was the concentrated outpouring of emotion during the likes of Fernando, with a real sense of occasion, or the real life soap opera cliffhanger that is Knowing Me, Knowing You. Casting aside Alan Partridge reminiscences – with a laugh – here was a chance to get to the nub of those lyrics describing a very public break up, remarkable bravery glimpsed throughout the song.
The set evolved with Disney-like surety, with the animations providing unexpected highs. Eagle was especially beautiful, with animations from Shynola backing a heady rush of endorphins as we soared above the earth, but even that was eclipsed by a triumphant Waterloo, shown exactly as performed at the Dome in Brighton, where it became the winning entry of Eurovision 1974. From there we segued into a truly joyous Thank You For The Music, a hymn to my favourite art form, then on our feet to celebrate Dancing Queen, before a majestic account of The Winner Takes It All.
Just occasionally there was a cynical thought of the amount of cash ABBA and their allies must be making from Voyage…but that was quickly overrun by the realisation that the experience is worth every penny, a thousand positive affirmations in a truly heartfelt two hours.
If you haven’t seen it yet, do try and get to East London, where the feelgood vibes are off the scale. As the Voyage website says, it is a concert like no other!
Published post no.2,716 – Wednesday 12 November 2025
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
April Fredrick (soprano), Brennen Guillory (tenor – Trost im Unglück, Der Tambourg’ sell; Revelge), Colorado MahlerFest Orchestra / Kenneth Woods
Mahler Symphony no.4 in G major (1892; 1899-1900) Des Knaben Wunderhorn: Lied des Verfolgten im Turm; Des Antonius von Padua; Fischpredigt; Trost im Unglück; Rheinlegendchen; Der Schildwache Nachtlied; Der Tambourg’sell; Revelge
Colorado MahlerFest 195269364564 [two discs, 89’22”] Producer Jonathan Galle Engineer Tim Burton Live performances at Macky Auditorium, Boulder, Colorado, 20 May 2023 (Des Knaben Wunderhorn), 19 May 2024 (symphony no.4)
Reviewed by Richard Whitehouse
What’s the story?
Recorded coverage of Colorado’s MahlerFest continues with these performances taken from the past two editions, duly confirming the significance of this event in the annals of Mahler interpretation and the increasing excellence of the orchestral playing under Kenneth Woods.
What are the performances like?
It may be the shortest of his cycle and the one which initially gained his music acceptance in the UK and US, but Mahler’s Fourth Symphony received as rough a reception as any of his premieres and it remains a difficult work fully to make cohere. While he undoubtedly has its measure, Woods might have pointed up those expressive contrasts in its opening movement a little more directly; the music only finding focus with a development where the emotional perspective opens out to reveal an unforeseen ambiguity. The remainder is unfailingly well judged, while the scherzo impresses through a seamless transition between the sardonic and the elegance of its trio sections. Alan Snow sounds just a little tentative with his ‘mistuned’ violin, but the unexpected panorama of enchantment prior to its coda is meltingly realized.
At just over 20 minutes, the Adagio feels relatively swift (surprisingly so), even if Woods is mindful never to rush its unfolding double variations and what becomes a contrast between intensifying expressive states whose Beethovenian antecedent is not hard to discern. If the climactic ‘portal to heaven’ lacks little in resplendence, it is that hushed inwardness either side such as sets the seal on a reading of this movement to rank among the finest in recent years. Nor is its segue into the finale other than seamless – Mahler having realized that an earlier vocal setting was the natural culmination to where his symphony had been headed. Suffice to add that April Fredrick’s contribution is of a piece with Woods’s conception in its canny mingling of innocence and experience prior to an ending of deep-seated repose.
The second disc features seven songs taken from Mahler’s settings of folk-inspired anthology Des Knaben Wunderhorn. April Fredrick is truly in her element with a Rheinlegendchen of winning insouciance and a Des Antonius von Padua Fischpredigt of deftest irony. Brennen Guillory comes into his own with the final two numbers, Der Tamboursg’sell distilling the darkest humour as surely as Revelge conveys that innate fatalism behind the resolve with which the soldier meets his destiny. Woods provides an astute and sensitive accompaniment.
Does it all work?
Yes, insofar as the collection of folk-inspired poetry proved central to Mahler’s evolution as both a song and symphonic composer. It might have been worthwhile to include the original version of Das himmlische Leben, not least as its appreciably different orchestration shows just how far the composer’s thinking had come during eight years, but the present selection is nothing if not representative. Hopefully those Wunderhorn songs not featured will appear on a future issue from this source, maybe in tandem with the Rückert songs of the next decade.
Is it recommended?
Yes it is. The symphonic cycle emerging from MahlerFest is shaping up to be a significant addition to the Mahler discography, with the latest instalment no exception. Hopefully this year’s account of the Sixth Symphony will find its way to commercial release before long.
Jennifer France (soprano), London Philharmonic Orchestra / Edward Gardner
Abrahamsen let me tell you (2012-3) Mahler Symphony no.4 in G major (1892, 1899-1900)
Royal Festival Hall, London Friday 3 October 2025
Reviewed by Richard Whitehouse
Tonight’s London Philharmonic Orchestra concert featured the welcome revival of a 21st-century classic. Hans Abrahamsen’s recent output may be relatively sparing, but the works that have emerged represent a triumph of quality over quantity and not least let me tell you.
Set to fragmentary lines drawn by Paul Griffiths from his eponymous novel, this centres on the character of Ophelia – its seven songs falling into three larger parts whose outlining of a ‘before, now and after’ trajectory gives focus to the arching intensity of its 30-minute span. The first, fourth and sixth of these anticipate what comes to fruition during the second, fifth and seventh – the exception being the third whose speculative vocal line is underpinned by a stealthy progress in the lower registers evoking the motion, if not the form, of a passacaglia. Elsewhere the voice evinces an intricacy and translucency that effortlessly carries the word-setting as it pivots between thought of oblivion and transcendence, before eventually being subsumed into the orchestra for a conclusion among the most affecting in recent memory.
The LPO acquitted itself ably in music which is texturally complex for all its harmonic clarity, though it was Jennifer France (above) who (not unreasonably) most impressed with a rendering of the solo part as did ample justice to its high-lying melisma and airborne flights of fancy. Edward Gardner directed with an innate sense of where this music was headed, not least in those final bars with their tapering off into silence. Relatively few pieces are recognized as seminal from the outset, but let me tell you is one such and seems destined to remain so well into the future.
France then returned (or rather stole in) for the finale of Mahler’s Fourth Symphony after the interval. His setting of ‘Das himmlische Leben’ from the folk-inspired anthology Das Knaben Wunderhorn had actually been written almost a decade earlier and was once envisaged as the finale to the Third Symphony, but it makes a natural conclusion to a successor whose relative understatement is sustained right through to this movement’s intangible end: a ‘child’s vision of heaven’ whose intended innocence becomes informed with no little experience by the close.
Gardner had steered a convincing trajectory through the preceding movements – not least the opening one whose mingled whimsy and wistfulness took on a more ominous demeanour in its eventful development, before conveying unalloyed resolve in a warm-hearted reprise and beatific coda. What is among the most striking of Mahler’s scherzo’s proceeded with audible appreciation of its pivoting between the sardonic and sublime, Pieter Schoeman’s ‘mistuned’ violin being first among equals in music whose soloistic textures were thrown into relief by the homogenous stability of the Adagio. Its double variations unfolded with a fluid intensity capped by a coda whose ‘portal to heaven’ yielded thrilling resplendence as subsided into a transcendent raptness that, in other circumstances, could have made a satisfying conclusion.
That this lead so seamlessly into the vocal finale says a great deal for Mahler’s foresight, but also Gardner’s ability to fashion so cohesive a symphonic entity. As the music subsided into subterranean chords on harp, the audience was (necessarily) held spellbound a while longer.
Arcana.fm 