Category Archives: Orchestral

In concert – Ilya Gringolts, CBSO / Ilan Volkov: Prokofiev & Bruckner

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Ilya Gringolts (violin), City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra / Ilan Volkov (above)

Prokofiev Violin Concerto no.1 in D major Op.19 (1915-17)
Bruckner Symphony no.7 in E major (1881-83)

Symphony Hall, Birmingham
Tuesday 3 November 2026

Reviewed by Richard Whitehouse Photos Ilan Volkov (c) Hannah Blake-Fathers, Ilya Gringolts (c) Kaupo Kikkas

This first concert in November by the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra was also its first with newly appointed principal guest conductor Ilan Volkov – continuing an association which has brought much innovative programming and music-making these past two decades.

A comparable amount of time, indeed, since Ilya Gringolts (above) recorded Prokofiev’s First Violin Concerto which, on the basis of this performance, remains a work for which he feels no little empathy. Almost coaxed into existence, the initial Andantino exuded a rapt calm that was by no means effaced as this movement arrived at its livelier second theme then accrued impetus prior to an ethereal revisiting of its main melody. Lithe and incisive, the brief central Scherzo provided the necessary contrast; during which, Gringolts’s passagework was a joy to behold.

Much the most difficult movement to realize, the final Moderato was ideally paced through its brief if stirring orchestral climaxes then the gradual reappearance of earlier ideas before a transformed restatement of the work’s opening music. Throughout, the integration of soloist and orchestra was abetted by the latter’s fastidious response under Volkov’s astute direction. ‘Old fashioned’ this piece may have seemed in the context of Prokofiev’s music during this period, but its unforced lyricism and formal poise make it a highpoint of his output overall.

Prokofiev and Bruckner rarely share the same programme, but the coupling worked ideally on this occasion. At just under 63 minutes, this was a taut yet never inflexible account of the latter’s Seventh Symphony as recalled that by Hans Rosbaud (remembered primarily for his advocacy of contemporary music but a fine exponent of Bruckner and Sibelius) in its innate Classicism and tensile rhetoric. Not least an opening Allegro moderato that proceeded as an unbroken span – the expressive character of its themes underlined with no real modifying of pulse; prior to a development whose disjunct contrasts made its ultimate cohesion the more tangible, then a coda whose surging grandeur brought this movement fervently full circle. A reminder, too, that broad(er) tempos are an option though never a prerequisite for Bruckner.

This was reinforced by the Adagio, if not its composer’s most profound such movement then certainly his most endearing. Its threnodic main melody duly gained in eloquence with each reappearance but it was Volkov’s easeful handling of its songful secondary theme and, most especially, the gravitas of its coda which lingered longest in the memory. A fine showing for the CBSO brass, with a quartet of Wagner Tubas effortlessly integrated tonally and texturally into the ensemble. Bracingly exuberant in its outer sections yet warmly ingratiating in its trio, the Scherzo struck a more worldly tone enhanced by the Finale’s moving from anticipation, via solemnity, to ominousness in Bruckner’s shortest while most ingenious such movement. Its coda linked hands with that from the first movement for what was a majestic peroration.

A commanding end to an impressive performance and one that bodes well for Volkov’s future concerts with this orchestra. These focus on Mendelssohn then Messiaen, and hopefully there will be a contemporary element introduced as the partnership continues over ensuing seasons.

To read more about the CBSO’s 2026/27 season, visit the CBSO website. Click on the names to read more on violinist Ilya Gringolts and conductor Ilan Volkov

Published post no.3,069 – Thursday 5 November 2026

In concert – Zlatomir Fung, Royal Philharmonic Orchestra / Ariane Matiakh: Debussy, Laurence Osborn & Brahms

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Zlatomir Fung (cello), Royal Philharmonic Orchestra / Ariane Matiakh

Debussy Prélude à l’Après-midi d’un faune (1894)
Osborn Sun Sundered Head (2026) [World Premiere]
Brahms Symphony no.1 in C minor Op.68 (1876)

Cadogan Hall, London
Wednesday 21 October 2026

Reviewed by Richard Whitehouse

The Royal Philharmonic Orchestra’s latest concert at Cadogan Hall paired two very different classics, just 18 years apart, with a new work by one of the UK’s most significant younger composers and what proved a notable debut with this orchestra by one of France’s leading conductors.

Laurence Osborn’s profile has grown incrementally this past decade and Sun Sundered Head is among his most significant premieres. Inspired by one of Guillaume Apollinaire’s typically oblique poems, the trajectory of his nocturne for cello and orchestra (to quote the composer) ‘‘from dusk, to the dead of night, to dawn’’ is one of a mounting anticipation and dissipating activity, to a central cadenza that is eventful for all its inwardness, then rapidly accumulating energy as makes ever more virtuosic demands before the most heart-stopping of conclusions.

The sheer intricacy and dexterity of orchestral writing would be a challenge for any soloist to negotiate, but from which Zlatomir Fung duly emerged with keen appreciation of his being a focal-point in proceedings. Music, moreover, that reinforces Osborn’s involvement with the musical past as often provocative while always engaging to a degree communicated to those present. Following on from the TOMB!, the first album dedicated to this work, this has been an auspicious year for a composer with a great deal to say and resourceful ways of saying it.

Something similar may well have been said about Debussy after the premiere of Prélude à l’ Après-midi d’un faune, his musical evocation of a poem by Stéphane Mallarmé, that opened tonight’s programme. Relatively slow if never sluggish in unfolding, with its sensuous allure never in doubt at climactic moments, this was an approach that played to the strengths of the RPO (not least among them flautist Emer McDonough) and reminded one of just how game-changing this music felt as the 19th century drew – not a little uncertainly – towards its close.

Not too long before, Brahms’s First Symphony must have seemed the vindication of a very different aesthetic and it was to Ariane Matiakh’s credit that this performance evolved with unforced conviction and not a little spontaneity. Suitably implacable, the first movement’s introduction segued into an Allegro trenchant but never dogged in forward motion with no lack of impetus in its development or repose in its coda. Eloquently rendered, the ensuing Andante drew felicitous playing from the RPO woodwind as not the least of its attractions.

Poised unerringly between a wistful intermezzo and a playful scherzo, the third movement afforded ideal breathing-space before a finale that carried all before it. From its speculative introduction then radiant horn melody, Matiakh had the measure of a movement which can easily become discursive or even prolix, but here never lost focus through to an apotheosis whose resplendence never felt overbearing. Whether or not Brahms consciously emulated Beethoven in this work, his re-energizing of the symphonic genre could hardly be denied. A memorable evening which ought to lead to a continued association between the RPO and Matiakh. She is currently recording the symphonic works of Charles Koechlin for Capriccio, and it is to be hoped that one of these impressive pieces may yet achieve a UK performance.

To read more about the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra’s 2026/27 season, visit the RPO website. Click on the names to read more on cellist Zlatomir Fung, conductor Ariane Matakh and composer Laurence Osborn

Published post no.3,056 – Friday 23 October 2026

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