Midlands Classical Music Making

                               NICKY SPENCE AND DYLAN PEREZ                                            Royal Pump Rooms, Leamington Spa *****   Jetlag? What jetlag? Such was the exhilaration and emotional energy communicated by this captivating recital in the Leamington Music Festival 2026 it was difficult to credit that the singer had flown in overnight after performing in Paris and that the pianist had landed from New York that very morning . This poignant, brilliantly-constructed programme devised by tenor Nicky Spence and accompanist Dylan Perez was all about the mystery of childhood and its relationship with the adult wo...

  Norman Stinchcombe reviews the latest classical CD releases Bach 'Goldberg Variations': Radek Baborák  et.al . (Animal Music CD) ★★★★ Bach's aria and thirty variations were composed for a keyboard player called Goldberg to induce sleep for his insomniac aristocratic employer. "Dear Goldberg, do play me one of my variations," he would insist, so Bach's biographer Johann Nikolaus Forkel tells us. A good tale but probably apocryphal; what's certain is that it's one of Bach's crowning achievements and was, as the 1741 published score puts it, "Composed for connoisseurs, for the refreshment of their spirits." There are dozens of keyboard recordings to choose from, played on the two manual harpsichord, the instrument Bach composed it for, and the modern concert grand. Musicians cannot resist the Goldberg spell and there are also recordings of transcriptions for an immense variety of soloists and ensembles including: solo harp, solo accordion,...

                                             BLAZE OF GLORY                                            Welsh National Opera at Wales Millennium Centre, Cardiff *****   Put quite simply, this is one of the most infectious, life-enhancing shows I have ever seen in nearly 60 years of reviewing, and I urge you not to miss it. The context is grim. This is 1953, and a mining community is faced with the imminent closure of its pit. So what do they do to raise morale? They form a male voice choir, and go from strength to strength, the whole tale underpinned by Davi...

                                             THE FLYING DUTCHMAN                                            Welsh National Opera at the Wales Millennium Centre, Cardiff *** The show may have been advertised as The Flying Dutchman, but Jack Furness’ production in fact began as Call the Midwife and ended as The Rite of Spring. Wagner’s wonderful, vivid overture went for nothing as we were treated to a faddish dumbshow prequel during its delivery (sorry about the unintended pun) showing a woman in childbirth. My heart had sunk when I saw in the cast list “Senta’s Mot...

  An Italian musical night to savour CBSO at Symphony Hall ★★★★ Puccini got top billing but it was fellow Italian Respighi who stole the show in a concert brimming with gorgeous melodies and a rich orchestral palette. Carlo Rizzi, well known to Birmingham audiences for conducting many productions in the Italian repertoire with Welsh National Opera, spent the dull days of the Covid lockdown fruitfully. Like all opera lovers he acknowledged Puccini as composer of "some of the most beautiful and recognisable arias in the operatic world," but while studying the scores he was struck, "by the sophistication of his orchestration and the innovative use of the instruments". The results were Rizzi's two Symphonic Suites, both around 20 minutes long, which opened both halves of this concert, the first arranged from 'Tosca' and the second from 'Madam Butterfly'. Rizzi adopted a strict Puccini-and-nothing-but-Puccini for the suites without what he dismissed a...

  Norman Stinchcombe reviews the latest classical CD releases Mahler Symphonies 1-9: Czech Philharmonic / Bychkov (Pentatone 11 CDs) ★★★★★ No single survey of Mahler's symphonies, the most disparate musically diverse traversal by any of the great composers, can be the last word on their interpretation and performance. Seasoned collectors will all have favourite individual performances that offer something special, uniquely capturing the essence of a particular work, one that becomes a benchmark in judging others. My own, for example, is Leonard Bernstein's second recording of No.6, with the Vienna Philharmonic, released in 1989 the year before the conductor's death, in which every abyss of despair and cry of anger is palpable. Yet there is something very satisfying in a complete set of Mahler symphonies played by the same orchestra under the same conductor and making the long musical journey with them from the burgeoning wonder and joy of nature in No.1 to the resignation a...

 We hear that Donald Trump is about to make a cover version of the 1966 Napoleon XIV hit, "They're coming to take me away, ha-haaa!".

                                             AURORA ORCHESTRA                                                          The Maltings, Snape (April 10 and 11) If ever there were a concert of two halves, the opening one of Britten Pears Arts’ Spring 26 season, would certainly qualify. The Aurora Orchestra has gained fame for its questing, revelatory approach to some of the most demanding works in the repertoire, playing from memory, so what was it doing, sitting at music-stands for a performance of one of the mos...

  CBSO'S TRIO OF MUSICAL EXILES TRIUMPH CBSO at Symphony Hall ★★★★ There was a lot of fine classical music being played in America during the 1930s and 1940s, a great deal of it composed, and conducted, by expatriate Europeans. Moviegoers could thrill to the swashbuckling soundtracks of Korngold and dab their eyes to the lush romantic weepies of Max Steiner.In the concert hall works by Stravinsky, Schoenberg and Martinu were performed and America's premier orchestras were conducted by Szell, Reiner, Steinberg, Toscanini and Ormandy. They came not just in pursuit of financial rewards, many were escaping from political oppression by the Nazis and their fascist imitators in Hungary and Italy, and from Stalin's communist Russia. The three composers featured in this entertaining and expertly played concert are cases in point. The German composer Paul Hindemith's music was labelled "degenerate" by the Nazis so he and his half-Jewish wife arrived in America in 1940. ...

                                             BACH ST JOHN PASSION                                            Ex Cathedra at Symphony Hall **** Ex Cathedra’s Good Friday presentations of the Bach Passions, whether at Symphony Hall or Birmingham Town Hall, have become the stuff of legend, but I fear, as Jeffrey Skidmore prepares to step down after over half a century on the podium of the chamber choir he founded, this performance of the St John Passion proved more of an irritation than an uplifting spiritual experience. Where Bach’s St Matthew Passion is discursive,...

                                                                          NICOLAOU ENSEMBLE                                                                         All Saints’ Church, Orpington   There can scarcely be anything more heartening for a grizzled old reviewer of n...

  Norman Stinchcombe reviews new discs from Chandos  In 2029 Chandos will celebrate 50 years in the classical music business. It was founded by Brian Couzens, a talented music arranger and recording engineer in 1979, and since his death in 2015 has been managed by his son Ralph. In the early days Chandos started with brass band recordings, a flourishing niche market, but grew to become Britain's leading independent classical music company with a catalogue of 3,000 recordings. The Chandos name has always been synonymous with sound quality: they were one of the first companies to embrace digital recordings and compact discs and regularly release high-definition discs on SACD. In 2024 Chandos was sold to Naxos label founder Klaus Heymann but Ralph Couzens continues to run Chandos as an independent label. As well as sound Chandos is always renowned for series, backing conductor, soloists and orchestras to focus on particular composers. An early success was an outstanding Tchaikovs...