Midlands Classical Music Making

  CBSO at Symphony Hall ★★★★ The stage was set for something grand and imposing. Filled to overflowing with just short of a hundred players on the platform, nine basses in line along the back like sentries, the same number of horns on the left wing. We were treated to a performance of Bruckner’s Symphony No.9 that justified these massive forces. There are two main approaches to this valedictory work. The first sees it as the culmination of the nineteenth century tradition, gaunt, grand, broad in scope and tempi. The second as a precursor of twentieth century angst, existential doubt and terror. Kazuki Yamada adhered to the first path, his expansive, though never dragging, tempi approaching those of Giulini and the Vienna Philharmonic’s nonpareil recording of the work. The spell is cast in the opening notes, the groundwork of tremolando strings, and then a call from the horns presaging some mighty message – a wonderful start.The scherzo was just about perfect. Inspired by the scherz...

  STIRRING ELGAR CONCERTO FROM THE CBSO LEADER CBSO at Symphony Hall ★★★★ Elgar’s Violin Concerto has provided almost as many opportunities for pointless speculation as his ‘Enigma’ Variations. Who is referred to in the work’s inscription, “Herein is enshrined the soul of...”? Is it someone codenamed “Windflower” after whom several of the work’s themes are named? Is it Alice Stuart-Wortley, daughter of the painter John Everett Millais? Is it Helen Weaver, or Elgar’s mother or possibly his wife? Who cares? Elgar himself told us all we need to know about the work when he said of it: “It's good! Awfully emotional! Too emotional, but I love it.” So would any unprejudiced listener after hearing this performance played with such tenderness, fierce concentration and passion by the CBSO’s leader Eugene Tzikindelean and backed to the hilt by the orchestra conducted by Kazuki Yamada. In the opening bars soloist and orchestra captured the mysterious haunting quality of the initial theme that ...

 MARK BEBBINGTON Holy Trinity Church, Stratford-upon-Avon ***** There was plenty of ‘entente cordiale’ on show in this piano recital featuring local star Mark Bebbington: the first two thirds of this thoughtfully selected programme included two French and two English composers, but every note was imbued with French musical influence. A late work by Cesar Franck, ‘Prelude, Chorale and Fugue’, was built on a clever development of repeating fragments over flowing embellishments involving much hand-crossing, and a sombre fugue employing a distinctive descending motif that had echoes of JS Bach. The first of two works by the enigmatic Francis Poulenc was an ‘homage’ to Edith Piaf, its improvisations conjuring up a lazy summer’s evening in Paris being serenaded by this great French entertainer. The second work, ‘Napoli – Suite for Piano’, included a ‘Barcarolle’ inspired by a Venetian gondolier song, a dark-toned ‘Nocturne’, and a highly energetic ‘Caprice Italien’ which was a feast for ...

  Norman Stinchcombe reviews the latest classical disc releases Donizetti ‘Songs’ Volumes 1 & 2: Brownlee, Alaimo, Rizzi (Op era Rara   2  CD s available separately )  ★★★★★ Opera Rara has won the award for outstanding classical record label of the year which is a just reward for its unstinting devotion to rare repertoire, especially the music of Donizetti. Their latest ambitious project is an eight volume survey of Donizetti’s songs, around 200 of them, many of which have never been heard in living memory. It was a labour of love for Opera Rara’s Repertoire Consultant Roger Parker who began it as a Covid lockdown project in 2020 and eventually found him researching archives and collections at home and in Italy, France, Austria, Sweden and Australia. It has resulted in a new edition of the Donizetti solo songs, a collaboration with Ian Schofield, and will be published by Casa Ricordi and made publicly available. We can hear the first two selections now; the first...

   🎶 A Month of Music, Magic, and Partnership! 🎶 by ABC of Opera Over the past month, we’ve had the absolute joy of delivering workshops to over 1,000 children across Wales. This incredible journey has been made possible by the generous support of Powys and Pembrokeshire Music Services, Castell Howell, and the legendary Welsh National Opera (WNO). Together, we’ve sparked creativity, built confidence, and brought the transformative magic of opera and storytelling to life for young learners. The story of Welsh National Opera is rooted in resilience and community. Founded in 1943, WNO was born from the passion of ordinary Welsh people—miners, teachers, and bakers—who believed opera should be for everyone. Over the years, WNO has grown to become a world-renowned company, blending tradition with innovation and bringing its powerful storytelling and unforgettable music to audiences across the globe. For Mark Llewelyn Evans, CEO of ABC – Any Body Can, this partnership is personal. ...

  Norman Stinchcombe reviews the latest classical CD releases Sibelius: Sibelius: Ehnes, Bergen Philharmonic Orchestra / Gardner (Chandos CD & SACD) ★★★★★ The Canadian violinist James Ehnes is a throwback to the golden era of fiddlers of the fifties. No showmanship, nor the eccentricity of cult favourite Patricia Kopatchinskaja, his demeanour on the platform is patrician like Nathan Milstein. He heads straight to the essence of the Sibelius concerto, its combination of icy beauty and volatility. Many recordings emphasise one aspect at the expense of the other – Ehnes gives due weight to both. He’s aided by the ever-alert conductor Edward Gardner and phenomenal sound from the Chandos engineers which is full of detail. Ehnes illuminates Sibelius’s miniatures perceptively – the Two Serenades, Op. 69; Two Pieces, Op. 77; Two Humoresques, Op. 87; and Four Humoresques, Op. 89 are polished and glittering. Sibelius’s last completed orchestral work, the Suite Op 117, is short, powerful ...

  FROM TOKYO WITH LOVE Yomiuri Nippon Symphony Orchestra of Tokyo at Symphony Hall ★★★★ In the autumn of 1993 this orchestra played Rachmaninov’s Symphony No 2 here. Thirty one years later they did so again, a performance combining passion, melting tenderness and scintillating energy. Their principal conductor Sebastian Weigle had filled the platform with players, a huge string section, five horns, eight basses and percussion so when Rachmaninov demanded power and weight there was plenty on tap and his trademark emphatic ending carried a tremendous wallop. There was delicacy too in the cor anglais’ plaintive solo which leads into the main body of the first movement and the orchestra’s first clarinet played with fluency and notable beauty in the Adagio, that epitome of swooning romanticism. Weigle is a conductor in the German kapellmeister tradition, a minimum of fuss and bother with a maximum of control. This is needed in the symphony’s first movement where a lot of exposition and ...

  ELGAR VIOLIN CONCERTO Vilde Frang, Deutscher Symphonie Orchester Berlin/Robin Ticciati (Warner Classics 5021732409423) This is such an exciting recording for so many reasons, not only because of the quality of delivery from the performers, but also because it restores this masterpiece to the status it so richly deserves. The Elgar Violin Concerto has almost become a staple of the repertoire, run-through dutifully in shrewdly-programmed concerts, but here we are reminded of its immense status, speaking on its own terms as a searing inner statement of the composer at his most vulnerable. We are reminded that Fritz Kreisler, coming onstage to give its premiere, appeared white as a sheet. He had to come down to earth in the second half by sitting at the back of the first violins, sight-reading through Elgar’s First Symphony (was he aware the first movement approached its end with a tentative reminder of the opening theme coming from the back desk of the Firsts?). What are we to...

                European Union Chamber Orchestra                                            Malvern College ****                      Thirty-five years after founding the Autumn in Malvern Festival, Peter Smith is finally retiring as Artistic Director. He has brought so many illustrious performers, composers, lecturers to the town, as well as promoting visual arts exhibitions, and though the running of the festival is now in the safe hands of Malvern Theatres, Peter’s devoted input will prove a difficult act to follow. Over recent years the European Union Chamber Orchestra have been popular visitors, and here t...

  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 presenc...

                                             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 wo...

                               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 poet...

  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 longes...

  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...

                                             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 flo...