Midlands Classical Music Making

CHRISTOPHER MORLEY GIVES THE KORNGOLD A TITLE AFTER FORGETTING SO TO DO YESTERDAY! CBSO YOUTH ORCHESTRA Symphony Hall **** The CBSO Youth Orchestra is an elite assembly of young musicians, expertly coached through half-term by players in the parent CBSO, and rehearsed selflessly by Associate Conductor Michael Seal before being handed over to the visiting guest conductor. Programming stretches and inspires these students, and the results have always been stunning. Up until now. I would be fascinated to learn how the fist half of Sunday afternoon's programme came to be selected. We began with 14-year-old Erich Korngold's lushly orchestrated Overture to a Drama, a nebulous structure sagging under too much material, and continued with only the third UK performance of the Piano Concerto by Florence Price, written in 1934. Circumstances surrounding this performance were unfortunate, Jeneba Kanneh-Mason, the announced soloist (and also featured on the programme-book...

A MORE THAN 5-STAR WNO DON GIOVANNI DON GIOVANNI Welsh National Opera at Wales Millennium Centre, Cardiff ***** Welsh National Opera's current revival of its original 2011 production is quite simply the best Don Giovanni of the many I have seen in nearly 60 years. John Caird's direction unfolds the drama of this come-uppance parable with clarity and originality, whilst at the same time preserving precious values of not interfering with the composer's and librettist's intentions, and staff director Caroline Chaney has brought everything up shiny and new. Except all is not sparkling, with not much cliched Spanish sunshine. Lighting and set design are heavy and dark (a reviewer colleague has likened it to a Renasissance Caravaggio painting), with a nocturnal skyscape looking down on everything). This is a wonderful team performance from the WNO squad, lighting designer David Hersey complementing the original designs, both costume and set, of John Napier. Th...

A CBSO YOUTH ORCHESTRA CONCERT OF TWO HALVES CBSO YOUTH ORCHESTRA Symphony Hall **** The CBSO Youth Orchestra is an elite assembly of young musicians, expertly coached through half-term by players in the parent CBSO, and rehearsed selflessly by Associate Conductor Michael Seal before being handed over to the visiting guest conductor. Programming stretches and inspires these students, and the results have always been stunning. Up until now. I would be fascinated to learn how the fist half of Sunday afternoon's programme came to be selected. We began with 14-year-old Erich Korngold's lushly orchestrated, a nebulous structure sagging under too much material, and continued with only the third UK performance of the Piano Concerto by Florence Price, written in 1934. Circumstances surrounding this performance were unfortunate, Jeneba Kanneh-Mason, the announced soloist (and also featured on the programme-book's front cover) was forced to withdraw through injury. Her ...

A UK PREMIERE AFTER 90 YEARS... THE ORDERING OF MOSES CBSO at Symphony Hall **** Robert Nathaniel Dett's sacred cantata The Ordering of Moses was composed in 1932 and premiered in Cincinnati in 1937. It has had to wait until now for its UK premiere, and I can understand why. The work is studiously written (it was presented as Dett's thesis for his Master of Music degree at Eastman School of Music), academically impeccable, just like so much of the Three Choirs Festival offerings until recent decades, and burns the midnight oil in the manner of Elgar's effortful oratorios And it takes no risks, unlike Walton's Belshazzar's Feast composed a year earlier, and Tippett's A Child of our Time, composed at the beginning of World War II. Its orchestration is conventional, with heavy reliance on a solo cello, though the inclusion of chains is a symbolic novelty, the choral writing is certainly effective, but the extravagance of including in the solo vocal qua...

NORMAN STINCHCOMBE REVIEWS HAYDN AND SHOSTAKOVICH CDS HAYDN Piano Sonatas Volume 4: Leon McCawley ★★★★ Haydn's quirky and innovative approach to form and style is obvious in his string quartets but less so in the solo piano works. Yet, as Robert Matthew-Walker writes his booklet notes to the latest instalment of Leon McCawley's enjoyable survey, these works, "range over the late-Baroque to early Beethoven," and as the keyboard developed from "clavichord and harpsichord to the fortepiano" so did Haydn's music. McCawley uses a Steinway Grand but plays the miniature No.1 in G (four movements in minutes) with a light and gracious touch suitable for a drawing-room performance. In contrast No.51 in E flat requires the projection of a larger instrument and, in its attention-grabbing opening scales, skills higher than those of a domestic amateur. Haydn's fanciful side can be heard in the rondo finale of No. 35 in A flat which starts deceptively plain...

WALTON, PROUST AND MENDELSSOHN CDS WILLIAM WALTON 'A Centenary Celebration': Williams, Dalley, Whately. Orchestra of the Swan / O'Neil (SOMM Recordings) ★★★★★ Façade, the collaboration between eccentric poet Edith Sitwell and the 19-year-old tyro composer William Walton, was premiered privately on January 24, 1922. It was a minor succès de scandale. This terrific new recording shows that it's still perplexing, surprising and immensely entertaining. Roderick Williams (baritone) and Tamsin Dalley (mezzo-soprano) perform (not just recite) the many tongue-twisting zany verses with precision, gusto and spot-on characterization. The small ensemble from the Orchestra of the Swan, under Bruce O'Neil, provide pin-sharp lively support. Walton composed the soundtrack for Laurence Olivier's 1944 film of Shakespeare's 'Henry V'. This ingenious chamber-sized arrangement, by composer Edward Watson, and the OTS's vigorous playing means that we don...

NORMAN STINCHCOMBE WISHES FOR MORE FIREBIRD CBSO at Symphony Hall ★★★★ At first glance this was a disparate programme with no obvious theme – but it worked. Kodály's Dances of Galánta, one of the fruits of the composer's field work in collecting Hungarian folk melodies, was a riot of rhythm and colour under conductor Mihhail Gerts and got the evening off to a great start. It's not so much the depiction of a joyous village gathering as its embodiment. The music pulses, surges, takes a breather and grabs a beer before launching itself into yet another dance as if entranced by Oliver Janes' clarinet as he channelled his inner gypsy. In Rachmaninov's Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini the soloist Sunwook Kim was all coolness, precision and gossamer touch. There was no over-indulgence or virtuoso mauling of the eighteenth variation's sublime melody – "This one is for my agent", quipped the composer – in Kim's hands it was elegant and eloq...

ENTHRALLING ORCHESTRA OF THE SWAN PROGRAMME ORCHESTRA OF THE SWAN Stratford Play House **** What was remarkable about this programme from Orchestra of the Swan was that none of the works on offer dated from earlier than 1909, and stretched forward until as recently as 2006. Yet it attracted a full, largely silver-haired audience enthusiastic in its applause, and it made for a truly happy evening. Of course the star soloist in the form of local boy Peter Donohoe may have added to the attraction. He gave a sparkling, deft account of Ravel's delicious G major Piano Concerto, fizzing, involving, and seamlessly singing in the slow movement's slow, lullaby-like waltz. Here he had the musicianly humility to resort to printed music as he sensitively accompanied Louise Braithwaite's heartstopping cor anglais solo, not wishing to let her down with any memory lapses. It was an extraordinary few minutes. Other wonderful solo contributions came from the magical, otherworldly ...

HEART-BREAKING FOUR LAST SONGS AND NOBLE RIENZI CBSO BENEVOLENT FUND CONCERT Symphony Hall ***** Who can wonder at the immense amount of goodwill surrounding the CBSO? Not only are they one of the world's truly great orchestras, they radiate warmth and pleasure in their music-making and receive so much back from their audiences. And all of this was in abundance from a well-filled auditorium on Friday for the annual CBSO Benevolent Fund. All involved – conductor, soloist, players, all b:music staff – generously donated their services, so every penny went to this important source of aid for players in times of trouble. CBSO tuba Graham Sibley, Chairman of the CBSO Benevolent Fund Committee, thanked us for our support both financially and morally, and dedicated the concert to the memory of Anita Davies, such an enthusiastic, pro-active and resourceful supporter of the orchestra, and so movingly remembered by clarinettist Jo Patton in the afternoon's printed progr...

MANIC, HALLUCINOGENIC BERLIOZ CBSO at Symphony Hall ★★★★★ Even a moment of youthful over-impetuosity could not mar an amazing performance by the twenty-year-old Swedish violinist Daniel Lozakovich. Approaching the final fervid minutes of Beethoven's violin concerto, the bow shot out of his hand onto the platform. A swift lunge and grab later he was back in business. Just before this he had played Fritz Kreisler's cadenza with precision, grace – qualities not always heard together – and burnished beauty of tone with not a blur, blemish or smudge. All fiddlers can play pianissimo but few with Lozakovich's full ripe tone while truly projecting (not attenuating) the sound with upmost brilliance. In the Larghetto either the soloist or conductor Fabien Gabel (or both) applied the erroneous equation Beauty + Profundity = Very Slow. It was self-indulgent but redeemed by moments of magic as when Lozakovich, stretched on tip-toe as if trying to levitate, spun out a "silver...