Classical music makes the visual connection


Still on a high from last night's Messiah with the Britten Sinfonia and David Hill in Norwich. Readers in Holland can catch a repeat performance at the Concertgebouw in Amsterdam tomorrow (Dec 20) evening; but hurry as a quick check of the Concertgebouw's website indicates that, hardly suprisingly, the performance is almost sold out. At a time when classical music is desperately short of smart moves the Britten Sinfonia has scored yet another home run by forming a new professional choir, the Britten Sinfonia Voices, that matches their instrumental ensemble for sheer élan and virtuosity. But don't take my word, read Edward Seckerson's 5 star Independent review for their recent L'enfance du Christ .

A lot of very special things were happening in the Theatre Royal Norwich yesterday. One of them was the visual signing for the Messiah by Paul Whittaker - that is Paul signing for The Sixteen in my header image. Paul Whittaker's miraculous facility for turning sounds into images does more than provide an invaluable service for the hearing impaired: it is also an important pointer towards how classical music can engage with new audiences, whatever their hearing hearing capabilities, by making the visual connection. More on Paul Whittaker in this essential video, and more on seeing the music here.

I presented the pre-concert talk with David Hill at the Britten Sinfonia Messiah and received compensation in kind. Any copyrighted material on these pages is included as "fair use", for the purpose of study, review or critical analysis only, and will be removed at the request of copyright owner(s). Report broken links, missing images and errors to - overgrownpath at hotmail dot co dot uk Also on Facebook and Twitter.

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