Midlands Classical Music Making

  Norman Stinchcombe reviews the latest classical CDs Janáček, ‘The Excursions of Mr Brouček’: Hoare, Crowe, Briscein, Tenebrae, London Symphony Orchestra / Rattle (LSO Live 2 CDs & SACDs) ★★★★★ For those who know Janácek’s operatic output from the domestic dramatic tragedies ‘Katya Kabanova’ and ‘Jenufa’ or the charming nature fantasy ‘The Cunning Little Vixen’ – all recorded by the LSO under Sir Simon Rattle – the partnership’s latest release will be a disorientating mind-boggler. The conductor puts it succinctly: “‘The Excursions of Mr Broucek’ is probably his most eccentric opera, and for Janácek that’s really saying something. It’s beautiful, off-the-charts surreal, and nobody can really imagine what he was thinking when he wrote it.” Don’t let that put you off though, it’s good fun and receives a super performance from singers and orchestra, vividly recorded with a straight-from-the-footlights immediacy. Yorkshire tenor Peter Hoare brings to life the boozy, sausage-eating...

                               THE MARRIAGE OF FIGARO                                Wild Arts at Birmingham Repertory Theatre ***** That Birmingham is becoming an operatic desert is undeniable. Welsh National Opera used to bring three fortnight-long seasons to Birmingham Hippodrome, one of the country’s finest lyric theatres especially rebuilt to accommodate the company’s lavish productions. Now its presence has evaporated. As in WNO’s case, other touring companies have become conspicuous by their absence. Yes, there is the heroic Birmingham Opera Company, but this is certainly not opera at its grandest which should be a resident presence in England’s Second City. No wonder, then, that Birmingha...

  CBSO at Symphony Hall ★★★★ A lice Sara Ott’ s Symphony Hall concert in 2019 was a sombre occasion: a solo recital promoting her new album ‘ Nightfall’, with the platform swathed in black drapes illuminated by pinpricks of light. Unintentionally the setting matched the mood, for Ott had just been diagnosed with multiple sclerosis. Her playing, unsurprisingly, was muted and the concert cut short. Here though, all was effervescence and brilliance. G rieg’ s Piano Concerto was performed by a very different Ott – r efreshed, revitalised and raring to go. A sylph-like figure she pattered onto the platform bare-footed and then tore through Grieg’s titanic opening bars, with its tumbling cascade of notes, like a muscular giant. Nothing was routine in the virtuoso cadenza; Ott gave the impression of creating it spontaneously. The Adagio was gorgeous, Ott musing dreamily before bursting into an episode of romantic fervour. The CBSO, under Kazuki Yamada, gave excellent support right from th...

  ELGAR VIOLIN CONCERTO: THOMAS BOWES                              Rubicon Classics RCD 1224   Yet another new recording of the Elgar Violin Concerto comes tumbling through the letterbox, following on from distinguished offerings by Vilde Frang, Christian Tetzlaff and Frank Peter Zimmermann. Stiff competition, then, for Thomas Bowes, as well as for the Sinfonia Arcadiana conducted by Nic Fallowfield, but this totally home-grown production, cultivated in the environs of Elgar’s own countryside, comes through with more than flying colours. The whole recording breathes a freshness and spontaneity in which star-quality is not an issue. Here is a deeply-felt, honest response to this giant of a concerto ranking only behind Beethoven and Mendelssohn in my pantheon of greatness. The enterprise is also sprinkled with a bit of stardust, set ...

  CBSO at Symphony Hall ★★★★★ Take the following ingredients: CBSO orchestra, CBSO chorus, conductor Kazuki Yamada and a hugely demanding, super-scale, richly emotional score. What is the result? A triumph. Symphony Hall was packed right to the upper circle and when the final notes of Mahler’s ‘Resurrection’ Symphony died away the standing ovation and fifteen minutes of applause put the seal on a magnificent start to the new CBSO season. This wasn’t a fluke, the same recipe has worked in recent seasons in equally impressive performances of Berlioz’s ‘Faust’, Haydn’s ‘Creation’, Verdi’s Requiem and Puccini’s ‘Tosca’ – they have brought out the best in the CBSO’s music director with his flair for musical drama and passion pushed to the limits. Yamada, a dapper musical general, command ed his huge forces – 120 players and a 100-strong chorus – t o dazzle the audience in a bravura displa y o f Mahler’s intoxicating musical brew, by turns sentimental and transcendental with a light sea...

  A SOLD-OUT CONCERT AT ST ANDREW’S, WILMCOTE If Elf and Safetee had allowed, it would have been standing-room only in Wilmcote’s St Andrew’s Church on Sunday evening for the latest in the popular series of Gwyn Williams Bursary concerts. This jewel of a building was packed to capacity with an audience of 80+ to enjoy a mixed programme of vocal and instrumental items delivered by a team of highly -talented international professionals all giving their services free of charge in aid of this charity, founded to aid young string players, in memory of Gwyn, a long-term Wilmcote resident, and Sir Simon Rattle’s principal viola in the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra. Much-loved local archdeacon, the Ven. Dr Brian Russell, gave informative and perceptive introductions to performances by Chinese violist Jinhe Chang, first prizewinner of the Gwyn Williams Viola Prize at the Royal Birmingham Conservatoire ,accompanied by Jiayi Chen (Vaughan Williams and Elgar), American cellist Ni...

  ENTER A LIVING LEGEND  Munich Philharmonic at Symphony Hall ★★★★ We live in the age of celebrity when the runner-up in a television reality show is hailed as a star and 1970s singers performing their two hit singles on the revival circuit are labelled legendary. In the midst of this devalued currency the audience for this concert had the privilege of seeing an authentic living legend perform. Martha Argerich first appeared on the concert platform, aged eight, 77 years ago, triumphed in every competition she entered becoming a star when winning the International Chopin Piano Competition in 1965. Look at the cover photograph of her first recording made that year for EMI and you'll see a pouting beauty with a mane of black hair for whom the word "sultry" could have been coined. She made Bardot loom prim. But tempus fugit; the Martha Argerich who was greeted with cheers and applause from an enthusiastic Symphony Hall audience is 85-years-old, the mane is grey, in black and ...