Category Archives: Orchestral

In concert – Benjamin Grosvenor, CBSO / Jac van Steen: Stravinsky, Hindemith, Ravel & Honegger

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Benjamin Grosvenor (piano), City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra / Jac van Steen

Hindemith Concert Music for Strings and Brass Op.50 (1930)
Ravel Piano Concerto in G major (1929-31)
Honegger Pacific 231 (1923)
Stravinsky Petruska (1911, rev. 1947)

Symphony Hall, Birmingham
Wednesday 5 May 2026

Reviewed by Richard Whitehouse Picture (c) Jonathan Ferro

Tonight’s concert by the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra saw the welcome return of Jac van Steen in a programme centred on several of the composers who contributed works to the Boston’s Symphony’s 50th season and what was an auspicious time for Western music.

Concert Music for strings and brass found Hindemith at an early peak of success abroad, as is evident from the ease with which he variously juxtaposes and combines these distinct groups. Formally the work is no less innovative – its initial part eliding first and slow movements as it pivots between densely orchestral or translucently chamber textures on the way towards a cumulatively sustained threnody; whereas its successor elides scherzo and finale as it veers between incisively fugal or plaintively homophonic textures prior to its resolute apotheosis. Music which has a notable advocate in Steen, ensuring this music never sounded congested or rhythmically inflexible while securing an impressive response from the CBSO musicians.

Although the Hindemith has latterly regained prominence, Ravel’s Piano Concerto has only gained further hearings across time. No mean exponent, Benjamin Grosvenor was not at his best in this account – the initial Allegramente finding rapport between soloist and orchestra less than unanimous, with its elements of jazz sounding a touch forced. The central Adagio opened with its solo passage lacking subtlety, though the build-up towards its close brought a frisson of anticipation, while the final Presto had a fluency and energy even more evident in that from Prokofiev’s Seventh Piano Sonata – Grosvenor on something like his best form.

A pity that no-one ever revives the [First] Symphony which Honegger wrote for that Boston anniversary, but his Pacific 231 has retained something of its early notoriety and Steen made the most of its implacable build-up from stasis, via a remorselessly accruing velocity then on to its merciless apotheosis. Certain members of the audience might first have encountered it in Louis Frémaux’s recording with this orchestra from 1973; the present performance being no less attentive to the music’s essentially human rendering of a technological phenomenon.

The scene was duly set for Stravinsky’s Petrushka, heard in its 1947 orchestration but with no lack of finesse on Steen’s part such as opened-out the music’s textures yet without diluting its emotional immediacy. There was no lack of evocation in the opening tableau’s depiction of St. Petersburg’s Shrove-Tide Fair, nor with that tantalizing passage when the anti-hero comes to life before a spirited Russian Dance. The central tableaux, focussing on Petrushka then the Moor in their respective cells, found an unerring balance between the music’s whimsical and its all-too-human emotions; heading into the Shrove-Tide Fair at Evening with its set-pieces vividly characterized. Just why Steen dispensed with the final minutes, depicting Petrushka’s death then his ‘resurrection’, is anyone’s guess: the CBSO trumpets were doubtless up for it.

An impressive concert, even so, not least as means for launching the CBSO’s 2026/27 season – details of which can be found elsewhere on Arcana.fm as well as on the orchestra’s website. Given the fitful funding at local and national levels, such ambition can only be commended.

To read more about the CBSO’s 2025/26 season, visit the CBSO website. Click on the names for more on soloist Benjamin Grosvenor and conductor Jac van Steen

Published post no.2,883 – Sunday 9 May 2026

In concert – Fleur Barron, CBSO / Carlo Rizzi: Puccini in Rome

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Fleur Barron (mezzo-soprano), City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra / Carlo Rizzi

Puccini arr. Rizzi Tosca – Symphonic Suite (1900, arr. 2020)
Respighi Il Tramonto (1917-18)
Puccini arr. Rizzi Madama Butterfly – Symphonic Suite (1904, arr. 2020)
Respighi Pini di Roma (1923-4)

Symphony Hall, Birmingham
Thursday 16 April 2026

Reviewed by Richard Whitehouse Photo of Fleur Barron by Victoria Cadisch

Carlo Rizzi has long been a familiar presence in Birmingham – though as music director (for 13 years) at Welsh National Opera rather than conducting the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra, with whom his rapport was nevertheless undoubted as tonight’s concert confirmed.

The theatrical essence of Puccini’s operas inevitably detracts from their orchestral mastery, but there is no reason why their music cannot be adapted for the concert hall – as Rizzi duly demonstrated with these two ‘symphonic suites’ created during the COVID lockdown. The incentive had come earlier when conducting the suite from Richard Strauss’ Der Rosenkavalier, and anyone familiar with that rather crassly assembled concoction will surely concur that Rizzi has performed a much greater service for two of the Italian composer’s most famous operas.

As regards Tosca, its unwavering concentration makes it difficult to extract purely orchestral passages of any length – thereby vindicating making Rizzi’s decision to adapt this music as   it stands and not ‘instrumentalize’ the vocal lines. Centred on the ill-fated lovers Tosca and Cavaradossi, his suite pivots between high emotion and fraught pathos while still managing to encompass the extent of the drama throughout the two hours of its unfolding. Put another way, those unfamiliar with this opera would be left in little doubt as to its dramatic potency.

If the overtly discursive quality of Madam Butterfly makes it less amenable for being distilled in this way, its score offers an abundance of orchestral finesse and local colour of which Rizzi has made the most. Here the emphasis comes even more on the eponymous heroine, her main set-pieces diminished only incrementally when shorn of their vocal component. Nor does this suite overlook the searing cruelty of the denouement, achieved here through a shattering burst of orchestral violence which felt scarcely less visceral than in operas from Janáček and Berg.

In between these high-octane encapsulations, a modicum of restraint (though hardly serenity) was conveyed by The Sunset. When setting Shelley’s typically over-wrought poem from 1816, Respighi was evidently guided by the disjunctive if not necessarily jarring transition between its rapt initial stages and its anguished continuation towards an ending of fatalistic repose. Its richly enveloping string-writing was fastidiously rendered – an apposite context for Canadian mezzo Fleur Barron (above) to project vocal writing no less suffused with radiant emotional warmth.

Respighi in more familiar guise concluded this programme. His Pines of Rome was accorded an insightful reading – whether in the raucous animation of those ‘of the Villa Borghese’, the sombre opulence of those ‘near a Catacomb’, the enfolding ecstasy of those ‘at the Janiculum’ (pre-recorded nightingale ascending headily through the expanse of Symphony Hall) then the surging majesty of those ‘of the Appian Way’, with its overwhelmingly cinematic peroration. Music expressly intended to bring the house down, which was certainly true on this occasion.

It set the seal on an imaginatively programmed and superbly played concert, making one hope that Rizzi will soon be returning. Next week, however, brings music of a very different nature when Ryan Wigglesworth takes the podium in commemorative music by Purcell and Brahms.

To read more about the CBSO’s 2025/26 season, visit the CBSO website. Click on the names for more on conductor Carlo Rizzi and mezzo-soprano Fleur Barron

Published post no.2,863 – Monday 20 April 2026

In Concert – Hans Christian Aavik, Estonian National Symphony Orchestra / Neeme Järvi & Olari Elts @ Estonia Concert Hall, Tallinn

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Hans Christian Aavik (violin), Estonian National Symphony Orchestra / Neeme Järvi, Olari Elts

Verbytsky / Chubynsky National Anthem of Ukraine
Eller Homeland Tune (1918/1953)
Sibelius Andante festivo (1922/1938)
Tüür Violin Concerto no.2 ‘Angel’s Share’ (2018)
Sumera Symphony no.2 (1984)

Estonia Concert Hall, Tallinn
Wednesday 15 April 2026

Reviewed by Ben Hogwood Pictures (c) Ben Hogwood

There was a celebratory air to this concert in the Estonian National Symphony Orchestra’s Violin Concerto series, which began with powerful solidarity as the orchestra played the Ukrainian National Anthem to a standing audience.

They were conducted by the return of the much-loved Neeme Järvi, soon to be 89 – the unofficial godfather of an Estonian conducting dynasty now spreading well beyond his own sons Paavo and Kristjan. Järvi also conducted Homeland Tune by the pioneering Estonian composer Heino Eller, whose stints at Tartu and Tallinn musical establishments found him teaching the likes of Arvo Pärt and Tubin. The burnished string tone of the Estonian NSO strings was to be savoured in this affectionate rendering, as it was in a warm account of Andante Festivo, the popular Sibelius encore.

The impish Järvi, playing to the gallery, was then joined on stage by Martin Cullingford (above) editor of Gramophone magazine. While there were mischievous asides from the conductor there were serious points too – the merits of composer Joachim Raff, the latest in a long list of countless musical discoveries, and the concluding exhortation that without music, life is nothing. It was difficult to disagree, Järvi showing just why he is held in such great esteem.

So, too, is composer Erkki-Sven Tüür, in his fifties but with a thirty-year career in which he has established himself on the world stage as a composer whose evolution is compelling to witness. Tüür writes with great fluency in established classical forms, and his Violin Concerto no.2 shows his ability to apply an emotive program to those structures. ‘Angel’s Share’ refers to the pocket of air appearing in a barrel of whisky during the ageing process, a phenomenon applied to the maturing of an adult.

The silvery edge to the tone of violinist Hans Christian Aavik was the ideal spur for music that engaged in luminous dialogue, while laced with folksy references. The frequency spectrum of this piece is wide, from the metallic percussion of the first gesture to the important part played by the double basses, providing notable depth, their counter melodies central as the concerto pushed forward. Aavik’s virtuosity was key, convincingly delivering with spacious phrasing. This concerto needs repeated listening but is on its way to becoming a repertoire regular.

The same fate should befall the Second Symphony of Lepo Sumera, a 20-minute single movement span that proved something of a revelation. Sumera is not often heard beyond his own country, but this work completely validated his compositional approach, blending an American-style minimalism – admired by John Adams, no less – with fresh melodies and open textures that could only be Baltic in origin.

The work began with the two harps (Sara Siria D’Amico and Saale Kivimaker) who played exquisitely, their distinctive motifs the seeds from which the music grew, forming like a sped-up motion picture of the growth of a tree, its branches extending outwards and upwards in twisting figures, germinating new ideas at every turn while all the while building a majestic canopy.

Olari Elts oversaw this process with admirable surety, aided by unexpected interventions from the trombones, and double basses, with wild whoops and guttural phrases introducing a more primal edge. The climactic section confirmed Sumera’s continental approach, for the tree could now be in the American plains given the wide-open textures around, and also his tight grasp of structure, with barely a note out of place. Gradually the music returned to earth, and to the harps of the beginning, its story told in a singularly powerful voice.

Sumera’s output numbers seven symphonies, each earmarked for release in recordings by this conductor and orchestra on the Finnish label Ondine. Judging by this rediscovered masterpiece, we are in for a treat – and for Sumera, whose life was cut tragically short at the age of 50, recognition of his talents looks set to go well beyond this appreciative Tallinn concert hall.

Published post no.2,862 – Sunday 19 April 2026

In Concert – Nelson Goerner, City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra / Kazuki Yamada: Hindemith, Rachmaninoff & Bartók

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Nelsen Goerner (piano) City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra / Kazuki Yamada

Hindemith Symphonic Metamorphosis of Themes by Carl Maria von Weber (1943)
Rachmaninoff Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini Op.43 (1934)
Bartók Concerto for Orchestra BB123 (1943)

Symphony Hall, Birmingham
Thursday 9 April 2026

Reviewed by Richard Whitehouse Pictures (c) Andrew Fox (above) and Marco Borggreve (below)

There was a pleasing overall balance to this evening’s concert from the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra and its music director Kazuki Yamada: the three works, written within a decade of each other, drawing extensively on earlier composers or, indeed, traditional music.

If not as familiar as it once was (and not least in Birmingham), Symphonic Metamorphosis of Themes by Carl Maria von Weber is always worth revival – not least for finding Hindemith at his most approachable and uninhibited. It was this latter aspect which came over most vividly here – Yamada securing a forceful though never blowzy response in the opening Allegro, then making the most of its ‘Turandot’ Scherzo’s freewheeling play on Weber’s already recalcitrant overture to which the CBSO responded in like fashion. Easily to underestimate, the Andantino emerged as music of no mean pathos as well as a foil to the final March’s breezy treatment of incisive then jocular melodies, with a close of real panache. Did a smile on the face of certain older punters indicate the latter tune’s audible resemblance to a once popular wartime song?

Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini has become increasingly familiar in recent decades, as has Rachmaninoff’s music as a whole, and tonight’s performance amply underlined why. He may not have partnered the CBSO for several years, but Nelson Goerner secured a rapport from the outset – the initial 15 variations pivoting between impetuosity and inwardness with dextrous assurance, then those three which constitute a ‘slow movement’ rendered with a soulfulness and, in the evergreen Variation XVIII, a deftness such as banished any hint of sentimentality. The closing six variations duly unfolded as a ‘finale’ capricious and scintillating, Goerner at one with the orchestra in rounding off this work with a deathless payoff. Impeccably played if emotionally aloof, Brahms’ Intermezzo in A major (Op. 118/2) was the less than apposite encore.

The CBSO has an association with Bartók’s Concerto for Orchestra itself going back decades with the present account notable, above all, for its sheer virtuosity of playing. Interpretatively things was not quite this consistent – the expressive contrasts in its Introduzione just a little inflexibly drawn so that the movement felt no more than the sum of its admittedly impressive parts, with the succession of duets in Presentando le coppie a little too detached from each other for this to become the genial though equally vulnerable scherzando it ideally should be.

Conversely, the Elegia had an ideal balance between wrenching anguish and that unworldly ‘night music’ from which it emerges and into which it ultimately withdraws, while the quirky interplay of styles and parodies – whether Léhar or Shostakovich seems beside the point – in the Intermezzo interrotto never sounded at all contrived. Neither did the Finale disappoint as it navigated between pulsating energy and brazen high jinx, on route to a coda of hushed anticipation capped by a peroration which set the seal on this work in an exhilarating QED.

Overall, a fine showing for the CBSO and Yamada in the wake of their latest European tour. The orchestra returns next week in an enterprising programme of Respighi and Puccini, the latter represented by syntheses from two of his operas devised by the conductor Carlo Rizzi.

To read more about the CBSO’s 2025/26 season, visit the CBSO website. Click on the names for more on their principal conductor Kazuki Yamada and pianist Nelson Goerner

Published post no.2,854 – Saturday 11 April 2026

In Concert: London Chamber Music Society – Ariel Lanyi, London Firebird Orchestra / George Jackson @ St. John’s Waterloo: Mendelssohn, Beethoven, Puccini & Haydn

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Ariel Lanyi (piano, below), London Firebird Orchestra / George Jackson (above)

Mendelssohn Overture: A Midsummer Night’s Dream Op.21 (1826)
Beethoven Piano Concerto no.4 in G major Op.58 (1805-06)
Puccini Crisantemi (1890)
Haydn Symphony no.96 in D major ‘The Miracle’ (1791)

St John’s Church, Waterloo, London
Sunday 8 March 2026 [6pm]

Reviewed by Richard Whitehouse Picture of George Jackson (c) Short Eared Dog Photography; Picture of Ariel Lanyi (c) Kaupo Kikkas

Having appeared at London Chamber Music Society on four previous occasions, the London Firebird Orchestra tonight made its debut at the organization’s new home, St John’s Waterloo, with a programme largely focussing on music from the late Classical and early Romantic eras.

Mendelssohn’s overture A Midsummer Night’s Dream seldom disappoints as a concert-opener, and conductor George Jackson duly ensured a characterful reading at its best in those passages when the composer allows his imaginative response to Shakespeare’s drama free rein – which is not to suggest a lack of animation or impetus elsewhere. Incidentally the prominent part for ophicleide was taken by bass trombone, though the programme listed both instruments while, with the piano lid already raised, it was by no means easy to tell which one was being played.

That piano came to the fore during Beethoven’s Fourth Concerto, and a work clearly playing to the strengths of Israeli pianist (currently residing in London) Ariel Lanyi. Speculative and often capricious in its solo writing, the opening movement had expressive breadth if without losing focus during its intricate development, and Lanyi made a persuasive case for the less often heard of the composer’s own cadenzas – the granitic power of its culmination making the orchestra’s re-entry more poetic. Soloist and orchestra drew the requisite contrasts from the Andante, before such opposition was resolved in a coda of melting pathos, then the final Rondo exuded boisterous good humour without neglecting those more graceful elements as increasingly come to the fore and hence make its hectic closing bars the more exhilarating.

Lanyi acknowledged the (rightly) enthusiastic reception with an unexpected yet appealing encore of a Notturno (fourth from a set of six pieces) that Respighi wrote around 1904. Its raptness made an admirable foil to the more conventional while affecting elegy Crisantemi that Puccini wrote in memory of Amadeo I, his brief tenure as Spanish king pre-dating his final years in Turin where he befriended the Italian composer. Conceived for string quartet, its never cloying sentiment felt even more in evidence heard with a larger group of strings.

The nicknames appended to many Haydn symphonies are often approximate and none more so than with No. 96, the ‘miracle’ of the falling chandelier which caused no injuries almost certainly taking place during the premiere of No. 102. The earlier work is not quite its equal, but Jackson made the most of its attractions with a winning take on a first movement whose imposing Adagio prepares for an agile Allegro in almost constant development. The Andante has a cadenza-like lead in to its coda – leader Calyssa Davidson and violinist Victoria Marsh relishing the spotlight as audibly as did oboist Polly Bartlett her winsome contribution in the Menuetto. The final Vivace finds Haydn at his most laconic, as he nimbly alternates its main themes on route to a coda which brings the whole symphony to a suitably effervescent close.

It also brought to an end a well-planned and thoroughly enjoyable concert that played to the strengths of both orchestra and conductor. LCMS continues on March 22nd with the Sacconi Quartet in what looks to be a no less enticing programme of Haydn, Boccherini and Dvořák.

Click on the highlighted names to read more on the London Chamber Music Society season for 2025-26, the London Firebird Orchestra, conductor George Jackson and pianist Ariel Lanyi

Published post no.2,826 – Wednesday 11 March 2026