SIR MARK ELDER’S TRIUMPHANT CBSO RETURN CBSO at Symphony Hall ★★★★★ The star attraction was Sir Stephen Hough as soloist in Brahms’ first piano concerto but the evening belonged to another musical knight. Sir Mark Elder joked that he’s had a strange experience at Euston station when remembering that, for the first time in 25 years, he would be getting off at Birmingham rather than Manchester. That’s how long since Elder had conducted the CBSO when he was its principal guest conductor. He left to become the Hall é Orchestra’s music director overseeing their move to Bridgewater Hall and rejuvenating them in the way Simon Rattle did with the CBSO. At 77 Sir Mark is now the elder statesman (pun intended) of British music and was given a hugely warm and enthusiastic welcome back by both players and audience. Age may have stiffened the joints but his qualities of drive, precision, clarity and a refreshing absence of look-at-me platform antics were all evident. He made his presence felt be
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EX CATHEDRA Birmingham Town Hall ***** In this year of anniversaries of composers particularly close to my heart Ex Cathedra could certainly celebrate Puccini (the early Messa di Gloria) and Schoenberg, with his large corpus of choral works, but of course Bruckner is the obvious happy hunting-ground with his Masses and Motets. Jeffrey Skidmore assembled a wonderful programme of works which all led unerringly to the great Mass in E minor, for which his chamber choir was joined by expert wind and brass players of the CBSO. This was a distinguished event on a chilly Sunday afternoon, gratifyingly well-attended, and recorded by the BBC for future broadcast on Radio 3 (October 22, 7.30pm). Each half of the programme began with an organ improvisation by Rupert Jeffcoat, recreating Bruckner’s own skills as an organist (a little-known fact is that there had been a scheme to bring
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SCHWANENGESANG Roderick Williams at Town Hall, Stratford-upon-Avon ***** A celebration involving depressing songs by a composer knowing he was dying of syphilis at a tragically early age might seem somewhat incongruous, but it certainly worked here. The occasion was the 60 th anniversary concert of Stratford-upon-Avon Chamber Music Society, genially introduced by chairman Tim Raistrick, and featuring the world-renowned baritone Roderick Williams in Schubert’s Schwanensang, triumphant examples of the composer’s song-writing prowess after 600-odd under his belt. Together with his empathetic accompanist Natalie Burcher, Williams took us on a journey through these settings of tortured texts by two of the earliest German poets of the Romantic movement, Rellstab and Heine. Initially there seemed problems of balance between voice and piano, but the ear adjusted in plenty of time to savour Williams’ silkiness of phrasing, clarity of artic
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FIERY LEILA IGNITES AD È S’ CONCERTO CBSO at Symphony Hall ★★★★ Thomas Adès Violin Concerto ‘Concentric Paths’ is an adversarial work despite its title hinting at planetary trajectories and celestial harmonies. At times the soloist faces a barrage of musical missiles with only a fiddle to fend them off. When Leila Josefowicz entered it was clear that this would be a genuine contest. Looking like the titular figure from Prokofiev’s opera ‘The Fiery Angel’ sheathed in a spectacular scarlet gown, half sparkling sequins half flouncing tulle, she shimmered and coruscated like a slim living flame. Adès packs a huge amount into the concerto’s concentrated three-movement twenty-minute span. It begins with the musical equivalent of a collective orchestral throat clearing. Like pugilists, the violinist and orchestra circle warily around each other, the brass and wind delivering jabs and punches, the soloist fending them off with furious, frenzied, unrelenting bowing. The second, and longest, m
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IL TRITTICO Welsh National Opera at Wales Millennium Centre, Cardiff ***** Two days, two shows, same company, but what a gulf of difference in impact! Unlike Verdi’s tub-thumping Rigoletto, easily run through, Puccini’s Il Trittico is an absolute masterpiece, little-known in its entirety because of the obvious difficulties of staging three very different operas during the course of a single evening. And that is actually one of its strengths: taken in as a whole, the structure is nothing less than an operatic symphony, Il Tabarro brooding and weighty as an opening movement, Suor Angelica reflective and soul-searching as a slow movement, and Gianni Schicchi an exuberant scherzo-finale. In the hands of such a sympathetic conductor as Alexander Joel this overview really works, and this joint staging by Scottish Opera and WNO packs a huge punch under the astute direction of David McVicar. The superb designs – Charles Edwards’ intricate sets so telling
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RIGOLETTO Welsh National Opera at Wales Millennium Centre, Cardiff ** Verdi’s Rigoletto certainly has its faults (more of that later), but it certainly doesn’t deserve this shambolic new production from one of the world’s great opera companies. Director Adele Thomas seems to have conceived the tragedy as a vehicle for a surreal send-up of the genre itself. We begin with the nowadays obligatory pre-music curtain-raiser, an adolescent orgy featuring prizefighters knocking each other senseless, an amused crowd of nobles spectating from an upper gallery, and a flock of hoorays of indeterminate gender bringing their nocturnal emissions to life. Amidst all this farrago important detail goes for nothing: the affair between the Duke of Mantua and Countess Ceprano, and far more importantly, the curse inflicted upon Rigoletto by Monterone (Paul Carey Jones, one of a small handful of voices deserving of commendation
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CBSO’s new season – fresh start CBSO at Symphony Hall ★★★★ Normal service has been resumed – after the most traumatic season for the CBSO since the orchestra almost went bankrupt just over twenty years ago. Birmingham City Council funding will be axed after a century of civic support. Then new CEO Emma Stenning’s infamous “Vision Statement” – a gospel for the trendy Holy Trinity of Accessibility, Relevance and Inclusiveness – urged audiences to get out the mobile phone, film the musicians, take selfies and bring in some drinks. In December Strauss and Beethoven were swamped by a vastly expensive, noisy, distracting and utterly irrelevant, light show. In April, tenor Ian Bostridge halted his performance of Britten’s ‘Les Illuminations’ until dimwits in the audience stopped distracting him with their mobile phones. My reviews of both concerts went viral and sparked many think pieces and diatribes in the national media. Perhaps in some small way they helped start the backtracking of the
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Norman Stinchcombe reviews the latest classical CD and DVD releases Mendelssohn ‘Elijah’: Soloists, London Symphony Orchestra & Chorus (LSO Live 2 CDs and SACDs) ★★★★★ Mendelssohn’s oratorio was commissioned for Birmingham and was premiered in 1846 at the Town Hall conducted by the composer. It was a resounding success and cemented his position as Queen Victoria’s favourite composer whom she considered to be, “the greatest musical genius since Mozart”. The coupling of Mendelssohn’s music with Victorian values, and the increasing secularization of modern Britain, means the biblical work has been kept alive largely by amateur choirs and players. This exciting new recording, conducted by Sir Antonio Pappano, shows what our concert halls have been missing. Forget the Victorian world of aspidistras and antimacassars – this superbly sung live recording blazes with passion, bringing the characters alive with operatic fervour. The Canadian baritone Gerald Finley is a mighty presence as
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ELAINE DELMAR The Radlett Centre, Radlett ***** Doyenne of British jazz-singing for well over half a century, Elaine Delmar continues to pack one hell of a punch. The voice is like a synthesizer of every musical sound imaginable, now piping like a piccolo, now swooping richly into cello tones. now barking out at us as though from the inside of a double-bass. And to this we add amazing clarity of diction and articulation, seductive phrasing born of immaculate breath-control, and a force of personality, bursting with adrenaline, which is irresistible. For this lovely event at the welcoming and charming Radlett Centre in such a delightful Hertfordshire village Delmar was joined by an expert quartet: Barry Green (piano), Simon Thorpe (bass), Bobby Worth (drums), and Alex Garnett (saxophone/flute). The empathy between instrumentalists and singer was heartwarming, and I was particular impressed by Garnett’s platform courtesies, stepp
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PETER SMITH RETIRES FROM AUTUMN IN MALVERN By Christopher Morley A footballer hangs up his boots when he comes to the end of his playing career. I’m not sure what a veteran festival-planner does when he retires, but whatever it is, Peter Smith will be doing it next month when he completes 35 years as founder and director of Autumn in Malvern. The festival does exactly what it says on the tin, marking the beginning of this season of mists and mellow fruitfulness in this beautiful, evocative, hilly corner of Worcestershire, and at the time of writing this year’s programme is just about to begin. Peter’s day job was actually as a Scientific Officer in Materials Research for the MoD, Royal Signals & Radar Establishment, Malvern. Malvern-born, he also served for 14 years as elected member for the Priory Ward on Malvern Town Council, in which role he instigated and delivere
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TRIAL BY JURY/ HMS PINAFORE The National Gilbert and Sullivan Opera Company At Malvern Theatre *** The company’s title sounds grand and imposing, the reality is somewhat different, with so many variable standards in performance. What is undeniably laudable is the unashamedly traditional set-designs of these productions, a forbidding courtroom for Trial, a properly nautical foredeck for Pinafore. These cameos by Gilbert and Sullivan are firmly set both in the period of their creation and the period of their action, and any directorial gimmickry can only show up frailties in their structure. So full marks to the company for this. Not so laudable is the varying standard of delivery, and therein lies the problem for any audience outside the G&S diehards. We had here a portrayal of a main character straight out of the Savoyard mould so appreciated by devotees, Simon Butteriss’ Sir Joseph
CD reviews 3.9.24
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Norman Stinchcombe reviews the latest classical CD releases The great symphonies are amenable to different interpretations, surely one of the necessary conditions of being a great piece of music. Dvorak’s late symphonies are in that category and there are plentiful rewards to be had from recordings by conductors and orchestras with different approaches as two newly released sets show. Dvorak: Czech Philharmonic / Semyon Bychkov (Pentatone 2CDs) ★★★★ was taken from performances of the Symphonies 7-9 in the Dvorak Hall at the Rudolfinum in Prague last year. As the orchestra’s chief conductor and music director Bychkov has formed an acclaimed partnership with his Czech players at home and on tour. The LSO Live label is 25 years-old and is celebrating with a remastered set from of Dvorak’s Symphonies 6-9 conducted by Sir Colin Davis, D vorak, Janacek, Smetana: London Symphony Orchestra / Davis / Rattle (LSO Live 4 CDs & SACDs) ★★★★ Both sets are great value for money and come w
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HOW THINGS STAND WITH THE CBSO The plans of the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra management to attract a diversity of new listeners off the city’s streets and into the concert-hall have caused consternation among regular audiences, subscribers, donors, and indeed legacy-givers. There has been much backtracking from the original proposals, issued in late November 2023, which included invitations to applaud whenever people felt like it, bring your drinks in, video the performance and your entourage enjoying it (and then send it in for publicity material), explanatory greetings from the platform at every concert, a more welcoming approach from front-of-house staff (a terrible affront to the expertise and experience of the stewards who have greeted us at Symphony Hall for a third of a century). There was also an inference that the orchestra was racist, ageist and sexist (the expression “old white men” had been bandied around in some quarters). The filming raised a couple of
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ANDREW DOWNES PERFORMANCE PRIZE A new international music competition launches at the Ruddock Performing Arts Centre, King Edward’s School, Edgbaston on September 22. The Andrew Downes Performance Prize, bringing £1000 to the winner, is designed to perpetuate the memory of this well-loved Midlands composer who died in January 2023. Downes’ music is performed worldwide, and this competition specifies that entrants, whether soloists or chamber ensembles, learn and play one of his compositions in the Final. Anna Downes, Andrew’s daughter, tells me how the competition was born. “Originally, the prize was put in place when Dad won compensation for medical negligence which left him in a wheelchair. As Dad could no longer travel to promote his music, part of the compensation was so that he could find alternative means of ensuring his legacy. “With the excellent support of David Saint at Royal Birmingham Conservatoire (where Dad had been Head of Creative
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CBSO’s Pre-Proms ‘Pictures’ a huge hit CBSO at Symphony Hall ★★★★ There’s no getting around the fact that Ravel’s orchestration of Mussorgsky’s ‘Pictures at an Exhibition’ is unbeatable. So powerful is its spell that on returning to the piano original it can seem pallid and details from Ravel – like the insistent whining trumpet to mimic the downtrodden Schmuÿle – become superimposed by our inner ear. Other arrangements by everyone from Ashkenazy, who conducted his own version at Symphony Hall in the 1990s, to Stokowski can seem drab, garish or bombastic. In May the CBSO under Kazuki Yamada performed Sir Henry Wood’s 1915 orchestration which preceded Ravel by seven years. I enjoyed it immensely and although it won’t supersede Ravel – when Wood heard that version he withdrew his own from performance – there’s surely room for an alternative version. It was immensely popular at Wood’s own Promenade Concerts and it’s fitting that the CBSO will be playing it the night after this c