Midlands Classical Music Making

                 ANDREW DOWNES PERFORMANCE PRIZE   A new international music competition launches at the Ruddock Performing Arts Centre, King Edward’s School, Edgbaston on September 22. The Andrew Downes Performance Prize, bringing £1000 to the winner, is designed to perpetuate the memory of this well-loved Midlands composer who died in January 2023. Downes’ music is performed worldwide, and this competition specifies that entrants, whether soloists or chamber ensembles, learn and play one of his compositions in the Final. Anna Downes, Andrew’s daughter, tells me how the competition was born.   “Originally, the prize was put in place when Dad won compensation for medical negligence which left him in a wheelchair. As Dad could no longer travel to promote his music, part of the compensation was so that he could find alternative means of ensuring his legacy.   “With the excellent suppo...

  CBSO’s Pre-Proms ‘Pictures’ a huge hit CBSO at Symphony Hall ★★★★ There’s no getting around the fact that Ravel’s orchestration of Mussorgsky’s ‘Pictures at an Exhibition’ is unbeatable. So powerful is its spell that on returning to the piano original it can seem pallid and details from Ravel – like the insistent whining trumpet to mimic the downtrodden Schmuÿle – become superimposed by our inner ear. Other arrangements by everyone from Ashkenazy, who conducted his own version at Symphony Hall in the 1990s, to Stokowski can seem drab, garish or bombastic. In May the CBSO under  Kazuki  Yamada performed Sir Henry Wood’s 1915 orchestration which preceded Ravel by seven years. I enjoyed it immensely and although it won’t supersede Ravel – when  Wood  heard that version he withdrew his own from performance – there’s surely room for an alternative version. It was  immensely popular  at Wood’s  own  Promenade Concerts and it’s fitting that the CB...

  Norman Stinchcombe  reviews the latest classical CD releases Meyerbeer ‘Le Prophète’: Soloists, Lyon Opera Chorus, Mediterranean Youth Orchestra, London Symphony Orchestra / Sir Mark Elder (LSO Live 3 CD & SACD)  ★★★★★ Premiered at the Paris Opera in 1849 Giacomo Meyerbeer’s grand opera ‘ Le Prophète’   was huge in every way – length, ambition, scale and success. Its five acts lasted over six hours with elaborate staging and spectacular effects; the first use of electric arc light to represent the blazing sunrise, a full-size skating rink and an explosive ending when a German palace is blown up and everyone perishes in the flames. Wagner sneered about “effects without causes” but then nicked the ending for the climax of ‘G ötterdämmerung’. Times and tastes change and grand opera is hardly performed now. No performances of  ‘ Le Prophète’   exist on DVD and the only full scale recording on disc – the 1970s showcase for Marilyn Horne and conducted by he...

                               CAROUSEL                                                           John Wilson and the Sinfonia of London (Chandos) *****   The greatest sorrow of my other life as a conductor, chiefly of musicals, is that I never got to conduct two of the greatest shows in the canon, Guys and Dolls, and, above all, Carousel. Now this new Chandos CD release of Rodgers and Hammerstein’s masterpiece telling of life in a New England fishing village has quickened those regrets, bringing every last bar of that tremendous show, including number...

  LA BOHEME                                            Longborough Festival Opera ****   From high-minded, earnest Norse mythology, Gods annihilated in a wiped-out Valhalla, Longborough has now brought us back to earth with real people with their feet on the ground in Puccini’s verismo masterpiece, La Boheme. Puccini did admire Wagner, however, using his Leitmotive reminiscence techniques at crucial moments, and even referring to the Valkyrie Magic Fire music as the poet Rodolfo burns a precious manuscript in order to keep himself and his flatmates warm against the Parisian Christmas Eve chill. Longborough’s new production of opera’s most-renowned love story brings us a uniformly brilliant cast of principals, headed by the simply stunning Mimi of Elin Pritchard...

                                                            CBSO YOUTH ORCHESTRA ACADEMY                                                           Birmingham Town Hall ***** It wasn’t a youth orchestra we heard on Sunday, it was a fully-fledged ensemble of young professionals, mature of tone, impeccable in intonation, expert in articulation and attack. This was the CBSO Youth Orchestra Academy, brilliantly coached by p...

I found this on the website of Kazuki Yamada's "other" orchestra, the Monte Carlo Philharmonic. The tenets are diametrically opposed to those of the CBSO. " Food and beverages may not be consumed in the concert hall.  6. Photography and recording  It is strictly forbidden to film, photograph or record.  Mobile phones must be switched off for the duration of the show." Is he happy with a foot in both camps?

  Puccini,‘Madama Butterfly’ CBSO at Symphony Hall ★★★★★ This was a triumphant end to a transitional, divisive and occasionally fractious first season under the new regime of Chief Executive Emma Stenning. Much of the vituperation and ridicule directed at the most outlandish of her ideas has been well-deserved. It has also had the unfortunate and unintended consequence of diverting attention away from an important truth of paramount importance – that the CBSO’s playing is as fine as it’s ever been, equalling their ‘90s heydays under Rattle. The ebullient newly anointed Music Director Kazuki Yamada has brought back joy and enthusiasm sorely missed during  Mirga Gražinytė-Tyla’ s short Covid-blighted reign. Sceptics may wince at his cult-of-personality presence and the synchronized hand-waving but only serial miserabilists can resist the infectious sense of fun. At the end of the performance a packed audience – the only classical concert of the season in which the Grand Tier was...

  Norman Stinchcombe reviews the latest classical CD releases Debussy & Strauss: Stagg, Melbourne Symphony Orchestra / Martin (MSO CD / SACD) ★★★★ Debussy’s song cycle ‘Ariettes oubliées’ (‘Forgotten Songs’) is aptly named since it is so seldom heard. Debussy composed the settings of six poems by Paul Verlaine for soprano and piano when in his twenties. This orchestral version by Australian composer Brett Dean, premiered in 2023, is a real find. Siobhan Stagg has the clear diction Debussy demanded combined with the requisite imagination to bring to life Verlaine’s sensual image-rich poetry. She captures the opening song’s sultry “l'extase langoureuse” and “la fatigue amoureuse” while in ‘Il pleure dans mon cœur’ (‘Tears fall in my heart’) – which compares falling rain to falling tears – Brett’s orchestration entrances with the slowly-falling hypnotic raindrops. It’s not all languor though; ‘Chevaux de Bois’ (the ‘Wooden Horses’ of a fairground roundabout) gallops in with Stagg’...

                                                            THE STATE OF THE CBSO                                                           Christopher Morley The name of the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra glows all over the world as a beacon of excellence, with huge fan bases in every country appreciating classical music. Music-lovers in Japan were overjoyed when a talk I gave there seven years ago about the or...

  Weilerstein wows in Barber’s Cello Concerto CBSO at Symphony Hall ★★★★ “ Wake-up call” is a much abused term. The England football team gets one every time it loses a friendly match 1-0 but still carries on dozing. Dvořák’s overture ‘Carnival’ is the genuine article, an electrifying musical wake-up call jump-starting the concert with an invigorating blast from Bohemia. The conductor Kevin John Edusei’s downbeat unleashed the CBSO for ten minutes of festive joy with Dvořák utilizing the orchestra from top to bottom with brass and horns providing a firm foundation while the tambourine rattled at the top – I can’t remember it being used to such good effect, and played so vigorously, in any other work. The gentle reflective inner section, with subtle but telling contributions from the wind section and leader Jonathan Martindale, hinted at the riches of Dvořák’s late masterpieces inspired by the folk tales of his fellow Bohemian Karel Jaromír Erben like ‘The Golden Spinning Wheel’. Wh...

  THE IMPLAUSIBLE POTIONS OF DR DULCAMARA                              Playground Opera at Welcombe Hills School, Stratford-upon-Avon ***** Rarely have I had such a life-enhancing experience as that I was privileged to share at Welcombe Hills on Wednesday morning, along with 100 excited and enthusiastic children of all ages. Playground Opera is one of Longborough Festival Opera’s many educational outreach activities, and under the aegis of director Maria Jagusz and musical director Jessica May it takes mini-opera productions to a range of schools around the Cotwolds area. But Welcombe Hills is unique, catering as it does for those with special educational needs, all the children clapping in time, tapping their toes, rocking backwards and forwards and even putting their fingers in their ears in their instinctive response to the music-makin...

                               RHEINGOLD DRESS REHEARSAL                                   Longborough Festival Opera ***** I was last in a dress rehearsal audience at Glyndebourne in 1966 (L’Heure Espagnole and Janet Baker in Dido and Aeneas). Since then I have conducted many such rehearsals, but yesterday it was a joy to be an audience member again, soaking up the atmosphere as Longborough Festival Opera presented the dress rehearsal of Wagner’s Rheingold, launching this year’s Ring cycle (to be given three times). Longborough combines Glyndebourne with Bayreuth, a winning combination which I have always enjoyed so much reviewing from this amazing Cotswold company for well over a quarter of a century. The atmosphere yesterday was so relaxed...

  Adams’ musical elegy for the Earth CBSO at Symphony Hall ★★★★★ In 2014 Ludovic Morlot conducted the world premiere of ‘Become Ocean’ the first of American composer John Luther Adams’ ecological orchestral trilogy. It won the Pulitzer Prize and Morlot conducted the 2015 Grammy award-winning recording of the work.So we were in experienced hands for the UK Premiere of Adams’ ‘Vespers of the Blessed Earth’ with Morlot at the helm. It’s a big work: around fifty minutes occupying the concert’s first half, and utilizing a large orchestra with extra percussion, choral forces and a solo soprano. Adams name-checks Monteverdi’s masterpiece as an inspiration with the work’s plaintive prayers addressed not to Virgin but to the Earth itself in all its “complexity and mystery”. To dismiss this as New Age healing-crystal-speak would be wrong. Adams’ ecological concerns are grounded in experience; before becoming a full-time composer he was an environmental activist, moving to Alaska to campaign ...