Midlands Classical Music Making

  Norman Stinchcombe reviews the latest classical CD releases The great symphonies are amenable to different interpretations, surely one of the necessary conditions of being a great piece of music. Dvorak’s late symphonies are in that category and there are plentiful rewards to be had from recordings by conductors and orchestras with different approaches as two newly released sets show.  Dvorak: Czech Philharmonic /  Semyon Bychkov  (Pentatone 2CDs)  ★★★★ was taken from performances of the Symphonies 7-9 in the Dvorak Hall at the Rudolfinum in Prague last year. As the orchestra’s chief conductor and music director Bychkov has formed an acclaimed partnership with his Czech players at home and on tour. The LSO Live label is 25 years-old and is celebrating with a remastered set from of Dvorak’s Symphonies 6-9 conducted by Sir Colin Davis, D vorak, Janacek, Smetana: London Symphony Orchestra / Davis / Rattle (LSO Live 4 CDs & SACDs)  ★★★★  Both sets are great value for money and come w

  HOW THINGS STAND WITH THE CBSO The plans of the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra management to attract a diversity of new listeners off the city’s streets and into the concert-hall have caused consternation among regular audiences, subscribers, donors, and indeed legacy-givers. There has been much backtracking from the original proposals, issued in late November 2023, which included invitations to applaud whenever people felt like it, bring your drinks in, video the performance and your entourage enjoying it (and then send it in for publicity material), explanatory greetings from the platform at every concert, a more welcoming approach from front-of-house staff (a terrible affront to the expertise and experience of the stewards who have greeted us at Symphony Hall for a third of a century).   There was also an inference that the orchestra was racist, ageist and sexist (the expression “old white men” had been bandied around in some quarters). The filming raised a couple of

                 ANDREW DOWNES PERFORMANCE PRIZE   A new international music competition launches at the Ruddock Performing Arts Centre, King Edward’s School, Edgbaston on September 22. The Andrew Downes Performance Prize, bringing £1000 to the winner, is designed to perpetuate the memory of this well-loved Midlands composer who died in January 2023. Downes’ music is performed worldwide, and this competition specifies that entrants, whether soloists or chamber ensembles, learn and play one of his compositions in the Final. Anna Downes, Andrew’s daughter, tells me how the competition was born.   “Originally, the prize was put in place when Dad won compensation for medical negligence which left him in a wheelchair. As Dad could no longer travel to promote his music, part of the compensation was so that he could find alternative means of ensuring his legacy.   “With the excellent support of David Saint at Royal Birmingham Conservatoire (where Dad had been Head of Creative

  CBSO’s Pre-Proms ‘Pictures’ a huge hit CBSO at Symphony Hall ★★★★ There’s no getting around the fact that Ravel’s orchestration of Mussorgsky’s ‘Pictures at an Exhibition’ is unbeatable. So powerful is its spell that on returning to the piano original it can seem pallid and details from Ravel – like the insistent whining trumpet to mimic the downtrodden Schmuÿle – become superimposed by our inner ear. Other arrangements by everyone from Ashkenazy, who conducted his own version at Symphony Hall in the 1990s, to Stokowski can seem drab, garish or bombastic. In May the CBSO under  Kazuki  Yamada performed Sir Henry Wood’s 1915 orchestration which preceded Ravel by seven years. I enjoyed it immensely and although it won’t supersede Ravel – when  Wood  heard that version he withdrew his own from performance – there’s surely room for an alternative version. It was  immensely popular  at Wood’s  own  Promenade Concerts and it’s fitting that the CBSO will be playing it the night after this c

  Norman Stinchcombe  reviews the latest classical CD releases Meyerbeer ‘Le Prophète’: Soloists, Lyon Opera Chorus, Mediterranean Youth Orchestra, London Symphony Orchestra / Sir Mark Elder (LSO Live 3 CD & SACD)  ★★★★★ Premiered at the Paris Opera in 1849 Giacomo Meyerbeer’s grand opera ‘ Le Prophète’   was huge in every way – length, ambition, scale and success. Its five acts lasted over six hours with elaborate staging and spectacular effects; the first use of electric arc light to represent the blazing sunrise, a full-size skating rink and an explosive ending when a German palace is blown up and everyone perishes in the flames. Wagner sneered about “effects without causes” but then nicked the ending for the climax of ‘G ötterdämmerung’. Times and tastes change and grand opera is hardly performed now. No performances of  ‘ Le Prophète’   exist on DVD and the only full scale recording on disc – the 1970s showcase for Marilyn Horne and conducted by her husband Henry Lewis – has b

                               CAROUSEL                                                           John Wilson and the Sinfonia of London (Chandos) *****   The greatest sorrow of my other life as a conductor, chiefly of musicals, is that I never got to conduct two of the greatest shows in the canon, Guys and Dolls, and, above all, Carousel. Now this new Chandos CD release of Rodgers and Hammerstein’s masterpiece telling of life in a New England fishing village has quickened those regrets, bringing every last bar of that tremendous show, including numbers and entr’actes, as well as snippets of dialogue, which we never get the opportunity to hear in staged performances. John Wilson and his tremendous Sinfonia of London bring the same zest and affection to this performance of Carousel as they recently did to their complete Oklahoma!, and the result is a treasurable compilation of this offering from Rodgers and Hammerstein on their greatest form. There is a real sense of “compan

  LA BOHEME                                            Longborough Festival Opera ****   From high-minded, earnest Norse mythology, Gods annihilated in a wiped-out Valhalla, Longborough has now brought us back to earth with real people with their feet on the ground in Puccini’s verismo masterpiece, La Boheme. Puccini did admire Wagner, however, using his Leitmotive reminiscence techniques at crucial moments, and even referring to the Valkyrie Magic Fire music as the poet Rodolfo burns a precious manuscript in order to keep himself and his flatmates warm against the Parisian Christmas Eve chill. Longborough’s new production of opera’s most-renowned love story brings us a uniformly brilliant cast of principals, headed by the simply stunning Mimi of Elin Pritchard. Her body-language as a waif-like consumptive is totally convincing, but her voice soars above all tribulations, coloured and shaded, gradually collapsing in tone as her end approaches. The quartet of aspiring studen

                                                            CBSO YOUTH ORCHESTRA ACADEMY                                                           Birmingham Town Hall ***** It wasn’t a youth orchestra we heard on Sunday, it was a fully-fledged ensemble of young professionals, mature of tone, impeccable in intonation, expert in articulation and attack. This was the CBSO Youth Orchestra Academy, brilliantly coached by players from the world-class CBSO, and brought together under the experienced, wise, empowering baton of conductor Michael Seal. No scraping, no thinness, no allowance-craving, this was music-making to be enjoyed at the highest level, beginning with Haydn’s “Clock” Symphony, written for a crack London orchestra in 1794, and receiving an equally crack performance here. There were some delicious wind contributions, not least the solo flute in the third movement’s Trio section (foreshadowing by well over a century the fairground flute solos in Stravinsky’s Petrushka and

I found this on the website of Kazuki Yamada's "other" orchestra, the Monte Carlo Philharmonic. The tenets are diametrically opposed to those of the CBSO. " Food and beverages may not be consumed in the concert hall.  6. Photography and recording  It is strictly forbidden to film, photograph or record.  Mobile phones must be switched off for the duration of the show." Is he happy with a foot in both camps?

  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