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Michael Downes

Reporter

Indexed articles, last 90 days
3
Latest publication
Aug 28, 2026
Outlet visibility, for The Guardian
Top 1K sites
Earliest in this view
Aug 20, 2026
The latest indexed work is over 30 days old. There may be a gap in what we hold.

Latest articles

  1. Article · Aug 28, 2026 · Michael Downes

    BBCSSO/Runnicles review – resplendent recounting of Mahler’s fratricidal fairytale (opens the original)

    Excerpt · Positive tone · English

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    Usher Hall, EdinburghColliding complex and contrasting moods, Mahler’s Das Klagende Lied was rendered with clarity and conviction When Sigmund Freud met Gustav Mahler in 1910, he suggested that, following a childhood trauma, “the conjunction of high tragedy and light amusement was inextricably fixed in Mahler’s mind”. Freud was famously uninterested in music, but had he known Das Klagende Lied, he would have found ample supporting evidence for his diagnosis. Composed in Mahler’s late t

  2. Article · Aug 24, 2026 · Michael Downes

    BBCSSO/Canellakis review – electrifying trio of women unleash the horror in Strauss’s Elektra (opens the original)

    Excerpt · English

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    Usher Hall, EdinburghMaking the most of a huge orchestra, conductor Karina Canellakis treated the dissonant score with relish, but the evening belonged to the singers, with even the tiniest role superbly realised Christopher Nolan’s film The Odyssey carries a content warning for “strong violence and intense mythological horror”, but even its goriest scenes do not match the mythological horror Richard Strauss produced nearly 120 years earlier in Elektra, whose special effects are confined t

  3. Article · Aug 20, 2026 · Michael Downes

    The Song of Hiawatha review – Rafael Payare reveals the riches of Coleridge-Taylor’s hit cantata (opens the original)

    Excerpt · Critical tone · English

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    Usher Hall, EdinburghFestival director Nicola Benedetti’s bold programming of these once-popular Victorian cantatas paid off with a crisp chorus and strong soloists tautly conducted The Song of Hiawatha, Black British composer Samuel Coleridge-Taylor’s turn-of-the-century cantata trilogy, packed the Albert Hall for weeks on end between the wars, but it really shouldn’t work today. The unmistakably Victorian if charming score is the least of the difficulties. More problematic is the librett

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For The Guardian, the outlet · Measured Aug 1, 2026

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