Midlands Classical Music Making

                                             TRIAL BY JURY/ HMS PINAFORE The National Gilbert and Sullivan Opera Company                                            At Malvern Theatre *** The company’s title sounds grand and imposing, the reality is somewhat different, with so many variable standards in performance. What is undeniably laudable is the unashamedly traditional set-designs of these productions, a forbidding courtroom for Trial, a properly nautical foredeck for Pinafore. These cameos by Gilbert and Sullivan are firmly set both in the period of their creation and the period of their action,   and any directorial gimmickry can only show up frailties in their structure. So full marks to the company for this. Not so laudable is the varying standard of delivery, and therein lies the problem for any audience outside the G&S diehards. We had here a portrayal of a main character straight out of the Savoyard mould so appreciated by devotees, Simon Butteriss’ Sir Joseph

  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