Midlands Classical Music Making

A REAL BRAN-TUB OF REVIEWS FROM NORMAN STINCHCOMBE C.P.E. BACH 'Sonatas & Rondos': Marc-Andre Hamelin (Hyperion 2 CDs) ★★★★★ After recording Haydn and Mozart the Canadian pianist is back exploring more esoteric repertoire – the keyboard works by the most talented of J.S. Bach's prodigious progeny. Carl Philipp Emanuel (1714-1788) saw the eclipse of baroque style and rise of the classical. His works encompass the switch from harpsichord and clavichord to fortepiano with its agility (no stops to change) and greater range of colour and dynamics. His short 'Farewell to my Clavier built by Silbermann', written in the style of his father, signals the transition. The amazing 'Freie Fantasie' in F sharp minor (H300) anticipates Romanticism and is dazzling in Hamelin's hands, justifying his use of a Steinway grand's full resources. The works here range from the fiery Sonata in F minor, the elegant E minor – a sonata-cum-suite – and astonishingly

POWERFUL, ANGRY TURNAGE PREMIERE QUATUOR MODIGLIANI St James' Church, Chipping Campden ***** Arguably the best thing to emerge from Brexit is Mark-Anthony Turnage's Split Apart, a substantial five-movement string quartet born of the composer's despair and anger at the outcome of the Brexit referendum. In an engaging pre-concert Question & Answer session at this year's continually enterprising Chipping Campden Festival Turnage confessed that this was the first time he had felt the confidence to tackle this most demanding of vehicles without the prop of other instruments. He referred to Beethoven, and indeed that greatest composer of string quartets casts a darkly benevolent presence over Split Apart, not only in its structure, but also in the slowly developing colloquy of the second movement. The fourth movement distorts and fragments the intervals of Beethoven's Ode to Joy (which of course became the great anthem of European unity), but here as we

NORMAN STINCHCOMBE ENTHUSES OVER CBSO'S BRUCKNER 6 WITH MIRGA CBSO at Symphony Hall ★★★★ The sixth is the odd man out of Bruckner's mature symphonies. An enigmatic work which is seldom-played and when it is often proves to be a conducting conundrum. Two recent recordings show conductors trying unsuccessfully to force the symphony into a more familiar, or at least consistent, shape. Thomas Dausgaard tried to increase excitement by fast tempi but made it sound chivvied and rushed; Andris Nelsons, usually a fine Brucknerian, slowed the Adagio down so much it lost shape, in a vain attempt to exalt it to the level of the seventh. Mirga Gražinytė-Tyla made no such mistakes, accepting the sixth's idiosyncrasies while revealing its many beauties. An interpretation-in-progress but one resolutely on the right track, eliciting playing of subtlety, trenchancy and power from the CBSO. There's no doubt the opening movement is a puzzle. The tense morse code motif from the s

CBSO DUTIFUL UNDER MIRGA CBSO Symphony Hall **** For all his legendary crustiness, Brahms was the most noble-hearted of composers. Despite an artificial feud between him and Wagner fomented by the Viennese musical press, on the day that composer died Brahms laid down his baton at a rehearsal, announced "today a genius has left us", and cancelled proceedings. Tchaikovsky couldn't stand Brahms, declaring him "that scoundrel, that talentless bastard", but here they both were on this CBSO matinee programme, one of the most popular works by each of them cheek-by-jowl. Before that, though, the concert began with an amazing rendition of a Ukrainian song delivered by the standing CBSO players, conductor Mirga Grazinyte-Tyla singing a solo, the afternoon's pianist Gabriela Montero making a heartwarming contribution. This was the CBSO showing its customary emotional generosity. Then Montero turned to the matter in hand, Tchaikovsky's Piano Concer

EMOTIONAL UKRAINE CONCERT AT THE ROYAL SHAKESPEARE THEATRE WORDS AND MUSIC FOR UKRAINE Orchestra of the Swan at the Royal Shakespeare Theatre, Stratford ***** This was a very special evening promoted by the Stratford-on-Avon Music Festival with willing co-operation from the Orchestra of the Swan and the Royal Shakespeare Company, all making themselves available for free, with all takings going to the Disasters Emergency Committee co-ordinating assistance to Ukrainian families Emotion was already overflowing as we stood for the State Anthem of Ukraine, and the house was packed. Encouragingly there seemed to be many novices at attending an orchestral concert, and after the heartening enthusiasm they expressed throughout this unique evening I am sure we shall seem thronging OOTS audiences in future. Three distinguished actors – Jim Broadbent, Mogali Masuku and Sam West -- donated their services, Broadbent delivering a particularly telling extract from the originally-suppressed

YAMADA ENCHANTS US YET AGAIN CBSO Symphony Hall***** Libel laws won't permit me to name the many conductors who cavort for the gallery, but there are some who have such an eloquence of body-language that it transmits every interpretative intention, and teases every detail from the players. Andris Nelsons is one thus gifted, and in Kazuki Yamada, the CBSO's Chief Conductor-elect, we now have another. He was like a goading, persuasive marionette, in what is indeed Prokofiev's toytown "Classical" Symphony. Uninhibited gestures mirrored those in this extrovert score, woodwind were encouraged to bubble and strings to bustle in this witty, elegant account. Only in the Gavotte did the shaping seem excessively rhetorical. Yamada then greeted us all with enthusiasm and warmth, flattering us as "a great audience", before introducing his compatriot Daishin Kashimoto, Concertmaster of the Berlin Philharmonic (who has therefore collaborated with Si