Midlands Classical Music Making

                               MELVYN TAN                                            Town Hall, Stratford-upon-Avon There are no gimmicks or razzmatazz with Melvyn Tan. For decades he has been a pianist of immense gifts content with presenting great music to the listener simply, and without intruding any distortions. To Sunday’s Stratford Chamber Music audience he offered a programme   reflecting his long-time absorption in early music to which he added a more recent interest with post-classic composers. The musicianship was never beyond doubt, crisp phrasing, neat ornamentation, two hands becoming as one with a conversational ...

                               BRITISH WOMEN COMPOSERS                                            Holy Trinity Church, Royal Leamington Spa It’s very rare that I review video links, but this one has just reached me of a highly promising cello-and-piano duo, Chinese students at Royal Birmingham Conservatoire, who organised a lunchtime recital a couple of months ago in this church which has such a strong musical tradition. And cellist Zimin Cheng and pianist Jinshuo Zhang didn’t let these august surroundings down, delivering a meticulously-rehearsed programme of Doreen Carwithen (at last emerging from undeserved obscurity), Elisabeth ...

  CBSO at Symphony Hall ★★★★ This century has seen the belated rise of the female composer. It’s a welcome sign of the times that the CBSO’s composer-in-residence this season is Anna Clyne. Ruth Gipps, who died in 1999, had close connections with the CBSO: she played oboe with the orchestra while her husband Robert Baker was on clarinet. With that first hand knowledge of wind instruments it’s no surprise that the current CBSO section enjoyed themselves performing her mercurial Wind Sinfonietta from 1991 which zips through four contrasted movements in a quarter of an hour, opening with a Pastoral where Rachael Pankhurst’s cor anglais excelled, and a lively scherzo which showcased the orchestra’s horn players. Few better to conduct the piece than François Leleux, once an orchestral principal oboist and renowned soloist, before taking up the baton. He took both roles in Debussy’s Rhapsody for Cor Anglais and Orchestra which began life as a work for saxophone, but never got past the sk...

                                             WINDSOR FESTIVAL                                            St George’s Chapel, Windsor *****   Though the theme of this brilliantly-planned concert was obviously celebrating the continuing musical links between Britain and America after 250 years of American independence, there was also an underlying celebration, Martin Denny’s Silver Jubilee as artistic director of the Windsor Festival. Martin cut his teeth in arts management working for Stephannie Williams Artists in Stratford-uoon-Avon, and was appointed to W...

  Norman Stinchcombe reviews the latest classical CDs Janáček, ‘The Excursions of Mr Brouček’: Hoare, Crowe, Briscein, Tenebrae, London Symphony Orchestra / Rattle (LSO Live 2 CDs & SACDs) ★★★★★ For those who know Janácek’s operatic output from the domestic dramatic tragedies ‘Katya Kabanova’ and ‘Jenufa’ or the charming nature fantasy ‘The Cunning Little Vixen’ – all recorded by the LSO under Sir Simon Rattle – the partnership’s latest release will be a disorientating mind-boggler. The conductor puts it succinctly: “‘The Excursions of Mr Broucek’ is probably his most eccentric opera, and for Janácek that’s really saying something. It’s beautiful, off-the-charts surreal, and nobody can really imagine what he was thinking when he wrote it.” Don’t let that put you off though, it’s good fun and receives a super performance from singers and orchestra, vividly recorded with a straight-from-the-footlights immediacy. Yorkshire tenor Peter Hoare brings to life the boozy, sausage-eating...

                               THE MARRIAGE OF FIGARO                                Wild Arts at Birmingham Repertory Theatre ***** That Birmingham is becoming an operatic desert is undeniable. Welsh National Opera used to bring three fortnight-long seasons to Birmingham Hippodrome, one of the country’s finest lyric theatres especially rebuilt to accommodate the company’s lavish productions. Now its presence has evaporated. As in WNO’s case, other touring companies have become conspicuous by their absence. Yes, there is the heroic Birmingham Opera Company, but this is certainly not opera at its grandest which should be a resident presence in England’s Second City. No wonder, then, that Birmingha...

  CBSO at Symphony Hall ★★★★ A lice Sara Ott’ s Symphony Hall concert in 2019 was a sombre occasion: a solo recital promoting her new album ‘ Nightfall’, with the platform swathed in black drapes illuminated by pinpricks of light. Unintentionally the setting matched the mood, for Ott had just been diagnosed with multiple sclerosis. Her playing, unsurprisingly, was muted and the concert cut short. Here though, all was effervescence and brilliance. G rieg’ s Piano Concerto was performed by a very different Ott – r efreshed, revitalised and raring to go. A sylph-like figure she pattered onto the platform bare-footed and then tore through Grieg’s titanic opening bars, with its tumbling cascade of notes, like a muscular giant. Nothing was routine in the virtuoso cadenza; Ott gave the impression of creating it spontaneously. The Adagio was gorgeous, Ott musing dreamily before bursting into an episode of romantic fervour. The CBSO, under Kazuki Yamada, gave excellent support right from th...