Midlands Classical Music Making

  Puccini,‘Madama Butterfly’ CBSO at Symphony Hall ★★★★★ This was a triumphant end to a transitional, divisive and occasionally fractious first season under the new regime of Chief Executive Emma Stenning. Much of the vituperation and ridicule directed at the most outlandish of her ideas has been well-deserved. It has also had the unfortunate and unintended consequence of diverting attention away from an important truth of paramount importance – that the CBSO’s playing is as fine as it’s ever been, equalling their ‘90s heydays under Rattle. The ebullient newly anointed Music Director Kazuki Yamada has brought back joy and enthusiasm sorely missed during  Mirga Gražinytė-Tyla’ s short Covid-blighted reign. Sceptics may wince at his cult-of-personality presence and the synchronized hand-waving but only serial miserabilists can resist the infectious sense of fun. At the end of the performance a packed audience – the only classical concert of the season in which the Grand Tier was opened –

  Norman Stinchcombe reviews the latest classical CD releases Debussy & Strauss: Stagg, Melbourne Symphony Orchestra / Martin (MSO CD / SACD) ★★★★ Debussy’s song cycle ‘Ariettes oubliées’ (‘Forgotten Songs’) is aptly named since it is so seldom heard. Debussy composed the settings of six poems by Paul Verlaine for soprano and piano when in his twenties. This orchestral version by Australian composer Brett Dean, premiered in 2023, is a real find. Siobhan Stagg has the clear diction Debussy demanded combined with the requisite imagination to bring to life Verlaine’s sensual image-rich poetry. She captures the opening song’s sultry “l'extase langoureuse” and “la fatigue amoureuse” while in ‘Il pleure dans mon cœur’ (‘Tears fall in my heart’) – which compares falling rain to falling tears – Brett’s orchestration entrances with the slowly-falling hypnotic raindrops. It’s not all languor though; ‘Chevaux de Bois’ (the ‘Wooden Horses’ of a fairground roundabout) gallops in with Stagg’

                                                            THE STATE OF THE CBSO                                                           Christopher Morley The name of the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra glows all over the world as a beacon of excellence, with huge fan bases in every country appreciating classical music. Music-lovers in Japan were overjoyed when a talk I gave there seven years ago about the orchestra’s history, scheduled to last 15 minutes, ran to 45. Its recordings under conductors such as Louis Fremaux Simon Rattle, Sakari Oramo, Edward Gardner, Andris Nelsons and Mirga Grazinyte-Tyla are quite rightly ranked very highly. It now has an exciting new music director in the popular Kazuki Yamada. Everything in the garden should be lovely. But it isn’t. Last November the recently-appointed Chief Executive Officer Emma Stenning, replacing Stephen Maddock, who after a brilliant near quarter-century at the CBSO was moving on to do great things as Principal of

  Weilerstein wows in Barber’s Cello Concerto CBSO at Symphony Hall ★★★★ “ Wake-up call” is a much abused term. The England football team gets one every time it loses a friendly match 1-0 but still carries on dozing. Dvořák’s overture ‘Carnival’ is the genuine article, an electrifying musical wake-up call jump-starting the concert with an invigorating blast from Bohemia. The conductor Kevin John Edusei’s downbeat unleashed the CBSO for ten minutes of festive joy with Dvořák utilizing the orchestra from top to bottom with brass and horns providing a firm foundation while the tambourine rattled at the top – I can’t remember it being used to such good effect, and played so vigorously, in any other work. The gentle reflective inner section, with subtle but telling contributions from the wind section and leader Jonathan Martindale, hinted at the riches of Dvořák’s late masterpieces inspired by the folk tales of his fellow Bohemian Karel Jaromír Erben like ‘The Golden Spinning Wheel’. Why do

  THE IMPLAUSIBLE POTIONS OF DR DULCAMARA                              Playground Opera at Welcombe Hills School, Stratford-upon-Avon ***** Rarely have I had such a life-enhancing experience as that I was privileged to share at Welcombe Hills on Wednesday morning, along with 100 excited and enthusiastic children of all ages. Playground Opera is one of Longborough Festival Opera’s many educational outreach activities, and under the aegis of director Maria Jagusz and musical director Jessica May it takes mini-opera productions to a range of schools around the Cotwolds area. But Welcombe Hills is unique, catering as it does for those with special educational needs, all the children clapping in time, tapping their toes, rocking backwards and forwards and even putting their fingers in their ears in their instinctive response to the music-making delivered by Playground Opera’s remarkable little   company. The Implausible Potions of Dr Dulcamara, derived from Donizetti’s L’Elisir d’Am

                               RHEINGOLD DRESS REHEARSAL                                   Longborough Festival Opera ***** I was last in a dress rehearsal audience at Glyndebourne in 1966 (L’Heure Espagnole and Janet Baker in Dido and Aeneas). Since then I have conducted many such rehearsals, but yesterday it was a joy to be an audience member again, soaking up the atmosphere as Longborough Festival Opera presented the dress rehearsal of Wagner’s Rheingold, launching this year’s Ring cycle (to be given three times). Longborough combines Glyndebourne with Bayreuth, a winning combination which I have always enjoyed so much reviewing from this amazing Cotswold company for well over a quarter of a century. The atmosphere yesterday was so relaxed, people picnicking beforehand (no intervals in Rheingold), no sartorial showoffs, and the back half of this jewel of an opera-house packed with enthusiasts (the front half the domain, quite rightly, of techies). We heard Anthony Negus, surel

  Adams’ musical elegy for the Earth CBSO at Symphony Hall ★★★★★ In 2014 Ludovic Morlot conducted the world premiere of ‘Become Ocean’ the first of American composer John Luther Adams’ ecological orchestral trilogy. It won the Pulitzer Prize and Morlot conducted the 2015 Grammy award-winning recording of the work.So we were in experienced hands for the UK Premiere of Adams’ ‘Vespers of the Blessed Earth’ with Morlot at the helm. It’s a big work: around fifty minutes occupying the concert’s first half, and utilizing a large orchestra with extra percussion, choral forces and a solo soprano. Adams name-checks Monteverdi’s masterpiece as an inspiration with the work’s plaintive prayers addressed not to Virgin but to the Earth itself in all its “complexity and mystery”. To dismiss this as New Age healing-crystal-speak would be wrong. Adams’ ecological concerns are grounded in experience; before becoming a full-time composer he was an environmental activist, moving to Alaska to campaign for

  CBSO at Symphony Hall ★★★★ Some composers abandon the muse of entertainment in search of the serious and profound. It seldom works out as time and audiences prove better judges. Arthur Sullivan composed ‘Ivanhoe’ and ‘The Muse of Antioch’ but we prefer ‘The Mikado’ and ‘Pirates of Penzance’. Paul McCartney’s ‘Liverpool Oratorio’ and ‘Standing Stone’ are career footnotes while ‘Hey Jude’ and ‘Yesterday’ prove evergreen. For Leonard Bernstein being the toast of Broadway and Hollywood wasn’t enough and so came portentous and pretentious behemoths like his ‘Kaddish’ Symphony and ‘Mass’. Happily this concert was bookended by works that show Bernstein’s compositional forte, a cunning blend of classical, jazz and pop with a wonderful ear for melody and witty orchestration. The conductor Fabien Gabel launched into a scintillating performance of the overture from ‘Candide’ – Bernstein’s finest foray into opera – with the CBSO on their toes. It’s a miracle of compression, a five-minute zip thr

                                             KALEIDOSCOPE CHAMBER COLLECTIVE                                            St James’s Church, Chipping Campden ***** Chipping Campden Music Festival’s programming is always magnetic in its fascination, and this offering from the remarkable Kaleidoscope Chamber Collective was brilliant in its powers of attraction. Its theme was Vienna, beginning innocently enough with Beethoven’s C major String Quintet,   delivered with total empathy and ideal balance, but Kaleidoscope’s warm, intimate tones perhaps a tad lacking in outward projection. The remainder of the programme embroiled us in the febrile atmosphere of expressionist Vienna and its incestuous artistic relationships. Now expanded into a sextet, the players were joined by Francesca Chiejina, positioned at the centre of a symmetrical arc of strings, her opened-eyed, vulnerable soprano acutely responsive to four songs by Alma Mahler, their string arrangements here revealing textural r

                               PIERRE-LAURENT AIMARD                                            St James’ Church, Chipping Campden *****   Charlie Bennett’s legacy lives on! During his long tenure as Artistic Director of the Chipping Campden Music Festival he developed an impressive roster of visiting international artists, not least those renowned as exponents of his own beloved instrument, the piano. If you can attract the likes of Alfred Brendel and Elisabeth Leonskaja to this off-the-beaten-track Cotswolds village, then you ain’t doing too badly. Now Charlie has retired, but the future is safe in the hands of Thomas Hull and Jessica May, and the visits of the world’s greatest pianists continue. It was my privilege to be present at the absorbing, life-enhancing recital given by Pierre-Laurent Aimard. His was a programme stimulating both intellectually and emotionally, beginning with Bach’s B-flat Partita, maintaining a forward rhythmic flow whilst allowing all the neatly

  Best of Both Worlds – Old meets New CBSO at Symphony Hall ★★★★ The Victorians’ judgement on children – that they should be seen but not heard – ought usually apply to conductors. Joshua Weilerstein was an exception, with a short, pithy platform address and outlined the theme of this cogently constructed concert. Contradiction was the keyword: four works whose nature or circumstances of composition were in tension but harmoniously reconciled. Then he launched the CBSO into the Czech composer Pavel Haas’s ‘Study for Strings’ which, like a white dwarf star, packs enormous energy into a tiny space – just seven minutes. The exhilarating opening shouts life-affirmation, while Haas’s use of canonic imitation was thrilling, starting with second fiddles against violas, then cellos, first and finally basses entering the fray. He slips in a brief elegiac slow movement before a final arms-raised dash to the finishing line, winningly played by the CBSO strings. Yet Haas wrote this joyous miniatur

                                             THE DRAGON OF WANTLEY                                            New Sussex Opera at Devonshire Park Theatre, Eastbourne   I have seen two previous presentations of John Frederick Lampe’s burlesque opera, and enjoyed them both greatly, but this new production by New Sussex Opera is the most inventive and exhilarating by far. Lampe’s spoof on Handelian grand opera is brilliantly constructed, built upon Henry Carey’s absolutely scintillating libretto. It leaves no stone of the genre unturned, and Handel himself loved it greatly. Whereas Handel’s operas take place in classical times, set in exotic locations, Lampe’s opera takes us to a village in South Yorkshire, peopled by common folk instead of great luminaries, and its three acts take half the time of one of Handel’s offerings. The chorus in Handelian opera is generally a minor consideration, a mere assemblage of all the principals creating an ensemble to round off proceedings in t

  Norman Stinchcombe reviews the latest classical CD releases Britten: Soloists, London Symphony Orchestra & Chorus / Rattle (LSO Live SACD / CD) ★★★★★ Simon Rattle has always been an enthusiastic advocate of Benjamin Britten’s music, performing and recording most of the composer’s major concert works with the CBSO – with one important omission. That’s put right on this disc with a sparkling live recording of Britten’s ‘Spring Symphony’, a joyous work celebrating the emergence from winter into a rejuvenated world – very apt for 1949 with Europe recovering after a world war. Britten always showed an acute taste in selecting texts and sets English poets from Spenser and Milton to Auden, finishing off with the medieval round ‘Sumer is icumen in’. The LSO Chorus are joined by the eager young voices of the Tiffin Boys’ Choir, Tiffin Children’s Chorus and The Tiffin Girls’ School Choir for a hugely enjoyable energized performance with a trio of outstanding soloists, Elizabeth Watts (sopr

  Sun, Sea and Sirens from Debussy and Ravel CBSO at Symphony Hall ★★★★ To contemporary eyes and ears the poems Ravel set for his song cycle ‘Shéhérazade’ are the epitome of what the cultural critic Edward Said labelled “Orientalism”. This is where non-Westerners are reduced to crudely demeaning stereotypes, usually colourful, violent passionate primitives. In the first song ‘Asie’ (Asia) we have: “dark faces with gleaming teeth”; “dark amorous eyes”; “skins as yellow as oranges”; “smiling murderers”; “roses and blood”. A century ago, however, this homage to the fantastic tales of the Arabian Nights was taken as intended – a kaleidoscope of colourful images from never-never land. Ravel clothes it in suitably light and luminous musical costumes and soprano Elizabeth Llewellyn lovingly caressed poet Tristan Klingsor’s images from the “wonderful land of nursery stories” derived from a delirious, perhaps narcotically enhanced, vision. In ‘L'indifférent’ Llewellyn conveyed the narrator’

                               A BUSY ELGAR FESTIVAL 2024   The kaleidoscope of offerings making up Elgar Festival 2024 is too generous to take in at one sitting, the near week-long event bringing celebration, education, encouragement, surprise elements and even a car rally. There is a strong local feel to the whole affair, reflecting Elgar’s love of the Worcestershire countryside and in particular his affinity with the Malvern Hills. And it is Malvern which brings us the car rally,   the 2024 Morgan Sports Car Club rally, heading off from the Morgan Motor Factory at 10.30am on May 28 and finishing at The Firs (Elgar’s Birthplace), Lower Broadheath, from 3.30pm The drivers can catch up there with the conclusion of a two-day Conducting Masterclass (beginning on May 27, first day of the Festival). Eight emerging conductors from all over the world will make a study of Elgar’s music with the help of musicians of the English String Orchestra under the guidance of Kenneth Woods and J