Nicholas Chalmers : Reviews
CONDUCTOR
2022 La bohème – Nevill Holt Opera and Manchester Camerata
“In the pit, the Manchester Camerata plays with impressive tone and total engagement, while festival artistic director and conductor Nicholas Chalmers summons up all the vitality and momentum required for Puccini to hold the audience in his tight emotional grip. Nevill Holt is lucky to have such a superb musician at the helm.”
The Stage
“Together with the excellent Manchester Camerata, conducted by NHO’s Artistic Director Nicholas Chalmers, the piece at times feels faultless.”
The Telegraph
“The Manchester Camerata was in the pit, combining impressive tone with total engagement and superintended by festival artistic director and conductor Nicholas Chalmers, who drew from Puccini’s score all the vitality and momentum required for the piece to hold its listeners in a tight emotional grip: he is a significant asset to the festival.”
Opera Now
2021 La traviata – Nevill Holt Opera and Manchester Camerata
“Nicholas Chalmers and the Manchester Camerata gave an excellent account of the score, romantic without being overdone, well accented and energetic without dissolving into caricature.”
Bachtrack
2020 First night of the BBC Proms – The BBC Singers
“Then came an hour of music that moved by degrees from radiant stillness through reflective quietness to blazing triumph…sung with immaculate tuning and beautiful tone by the BBC Singers.”
The Telegraph
“The BBC Singers, conducted by Nicholas Chalmers…this small professional choir can hardly be bettered in present-day polyphony, singing ravishingly.”
The Sunday Times
“After that, Eric Whitacres choral piece Sleep…was lusciously delivered from the stalls by the socially-distanced BBC Singers under Nicholas Chalmers.”
The Times
“…the simply stunning performances that Chalmers and the singers gave us (all from memory), giving a real edge to Whitacre’s harmonies, meant that the short work had great intensity.”
Planet Hugill
“…they (the BBC Singers) sang exquisitely under Nicholas Chalmers, their spacing in the stalls visually striking and atmospherically complemented by the beams of light above.”
The Arts Desk
“Eric Whitacre’s motet Sleep, sung by the BBC Singers, and Aaron Copland’s Quiet City were included for their resonance with the Covid experience, and both were performed with sensitivity and commitment.”
The Guardian
“With the eighteen members of the BBC Singers positioned in the stalls and conductor Nicholas Chalmers spot-lit in the centre of the arena, there was an otherworldliness about the performance before it even began. Intonation was immaculate; tone ranged from cool cotton to rich velvet; Chalmers kept the iambic tetrameter of Robert Frost’s ‘Stopping By Woods on a Snowy Evening’ breathing steadily…”
Seen and Heard International
2019 A Midsummer Night’s Dream by Benjamin Britten – Nevill Holt Opera
“[Nicholas Chalmers] conducts both of this year’s [Nevill Holt Opera] offerings – I heard A Midsummer Night’s Dream, which he led in robust fashion, drawing lively and affectionate playing from Britten Sinfonia”
The Telegraph
“A terrific ensemble achievement, and Chalmers’s conducting of the outstanding Britten Sinfonia lent the music a special magic in the warm, woody acoustic”
The Sunday Times
“Deftly conducted by Nicholas Chalmers, Britten Sinfonia (what a luxury as a pit band) use their slim string numbers to bring translucency and a spare, angular beauty to Britten’s score”
The Arts Desk
“Most of the magic on opening night emanated from this pit. Britten Sinfonia, under Nevill Holt Opera’s artistic director Nicholas Chalmers, teased out every icy sul ponticello and slithering glissando in Britten’s brilliantly orchestrated score. The precision of the woodwind and brass playing was superb, resounding with clarity”
Bachtrack
“The show can rely on the exceptional musical values maintained by Nevill Holt’s artistic director, conductor Nicholas Chalmers, who explores the score with an ear for fine detail as well as, in his overview, luminosity of tone: in the pit Britten Sinfonia is on wonderful form”
The Stage
“…a reading conducted with scrupulous attention to nocturnal colour by Nicholas Chalmers”
Opera Magazine
2019 Così fan tutte by Mozart – Nevill Holt Opera
“Nevill Holt’s artistic director Nicholas Chalmers demonstrated once again his gifts as a Mozartian with a reading that was beautifully paced from start to finish, with an ideal combination of subtlety and vitality, of purpose and poetry, and outstanding playing from the Royal Northern Sinfonia, especially its wind principals”
Opera Magazine
“What made the performance so special was the musical proceedings expertly overseen by Chalmers conducting the Royal Northern Sinfonia. He is a brisk but natural Mozartian, and his gift for spotting excellent young singers is a huge boon for this and other medium-scale repertoire.”
Hugh Canning – The Sunday Times
“The palm of this successful launch has to go to conductor Nicholas Chalmers and the Royal Northern Sinfonia who between them supply an ideal musical underlay, spirited in momentum and refined in texture”
George Hall – The Stage