Midlands Classical Music Making

  Norman Stinchcombe reviews the latest classical CD releases Weill, 'The Seven Deadly Sins': Soloists, London Symphony Orchestra / Rattle (LSO Live CD & SACD) ★★★★ Sir Simon Rattle chose Weill’s work, an acerbic Berlin pastiche of the Hollywood musical, as one of his first recordings with the CBSO in 1982. The lead role of Anna was taken by his first wife American soprano Elise Ross. Forty years on and his new recording stars his third wife, the Czech mezzo-soprano Magdalena Kožená. This 1933 collaboration with Bertolt Brecht was styled a ballet chanté (sung ballet) with dual personality Anna played by a singer and a dancer. No dancing for Kožená but she took both roles – singing one and speaking the other – and is very effective. Her portrayal of Lust is psychologically and vocally acute. Rattle has assembled an excellent male quartet of singers to portray Anna’s exploitative family: Andrew Staples (tenor), Alessandro Fisher (tenor), Ross Ramgobin (baritone) and Florian B...

 COULL QUARTET Royal Pump Rooms, Leamington Spa *** A complement which has delighted us for decades, the Coull Quartet has delivered so many exciting accounts of works from both the standard repertoire and more searching contemporary fields. Its  long residency at the University of Warwick proved intensely rewarding, enhancing the musical life of our region and beyond. But time takes its toll, and this concert for Leamington Music, virtually on the Coull’s home patch, provided both a poignant reminder of past glories and present problems. The Coull still have a wonderful gift of empathy in ensemble, as exemplified in Mozart’s G major Quartet, K387 (incidentally, I have never before encountered its being afforded the sobriquet “Spring”, nor seen the programme-note extending the composer’s life by six years), with a wonderful air of civilised discussion, thinking and reacting as one, full of dynamic subtlety. Yet there was also tentativity in attack, not least in the openin...

  CBSO at Symphony Hall ★★★★ Admirers of Shakespeare’s tragedy ‘Romeo and Juliet’ received a bonus with this concert – not one but two pairs of ‘star-crossed lovers’ in musical guise. First came a suite by Borys Lyatoshynsky, a Ukrainian composer whose work has become better known due to the advocacy of his countryman, the conductor Kirill Karabits, who esteemed him “as probably Ukraine’s most important composer of the 20 th  century.” The suite was composed in 1955, originally as incidental music for a performance of the play, and is a tuneful and deftly orchestrated piece, beginning almost like a concerto for orchestra with Lyatoshynsky bringing each section forward to take a bow as it were. Textures are often gossamer but he gives them ballast with healthy doses of brass. The succeeding ‘Pavane’ is the musical highlight, with pizzicato fiddles, a tinkling tambourine, underpinned by stately brass and percussion. A terrific piece of costume drama music – and that’s not dispar...