Midlands Classical Music Making

                 ANDREW DOWNES PERFORMANCE PRIZE   A new international music competition launches at the Ruddock Performing Arts Centre, King Edward’s School, Edgbaston on September 22. The Andrew Downes Performance Prize, bringing £1000 to the winner, is designed to perpetuate the memory of this well-loved Midlands composer who died in January 2023. Downes’ music is performed worldwide, and this competition specifies that entrants, whether soloists or chamber ensembles, learn and play one of his compositions in the Final. Anna Downes, Andrew’s daughter, tells me how the competition was born.   “Originally, the prize was put in place when Dad won compensation for medical negligence which left him in a wheelchair. As Dad could no longer travel to promote his music, part of the compensation was so that he could find alternative means of ensuring his legacy.   “With the excellent suppo...

  CBSO’s Pre-Proms ‘Pictures’ a huge hit CBSO at Symphony Hall ★★★★ There’s no getting around the fact that Ravel’s orchestration of Mussorgsky’s ‘Pictures at an Exhibition’ is unbeatable. So powerful is its spell that on returning to the piano original it can seem pallid and details from Ravel – like the insistent whining trumpet to mimic the downtrodden Schmuÿle – become superimposed by our inner ear. Other arrangements by everyone from Ashkenazy, who conducted his own version at Symphony Hall in the 1990s, to Stokowski can seem drab, garish or bombastic. In May the CBSO under  Kazuki  Yamada performed Sir Henry Wood’s 1915 orchestration which preceded Ravel by seven years. I enjoyed it immensely and although it won’t supersede Ravel – when  Wood  heard that version he withdrew his own from performance – there’s surely room for an alternative version. It was  immensely popular  at Wood’s  own  Promenade Concerts and it’s fitting that the CB...

  Norman Stinchcombe  reviews the latest classical CD releases Meyerbeer ‘Le Prophète’: Soloists, Lyon Opera Chorus, Mediterranean Youth Orchestra, London Symphony Orchestra / Sir Mark Elder (LSO Live 3 CD & SACD)  ★★★★★ Premiered at the Paris Opera in 1849 Giacomo Meyerbeer’s grand opera ‘ Le Prophète’   was huge in every way – length, ambition, scale and success. Its five acts lasted over six hours with elaborate staging and spectacular effects; the first use of electric arc light to represent the blazing sunrise, a full-size skating rink and an explosive ending when a German palace is blown up and everyone perishes in the flames. Wagner sneered about “effects without causes” but then nicked the ending for the climax of ‘G ötterdämmerung’. Times and tastes change and grand opera is hardly performed now. No performances of  ‘ Le Prophète’   exist on DVD and the only full scale recording on disc – the 1970s showcase for Marilyn Horne and conducted by he...

                               CAROUSEL                                                           John Wilson and the Sinfonia of London (Chandos) *****   The greatest sorrow of my other life as a conductor, chiefly of musicals, is that I never got to conduct two of the greatest shows in the canon, Guys and Dolls, and, above all, Carousel. Now this new Chandos CD release of Rodgers and Hammerstein’s masterpiece telling of life in a New England fishing village has quickened those regrets, bringing every last bar of that tremendous show, including number...