Midlands Classical Music Making

  BENJAMIN BRITTEN, A LIFE IN MUSIC By Timothy Gilbert Timothy Gilbert lives in quiet retirement at home in Walsall – and he has produced an illuminating book on Benjamin Britten, exploring aspects of the composer’s work rarely touched on before. More of that later, but first I ask him about the path which brought him to a love of one of this country’s greatest composers. “I went to Queen Mary’s Grammar School in Walsall, and then on to Sidney Sussex College in Cambridge to read History. But in order to escape Physics at ‘O’-level four of us opted to take ‘O’-level music; I was the only one who passed! “I had taken clarinet lessons up to Grade 3 and 4, but had given up on the piano after Grade 1 because of the pressures at the Grammar School. But Radio 3’s ‘This Week’s Composer’ was a wonderful companion! “One of the set works for ‘O’-level was Britten’s St Nicolas cantata, and I was captivated by its melodic freshness, and its resourcefulness deployed so skilfully for amate...

                                         RODERICK WILLIAMS Royal Pump Rooms, Leamington Spa ***** Much-loved baritone Roderick Williams gave the Leamington Festival “a Taste of the Exotic” on Sunday lunchtime, and, boy, didn’t he just! This was such a well-researched programme, full of discoveries which he and pianist Andrew West shared with us so enthusiastically, and Williams’ friendly, engaging introductions were the icing on a cake of wonderful performances. The Festival’s commemoration of the 50th anniversary of the death of Sir Arthur Bliss was continued with his Siege, an early song delivered with driving energy before its enigmatic final note. As throughout the recital, Williams’ body-language, resourceful eye-deployment  and shadings within the vocal registers added to the communication of the music, as did West’s mercurial, responsive alert acco...

 MARK BEBBINGTON Royal Pump Rooms, Leamington Spa ***** Long a major international pianist, Mark Bebbington has equally long been a champion of British music, and this year his attention has turned naturally to former Master of the Queen’s Musick Sir Arthur Bliss, who died 50 years ago. Bliss features largely in this year’s vibrant Leamington Music Festival, and Bebbington’s enthralling lunchtime recital last Saturday featured two works from opposite ends of the composer’s life. Masks, written in 1924, sparkles with an almost Gallic wite and clarity, surely qualifying Bliss as an honorary seventh member of Les Six, while Triptych (1970) profoundly combines both energy and regret, an epitaph of loss (including the composer’s younger brother, killed in the Great War) and, as Bebbington himself indicated, “an anthem for our own troubled times”. Both were given with the pianist’s legendary command of texture, colouring of an extreme range of dynamics, and resourcefully subtle pedal...

  Norman Stinchcombe reviews the latest classical CD releases Verdi ‘Simon Boccanegra’ original version: Alcántara, Nakamura, Thomas, Ayón-Rivas, Chorus of Opera North, RNCM Opera Chorus, Hallé / Elder (Opera Rara 2 CDs) ★★★★★ Composers have often revised operas and Verdi, ever the perfectionist, was no exception. Those revisions include minor dramaturgical ones caused by censorship (‘Un ballo in maschera’) and a change of language from performances in Italy to Paris (‘Don Carlo’ and ‘Don Carlos’) but also Verdi’s revamped versions were made to rescue works which had become unfashionable and bring them into line with his later very different style. In 2003 the Opera Rara label released a recording of Verdi’s original 1847 version of ‘Macbeth’, with different arias, giving fascinating comparisons with Verdi’s familiar 1865 version. In his excellent booklet essay for the new recording of the 1857 original version of ‘Simon Boccanegra’, Roger Parker raises the question “of whether Ver...

  ST MATTHEW PASSION Ex Cathedra at Symphony Hall **** This was authenticity with no holds barred. Not only did we have the excellent period-instrument Ex Cathedra Baroque Orchestra at lower pitch, Jeffrey Skidmore also Tardised us back to the circumstances of the original performance of Bach’s St Matthew Passion in 1727, given as part of Good Friday Vespers, surrounded by liturgy and interspersed with a sermon (oh, those unforgiving pews in Leipzig’s Thomaskirche!). So here we were topped and tailed with organ preludes (the excellent Rupert Jeffcoat), imported choral offerings, and a congregational hymn. There was also an interval sermon, recitations of texts by Ben Okri and Dietrich Bonhoeffer.  All of this was rationalised in Skidmore’s excellent and engaging programme-notes, but what of the actual performance of Bach’s miraculous score? Under Skidmore’s discreet direction this was a flowing, lightly-textured account, unforced in its projection, and achieving a fin...

  FAZIL RAISES THE ROOF CBSO at Symphony Hall ★★★★★ In 1928 Ravel visited America for a four month-long concert tour and a party was held in his honour in New York. There’s a photograph of the occasion with Ravel at the piano surrounded by admirers who are all looking at the society photographer’s camera. Except for one young man who gazes downward intently, eyes focused on Ravel’s hands on the keyboard – it’s George Gershwin. Set on composing “serious” music the young American asked Ravel to give him composition lessons. Ravel looked thoughtful and asked Gershwin, the toast of Broadway and writer of million-sellers like ‘Fascinating Rhythm’ and ‘Someone to Watch over Me’, how much he had earned in the last year. Gershwin told him. Ravel smiled and said he had nothing to teach him. But Ravel learned something from George and jazz music, Gershwin played him ‘Rhapsody in Blue’ and took him to see Duke Ellington perform at the Cotton Club. Ravel lapped it up and the results are distil...

  A MIXED MAHLER 9 CBSO at Symphony Hall ★★★ In the Musical Claptrap Stakes, the race to determine which work has the most egregious nonsense written about it, one contender is furlongs ahead of the rest – Mahler’s Symphony No.9. Mahler may have been superstitious but surely couldn’t have believed in the “curse of the ninth symphony” – invented post hoc by Schoenberg – which allegedly claimed the lives of Beethoven and Bruckner. This dubious assertion was used in last month’s programme on ‘Das Lied von der Erde’ and appears to have been cut-and-pasted into conductor Kazuki Yamada introductory notes where he adds; ‘Mahler expected his death to be very near when he wrote this symphony.” Says who? Not Mahler, who soon started on a tenth symphony with every expectation of finishing it. No, pneumonia and Mahler’s gruelling 8,000 mile round trips to New York to conduct at the Metropolitan Opera were responsible for his death, not compositional hubris. When beginning writing the ninth in ...

 THE MARRIAGE OF FIGARO Welsh National Opera at Wales Millennium Centre **** This production of Mozart’s crowning glory began uneasily, but developed into something of a triumph by the end of a protracted evening (we came down at 10.45 after a 7pm start). Visually attractive, witty in its stage-direction, the presentation suffered from some decidedly erratic tempi set by conductor Kerem Hasan. From a hard-driven overture (perhaps trying to beat the egg-timing four minutes), straight into the opening act, swift speeds made articulation difficult for the singers, not least in this open, airy acoustic, and then a decidedly slow-paced Porgi Amor at the beginning of Act Two put a predictable strain upon Erika Grimaldi’s Countess which she survived impressively. There were also ragged moments from the usually impressive WNO orchestra, and lapses in ensemble between soloists and pit, particularly in the final act. All that set aside, this was a visually enchanting revival of Tobias Ric...

  PETER GRIMES Welsh National Opera at Wales Millennium Centre ***** Making his debut in the role, Nicky Spence’s interpretation of the character of Peter Grimes comes as something as a revelation to those already familiar with Britten’s opera. Instead of portraying the fisherman as an out-and-out psychopath whose ending we can foresee right from the start, Spence makes him a more rounded individual, capable of affection and aspiration, which makes his eventual fate chilling rather than predictable. This production, directed by Melly Still, sets Grimes as an object of self-righteous gossipy scandal from the good citizens (each with their own secret vices) of the Borough, a thinly-disguised Aldeburgh,Britten pinpointing them so shrewdly, himself a victim of ostracisation and prejudice. Each one is well characterised in this production, but there are three main characters who have an influence upon Grimes’ destiny. David Kempster is a sympathetic, wise Captain Balstrode, Sara...

  Dvořák’s Brilliant Bohemian Rhapsody CBSO at Symphony Hall ★★★★ We have all heard about love at first sight, that joyous epiphany which instantly transforms drab sepia life into glorious technicolour as in ‘The Wizard of Oz’. There is also love at first hearing when a piece of music has the same effect. In his programme notes the young Portuguese conductor Dinis Sousa admits that it wasn’t quite like that for him with Dvořák’s Symphony No.8: “I remember first thinking that it was a bit over the top,” he admits, “but when I eventually came to conduct it, I completely fell in love.” His affection was evident during every bar of this joyous performance, sometimes achingly beautiful, frenetically abandoned and brimming with boisterous good humour. Pace is essential here knowing when to relax into Dvořák’s idealized nostalgic vision of Bohemia, sun-kissed hills, sylvan breezes and twittering birds, but also to limn the dark shadows that occasionally threaten this prelapsarian paradise...

  ST JOHN PASSION Stratford Choral Society at Holy Trinity Church, Stratford **** Whereas Bach’s St Matthew Passion takes its time, reflecting upon the events of the Crucifixion, his St John Passion hustles us straight into the terrible drama, tight and concise as it involves us in the narrative, and Saturday’s performance from the Stratford Choral Society responded tautly and expressively. The orchestral opening, splendidly delivered by the period-performance Instruments of Time and Truth, whispered with gripping urgency, its tread leading forward to the powerful choral entry. Many multiples larger than Bach’s own choral forces in Leipzig, the SCS nevertheless sang with commendable lightness and balance under the gently authoritative conducting of Oliver Neal Parker This choral input of a very high standard was maintained throughout the evening, with the many chorales, originally reaching out to the Lutheran congregation, particularly effective (incidentally, John Bawden’s ...

  Norman Stinchcombe reviews the latest classical CD releases Donizetti ‘Songs’ Volumes  3  &  4 :  Spyres, Lemieux ,  Rizzi, Zappa  (Op era Rara   2  CD s available separately )  ★★★★★ Last year the enterprising Opera Rara label released the first two discs in a planned  eight volume survey of Donizetti’s songs, around 200 of them, many of which have  not been heard in decades. The project is masterminded by  Opera Rara’s  Repertoire Consultant Roger Parker  who has scoured musical archives in Europa and as far away as Australia searching for the opera composer’s solo songs. The first two volumes with  teno r  Lawrence Brownlee  and  baritone  Nicola Alaimo,  both accompanied on piano by conductor Carlo Rizzi,  were outstanding. Now come Volumes 3 and 4 with American singer Michael Spyres, accompanied by Rizzi, and Canadian Marie-Nicole Lemieux, accompanied by Giulio Zappa....