Category Archives: Orchestral

In Concert – Chiara Skerath & The Mozartists / Ian Page @ Wigmore Hall: Sturm und Drang

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Chiara Skerath (soprano), The Mozartists / Ian Page

Kraus Symphony in C minor VB142
Gluck Dieux puissants que j’atteste…Jupiter, lance la foundre (from Iphigénie en Aulide)
Jammelli Ombre che tacite qui sede (from Fetante)
Mozart Vorrei punirti, indegno (from La finta giardiniera K196)
Traetta Ombra cara, amorosa…li resti sempre a piangere (from Antigona)
Haydn Amore nel moi petto (from Lo Speziale)
Haydn Symphony no.45 in F# minor ‘Farewell’

Wigmore Hall, London
Thursday 24 September 7:30pm

Reviewed by Ben Hogwood Pictures (c) Bertille Cascio

Ian Page and The Mozartists continued their remarkable and revealing turning over of scores from the 18th century at the Wigmore Hall. Their exploration of Sturm and Drang marked 250 years’ use of the phrase, since title of a play by the German Friedrich Maximilian von Klinger – and also the Mozartists’ fourth album exploring music written in this feverish mood.

Three of the composers here are virtually unknown today, while Haydn – whose Farewell symphony closed the program – is the one most associated with the phrase. More of him later, for the early part of the concert belonged to Joseph Martin Kraus. The Frankfurt-born composer, who relocated to Sweden in 1778, wrote a Symphony in C minor of some stature five years later, its power sufficient for me to check there were only 20 players on the Wigmore Hall platform. Page marshalled a performance with poise and drama, the lean tones of the Mozartists’ strings complemented by wonderfully grainy woodwind and a fulsome horn quartet who stood to play, two either side of the stage. The solemn counterpoint of the introduction harked back unexpectedly towards the slow movements of Bach’s Brandenburg Concertos, before the urgent Allegro raced ahead in dramatic fashion. The striking Adagio was initially pared-back but blossomed in the wind section, before the sharply defined third movement returned to the cut and thrust of the first. With lively dialogue and fierce energy, this was a performance to savour.

So, too, was the Haydn with which the concert ended, though at times Page appeared to be pressing too hard on the accelerator, with some phrases in the first movement of the Farewell needing more time to breathe. There was considerable tension here though, as there was in the second movement, albeit expressed through austere colours and stretched phrases. The Minuet was lightly defined but offered little relief, while the finale, surely one of the first examples of instrumental protest music, was brilliantly done. The players left the stage incrementally as Haydn requested of his Esterházy musicians, so at the end we were left with just violinists Matthew Truscott and Daniel Edgar. Typically Haydn’s humour was retained, but this time with a darker edge.

Between the symphonies lay five well-chosen arias, themselves a history lesson – in excellent performances from soprano Chiara Skerath (above), standing in for the indisposed Alexandra Lowe. She immediately seized the audience’s attention with Clytemnestre’s aria from Gluck‘s Iphigenie et Aulide, her horrific realisation that her husband Agamemnon was thinking of sacrificing his own daughter. This was a dramatic a, a dramatic affair, with appropriately sharp interjections from the orchestra. The aria Ombre che tacite qui sede, from Niccolò Jammelli’s Fetante, breathed much cooler air, the soprano low in her range at times, before the concert’s only fleeting reference to Mozart himself. Here we returned to the minor key for an aria from composer’s first mature opera, La finta giardiniera. Skerath’s communication with both orchestra and audience was captivating, revealing the extent of Arminda’s anger at the arrival of her fiancée’s former lover.

The next composer to prove his worth as a dramatic scene setter was Gluck’s Italian contemporary Tomasso Traetta, the cold introduction to Ombra cara balanced by beautiful control from Skerath. We then had a rare outing for the stage music of Haydn himself, keeping the theme of G minor tonality. The humour on show in Amore nel moi petto may not have been as immediate as his wit in the symphonies, but Skerath’s expression gave it the best chance.

As ever, Ian Page deserves enormous credit for an imaginative and entertaining program, balancing education and entertainment. By bringing fresh insight to the familiar repertoire and a chance to shine for the lesser-known names, he has made the ensemble’s Wigmore Hall series an unmissable date in the calendar. The players clearly enjoy it, too, as their encore – a palette cleansing major key slow movement from English composer Carl Friedrich Abel – was wreathed in smiles.

Published post no.3,029 – Saturday 26 September 2026

In concert – Alice Sara Ott, CBSO / Kazuki Yamada: Grieg, Bax, Clyne & Debussy

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Alice Sara Ott (piano), City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra / Kazuki Yamada

Bax Tintagel (1917-19)
Grieg Piano Concerto in A minor Op.16 (1868)
Clyne Restless Oceans (2018)
Debussy La mer L109 (1903-05)

Symphony Hall, Birmingham
Tuesday 22 September 2026

Reviewed by Richard Whitehouse Photo (c) Hannah Blake-Fathers

The sea, in various manifestations, was a dominant factor in this evening’s concert by the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra. One which began with Tintagel, long the most familiar (if not the only one now being revived) of Bax’s tone poems, where Kazuki Yamada showed a sure grasp of music more a reflection of its composer’s involvement with the pianist Harriet Cohen than of Arthurian times or places. Its ‘love music’ lacked nothing in rapture, yet it was the seascape from which it emerges then to which it returns that made the lasting impression.

Grieg’s Piano Concerto might not convey any overt maritime associations, but its expressive ambience is audibly that of the outdoors (unlike that of the Schumann concerto that provided its model in many particulars) and Alice Sara Ott – CBSO Collaborative Artist these next two seasons – responded with playing as impetuous and soulful as its opening movement requires. Fleeting hesitancies aside, there was no mistaking the rapport between her and Yamada; with its cadenza an emotional culmination in every respect. Soulful while never inert expressively, the central Adagio exuded inward warmth as found ideal contrast in the bracing energy of the finale – its poetic middle section artlessly rendered, and its apotheosis opulent with no undue bathos. Ott’s limpid rendering of John Field’s Ninth Nocturne made for an appealing encore.

The second half got off to a short if by no means sweet start with Restless Oceans, a compact yet eventful celebration of female identity from Anna Clyne – CBSO Composer in Residence for the current season – that lacked little in presence. Rhythmically incisive and harmonically expressive ideas, alternating purposefully on their way to the tersely unequivocal conclusion, were offset by vocal and gestural contributions from the musicians that added a layer of vivid theatricality. Further and more extended instances of Clyne’s music will follow in due course.

Bax can only have been too aware when writing Tintagel of Debussy’s La mer – this latter a game-changer in terms of orchestral composition, whose influence continues to radiate some 120 years on. Right from the opening of From dawn to midday on the sea, it was apparent Yamada had found the balance between the placing of detail within an overall structure that, if not symphonic per se, has a formal integration and expressive sweep as feels nothing if not symphonic – witness the majestic peroration with which this opening movement culminates.

Much the most elusive of these symphonic sketches, Play of the Waves yielded a lightness of touch and deftness of motion that only emphasized its emotional ambivalence. Unerringly phrased, its coda prepared ideally for Dialogue of the Wind and the Sea, a finale where the combative and alluring are brought together for what proved a thrilling culmination (though Yamada might have dispensed with those trumpet entries which Debussy subsequently and unwisely added). Certainly it brought this concert to its unequivocal and impressive close.

Yamada returns to Birmingham just before Christmas and Ott does likewise next May, while the CBSO is back in a week’s time with a programme featuring Elgar’s Enigma Variations as well as a second hearing for the co-commissioned Saxophone Concerto by Gwilym Simcock.

To read more about the CBSO’s 2026/27 season, visit the CBSO website. Click on the names to read more on pianist Alice Sara Ott and conductor Kazuki Yamada, and more on composer Anna Clyne

Published post no.3,027 – Thursday 24 September 2026

In concert – London Schools Symphony Orchestra @ Fairfield Hall – Voyages and Visions

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London Schools Symphony Orchestra / Enyi Okpara / *Sitali Dewan

Smyth The Wreckers (1902-04) – Overture*
Pickard Sea-Change (1988-89)
Clyne Restless Oceans (2018)
Rimsky-Korsakov Scheherazade Op.35 (1888)

Fairfield Halls, Croydon
Tuesday 15 September 2026

Reviewed by Richard Whitehouse

Ever enterprising, the London Schools Symphony Orchestra ended its season with this wide ranging exploration of music inspired or pervaded by the sea. Conductor in residence Sitali Dewan duly took the podium for a performance of the overture to Ethel Smyth’s opera The Wreckers as more than made up for what it lacked in cohesion with vibrant characterization of its thematic contrasts – energetic, introspective and hymnic – towards a culmination that accorded the ultimately redemptive essence of what is a very human drama tangible focus.

Preferable though it might have been to place Anna Clyne’s Restless Oceans next instead of at the start of the second half, this brief if eventful celebration of female identity lacked nothing in presence. Its alternating rhythmically incisive and harmonically expressive ideas, building to a tersely unequivocal close, was enhanced by a contribution from the musicians that made for a vividly theatrical conclusion. The sort of piece, moreover, that doubtless left its mark on those participants at the World Economic Forum in Davos – where it was first heard in 2019.

Enyi Okpara had been no less assured when directing John Pickard’s Sea-Change. A typically unequivocal instance of his early music, its title refers less to Shakespeare than to the layered eddying of waves, currents and tides; their contrasts in motion given focus by consistency of pulse and a tonal trajectory centred, however obliquely, around E. Music which is visceral as well as inevitable in its progress, this demands a committed response and the LSSO was not found wanting; whether in its impetuous opening phase, mounting aggression at its centre or that remorseless accumulation whose ultimate catharsis is shot through with ominous import. This is a piece written for while making no concessions to younger players, and those tonight clearly enjoyed the encounter as much as Okpara relished making it his own interpretatively.

If it inhabits far more descriptive terrain, Rimsky-Korsakov’s Scheherazade was not without its formal and emotional subtleties in this insightful reading. Thus there was no lack of drama in The Sea and Sinbad’s Ship to offset its repetition of motion and material, while The Tale of the Kalender Prince had no absence of pathos to balance the quirky humour of its call-and-response between brass or thrilling defiance of its last crescendo. Nor was The Young Prince and the Young Princess less than rapturous in the coming together of its contrasted melodies.

A culmination in every respect, The Festival at Baghdad brings back earlier ideas in varied and ingenious guise; all the while generating a momentum that made its seismic culmination the more impressive and the enfolding resignation of those closing pages the more affecting. Throughout this performance, the LSSO principals were heard to advantage – none more so than leader Erin Healy, her rendering of the violin solos that punctuate each movement of a poise and eloquence such as endowed Rimsky’s technical wizardry with unfailing humanity.

A fitting conclusion, then, to a memorable concert that the LSSO rounded off with a lively medley of maritime melodies that evidently went down a storm on TikTok and in which all participants (not least both conductors) gave their collective all in what was a heady encore.

You can read more about the orchestra at the London Schools Symphony Orchestra website – and click on the names to read more about conductors Enyi Okpara and Sitali Dewan and composers Anna Clyne, John Pickard and Dame Ethel Smyth. For concert information you can also visit the Fairfield Halls website

Published post no.3,020 – Thursday 17 September 2026

Arcana at the BBC Proms: Simone Lamsma, Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra / Andrew Manze – Vaughan Williams, Britten & Smickersgill

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Simone Lamsma (violin), Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra / Andrew Manze

Vaughan Williams Fantasia on a Theme by Thomas Tallis (1910)
Britten Violin Concerto in D minor Op.15 (1938-9)
Smickersgill A Brick Thrown with Love (2026) [BBC co-commission: World premiere]
Vaughan Williams Symphony No. 9 in E minor (1956-7)

Royal Albert Hall, London
Friday 4 September 2026

Reviewed by Richard Whitehouse Photos (c) BBC / Chris Christodoulou

Andrew Manze’s eleventh appearance at the Proms, during which 28 years he has moved from being a Baroque violinist and director to a symphonic conductor, drew on just over a century of British music for what proved a typically thoughtful and absorbing programme.

Not consistently successful, though – hence an account of Vaughan Williams‘ Tallis Fantasia whose avoiding of old-school eloquence leant it a certain uniformity of expression. In particular, the second (nine-piece) orchestra sounded rather un-atmospheric placed just behind the main body, leaving it to the solo quartet to instil a degree of intensity as the piece built toward its fervent if generalized climax before heading into subdued retrospection. Assured playing among the ranks of the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra strings did not make it other than an unexceptional reading.

The surprise about Simone Lamsma’s Proms appearance was this being her first, but anyone having heard her in Saint-Saëns’s Third Concerto knows her to be a soloist of the first order -as was the case with Britten’s Violin Concerto. The Moderato’s alternating of enervation and incisiveness was deftly handled, then the Vivace’s impetus did not omit a soulful response in its central episode with a magical transition on piccolos and tuba back to its initial animation. Nor was the cadenza other than integrated thematically into an overall structure as concludes with one of Britten’s most deeply felt passacaglias. Spanish elements which keenly offset any formal severity with expressive spontaneity bring about its powerful climax; the equivocation between hope and resignation unerringly judged at the end of what was a memorable reading.

Those responsive to her earlier ensemble works should have found Carmel Smickersgill’s new Proms piece no less intriguing. Its three (more or less) continuous sections of A Brick Thrown with Love provide an unforced trajectory where reckless negativity is countered with diverse responses, before the coming together in a mood of determined positivity. Lucid textures and iridescent scoring banish any hint of agit-prop with an appealing demonstration of orchestral prowess; one whose warm reception the composer chose to acknowledge from the rear stalls.

Vaughan Williams’s Ninth Symphony receives more hearings than ever in the seven decades since it premiered to a lukewarm response. Manze had the measure of the opening Moderato with its luminous scoring for three saxophones and a restiveness allayed if not resolved by its twilit coda. The ensuing Andante drew potent contrast from its hieratic and human elements, thrown into relief by a flugelhorn refrain (evocatively played by Tom Fountain) that reaches back into the composer’s distant past, then the Scherzo purposefully offset its capricious and militant aspects with a haunting lyricism as comes into its own in the finale. Less protracted than on Manze’s recording (Onyx), this unfolds in ever more elaborate arcs of accumulating activity to what is less a coda than an apotheosis which here was inevitable and unequivocal.

Just what those closing bars are conveying has been the subject of considerable speculation over time. Without overstating his case, Manze allowed this ‘journey of a life’ to envelop the Albert Hall’s expanse in what was an affecting end to a memorable evening’s music-making.

You can listen to this Prom on BBC Sounds until the end of September 2026.

Published post no.3,012 – Wednesday 9 September 2026

Arcana at the BBC Proms: Julie Roset, Sinfonia of London Strings / John Wilson – Britten, Berkeley, Bridge & Imogen Holst

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Julie Roset (soprano), Sinfonia of London Strings / John Wilson

Berkeley Serenade for Strings Op.12 (1938-9)
Bridge Lament H117 (1915)
Britten Les illuminations Op.18 (1939)
Imogen Holst Suite for String Orchestra (1943)
Britten Variations on a Theme of Frank Bridge Op.10 (1937)

Royal Albert Hall, London
Sunday 6 September 2026, 11am

Reviewed by Richard Whitehouse Photos (c) BBC / Chris Christodoulou

Just weeks after the heady excess of Respighi’s ‘Roman Triptych’, John Wilson and Sinfonia of London were back at the Proms with a typically resourceful programme of British works for and with string orchestra. One which opened with the fourth appearance at these concerts for Lennox Berkeley’s Serenade for Strings, its modest dimensions belying an intensifying trajectory from the high-spirited Vivace, through a suave Andantino then impetuous Allegro, to a Lento whose inward plangency is a sure reflection of events in the latter months of 1939.

Following on naturally, Frank Bridge’s Lament – remembering a nine-year-old girl drowned with the sinking of RMS Lusitania in May 1915 – found a more apposite context than its two previous Proms appearances; not least as Wilson drew such fastidious poise from his players.

Although hardly ineffective given with tenor, Britten’s Les illuminations conveys its essence more fully as conceived with soprano and Julie Roset’s rendering (above) of Arthur Rimbaud’s often disquieting texts was nothing if not idiomatic. From the insistent activity of Villes, via the suspenseful Phrase and elegant Antique to the portentous Royauté and playful Marine – this was a reading to savour. As enticing were the yearning sensuality of Being Beauteous then capricious contrasts of Parade; this latter’s climactic setting of lines first encountered in Fanfare then Interlude as if completing a circle, from where Départ brings the whole sequence to a resigned though fulfilled conclusion. Roset’s insights were ably underpinned by the strings, even if a slightly more visceral response would at times have been welcome.

Her output can suggest an ambition waylaid if not frustrated at every turn, but Imogen Holst left numerous works of intrinsic as opposed to practical worth. Not least her Suite for Strings, its inquiring spirit evident in a restless Prelude then taciturn Fugue with a tellingly queasy final cadence. Despite its title, the Intermezzo that follows makes for a slow movement of unforced eloquence; one whose barely concealed depths inform the final Jig such that the latter’s impetus is not without a growing ambivalence only just dispelled towards its close.

Commemorating Britten at these concerts in the 50th anniversary of his death means, almost by definition, focussing on those works for orchestra largely absent from his post-war output. Among which, Variations on a Theme of Frank Bridge remains among the most impressive – not least in a performance as finely conceived and executed as this. As if mindful of an early comment that ‘‘neither [Britten’s] seriousness nor his levity is intense enough’’, Wilson duly pushed expressive contrasts across its 10 variations to their limits. Characterful as were those earlier vignettes, it was in the sequence of glowering Funeral March, ominous Chant then closing Fugue and Finale that his approach came into its own – not least in the way that the latter’s animation came to a standstill before its belated if impulsive surge to a decisive close.

A pity that Wilson did not consider including an encore (one or other of Bridge’s Two Old English Songs would have been ideal for this context) but the all-round excellence of what was heard, at what might be thought a ‘Proms matinee’, was assuredly its own justification.

You can listen to this Prom on BBC Sounds until the end of September 2026.

Published post no.3,009 – Sunday 6 September 2026