Midlands Classical Music Making

  ST JOHN PASSION Stratford Choral Society at Holy Trinity Church, Stratford **** Whereas Bach’s St Matthew Passion takes its time, reflecting upon the events of the Crucifixion, his St John Passion hustles us straight into the terrible drama, tight and concise as it involves us in the narrative, and Saturday’s performance from the Stratford Choral Society responded tautly and expressively. The orchestral opening, splendidly delivered by the period-performance Instruments of Time and Truth, whispered with gripping urgency, its tread leading forward to the powerful choral entry. Many multiples larger than Bach’s own choral forces in Leipzig, the SCS nevertheless sang with commendable lightness and balance under the gently authoritative conducting of Oliver Neal Parker This choral input of a very high standard was maintained throughout the evening, with the many chorales, originally reaching out to the Lutheran congregation, particularly effective (incidentally, John Bawden’s ...

  Norman Stinchcombe reviews the latest classical CD releases Donizetti ‘Songs’ Volumes  3  &  4 :  Spyres, Lemieux ,  Rizzi, Zappa  (Op era Rara   2  CD s available separately )  ★★★★★ Last year the enterprising Opera Rara label released the first two discs in a planned  eight volume survey of Donizetti’s songs, around 200 of them, many of which have  not been heard in decades. The project is masterminded by  Opera Rara’s  Repertoire Consultant Roger Parker  who has scoured musical archives in Europa and as far away as Australia searching for the opera composer’s solo songs. The first two volumes with  teno r  Lawrence Brownlee  and  baritone  Nicola Alaimo,  both accompanied on piano by conductor Carlo Rizzi,  were outstanding. Now come Volumes 3 and 4 with American singer Michael Spyres, accompanied by Rizzi, and Canadian Marie-Nicole Lemieux, accompanied by Giulio Zappa....

  STRAVINSKY’S DIAGHILEV BALLETS Kimichi Symphony Orchestra at Symphony Hall ***** If this feat has ever been accomplished before, then I’ve never heard of it. To perform any one of Stravinsky’s first three great Diaghilev ballets – Firebird, Petrushka, Rite of Spring – is a tour de force for any professional orchestra. To perform all three in one programme, and by a part-time orchestra of semi-professionals seems to be flying dangerously close to the sun or the wind. And the result was a triumphant return to earth after spreading glory. The Kimichi Symphony Orchestra, one hundred strong, gave more than impressive accounts of these taxing scores, demanding both technically and physically, under the supremely calm, reliable and reassuring baton of Keith Slade.  What is their secret, one might ask? The answers are brilliantly obvious: an inspirational conductor with a flawless stick-technique; enthusiastically motivated players devoted to their instruments; tight, efficient,...

 KIMICHI ORCHESTRA PERFORMS THE THREE GREAT STRAVINSKY BALLETS By Christopher Morley (for 20.3.25) Launched in 2014, the Acocks Green-based Kimichi School has a unique place among educational establishments in the West Midlands. It is an independent secondary school which has no barriers to ethnicity, disability or gender, and its main ethos is the fostering of musical awareness among every one of its students. Sally Alexander, herself a professional cellist awarded an MBE for services to education in the late Queen’s 2021 Birthday Honours list,, is its dynamic founder, and her nurturing of the school has run parallel with large-scale musical activities proudly spreading its name. And nothing gets larger than the event she has planned for Sunday afternoon at Symphony Hall on March 23.  All three of the great Stravinsky ballets composed for Sergei Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes – Firebird, Petrushka, Rite of Spring – are to be performed by the amateur Kimichi Symphony Orchestra, Ke...

 ALBERT HERRING Gas Street Central, Birmingham ***** Royal Birmingham Conservatoire’s production of Britten’s witty satire on smalltown life has proved a triumphant collaboration between several colleges, and high praise to all involved. The cast is a compact one (13 singers), so in fact the four performances have been able to feature two teams. I caught the Blue Cast on Saturday afternoon. Matinees are obviously congenial times for those of us of a certain age, and this versatile, performance-leaning church just off Birmingham’s lively Broad Street, was packed. Fortunately the RBC Department of Vocal and Operatic Studies hasn’t totally followed the example of the legendary late Graham Vick, who preferred to present shows in a variety of spaces, from factories to churches, and to get the audience to mill and shift around as participants, There wasn’t any of that nonsense here, just an opening dining-room and then a move to a resourceful thrust stage where we all had surrounding...

  ROYAL PHILHARMONIC SOCIETY AWARDS 2025 Royal Birmingham Conservatoire As such events are usually mired in metrocentricity, readers will forgive me for rejoicing that the Royal Philharmonic Society, coming out of London for its annual Awards Ceremony for only the second time in the Society’s 200-year  history, (last year was Manchester) should honour its Birmingham hosts with such an acknowledgement of the proud musical achievements of the West Midlands. Hosted by BBC Radio 3 presenters Jess Gillam and Tom McKinney for a programme to be broadcast the subsequent evening, the evening began with a performance of “Sometime I Sing” composed by a composer long associated with Ex Cathedra, Alec Roth, and performed by Ex Cathedra Student Scholars under the directorship of Jeffrey Skidmore. Other local organisations featured were the Wolverhampton Symphony Orchestra, nominated in the Inspiration category for its reach-out to the disabled; Ex Cathedra’s Singing Medicine brighteni...

  A SUBLIME MAHLER FAREWELL FROM THE CBSO CBSO at Symphony Hall ★★★★ Mahler’s orchestral song cycle ‘Das Lied von der Erde’ (‘The Song of the Earth’) has been straitjacketed into the symphony-in-all-but-name category. This arose from a notoriously unreliable source, his widow Alma, who claimed that Mahler superstitiously refused to name it as such because, as the concert programme has it,”no major composer had lived long after completing their ninth symphony. Beethoven and Bruckner seemed to prove the point.” So Mozart (41 symphonies) and Haydn (104 Symphonies) weren’t major composers? Nonsense of course but Alma was a serial mythologist. Listening to this passionate performance under conductor Alpesh Chauhan, making a welcome return to his home city, confirmed that song is the essence of this work and reinforces the judgement that Mahler was a genius when writing for voices. Which needs, of course, voices capable of doing justice to this sublime and vocally demanding work. Demandi...

  Norman Stinchcombe reviews the latest classical CD releases Ravel, ‘Daphnis et Chloé’: London Symphony Orchestra, Tenebrae / Sir Antonio Pappano (LSO Live CD & SACD) ★★★★★ Thirty years ago a new recording of Ravel’s complete ballet ‘Daphnis et Chloé’ would have faced intense competition in a crowded field. The deletions axe wielded by the international media conglomerates which control most of the classical music market has changed all that. So the classic 1950s analogue recording by Monteux and the LSO, fine digital recordings by Boulez, Dutoit, Ozawa and Levine – all owned by Universal – Rattle (Warner Classics) and Munch (Sony) have gone. Which makes this excellent release from the LSO’s own label doubly welcome. Ravel’s lush score demands a virtuoso orchestra: it needs to be subtle and diaphanous, as in the ‘Lever du jour’ (Sunrise) of Part II; swaggering and exuberant as the pirates burst onto the scene; and with reserves of power for the climactic ‘Danse générale’ (Bacc...