Category Archives: In concert

In Concert – Sir Stephen Hough, Soloists, CBSO Chorus, City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra / Omer Meir Wellber: Beethoven & Haydn

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Sir Stephen Hough (piano, below), Lauren Urquhart (soprano), Georgia Mae Ellis (mezzo-soprano), Luis Gomes (tenor), Alexander Grassauer (bass), CBSO Chorus (above), City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra / Omer Meir Wellber (conductor & harpsichord/director)

Beethoven (/Hough) Piano Concerto no.3 in C minor Op.37 (1800, rev. 1803)
Haydn Missa in Angustiis, Hob.XXII/11 (‘Nelson Mass’) (1798)

Symphony Hall, Birmingham
Thursday 19 February 2026

Reviewed by Richard Whitehouse

That tonight’s concert from the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra featured music by Beethoven and Haydn might have been indicative of a straight-ahead or mainstream concert but, as things turned out, neither programme nor music-making could be deemed predictable.

Sir Stephen Hough has no doubt played Beethoven’s Third Concerto many times with, moreover, his take on the outer movements not far removed from his much-praised Hyperion recording. The initial Allegro was lithe and impetuous if at times a touch hectoring (and Matthew Hardy was uncharacteristically reticent in that spellbinding passage after the cadenza), with the final Rondo treading a fine line between humour and irony at its most distinctive in the modulatory transition to the main theme, or that improvisatory solo flourish prior to the nonchalant coda.

Interest naturally centred on the slow movement – a Largo designated Con gran espressione in its ‘re-imagining’ by Hough (above). Itself part of a project instigated by this evening’s conductor, Omer Meir Wellber, to re-examine works in the core repertoire, this duly retains Beethoven’s instrumentation but renders the main theme, introduced by the soloist, as a hushed chorale for strings which pervades what follows. All well and good had that chorale become more than a static backdrop, against which Hough’s welter of skittish figuration sounded overly confined to the upper register. Neither was the climactic return of the first movement’s principal theme other than an affectation, nor the upsurge leading directly into the finale without contrivance. One respected Hough’s following of his muse, even if the outcome felt less than convincing.

Having not unreasonably given Hough the benefit of any doubt, the audience was nonplussed with his encore – the last of Schoenberg’s Six Little Pieces that, written after Mahler’s funeral on 17th June 1911, yields a rapt eloquence even at less than the ‘very slow’ tempo prescribed.

As searching products of his late maturity, the six ‘name day’ Masses that Haydn wrote around the turn of the 19th century remain too little heard at orchestral concerts; save for the ‘Nelson Mass’ whose actual title, Mass in Troubled Times, makes explicit the cultural turmoil from of which it arose. This must also have occasioned its unyielding orchestration with trumpets and timpani but no woodwind, plus a dextrous continuo part allotted here to harpsichord and from which Wellber directed with a sure sense of where this most combative of masses was headed.

Vocally the solo writing favours soprano and bass, with Alexander Grassauer making the most of his mellifluous contributions and those of Lauren Urquhart impassioned yet tonally uneven in more animated passages. Georgia Mae Ellis and Luis Gomes handled their secondary roles with real finesse, while chorus-master David Young drew a laudable response from the CBSO Chorus (arrayed on stage with what might be felt the choral equivalent of ‘free bowing’). Taut and incisive, the epithet ‘symphonic’ as applied to this work can rarely have been so apposite.

The performance certainly set the seal on a concert which rightly encouraged a reassessment of both works and, by so doing, underlined Wellber’s own interpretative convictions. Having last appeared with the CBSO almost six years before, his return should be so long in coming.

To read more about the CBSO’s 2025/26 season, visit the CBSO website. Click on the names for more on conductor Omar Meir Wellber, pianist Sir Stephen Hough and soloists Lauren Urquhart, Georgia Mae Ellis, Luis Gomes and Alexander Grassauer.

Published post no.2,804 – Friday 20 February 2026

In Concert – Natalya Romaniw, CBSO / Eduardo Strausser: Shekhar, Richard Strauss & Brahms

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Natalya Romaniw (soprano, below), City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra / Eduardo Strausser (above)

Shekhar Lumina (2020) [UK Premiere]
Richard Strauss Vier letzte Lieder (1948)
Brahms Symphony no.4 in E minor Op.98 (1884-5)

Symphony Hall, Birmingham
Wednesday 4 February 2026

Reviewed by Richard Whitehouse Pictures (c) Rodrigo Levy (Eduardo Strausser), Frances Marshall (Natalya Romaniw)

Eduardo Strausser has been welcome visitor to the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra on several earlier occasions (see elsewhere on this website), with this afternoon’s programme demonstrating a keen ear for his juxtaposing of contemporary music and established classics.

Equally well-established as an instrumentalist and multi-media artist, Nina Shekhar (b.1995) is an Indian-American with a substantial output to her credit – not least Lumina. Premiered in Los Angeles and subsequently heard across the United States, its eventful 12 minutes explore what she has described as ‘‘… the spectrum of light and dark and the murkiness in between’’. The incremental emergence of sound and texture brings Ligeti’s 1960s pieces to mind, while the build-up of its central phase towards a culmination of palpable emotional fervour is both adeptly managed and powerfully sustained, before the gradual return to its inward origin. The present performance left little doubt as to Strausser’s belief in this music, even if that opening stage would have benefitted from a more attentive response by some of those in the audience.

Richard Strauss’s Four Last Songs is too frequently encountered in concert these days, so that it takes something special to make one reflect anew on its achievement as among the greatest of musical swansongs. This account got off to rather an inauspicious start – Natalya Romaniw overwrought in the vernal deftness of Frühling, not aided by overly opaque textures – though it subsequently came into its own. Arguably the most perfectly realized of all orchestral songs, September found an enticing balance between joy and resignation, while if leader Jonathan Martindale’s solo in Beim Schlafengehen was not quite flawless, it eschewed sentimentality to a (surprisingly?) rare degree. Im Abendrot rounded off the performance with Romaniw’s eloquent retreat into an orchestral backdrop which itself faded into serene and rapt fulfilment.

If by no means his final work, Brahms’s Fourth Symphony surely marks the onset of his final creative period. In its overtly austere sound-world and an abundance of hymn-like or chorale-inflected themes, it is also the most Bachian of his orchestral works but Strausser was right to offset this aspect against that surging emotion as underlies even the most speculative passages of its opening movement. The coda built methodically yet not a little impulsively towards an apotheosis as dramatic as anything by this most Classically inclined of Romantic composers.

After this, the Andante emerged in all its autumnal warmth and expressive poignancy – if not the most perfectly realized Brahms slow movement then surely the most profound. Bracingly energetic if never headlong, the scherzo prepared unerringly for the finale – the effectiveness of its passacaglia format having on occasion been questioned, while conveniently overlooking that parallel sonata-form dynamism such as galvanizes this movement on its intended course. Suffice to add that the closing pages felt as inevitable as any performance in recent memory.

Overall, a fine showing for the CBSO – notably its woodwind and brass – and Strausser, who will hopefully return soon. The orchestra is heard later this month with Omar Meir Wellber in a no less stimulating programme of Beethoven’s Third Piano Concerto with Haydn’s ‘Nelson’ Mass.

To read more about the CBSO’s 2025/26 season, visit the CBSO website. Click on the names for more on conductor Eduardo Strausser soprano Natalya Romaniw and composer Nina Shekhar

Published post no.2,791 – Saturday 7 February 2026

In Concert – Zoë Beyers, English Symphony Orchestra / Kenneth Woods: Vaughan Williams, Sawyers & Elgar @ Cheltenham Town Hall

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Zoë Beyers (violin, above), English Symphony Orchestra / Kenneth Woods

Vaughan Williams The Wasps (1909) – Overture
Sawyers Symphony no.6 ‘A Pastoral’ (2022) [World Premiere]
Elgar Violin Concerto in B minor Op.61 (1909-10)

Town Hall, Cheltenham
Sunday 1 February 2026

Reviewed by Richard Whitehouse Photo of Zoë Beyers (c) Bill Leighton

This afternoon’s concert in the second season of its Cheltenham residency found the English Symphony Orchestra tackling, appropriately enough, an all-English programme; the Overture from Vaughan Williams’s incidental music to The Wasps being an ideal curtain-raiser with its interplay of incisiveness and eloquence ideally judged. The performance was enhanced by an unerring balance that allowed such as Rita Schindler’s dextrous harp playing to register with real clarity. Hopefully the whole suite will appear at an ESO concert sometime in the future.

The music of Philip Sawyers has appeared frequently on ESO programmes this past decade, with his Third Symphony launching the orchestra’s 21st Century Symphony Project back in 2016. A decade on bought the premiere of his Sixth Symphony – less epic in scope than the Third or Fourth in this cycle and without the searching ambiguities of the Fifth, but a piece whose modest length (30 minutes) or forces (double woodwind, horns and trumpets) likely belie the emotional range of what is being played out across these four compact movements.

Its subtitle evidently an afterthought, ‘A Pastoral’ deftly characterizes this symphony audibly influenced by if never beholden to that by Beethoven. Hence the opening Moderato implies a journey whose destination seems at best uncertain, its accumulating tension carried over into an Andante where scenic aspect is countered with more subjective preoccupations. Nor is the Allegro of an unchecked jollity, the insistent rhythmic profile accumulating an impetus such as takes on more elemental qualities in its visceral latter stages. The final Allegretto surveys all that went before (whether motivically or emotionally) through a process of clarifying and honing earlier ideas towards an ending which, with its evocation of birdsong, affords closure but not catharsis. An ambivalence Sawyers will hopefully address in his Seventh Symphony.

Assuredly directed by Kenneth Woods (below), this first performance was almost all that could have been wished as to accuracy of ensemble or interpretive insight. Good to hear it was recorded for future release, and hopefully Sawyers’s Sixth will receive more hearings before too long.

After the interval, Zoë Beyers repeated what was a well-received account of Elgar’s Violin Concerto from last year’s Elgar Festival. With its opulent scale and solo part that had been conceived for Fritz Kreisler, this could never be other than a testing proposition but Beyers succeeded admirably in conveying that formal intricacy and expressive force which typify this work. The opening Allegro was rarely other than cohesive, thanks not least to Woods’s astute accompanying, and the Andante radiated an emotional warmth with no risk of undue emoting. Beyers had the measure of the lengthy finale, duly coming into her own with that accompanied cadenza such as reviews previous themes at an emotional remove and whose ambivalence resonated long after activity had been resumed on the way to a decisive close.

An engrossing performance which concluded this concert in impressive fashion. Woods and the ESO return to Cheltenham Town Hall next month with a new piece by David Matthews, alongside Mozart’s Sinfonia Concertante (for strings) and Beethoven’s Seventh Symphony.

To read more about the orchestra’s 2025/26 season, visit the English Symphony Orchestra website. Click on the names for more on violinist Zoë Beyers, conductor Kenneth Woods and composer Philip Sawyers

Published post no.2,786 – Monday 2 February 2026

In Concert – Simon Wallfisch & Joseph Middleton @ Wigmore Hall: Voices of Terezin

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Simon Wallfisch (baritone, above), Joseph Middleton (below)

Ullmann Beryozkele from 3 jiddische Lieder Op. 53 (1944); Lieder der Tröstung (1943): Tote wollen nicht verweilen, Erwachen zu Weihnachten; From Drei chinesische Lieder (1943): Wanderer erwacht in der Herberge; Der Müde Soldat
Taube Ein jüdisches Kind (1944)
Haas 4 Songs on Chinese Poetry (1944)
Leo Strauss arr. Iain Farrington Als Ob! (c.1942-4)
Brahms 4 Serious Songs Op.121 (1896): Ich wandte mich und sahe an alle
Ullmann From Der Mensch und sein Tag Op. 47 (1943): Heimat, Der Liebsten, Verdämmern, Nacht
Brahms 4 Serious Songs Op.121 (1896): Wenn ich mit Menschen und mit Engelszungen redete
Ullmann Stille from Der Mensch und sein Tag Op. 47 (1943)
Ilse Weber Wiegala (1944)
Ravel Kaddisch from 2 mélodies hebraiques (1914)

Wigmore Hall, London
Tuesday 27 January 2026, 1pm

Reviewed by Ben Hogwood

This remarkable concert, given on International Holocaust Remembrance Day, took the form of a wholly appropriate tribute to the musicians, writers and academics assembled by the Nazis in the Ghetto Theresienstadt. This was based at Terezin, the small town near Prague, and used as a propaganda tool to present Jewish prisoners as thriving artists, in spite of them being held prior to being sent to the Auschwitz or Treblinka concentration camps.

German-English Baritone Simon Wallfisch is a member of a deeply musical family, with his grandmother, Anita Lasker-Wallfisch, a survivor from the Women’s Orchestra of Auschwitz. Together with pianist Joseph Middleton he presented music from four composers held in the ghetto, part of a sequence intertwined with diaries, poems, essays, pictures and musical excerpts. They gave the Wigmore Hall a deeply moving period of contemplation, their consummate artistry and control ensuring that a celebration of the creative spirit ultimately won through.

Wallfisch and Middleton (above) used the music of Viktor Ullmann as reference points. A principal focus was the composer’s settings of German haiku equivalents by the Czech poet Hans Günther Adler, a Holocaust survivor whose son Jeremy addressed the audience before the concert began. Ullmann’s music found a blend of touching simplicity and harmonic daring, pulling against tonal confines to give increased tension but in a way bringing the music closer to Berg than Schoenberg.

His word settings were particularly vivid in the first song, Beryozkele (Little birch tree), especially the line Jedes Bletele ihr’s Scheptshet schtil a t’rile (Each little leaf whispers quietly its own prayer), a parallel for each of the souls held captive in the town.

Meanwhile the crumpled harmonies of Tote wollen nicht verweilen (The dead do not want to linger) contrasted with the eerie purity of the fragment Erwachen zu Weihnachten (Awakening at Christmas), while in the Adler settings we heard the concentrated Heimat (Home) and the shafts of hopeful light offered by Der Liebsten (The loved one). The cold bell of Verdämmern (Twilight) rendered by Middleton offered beauty but also fear, before the pair achieved a remarkable stasis during Stille (Stillness).

The music of Carlo Sigmund Taube was similarly moving, through the innocence of Ein jüdisches Kind (A Jewish child), but was a wild contrast to the approach of Leo Strauss, whose cabaret scene Als Ob! (As If!) was deadpan, its humour brilliantly done but cold in the extreme.

The music of Czech composer Pavel Haas continues to make a striking impact, and his 4 Songs on Chinese Poetry were prefaced by a video clip (above) of the tensile Study for Strings from Theresienstadt itself. The songs were dramatic, particularly The moon is far from home, where the bare bones of Middleton’s left-hand line supported the powerful vocal. The discomfort and distorted imagery of A sleepless night were similarly vivid.

Finally Ilse Weber, the nurse who opted to travel with her young children to Auschwitz, was represented by Wiegala (Cradle Song), a touching sweetness lent to the upper piano part and a moving simplicity to Wallfisch’s reading.

Complementing the four Terezin composers was the music of Brahms, whose last work for voice, the 4 Serious Songs Op.121, were heard in a concert in the ghetto. Their gravitas here was only enhanced by the composer’s sense of mortality, Wallfisch singing with poise and power. The final word, however, was left to Ravel, whose Kaddisch was a potent memorial, Wallfisch commanding through his intonation and ornamentation.

A prolonged silence followed; the only appropriate response to a deeply moving concert. Here, in spite of the horrors suffered by the composers and the subjects of the readings, it was possible to appreciate their resolve and enduring talent, their lights somehow undimmed. Here they were remembered with the utmost respect and appreciation, and I for one shall never forget it.

Published post no.2,781 – Tuesday 27 January 2026

In Concert – Stewart Goodyear, CBSO / Kazuki Yamada: Gershwin, Ives, Simon & Mazzoli

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Stewart Goodyear (piano, above), City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra / Kazuki Yamada

Simon Hellfighters’ Blues (2024)
Mazzoli Sinfonia (for Orbiting Spheres) (2014)
Gershwin Rhapsody in Blue (1924)
Ives ed. Sinclair Three Places in New England (1911-14)
Gershwin An American in Paris (1928)

Symphony Hall, Birmingham
Wednesday 21 January 2026

Reviewed by Richard Whitehouse

The heady interplay of jazz and blues idioms (with a little help from pioneer W. C. Handy) of Carlos Simon’s Hellfighter’s Blues launched in exhilarating fashion this City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra concert, pertinent as the 250th anniversary of American Independence approaches.

Missy Mazzoli’sSinfonia (for Orbiting Spheres) could not have been further removed with its formal parallel to that of the solar system; an abstraction offset by the ‘sinfonia’ connotations of a Medieval hurdy-gurdy whose modal drone, recreated here with harmonicas played by the horns and woodwind, underlies the piece’s increasing velocity. That this suggested a tangible connection with the past and, at the same time, absorbed accrued influences into an idiom of today said much about the effectiveness of Mazzoli’s modus operandi these past two decades.

It could have been a conceptual leap too far from here to Gershwin’s galvanizing of the ‘jazz age’ aesthetic almost a century earlier yet Rhapsody in Blue has lost but little of its edge in the interim, especially as Stewart Goodyear rendered its solo part with almost reckless enjoyment. With almost every focal point either underlined or rendered in inverted commas, this was not the subtlest of performance, but Kazuki Yamada was at one with his pianist in conveying the breezy excitement of this music, with the final stages emerging as a high-octane apotheosis. Goodyear is evidently a pianist with whom to reckon – maybe his next appearance will find him tackling Gershwin’s Piano Concerto in F? For the present, he gave the slow movement of his own Piano Sonata (1996), poised midway between Copland and Piston, as plaintive encore.

Whatever his radical tendencies, Charles Ives embodies the ethos of an earlier age (Michael Tilson Thomas aptly described him as America’s greatest late-Romantic composer), such as felt uppermost with Yamada’s take on Three Places in New England. So the intensifying of feeling in The ‘St. Gaudens’ at Boston Common was secondary to a distanced recollection of time, while the elaborate march-fantasy that is Putnam’s Camp, Redding, Connecticut was genial rather than boisterous – albeit until its accumulation of activity for an ending of visceral abandon. The Housatonic at Stockbridge yet which left the deepest impression –   its fervent evocation of place from the vantage of marital bliss duly inspiring a welling-up    of emotion which not even Yamada’s slight over-hastiness could rob of its sheer eloquence.

An American in Paris might have been an awkward piece with which to close, but succeeded well on its own terms. Something between tone poem and symphonic rhapsody. Gershwin’s evocation of a compatriot (himself?) a little lost in the French capital received an impulsive yet perceptive reading. There was a start-stop feel to its earlier stages, while Oscar Whight’s rather forced take on the indelible trumpet melody was to its detriment, but what ensued was rarely less than persuasive – not least those final bars with their tangible sense of resolution.

It certainly brought to a resounding close a concert which conveyed much of the sheer variety of American music across little more than a century. Hopefully Yamada will programme more of this repertoire – perhaps an Ives symphony or music by the late, great Christopher Rouse?

To read more about the CBSO’s 2025/26 season, visit the CBSO website. Click on the names for more on pianist Stewart Goodyear, CBSO chief conductor Kazuki Yamada and composers Missy Mazzoli and Carlos Simon

Published post no.2,777 – Saturday 24 January 2026