Midlands Classical Music Making

                                             BLAZE OF GLORY                                            Welsh National Opera at Wales Millennium Centre, Cardiff *****   Put quite simply, this is one of the most infectious, life-enhancing shows I have ever seen in nearly 60 years of reviewing, and I urge you not to miss it. The context is grim. This is 1953, and a mining community is faced with the imminent closure of its pit. So what do they do to raise morale? They form a male voice choir, and go from strength to strength, the whole tale underpinned by Davi...

                                             THE FLYING DUTCHMAN                                            Welsh National Opera at the Wales Millennium Centre, Cardiff *** The show may have been advertised as The Flying Dutchman, but Jack Furness’ production in fact began as Call the Midwife and ended as The Rite of Spring. Wagner’s wonderful, vivid overture went for nothing as we were treated to a faddish dumbshow prequel during its delivery (sorry about the unintended pun) showing a woman in childbirth. My heart had sunk when I saw in the cast list “Senta’s Mot...

  An Italian musical night to savour CBSO at Symphony Hall ★★★★ Puccini got top billing but it was fellow Italian Respighi who stole the show in a concert brimming with gorgeous melodies and a rich orchestral palette. Carlo Rizzi, well known to Birmingham audiences for conducting many productions in the Italian repertoire with Welsh National Opera, spent the dull days of the Covid lockdown fruitfully. Like all opera lovers he acknowledged Puccini as composer of "some of the most beautiful and recognisable arias in the operatic world," but while studying the scores he was struck, "by the sophistication of his orchestration and the innovative use of the instruments". The results were Rizzi's two Symphonic Suites, both around 20 minutes long, which opened both halves of this concert, the first arranged from 'Tosca' and the second from 'Madam Butterfly'. Rizzi adopted a strict Puccini-and-nothing-but-Puccini for the suites without what he dismissed a...

  Norman Stinchcombe reviews the latest classical CD releases Mahler Symphonies 1-9: Czech Philharmonic / Bychkov (Pentatone 11 CDs) ★★★★★ No single survey of Mahler's symphonies, the most disparate musically diverse traversal by any of the great composers, can be the last word on their interpretation and performance. Seasoned collectors will all have favourite individual performances that offer something special, uniquely capturing the essence of a particular work, one that becomes a benchmark in judging others. My own, for example, is Leonard Bernstein's second recording of No.6, with the Vienna Philharmonic, released in 1989 the year before the conductor's death, in which every abyss of despair and cry of anger is palpable. Yet there is something very satisfying in a complete set of Mahler symphonies played by the same orchestra under the same conductor and making the long musical journey with them from the burgeoning wonder and joy of nature in No.1 to the resignation a...

 We hear that Donald Trump is about to make a cover version of the 1966 Napoleon XIV hit, "They're coming to take me away, ha-haaa!".

                                             AURORA ORCHESTRA                                                          The Maltings, Snape (April 10 and 11) If ever there were a concert of two halves, the opening one of Britten Pears Arts’ Spring 26 season, would certainly qualify. The Aurora Orchestra has gained fame for its questing, revelatory approach to some of the most demanding works in the repertoire, playing from memory, so what was it doing, sitting at music-stands for a performance of one of the mos...

  CBSO'S TRIO OF MUSICAL EXILES TRIUMPH CBSO at Symphony Hall ★★★★ There was a lot of fine classical music being played in America during the 1930s and 1940s, a great deal of it composed, and conducted, by expatriate Europeans. Moviegoers could thrill to the swashbuckling soundtracks of Korngold and dab their eyes to the lush romantic weepies of Max Steiner.In the concert hall works by Stravinsky, Schoenberg and Martinu were performed and America's premier orchestras were conducted by Szell, Reiner, Steinberg, Toscanini and Ormandy. They came not just in pursuit of financial rewards, many were escaping from political oppression by the Nazis and their fascist imitators in Hungary and Italy, and from Stalin's communist Russia. The three composers featured in this entertaining and expertly played concert are cases in point. The German composer Paul Hindemith's music was labelled "degenerate" by the Nazis so he and his half-Jewish wife arrived in America in 1940. ...

                                             BACH ST JOHN PASSION                                            Ex Cathedra at Symphony Hall **** Ex Cathedra’s Good Friday presentations of the Bach Passions, whether at Symphony Hall or Birmingham Town Hall, have become the stuff of legend, but I fear, as Jeffrey Skidmore prepares to step down after over half a century on the podium of the chamber choir he founded, this performance of the St John Passion proved more of an irritation than an uplifting spiritual experience. Where Bach’s St Matthew Passion is discursive,...