Midlands Classical Music Making

  LA BOHEME                                            Longborough Festival Opera ****   From high-minded, earnest Norse mythology, Gods annihilated in a wiped-out Valhalla, Longborough has now brought us back to earth with real people with their feet on the ground in Puccini’s verismo masterpiece, La Boheme. Puccini did admire Wagner, however, using his Leitmotive reminiscence techniques at crucial moments, and even referring to the Valkyrie Magic Fire music as the poet Rodolfo burns a precious manuscript in order to keep himself and his flatmates warm against the Parisian Christmas Eve chill. Longborough’s new production of opera’s most-renowned love story brings us a uniformly brilliant cast of principals, headed by the simply stunning Mimi of Elin Pritchard. Her body-language as a waif-like consumptive is totally convincing, but her voice soars above all tribulations, coloured and shaded, gradually collapsing in tone as her end approaches. The quartet of aspiring studen

                                                            CBSO YOUTH ORCHESTRA ACADEMY                                                           Birmingham Town Hall ***** It wasn’t a youth orchestra we heard on Sunday, it was a fully-fledged ensemble of young professionals, mature of tone, impeccable in intonation, expert in articulation and attack. This was the CBSO Youth Orchestra Academy, brilliantly coached by players from the world-class CBSO, and brought together under the experienced, wise, empowering baton of conductor Michael Seal. No scraping, no thinness, no allowance-craving, this was music-making to be enjoyed at the highest level, beginning with Haydn’s “Clock” Symphony, written for a crack London orchestra in 1794, and receiving an equally crack performance here. There were some delicious wind contributions, not least the solo flute in the third movement’s Trio section (foreshadowing by well over a century the fairground flute solos in Stravinsky’s Petrushka and

I found this on the website of Kazuki Yamada's "other" orchestra, the Monte Carlo Philharmonic. The tenets are diametrically opposed to those of the CBSO. " Food and beverages may not be consumed in the concert hall.  6. Photography and recording  It is strictly forbidden to film, photograph or record.  Mobile phones must be switched off for the duration of the show." Is he happy with a foot in both camps?

  Puccini,‘Madama Butterfly’ CBSO at Symphony Hall ★★★★★ This was a triumphant end to a transitional, divisive and occasionally fractious first season under the new regime of Chief Executive Emma Stenning. Much of the vituperation and ridicule directed at the most outlandish of her ideas has been well-deserved. It has also had the unfortunate and unintended consequence of diverting attention away from an important truth of paramount importance – that the CBSO’s playing is as fine as it’s ever been, equalling their ‘90s heydays under Rattle. The ebullient newly anointed Music Director Kazuki Yamada has brought back joy and enthusiasm sorely missed during  Mirga Gražinytė-Tyla’ s short Covid-blighted reign. Sceptics may wince at his cult-of-personality presence and the synchronized hand-waving but only serial miserabilists can resist the infectious sense of fun. At the end of the performance a packed audience – the only classical concert of the season in which the Grand Tier was opened –