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                                                          MY 2025 HIGHLIGHTS

Two outstanding events at Birmingham’s Symphony Hall, right at the end of the year, crowned my highlights, one a welcome back reunion, the other a fond farewell.

In November Sir Simon Rattle returned to the concert-hall he had fought for for years, bringing the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra to such a standard that it was crying out for a performing space of world-class excellence, and in Hall 2 of the International Convention Centre they certainly got it. Having achieved so much for the orchestra, Rattle left in 1998, since then holding principal conductorships with the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra, the London Symphony Orchestra, and currently the remarkable Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra, which is the ensemble he brought to the Midlands, and to “his” hall.

The venue was packed, and the acclaim greeting Rattle’s arrival on the platform was warm, grateful and highly charged. His programme began with Schumann’s Second Symphony and concluded with Stravinsky’s complete score for the Firebird ballet – the first piece Rattle and the CBSO played in public on the heady night Symphony Hall opened, on April 15 1991. That was a prominent memory when Simon and I had an emotional reunion backstage after this BRSO concert.

A few weeks later, Simon Rattle’s principal cello at the CBSO, Eduardo Vassallo, retired after 36 years with the orchestra. The reception greeting Vassallo as he took the stage was equally ecstatic, as were the plaudits from his orchestral colleagues. This was an all-Richard Strauss concert, and returning for the Oboe Concerto was Jonathan Kelly, Simon Rattle’s principal oboe at the CBSO and subsequently at the Berlin Phil, and an old mucker of Eduardo’s.

My opera highlight was Welsh National Opera’s witty, resourceful production of Leonard Bernstein’s Candide. This is always such a difficult opera to stage (which version? is it opera, operetta, or a musical?), but WNO solved all the problems joyously, with cartoon-like computer-generated scenic designs, almost three-dimensional a joy to behold.

This made up for walking out of their ill-imagined Tosca the previous evening, definitely a lowlight.

Christopher Morley

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