Midlands Classical Music Making

BAVARIANS SING ELGAR'S FROM THE BAVARIAN HIGHLANDS EDWARD ELGAR PARTSONGS Chor des Bayerischen Rundfunks BR Klassik 900522 **** One of the problems with Elgar's vocal music is his choice of texts. Cardinal Newman's Dream of Gerontius is a wonderful vehicle, as is actually O'Shaughnessy's The Music Makers. Many words have been spilt discussing the midnight oil which Elgar burnt compiling his own texts for The Apostles and The Kingdom, but it can safely be said he made good work of all the librettos for his choral works, whatever their quality. But then we get to the partsongs. Did he really need the pittance of a commission to set some of these dreadful texts? Perhaps early on in his careerg he did, but surely not after the acclaim following the Enigma Variations, Gerontius, and the Elgar Festival of 1904. Preceding his "arrival", however, his loyalty to his wife Caroline Alice's literary efforts is touching, culminating in the inclusion of ...

ANOTHER IMAGINATIVE ENGLISH SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA CONCERT ENGLISH SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA streamed from Wyastone Leys **** "Inspired by Mahler" was the apt title for this English Symphony Orchestra programme marking Holocaust Memorial Day. Mahler considered himself a triple outsider, not least because of his Jewishness, and though he himself prospered as a composer and conductor (undoubtedly the first transatlantic superstar of the podium), the other composers in this streamed concert suffered, some indeed perishing in Nazi concentration camps. It is quite a thought to reflect that had not heart disease brought about his early death, Mahler himself might have been one of those victims. Kenneth Woods conducted a sequence of works which was both shrewd and loving, beginning with Das Irdische Leben by Mahler himself. Like Schubert's Erl King, this is a song depicting a child's journey to death, and April Fredrick was the gripping soloist. Her soprano voice here d...

NEW CDs OF BEETHOVEN, BRUCH, DONIZETTI AND WALTON REVIEWED BY NORMAN STINCHCOMBE BEETHOVEN: Nikolai Lugansky ★★ I came to this disc after spending a week listening to Jean-Efflam Bavouzet's complete set of piano sonatas on Chandos. This did Lugansky no favours. Bavouzet captures Beethoven's kaleidoscopic emotional shifts – mysticism, manic dynamism, raucous humour – realized within a dazzling array of changing musical strategies. Lugansky eschewed the obvious, and logical, coupling of the last three sonatas by swapping Op 110 for Op 101. It's Op.101 which comes off best, with the second movement's march rhythms crisply and energetically articulated, while tenderly shaping the succeeding inward and yearning (sehnsuchtvoll) slow movement. In Op.109's concluding theme-and-variations Lugansky overdoes the contrast with the preceding prestissimo movement by playing the opening excessively slowly – Bavouzet captures its singing expressiveness at a more naturally f...

Mirga Gražinytė-Tyla extends contract with the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra The City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra (CBSO) is delighted to announce that Mirga Gražinytė-Tyla will extend her commitment to the orchestra, continuing as Osborn Music Director for an additional season until summer 2022 and then moving to the role of Principal Guest Conductor. Stephen Maddock, Chief Executive of the CBSO, said: 'We're delighted to be continuing our relationship with Mirga and are hugely grateful to her for the unending energy, passion and creativity she pours into her work with us. We're thrilled that she has agreed to extend her commitment to the CBSO, and are pleased to be able to support her as she balances her working life. We look forward to making music together into the future.' Mirga Gražinytė-Tyla, Music Director, CBSO, says: 'I have decided to give up my position of Music Director of the CBSO at the end of the 2021/22 season and ...

FASCINATING ONLINE CONCERT BY CBSO FRENCH CONNECTIONS CBSO streamed from Symphony Hall ***** "French Connections" is perhaps a tantalising understatement for this latest CBSO programme recorded at Symphony Hall early last December for online streaming. We end with Haydn's Symphony no.84, composed for the huge orchestra of the Concert de la Loge Olympique in Paris, an ensemble founded by Joseph Boulogne, Chevalier de St-Georges. This immensely fascinating character was born on Guadeloupe, the son of a former French politician and a native West Indian woman. The family eventually settled in Paris, where Boulogne became an expert horseman, swimmer, dancer, skater and, especially, fencer. He was hailed as the finest swordsman in Europe, and was indeed summoned to England to give exhibition fencing matches, including for the Prince of Wales at the Royal Pavilion in Brighton. But above all this he was also a very fine violinist, composing many works for his ...

NORMAN STINCHCOMBE REVIEWS FASCINATING NEW STRAUSS, GERSHWIN AND BEN-HAIM CDs STRAUSS: New Zealand Symphony Orchestra / Märkl ★★★★ When we think of Richard Strauss's orchestral music it's primarily his richly scored tone poems. It's easy to overlook his wizardry with light music and especially the dance – think of his opera Rosenkavalier. That facility is exemplified by his Tanzsuite (Dance Suite) of 1923 for chamber orchestra, ballet music commissioned by the Vienna Opera. It's a labour of love, delightfully mixing pastiche and orchestral reimagining of eight dances by baroque composer François Couperin which were originally composed for harpsichord. Try not to laugh at the Carillon with Strauss's kaleidoscopic mixture of celesta, bells and harp, or to sigh as the closing march dies slowly away. The NZSO, under Jun Märkl, don't have the suavity, richness and echt-Strauss sound of Rudolf Kempe's Dresden orchestra (Warner) but they...

A REWARDING BEETHOVEN MINI-CONCERT BEETHOVEN: EGMONT OVERTURE, TWO ROMANCES, FIFTH SYMPHONY (Guild GMCD7826) **** Though there are some who might accuse this CD of offering short measure at just an hour, it in fact manages to convey all the structure of a full symphony concert, with overture, concerto and symphony, and constitutes a deeply-felt homage to Beethoven in this year in which celebrations of the 250th anniversary of his birth have been so cruelly locked down. Rimma Sushanskaya conducts the fine musicians of the National Symphony Orchestra on a disc amazingly set down during just one day, and released within two months. yet there is no feeling of rush -- in fact, sometimes the opposite, as Sushanskaya has the very Russian trait of savouring the moment, occasionally at the expense of onward sense of momentum. This approach works very well for the opening of the Egmont Overture, appropriately weighty, but there are moments of stasis in the allegro when we should be mo...

NORMAN STINCHCOMBE REVIEWS A BRANTUB OF NEW CD RELEASES DELIBES, BALLET SUITES: Royal Scottish National Orchestra / Järvi (CD & SACD) ★★★★ At the age of 83 the prolific conductor Neeme Järvi (400 recordings and counting) shows no sign of slowing down. He's been mining yet another musical seam with Chandos – French ballet music. This delightful disc features suites from three ballets by Delibes, Tchaikovsky's favourite ballet composer. His most popular score Coppèlia – the life-like mechanical doll which also featured in Offenbach's opera – gets a sparkling performance from the RSNO with a lively Mazurka and snappy set of Slavic variations. Järvi's brisk tempi will raise eyebrows – as they did in his Tchaikovsky ballet recordings. Could the waltz have a little more rubato and charm? Fans of Richard Bonynge's relaxed approach (Decca) will think so. But Järvi's decision not to linger can pay dividends. He gives La Source a spri...

WONDERFUL BRAHMS AND MENDELSSOHN CONDUCTED BY LOCAL BOY ALPESH CBSO streamed from Symphony Hall ***** Never mind the puny sound from computer loudspeakers, nor the fact of not being able to flick one's eyes around the orchestra and the much-missed 2000-strong audience, this streamed concert still breathed the exhilarating freshness of the CBSO as it responded to the gifted young conductor who has grown through its tiers (sorry about that word) of training, Alpesh Chauhan. It was also exhilarating to hear how the orchestra reached out to us from the spaciousness and acoustic marvels of the hall which has been its home for nearly 30 years. Social distancing pinpointed detail, and actually enhanced ensemble alertness. I have never heard a more vivid, engaging account of Brahms' Academic Festival Overture than this, well-paced, onward driven, and with a wonderful web of sound far more transparent than Brahms could ever have hoped for from the clod-hopping orchestra...

NORMAN STINCHCOMBE ENTHUSES OVER NEW HAYDN AND BRITTEN RELEASES, JUST IN TIME FOR CHRISTMAS HAYDN PIANO SONATAS VOL. III: Leon McCawley ★★★★ Devotees of Haydn's solo keyboard works are spoiled for choice. Complete box sets are available from McCabe (Decca), Jando (Naxos) and Buchbinder (Warner) while Jean-Efflam Bavouzet's much lauded survey (Chandos) has reached Vol.8. Meanwhile the third volume in Leon McCawley's survey on Somm, this one of six sonatas, brings us astute performances and much pleasurable listening. Bavouzet uses a bright-toned Yamaha, which occasionally becomes a little unrelenting, while McCawley's Steinway gives him extra depth and warmer colours – in the adagio central movements of Sonatas No.34 in D major and No.38 in F major, for example. Yet his articulation is excitingly crisp and forthright when required: the Allegro di molto of the two-movement Sonata No.55 in B-flat major fairly bowls along, as does the rumbustious Vivace assai of No....

A WONDERFUL CBSO CONCERT DESPITE THE TECHIE PROBLEMS CBSO (streamed from Symphony Hall) ***** This latest streamed concert from the CBSO in these locked-down times was well-conceived, two refreshing open-air works preceding one cathedral-closed. Mirga Grazinyte-Tyla introduced the programme charmingly and persuasively, and trumpeter Jonathan Quirke prefaced the opening item enthusiastically and informatively, telling us how John Ireland's Downland Suite had been composed as a brass band competition test-piece (as was Elgar's Severn Suite). I have to say I prefer the string orchestra transcription, which was the title-music to BBC TV's The Pearcross Girls, with the wondrous Penelope Wilton, nearly 50 years ago, but this was a crisp account from the brass players here, lyrical, smoothly-phrased and sensitively-balanced. The trouble was, I couldn't see it! There was no vision from the link I was given, so all I had to work on was puny sound from my laptop. ...

NORMAN STINCHCOMBE REVIEWS CDSs OF RATTLE'S BERLIN SUCCESSOR AND A WONDERFUL SIBELIUS SYMPHONY CYCLE BEETHOVEN, TCHAIKOVSKY, SCHMIDT & STEPHAN: Berlin Philharmonic / Petrenko ★★★ The Russian-born Vienna-educated Kirill Petrenko is Simon Rattle's successor as chief conductor of the Berlin Philharmonic. His initial concerts were greeted with adulation in some quarters. This luxurious and highly expensive box set of those concerts is now released on the orchestra's own label. We have symphonies by Beethoven (7 & 9), Tchaikovsky (5 & 6), Franz Schmidt's fourth, and a Rudi Stephan's fifteen-minute Music for Orchestra. These appear on five CDs, a BluRay video disc and an audio-only BluRay disc, with excellent sound quality in stereo and 5.1 surround sound. There is, unsurprisingly, playing of outstanding beauty – the subtle wind and burnished strings in Tchaikovsky Pathetique – and power, when Petrenko unleashes the Ninth's mighty finale. Despite ...

A SOCIALLY-DISTANCED ANDREW DOWNES PREMIERE ANDREW DOWNES SIXTH SYMPHONY PREMIERE by Christopher Morley (for 26.11.20) Andrew Downes' Sixth Symphony was due to receive its premiere from the Central England Camerata at Hagley Hall last month, but Covid-19 restrictions led to the event's abandonment. Did the composer see this as a setback in his 70th birthday year? Emphatically not, as Andrew explains, looking forward to an official launch of the symphony at a 'watch party' on Facebook at 3pm on Sunday November 29. " We saw the cancellation of the 6th Symphony as an opportunity rather than a disappointment. The proposed performance at Hagley Hall would have played to quite a limited audience due to the small capacity of the venue, whereas the virtual premiere on the 29th November could hopefully reach many times that number. "It also gave us the opportunity to have the new symphony recorded in an ideal acoustic (with suitable soci...

CBSO'S TRIUMPH OVER LOCKDOWN CBSO CENTENARY CONCERT BBC Radio 3 and online stream ***** Between them the CBSO's technical wizards and BBC Radio 3 brought about a remarkable example of triumph over adversity in their relaying of the orchestra's celebratory centenary concert, necessarily disfigured behind the pandemic's shielding mask. This concert, filmed and recorded in a deserted Symphony Hall (just imagine how full the joyous auditorium would have been in "normal" circumstances) on the exact date when Elgar conducted the City of Birmingham Orchestra resident in Birmingham Town Hall for the first time one hundred years ago, was packed with joyous affirmation. The Radio 3 broadcast a couple of days ago allowed us to concentrate on the quality of the music-making from players who have had so little ensemble contact for so many months, and brought us too a wonderfully evocative early history of the CBSO from my colleague Richard Bratby, author of F...

IS THE MYSTERY OF BEETHOVEN'S 'IMMORTAL BELOVED' AT LAST SOLVED? JESSICA DUCHEN AND HER BEETHOVEN NOVEL by Christopher Morley In lockdown times music critics, deprived of reviewing opportunities, are turning to less ephemeral forms of writing. In my own case, my autobiographical Confessions are due for publication very soon, and I have just completed Trio of Devotion, a novel about the relationship between Robert and Clara Schumann and Johannes Brahms. But Jessica Duchen has combined the wearing of journalistic hats and "proper" writing hats for many years, and has recently published her latest novel, "Immortal", exploring the secret love Beethoven carried in his heart, and to whom he wrote one of the most poignant love-letters ever penned; he never sent it. Jessica tells me how her career developed. "My parents were born in Johannesburg and moved to London in the 1950s. They were strongly anti-apartheid and my father refus...

BOURNEMOUTH SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA SHINES IN LINDBERG UK PREMIERE AND BEETHOVEN'S PROMETHEUS BOURNEMOUTH SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA Streamed from the Lighthouse, Poole and on BBC Radio3 Fate knocks at the door in mysterious and ingenious ways as we celebrate in this locked-down year the 250th anniversary of Beethoven's birth. The Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra, who recently presented such a brilliantly socially-distanced live concert with a full complement at its Lighthouse home base, returned to the venue tonight with a Beethoven-inspired concert aeons away from the meat-and-two-veg overture, concerto and symphony menu which would have been an easy homage. Instead we began with the UK premiere of Magnus Lindberg's Absence, a co-commission from the Rotterdam Philharmonic Orchestra, the Dallas Symphony Orchestra, the Cologne Philharmonic, and the BSO itself. We are told the inspiration comes from the little conversation notebooks the deaf Beethoven carried around with ...

MIRGA BRINGS A SMILE TO THE CBSO'S SECOND LOCKDOWN CONCERT CBSO at Symphony Hall ★★★★★ In her audience address Mirga Gražinytė-Tyla reminded us that Brahms Symphony No.3 was the CBSO's last piece before lockdown and eight months later it was again. Good to see that during the hiatus the orchestra's music director has retained her sense of humour. She hoped we'd all be able to see their opera performance next March which is – nudge, nudge – Verdi's A Masked Ball. Nice one Mirga. She concentrated on the symphony's many ambiguities, both musical and of mood. Covid separation gave the wind and brass greater prominence and slimmed down the string sound – more like the balance Brahms would have known – perhaps exaggerated by my perch on the fifth floor. The symphony's tonally shifting opening was genuinely disturbing, while the benedictory ending was achieved after the CBSO's energized finale, thrusting and jabbing to-and-fro. The intermezzo was gorgeous...

NORMAN STINCHCOMBE ENJOYS ITALIAN OPERA, CRAMER, SHOSTAKOVICH, GURNEY AND HOWELLS IN HIS LATEST CD REVIEWS ANIMA RARA: Jaho / Orquestra de la Communitat Valenciana / Battistoni ★★★★★ Ermonela Jaho devotes her album to arias associated with Rosina Storchio who sang Cio-Cio San in the 1904 premiere of Puccini's Madama Butterfly. It's a perfect fit for the Albanian soprano whose performance at Covent Garden in 2017 was greeted rapturously. This album begins and ends with Un bel di, vedremo and Tu?Tu? Piccolo Iddio and show Jaho's strengths: intense emotional identification with a role, fearless high notes and a touch of spinto steel. She does vocal fireworks too – the twelve-minute mad scene from Mascagni's Lodoletta (one of several rarities included) is a tour-de-force. Despite the airbrushed cover photo Jaho is no ingenue but a mature singer (46) at the height of her powers. Her Violetta oozes knowledge of the world (passion, regret) – she has all the notes for t...

NORMAN STINCHCOMBE'S LATEST CD REVIEWS, BRAHMS AND LISZT AMONG THEM LISZT & THALBERG: Marc-André Hamelin ★★★★★ Aren't opera transcriptions passé nowadays with the originals available on disc, download and video? Hear Hamelin play Liszt's Reminiscences de Norma and one is disabused of such a naive notion. Liszt captures the essence of Bellini's three-hour Druidic drama in just over seventeen minutes: themes, arias (the divine Casta Diva) and duets are not spatchcocked together but seamlessly integrated. Seven minutes of furious F minor of Verdi's tragedy Ernani is just as effective. Hamelin's playing is phenomenal – dexterity, clarity and nuance everything one could desire. If fantasies on Rossini's Moses in Egypt and Donizetti's Don Pasquale – by Sigismond Thalberg – can't match his rival Liszt's for imagination they are still very enjoyable. Liszt declared Hexaméron "a monster": a bizarre set of seven variati...

NORMAN STINCHCOMBE RAVES ABOUT THE CBSO BRASS CONCERT ENGLISH BRASS CBSO at the CBSO Centre, Birmingham ★★★★★ "A masterpiece...fiendish...Paganini for valved instruments", was how CBSO trombonist Anthony Howe described Sir Malcolm Arnold's Symphony for Brass to us. Arnold knew brass playing at first hand, as the London Philharmonic's principal trumpet. This four-movement work combines his familiar fluency with great technical sophistication. He surely wore an impish grin when composing the finale's fugue. Arnold, like his musical idol Mahler, often put popular and profound together to disconcerting effect. Arnold begins the third movement in film score mode but then splices in an ominous Wagnerian descending figure. Was that Wotan's spear? The CBSO's eleven players rose to all its challenges: the opening flashes and scintillations; the high-lying staccato lines really pinged out; the aching, melancholy opening of the allegretto for two trumpets. T...

CHRISTOPHER MORLEY LAMENTS THE CONTINUED DARKNESS OF BIRMINGHAM'S SYMPHONY HALL DARK SYMPHONY HALL A few weeks ago I drove down to the south coast, passing through the autumnal New Forest, and arriving at Poole in Dorset. And there I attended (and reviewed on worldwide media) the first post-lockdown concert given by the Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra, at their home base in the Lighthouse Arts Centre. The organisation was immaculate. Socially-distanced seats were personally allocated, volunteer stewards (so happy to see their concert hall functioning again) had been coached in their tasks and helpfully directed us, even to the loos, and then the orchestra appeared. On an extended platform, the distancing of the orchestra was carefully preserved. Some of the brass were situated way up in the gallery, there were partitions between the winds and the strings, the percussion were carefully tucked away, but here was a a full orchestra performing in front of a live, en...

HAYDN BRINGS THE EVENING TO LIFE FITZWILLIAM STRING QUARTET at The Dream Factory, Warwick **** One good thing to have come out of the pandemic crisis is the way it has caused concert promoters to find new ways of presenting events, and the wily Richard Phillips, with the experience of mounting over 4000 concerts behind him, came up with a winning solution. He moved Leamington Music from its usual home base in that town's Pump Rooms to the Dream Factory, a highly flexible performing space between Warwick and Junction 15 of the M40, and a venue which on the evidence of this Tuesday evening proved accommodating and amenable. Its high roof makes for an attractive, open acoustic, and the large hall area made social distancing simple to organise with personally identified seating bubbles.. This was a delayed celebration of Richard's 80th birthday, and the Fitzwilliam String Quartet in fact began in celebratory mode, with an item extra to the programme, announcing Purce...