Midlands Classical Music Making

  Norman Stinchcombe reviews the latest classical CD releases Janáček, ‘Jenůfa’: Eichenholz, Karnéus, Wilson, Spence, Briscein, London Symphony Orchestra & Chorus / Rattle (LSO Live 2 CDs & SACDs)  ★★★★★ Sir Simon Rattle has been an advocate of Janáček’s music for more than forty years and following ‘The Cunning Little Vixen’ and ‘Katya Kabanova’, this is his latest in a series of the composer’s operas recorded in concert. They were both excellent and this is perhaps the best so far with an outstanding cast bringing to vivid life Janáček’s intense and visceral tale of sexual jealousy, family strife and infanticide. Rattle and the LSO’s mastery of Janáček’s spiky angular music, and it’s ability to flower into moments of intense beauty and hope, are the foundations for a riveting performance. Swedish soprano Agneta Eichenholz, following in the tradition of her countrywoman Elisabeth S ö derstr ö m, makes Jenůfa’s emotional plight convincing, her singing passionate and se...

  BENJAMIN BRITTEN, A LIFE IN MUSIC By Timothy Gilbert Timothy Gilbert lives in quiet retirement at home in Walsall – and he has produced an illuminating book on Benjamin Britten, exploring aspects of the composer’s work rarely touched on before. More of that later, but first I ask him about the path which brought him to a love of one of this country’s greatest composers. “I went to Queen Mary’s Grammar School in Walsall, and then on to Sidney Sussex College in Cambridge to read History. But in order to escape Physics at ‘O’-level four of us opted to take ‘O’-level music; I was the only one who passed! “I had taken clarinet lessons up to Grade 3 and 4, but had given up on the piano after Grade 1 because of the pressures at the Grammar School. But Radio 3’s ‘This Week’s Composer’ was a wonderful companion! “One of the set works for ‘O’-level was Britten’s St Nicolas cantata, and I was captivated by its melodic freshness, and its resourcefulness deployed so skilfully for amate...

                                         RODERICK WILLIAMS Royal Pump Rooms, Leamington Spa ***** Much-loved baritone Roderick Williams gave the Leamington Festival “a Taste of the Exotic” on Sunday lunchtime, and, boy, didn’t he just! This was such a well-researched programme, full of discoveries which he and pianist Andrew West shared with us so enthusiastically, and Williams’ friendly, engaging introductions were the icing on a cake of wonderful performances. The Festival’s commemoration of the 50th anniversary of the death of Sir Arthur Bliss was continued with his Siege, an early song delivered with driving energy before its enigmatic final note. As throughout the recital, Williams’ body-language, resourceful eye-deployment  and shadings within the vocal registers added to the communication of the music, as did West’s mercurial, responsive alert acco...

 MARK BEBBINGTON Royal Pump Rooms, Leamington Spa ***** Long a major international pianist, Mark Bebbington has equally long been a champion of British music, and this year his attention has turned naturally to former Master of the Queen’s Musick Sir Arthur Bliss, who died 50 years ago. Bliss features largely in this year’s vibrant Leamington Music Festival, and Bebbington’s enthralling lunchtime recital last Saturday featured two works from opposite ends of the composer’s life. Masks, written in 1924, sparkles with an almost Gallic wite and clarity, surely qualifying Bliss as an honorary seventh member of Les Six, while Triptych (1970) profoundly combines both energy and regret, an epitaph of loss (including the composer’s younger brother, killed in the Great War) and, as Bebbington himself indicated, “an anthem for our own troubled times”. Both were given with the pianist’s legendary command of texture, colouring of an extreme range of dynamics, and resourcefully subtle pedal...