Midlands Classical Music Making

 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...

  AN ALMIGHTY HAYDN ‘CREATION’ CBSO at Symphony Hall ★★★★★ The scientific story of the creation of the universe arrived in 1931 when the physicist Georges Lemaître pictured it mysteriously arising from a single primeval atom. Haydn, a century and half before, presented the event more graphically, impressively and transcendentally without a single mathematical equation. His oratorio ‘The Creation’ begins with ‘The Representation of Chaos’ in a sinuously shifting hushed C minor which defeats our expectations by never reaching the musical closure we instinctively crave. Kazuki Yamada directed the CBSO as if in stealth mode, everything held in check. The bass Ashley Riches, towering over everyone as the Archangel Raphael, was just the man to intone, “In the beginning God created Heaven and Earth.” Enter the CBSO Chorus, hushed and subdued describing the Spirit of God surveying the inchoate darkness. Then comes one of the greatest coupes in classical music – another surprise from the ma...

  A SUPER PERFORMANCE OF DVORAK’S POPULAR CLASSIC CBSO at Symphony Hall ★★★★ In 1973 long before he found fame as the director of ‘Alien’, ‘Blade Runner’ and ‘Gladiator’ the young Ridley Scott directed a television commercial advertising Hovis bread. It showed a boy pushing a bicycle, its basket laden with loaves, up a steep cobbled village street to the sound of the Ashington Colliery brass band playing an evocatively nostalgic tune. In just 47 seconds it captured the heart of a sentimental nation and has been voted Britain’s favourite advert of all time. More pertinently it introduced millions of people to the Largo of Dvorak’s Symphony No.9 with an immortal and hummable melody which conjured up a “land of lost content”. Music graduates at specialist classical record stores – remember them?– were bemused by people wanting a record of “the Hovis theme”. Sales soared, Dvorak’s ‘New World’ Symphony became a guaranteed crowd-pleaser and half a century later it still is – as the full-...

  CBSO BENEVOLENT FUND CONCERT Symphony Hall ***** After many months away from the orchestra it was good to catch up with a CBSO in wonderful form, and on such a joyous occasion, a warm and packed audience joining in the annual celebration of the CBSO Benevolent Fund, and all it does to assist distressed musicians and staff. The players clearly adore performing under principal conductor Kazuki Yamada, indulging his all kinds of quirks from the podium, and following him down some surprise byways – of which there were many in the Tchaikovsky symphony which concluded this all-Russian programme. We began busily, with Shostakovich’s Festival Overture, no need for the composer to look over his shoulder for the KGB here, bubbling with woodwind (this was to be very much their afternoon), string detail scudding out of Yamada’s wide, sweeping, empowering beat. Then came a very different mood with the Tchaikovsky Violin Concerto, introversion desperately trying to liberate itself. Jam...

  A LONG DELAYED PREMIERE FOR THE CBSO CBSO at Symphony Hall ★★★★ When an orchestra announces the UK Premiere of a work then it’s normally of something new, novel, up-to-the minute. Akio Yashiro’s ‘Symphony for Large Orchestra’ was commissioned in 1958 so why perform it now? It would no doubt gain a little cultural credit for the CBSO’s forthcoming tour of Japan later this year while also being a personal indulgence for Kazuki Yamada. So what if it was? All the CBSO’s music directors have been allowed to ride their musical hobby horses: Simon Rattle conducted Nicholas Maw’s gigantic ‘Odyssey’, Sakari Oramo showcased the forgotten British composer John Foulds and Mirga proselytized for Weinberg. Yamada introduced his late countryman’s work to the British concert hall and a much wider audience via a Radio 3 live relay. Good for him. But perhaps that 67 year wait signified that the symphony isn’t very good? Having heard many CBSO premieres over the decades – some instantly forgettable...

  THE JOHN WILSON PIANO SPECTACULAR V Royal Northern College of Music **** Having managed to assemble eight grand pianos onto one stage I suppose it is inevitable that one would want to wring as much out of the behemoth as possible. This was certainly the case with John Wilson’s joyous 85th birthday event attracting an overflowing and enthusiastic audience of ex-students and well-wishers to the RNCM Concert Hall. Wilson inaugurated these five-yearly events in 2005, raising funds for the John Wilson Junior Fellowship in Accompaniment at the College where he has been such a respected presence as student and subsequently teacher; his association with the establishment now goes back 60 years. Eight colleagues and past students each man one of the instruments, generously donating their services to the cause, as does Timothy Reynish, directing from the podium. This year’s complement comprised Harvey Davies, Peter Donohoe, Julian Evans, Peter Lawson, Nicholas Rimmer, Martin Roscoe, ...

  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...

  MARK BEBBINGTON Wigmore Hall, London  Over the years Mark Bebbington has developed into a pianist with a remarkable mastery of texture, judiciously weighting the balance of his flexible hands to draw out and colour every line. This, allied with a wonderful warmth of dynamics, the softest of pianissimi never thin, the power of the beefiest fortissimo never ear-jangling, permits performances which are totally engrossing and always musically rewarding. A packed and enthusiastic Sunday morning audience at the Wigmore Hall responded to these qualities with a huge ovation at the end of a well-planned hour-long programme. which began with Cesar Franck’s mighty Prelude, Choral et Fugue. Waiting for the “Bernstein moment” (the precise moment the great maestro said was the only time to launch a performance), Bebbington set forth on a journey focussing our concentration as well as his own, building a sombre atmosphere in which the transitional passages became equally as impor...

 EX CATHEDRA St. Paul’s Church, Birmingham ***** One of the challenges of hitting on such a consistently winning formula as Ex Cathedra’s annual ‘Christmas Music by Candlelight’ series is that it’s all too easy to rest on one’s (programming) laurels. Perhaps mindful of this, Conductor Jeffrey Skidmore decided to mix things up a little this year with no fewer than four audience participation opportunities, necessitating a little rehearsal just before proceedings formally started. This pre-rehearsal certainly paid off in Judith Weir’s ‘My Guardian Angel’, the choir declaiming high above the audience’s 14-bar ‘Alleluia’ refrain before joining the theme themselves in harmony. The choristers also led the audience in a hearty rendition of ‘Auld lang syne’, Skidmore reminding us of the correct yet often misconstrued pronunciation. There was perhaps a touch more humour in evidence this year too: especially enjoyable was a ‘Somerset Wassail’, Skidmore himself taking the solo line from the p...

  CBSO at Symphony Hall ★★★★ The stage was set for something grand and imposing. Filled to overflowing with just short of a hundred players on the platform, nine basses in line along the back like sentries, the same number of horns on the left wing. We were treated to a performance of Bruckner’s Symphony No.9 that justified these massive forces. There are two main approaches to this valedictory work. The first sees it as the culmination of the nineteenth century tradition, gaunt, grand, broad in scope and tempi. The second as a precursor of twentieth century angst, existential doubt and terror. Kazuki Yamada adhered to the first path, his expansive, though never dragging, tempi approaching those of Giulini and the Vienna Philharmonic’s nonpareil recording of the work. The spell is cast in the opening notes, the groundwork of tremolando strings, and then a call from the horns presaging some mighty message – a wonderful start.The scherzo was just about perfect. Inspired by the scherz...