Midlands Classical Music Making

                                             RODGERS AND HAMMERSTEIN                              John Wilson and the Sinfonia of London at Symphony Hall ***** It is a long time since I have been in a Symphony Hall packed to the rafters, with such an atmosphere of expectation, and an audience agog and appreciative of every note. And what engendered all this? The eagerly-awaited appearance of John Wilson and his remarkable Sinfonia of London in a Rodgers and Hammerstein programme, hot on the heels of their CD releases of ultra-complete performances of that more than talented duo’s Oklahoma! and Carousel. Wilson, now mended from a serious ...

                               ELGAR: SYMPHONY NO.1, IN THE SOUTH                              English Symphony Orchestra, Kenneth Woods                              ESO Records   Even before we begin to listen to this well-intentioned release there is a problem.  Why on earth put the Overture at the end, when listeners might well wish just to sit and ponder the peroration of the Symphony, perhaps while savouring the informative and indeed moving insert-notes? So I shall impose my own playing order, and review Elgar’s In the South Overture first. Th...

  Norman Stinchcombe reviews the latest classical CD releases Strauss, ‘Salome’: Byström, Dalayman, Reuter, Siegel, Bergen Philharmonic Orchestra / Gardner (Naxos 2CDs & SACDs) ★★★★ The raison d'etre of Strauss’s once scandalous opera is Salome’s dance of the seven veils. The first question about any opera production is will or won’t the soprano take off her clothes? This 2022 Edinburgh International Festival production was a concert performance and the only naked thing in Salome’s dance was the stage. The music had to do all the work and this performance under Edward Gardner, with the Bergen orchestra at the top of their game, reveals how exciting, disturbing and revealing just the notes can be. Gardner also has a fine cast at his disposal with Malin Byström, world’s reigning Salome, in mesmerising form, salacious, seductive and deadly with a convincingly young-sounding voice. There’s a noble Jochanaan from Johan Reuter and the malicious parents, Herodias (Katarina Dalayman) a...

  JOHN WILSON CONDUCTS RODGERS AND HAMMERSTEIN AT SYMPHONY HALL                                            By Christopher Morley Anyone who loves the classic stage musicals will have been delighted at the recent CD releases on the Chandos label from John Wilson, conducting the Sinfonia of London in ultra-complete versions of two of the world’s greatest shows, Oklahoma! and Carousel, by Rodgers and Hammerstein Now he and his wonderful orchestra, plus a glittering lineup of soloists, are preparing to bring an evening of those great creators to Symphony Hall. When I speak to him he is recovering from breaking his left arm whilst cycling (stick to the car, I always say), but it will all be all right on the night. I ask him how he would describe the greatness of Richard Ro...

  Norman Stinchcombe reviews the latest classical CD releases Janáček, ‘Jenůfa’: Eichenholz, Karnéus, Wilson, Spence, Briscein, London Symphony Orchestra & Chorus / Rattle (LSO Live 2 CDs & SACDs)  ★★★★★ Sir Simon Rattle has been an advocate of Janáček’s music for more than forty years and following ‘The Cunning Little Vixen’ and ‘Katya Kabanova’, this is his latest in a series of the composer’s operas recorded in concert. They were both excellent and this is perhaps the best so far with an outstanding cast bringing to vivid life Janáček’s intense and visceral tale of sexual jealousy, family strife and infanticide. Rattle and the LSO’s mastery of Janáček’s spiky angular music, and it’s ability to flower into moments of intense beauty and hope, are the foundations for a riveting performance. Swedish soprano Agneta Eichenholz, following in the tradition of her countrywoman Elisabeth S ö derstr ö m, makes Jenůfa’s emotional plight convincing, her singing passionate and se...

  BENJAMIN BRITTEN, A LIFE IN MUSIC By Timothy Gilbert Timothy Gilbert lives in quiet retirement at home in Walsall – and he has produced an illuminating book on Benjamin Britten, exploring aspects of the composer’s work rarely touched on before. More of that later, but first I ask him about the path which brought him to a love of one of this country’s greatest composers. “I went to Queen Mary’s Grammar School in Walsall, and then on to Sidney Sussex College in Cambridge to read History. But in order to escape Physics at ‘O’-level four of us opted to take ‘O’-level music; I was the only one who passed! “I had taken clarinet lessons up to Grade 3 and 4, but had given up on the piano after Grade 1 because of the pressures at the Grammar School. But Radio 3’s ‘This Week’s Composer’ was a wonderful companion! “One of the set works for ‘O’-level was Britten’s St Nicolas cantata, and I was captivated by its melodic freshness, and its resourcefulness deployed so skilfully for amate...

                                         RODERICK WILLIAMS Royal Pump Rooms, Leamington Spa ***** Much-loved baritone Roderick Williams gave the Leamington Festival “a Taste of the Exotic” on Sunday lunchtime, and, boy, didn’t he just! This was such a well-researched programme, full of discoveries which he and pianist Andrew West shared with us so enthusiastically, and Williams’ friendly, engaging introductions were the icing on a cake of wonderful performances. The Festival’s commemoration of the 50th anniversary of the death of Sir Arthur Bliss was continued with his Siege, an early song delivered with driving energy before its enigmatic final note. As throughout the recital, Williams’ body-language, resourceful eye-deployment  and shadings within the vocal registers added to the communication of the music, as did West’s mercurial, responsive alert acco...

 MARK BEBBINGTON Royal Pump Rooms, Leamington Spa ***** Long a major international pianist, Mark Bebbington has equally long been a champion of British music, and this year his attention has turned naturally to former Master of the Queen’s Musick Sir Arthur Bliss, who died 50 years ago. Bliss features largely in this year’s vibrant Leamington Music Festival, and Bebbington’s enthralling lunchtime recital last Saturday featured two works from opposite ends of the composer’s life. Masks, written in 1924, sparkles with an almost Gallic wite and clarity, surely qualifying Bliss as an honorary seventh member of Les Six, while Triptych (1970) profoundly combines both energy and regret, an epitaph of loss (including the composer’s younger brother, killed in the Great War) and, as Bebbington himself indicated, “an anthem for our own troubled times”. Both were given with the pianist’s legendary command of texture, colouring of an extreme range of dynamics, and resourcefully subtle pedal...

  Norman Stinchcombe reviews the latest classical CD releases Verdi ‘Simon Boccanegra’ original version: Alcántara, Nakamura, Thomas, Ayón-Rivas, Chorus of Opera North, RNCM Opera Chorus, Hallé / Elder (Opera Rara 2 CDs) ★★★★★ Composers have often revised operas and Verdi, ever the perfectionist, was no exception. Those revisions include minor dramaturgical ones caused by censorship (‘Un ballo in maschera’) and a change of language from performances in Italy to Paris (‘Don Carlo’ and ‘Don Carlos’) but also Verdi’s revamped versions were made to rescue works which had become unfashionable and bring them into line with his later very different style. In 2003 the Opera Rara label released a recording of Verdi’s original 1847 version of ‘Macbeth’, with different arias, giving fascinating comparisons with Verdi’s familiar 1865 version. In his excellent booklet essay for the new recording of the 1857 original version of ‘Simon Boccanegra’, Roger Parker raises the question “of whether Ver...

  ST MATTHEW PASSION Ex Cathedra at Symphony Hall **** This was authenticity with no holds barred. Not only did we have the excellent period-instrument Ex Cathedra Baroque Orchestra at lower pitch, Jeffrey Skidmore also Tardised us back to the circumstances of the original performance of Bach’s St Matthew Passion in 1727, given as part of Good Friday Vespers, surrounded by liturgy and interspersed with a sermon (oh, those unforgiving pews in Leipzig’s Thomaskirche!). So here we were topped and tailed with organ preludes (the excellent Rupert Jeffcoat), imported choral offerings, and a congregational hymn. There was also an interval sermon, recitations of texts by Ben Okri and Dietrich Bonhoeffer.  All of this was rationalised in Skidmore’s excellent and engaging programme-notes, but what of the actual performance of Bach’s miraculous score? Under Skidmore’s discreet direction this was a flowing, lightly-textured account, unforced in its projection, and achieving a fin...

  FAZIL RAISES THE ROOF CBSO at Symphony Hall ★★★★★ In 1928 Ravel visited America for a four month-long concert tour and a party was held in his honour in New York. There’s a photograph of the occasion with Ravel at the piano surrounded by admirers who are all looking at the society photographer’s camera. Except for one young man who gazes downward intently, eyes focused on Ravel’s hands on the keyboard – it’s George Gershwin. Set on composing “serious” music the young American asked Ravel to give him composition lessons. Ravel looked thoughtful and asked Gershwin, the toast of Broadway and writer of million-sellers like ‘Fascinating Rhythm’ and ‘Someone to Watch over Me’, how much he had earned in the last year. Gershwin told him. Ravel smiled and said he had nothing to teach him. But Ravel learned something from George and jazz music, Gershwin played him ‘Rhapsody in Blue’ and took him to see Duke Ellington perform at the Cotton Club. Ravel lapped it up and the results are distil...

  A MIXED MAHLER 9 CBSO at Symphony Hall ★★★ In the Musical Claptrap Stakes, the race to determine which work has the most egregious nonsense written about it, one contender is furlongs ahead of the rest – Mahler’s Symphony No.9. Mahler may have been superstitious but surely couldn’t have believed in the “curse of the ninth symphony” – invented post hoc by Schoenberg – which allegedly claimed the lives of Beethoven and Bruckner. This dubious assertion was used in last month’s programme on ‘Das Lied von der Erde’ and appears to have been cut-and-pasted into conductor Kazuki Yamada introductory notes where he adds; ‘Mahler expected his death to be very near when he wrote this symphony.” Says who? Not Mahler, who soon started on a tenth symphony with every expectation of finishing it. No, pneumonia and Mahler’s gruelling 8,000 mile round trips to New York to conduct at the Metropolitan Opera were responsible for his death, not compositional hubris. When beginning writing the ninth in ...