Category Archives: Orchestral

In concert – Raphael Wallfisch, BBC Concert Orchestra / Martin Yates: English Music Festival opening concert – A Night of Bliss

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Raphael Wallfisch (cello), BBC Concert Orchestra / Martin Yates

Alwyn The Innumerable Dance – An English Overture (1933)
Delius ed. Beecham A Village Romeo and Juliet – The Walk to the Paradise Garden (1907)
Bliss Cello Concerto F107 (1969-70)
Vaughan Williams Heroic Elegy and Triumphal Epilogue (1901 rev. 1902)
Bate Symphony no.2, Op.20 (1937-39) [World Premiere]

Dorchester Abbey, Dorchester-on- Thames
Friday 24 May 2025

Reviewed by Richard Whitehouse Photos (c) John Francis

The Walk to the Paradise Garden’s filling the expanse of Dorchester Abbey can only mean the English Music festival was again underway, Martin Yates drawing a response from the BBC Concert Orchestra that exquisitely conveyed the acute pathos of Delius’s operatic interlude.

This opening concert had begun with another reclamation from William Alwyn’s early output. Offshoot of his early fascination with William Blake, The Innumerable Dance is more a tone poem than overture – ‘English’ or otherwise. Its initial phase crescendos in a potent evocation of sunrise, and if the livelier music that follows sounds comparatively anodyne, its finesse of instrumentation (with harp and celesta much in evidence) and its formal deftness made for a welcome revival. How about including Alwyn’s Second or Fifth Symphonies at a future EMF?

Arthur Bliss has enjoyed a veritable upsurge of performances in this 50th anniversary of his death, with his Cello Concerto among the finest works from that creative Indian Summer of his last decade. Compared with those for piano and violin before it, it eschews Romantic-era trappings in favour of Classical lucidity and proportion; its initial Allegro as much impulsive as decisive in its unfolding, with a semi-accompanied cadenza for its development in which Raphael Wallfisch (above) dovetailed effortlessly with orchestra. Subdued and poignant, the central Larghetto doubtless draws on the distant past in its heartfelt rumination, and while the final Allegro seems to dispel such memories, its progress is shot through with an ambivalence as makes the closing exchanges less than conclusive. Not least in this persuasive performance.

After the interval, another worthwhile revival in Heroic Elegy and Triumphal Epilogue with which Vaughan Williams, then in his late twenties, sought eminence among his peers. Only the first part, its fatalistic tread underpinning an eloquent theme on horns, was played at the time – the composer likely unsure if those episodic build-ups and rhetorical overkill of what follows were justified. Thanks to Yates’s assured direction, this music sustained itself up to a fervent apotheosis presaging the first movement from Sinfonia Antarctica half a century on.

Yates has always sought to include a world premiere in his EMF concerts and tonight saw that of Stanley Bate’s Second Symphony. A composer who rather snatched defeat from the jaws of victory, he doubtless had high hopes for a piece written in Paris and London but not accepted (if indeed it was ever put forward) for performance. Shostakovich’s Fifth has been suggested as precursor but a more likely precedent is VW’s Fourth, not least with the fractious progress of an Allegro whose starkly contrasted themes build towards a combative development then resigned coda. Sombre and fatalistic with a powerfully wrought culmination, the Andante is its highlight and the ensuing Scherzo puts the rhythmic syncopation of that in Walton’s First to very different if hardly less effective ends (which have been even more so placed second).

If it fails to clinch the whole, the finale’s alternately baleful expression and propulsive motion secures a rousing peroration then a coda which, if its serenity is borne out of exhaustion rather than affirmation, fittingly ends a work whose motto might well be that of ‘travelling in hope’.

Published post no.2,544 – Sunday 25 May 2025

In concert – Roberts Balanas, Ealing Symphony Orchestra / John Gibbons: Electrifying Ealing – Bernstein, Ángela Luq, Coleridge-Taylor & Bliss

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Roberts Balanas (electric violin, below), Ealing Symphony Orchestra / John Gibbons (above)

Bernstein orch. Kostall & Ramin Symphonic Dances from West Side Story (1957 arr. 1961)
Luq Electric Violin Concerto ‘Machina Humana’ (2023-24) [World Premiere]
Coleridge-Taylor Valse de la reine Op.22/3 (1899)
Bliss A Colour Symphony Op.24 (1921-22, rev, 1930)

St Barnabas Church, Ealing, London
Saturday 10 May 2025

Reviewed by Richard Whitehouse Picture of Roberts Balanas (c) Kiril Kozlov

Another typically enterprising concert by the Ealing Symphony Orchestra and its longstanding music director John Gibbons, featuring the first performance (albeit not designated such) of a major work for electric violin and pieces from a diverse trio of British or American composers.

It might have been orchestrated by regular collaborators Irwin Kostall and Sid Ramin, but the Symphonic Dances from Leonard Bernstein’s West Side Story is as characteristic of the latter’s idiom as it is representative of his most successful musical. Rhythmically a little straightlaced in the Prologue, the performance audibly hit its stride with a Somewhere of melting pathos then a vivacious Scherzo leading to an impulsive Mambo, before the insouciant Cha Cha and ominous fugal Cool presaged a visceral Rumble then a Finale of heartfelt eloquence.

Lauded for her work with electronics, Spanish composer Ángela Luq evidently had no qualms when tackling a full-scale concerto for electric violin. Comprising four contrasted movements, Machina humana duly exploits those timbral and expressive possibilities of its solo instrument – whether in the intricate rhythmic dialogues of its opening Machina, the lucid textures and sensuous harmonies of Sueño (Dream), the impulsive conflict between soloist and orchestra of Animal, then the surging emotions of the final Amar (Love). Musical content may have lacked memorability, with the work rather falling short of its ambition (at least as expressed in the composer’s programme note), but the virtuosity or finesse of Roberts Balanas in realizing this innovative project was unarguable, with the Ealing SO audibly relishing its involvement.

No doubt this piece will secure even greater attention when soloist, orchestra and conductor tour it to Latvia in due course. Maybe on that occasion Gibbons will take the opportunity to give what would likely a first hearing there of Valse de la reine by Samuel Coleridge-Taylor. Third in a sequence of Four Characteristic Waltzes, this is a reminder that its composer was highly adept at ‘light’ music; its halting gait and its affecting lyricism to the fore in what was a welcome revival and a pertinent reminder of his legacy at the time of his premature death.

It also made a telling entrée into A Colour Symphony by Arthur Bliss. This 50th anniversary-year of his passing has led to a notable upsurge in performance and not least of what remains his best-known orchestral work. Whether or not Gibbons has previously conducted it, he had the measure of this piece. Purple made for a thoughtful yet never turgid prelude; one whose stately processional found immediate contrast in the alternate impetus and effulgence of the scherzo that is Red. Nor was there any underplaying of that ambivalent and even ominous element which underpins the outwardly placed unfolding of Blue, a slow movement which leads effortlessly into the finale that is Green with its intricately arrayed double-fugue that builds to a peroration whose outcome is a true declaration of intent thrillingly conveyed here.

An impressive performance, then, which once again confirmed Gibbons’s prowess across the broad spectrum of British orchestral music. Hopefully the Ealing SO will be able to include more Bliss in future programmes, this being music it had clearly taken to its collective heart.

Published post no.2,541 – Thursday 22 May 2025

In concert – The London Chorus and New London Orchestra / Adrian Brown: VE Day 80th Anniversary Concert @ Holy Trinity Church, Sloane Square

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Petroc Trelawny (orator), The London Chorus, New London Orchestra / Adrian Brown

Vaughan Williams Six Choral Songs (1940)
Martinů Memorial to Lidice (1943)
Walton Spitfire Prelude and Fugue (1942)
Bliss Morning Heroes (1929-30)
Holst/Rice I Vow to Thee My Country (1921)

Holy Trinity Church, Sloane Square, London
Thursday 9 May 2025

Reviewed by Richard Whitehouse

The London Chorus and New London Orchestra have put on notable concerts in recent years, few more ambitious than this programme to mark not merely the 80th anniversary of Victory in Europe Day but also the 50th anniversary of Sir Arthur Bliss’s death in appropriate manner.

The first half comprised an unlikely but effective sequence of pieces written at the start of or during the Second World War. Rarely revived as such, Vaughan Williams’s Six Choral Songs to be Sung in Time of War works well as a whole: settings of Shelley that touch on aspects of courage, liberty, healing, victory, then pity, peace and war – before A Song to the New Age characterizes its utopian leanings in subdued and even ambivalent terms which seem typical of its composer. Suffice to add that the London Chorus had the full measure of its aspiration.

Two succinct if otherwise entirely different pieces brought out the best from the New London Orchestra. Rarely so overt in emotion, Martinů was well-nigh explicit when commemorating Nazi atrocities in music of plangent harmonies and chorale-like fervency both evocative and affecting. Derived from his score to the film The First of the Few, Walton had come up with a showpiece whose ceremonial prelude is vividly countered by its incisive fugue – making way for a brief if poignant interlude before matters are brought to a head in the rousing peroration.

Although intimately bound up with the First World War, Morning Heroes is wholly apposite for the present context. Conceived as the exorcism of his wartime experiences, Bliss’s choral symphony elides deftly between a distant past and its present; the first of its five movements featuring an orchestral introduction to set out the underlying mood and salient motifs, before Hector’s Farewell to Adromache had Petroc Trelawny eloquently evoking that scene on the ramparts of Troy without excess rhetoric. Adrian Brown’s understated direction meaningfully pointed up the expressive contrast between this and The City Arming – the setting of Walt Whitman whose interaction of chorus and orchestra was powerfully sustained right through   to the simmering unease at its close, with the onset of hostilities in the American Civil War.

The two parts of the central movement saw each section of the London Chorus come into its own: the women in Vigil, a confiding take on lines by Li-Tai-Po (Li Bai) such as relates the emotions of those left behind; and the men in The Bivouac’s Flame, plangently evoking life at the front with further lines from Whitman’s Drum Taps. Choral forces reunite in Achilles Goes Forth to Battle, a setting from later in The Iliad which brings about the work’s climax via The Heroes – a rollcall commemorating those of Antiquity. After this, the starkness of Wilfred Owen’s Spring Offensive is the greater for its sparse accompaniment – Trelawny’s oration a model of understatement as this segued into the setting of Robert Nichols’s Dawn on the Somme with those ‘morning heroes’ themselves evoked affirmatively if fatalistically.

A concert which ended in fine style with Holst’s stirring anthem had begun in subdued fashion with Dawn on the Somme – Ronald Corp’s elegy, given hours after his death was announced. Someone who had always given his all to this chorus and orchestra, he will be greatly missed.

Ronald Corp OBE (1951-2025)

Published post no.2,530 – Sunday 11 May 2025

In concert – The Bach Choir, Philharmonia Orchestra / David Hill: Delius, Blackford & Walton

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Amy Carson (soprano), Harry Jacques (tenor), Christopher Purves (baritone), The Bach Choir, Philharmonia Orchestra / David Hill

Delius The Song Of The High Hills (1911)
Blackford La Sagrada Familia Symphony (2022, world premiere)
Walton Belshazzar’s Feast (1931)

Royal Festival Hall, London
Thursday 8 May 2025

Reviewed by Ben Hogwood Pictures (c) Chris Christodoulou

This imaginative concert presented three British works telling stories from overseas, their reach extending to Norway, Spain and Babylon respectively.

Although born in Bradford, Frederick Delius spent much of his life abroad, living in America and then France – from where he would visit Norway for many a summer holiday with his wife. One such vacation in 1911 inspired him to write The Song Of The High Hills, a continuous sequence in three sections for wordless choir and orchestra capturing the mountain plateau, or ‘vidda’, that they found on their walks. Images from the plateau were shown on a screen behind the chorus as they performed.

Musically the work draws from Grieg and Debussy (his Nocturnes in especially) but inhabits a world all of its own, Delius achieving an unusual, rapt stillness when describing the high plains. David Hill, a long time exponent of his music, marshalled a strong performance, albeit one that didn’t quite sustain the rarefied atmosphere of the central section. It did cast quite a spell, mind, thanks to a beautiful oboe solo from Timothy Rundle on the approach, and some superbly controlled singing from The Bach Choir, headed by soloists Amy Carson (soprano) and Harry Jacques (tenor). The climax of the middle section was bolstered by three timpani, before the orchestra returned us to base camp. Speeds were on the fast side, but the Philharmonia Orchestra gave consistently luminous textures.

London-born composer Richard Blackford has shown considerable flair when writing for orchestra, and this was immediately evident in the world premiere of his La Sagrada Famila Symphony. Completed in 2022 and already recorded on the Lyrita label, it is a musical response to a 2019 encounter with Gaudí’s vision, concentrating on three great facades of the building – Nativity, Passion and Glory.

Blackford’s symphony was rich in colour but also vividly descriptive, his responses matched by an accompanying film, directed by the composer. Nativity began with awe-inspiring salvos from the brass but grew into a more intimate study, with elements of Hindemith and Berg in the orchestral writing, before a propulsive passage threw off the shackles. Passion was the emotional centrepiece, a vivid study in the brutality of the Good Friday story. Grotesque elements were emphasised by sudden closeups of Josep Maria Subirachs’s sculptures, their drawn expressions reflected in the music. The death of Christ was especially notable, marked by a solo of moving eloquence from cellist Martin Smith, then a sharp cry of dismay from Mark van de Wiel’s clarinet.

Glory was less obviously jubilant than might have been expected, mystical and reverent, but again it was an accurate response to the imagery as the film briefly went inside the massive structure. Blackford’s imagery danced in the listener’s mind on its own merits, with the thrilling surge at the end, bolstered by the organ, reminiscent of Messiaen or Scriabin. David Hill secured a fine performance from the Philharmonia, bringing the splendour of Gaudí’s cathedral to the concert hall. The emphatic finish brought with it a reminder of the building’s likely completion in 2026, a mere 144 years after construction began!

A British choral classic followed in the second half. Belshazzar’s Feast was initially denounced by Sir Thomas Beecham (a Delius fan, coincidentally) but Walton’s cantata has become a popular occasion piece. It is a vivid account of Babylonian decadence, before a human hand appears, writing on the wall of the banqueting hall to prophesy Belshazzar’s downfall. David Hill applied expert pacing to the storytelling, the Bach Choir on top form as the tension grew, spilling over into the exultant Praise Ye section. The paeans to the Babylonian Gods were starkly thrilling, contrasted by the terrifying unison shout of “Slain!” at Belshazzar’s death. The Philharmonia were superb, too, offstage brass bringing widescreen sound from either side of the stage and the percussion giving brilliant descriptions of the elements – iron and wood especially.

When the writing on the wall began, an ominous hush descended on the choir, the orchestra spreading a macabre chill through the hall – before the triumph of the closing pages, the Israelites free at last. Baritone Christopher Purves was a fine soloist, narrating the events and capturing the mood throughout. With 220+ in the choir, our ears were ringing long after the concert had finished, a timely reminder of a ruler whose inflated ego had brought about his downfall. Could there be any parallels in today’s world, I wonder?

For details on the their 2024-25 season, head to the Philharmonia Orchestra website

Published post no.2,529 – Saturday 10 May 2025

In concert – Peter Donohoe, RPO / Brabbins: Elgar ‘Enigma’ Variations; Bliss Piano Concerto; Vaughan Williams @ Cadogan Hall

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Peter Donohoe (piano, above), Royal Philharmonic Orchestra / Martyn Brabbins (below)

Vaughan Williams Five Variants of Dives and Lazarus (1939)
Bliss Piano Concerto in B flat major Op.58 (1938-9)
Elgar Variations on an Original Theme Op.36 ‘Enigma’ (1898-9)

Cadogan Hall, London
Wednesday 16 April 2025

Reviewed by Richard Whitehouse Pictures (c) Andy Paradise

June 1939 saw one of the more memorable occasions for British music with several premieres at the World’s Fair of New York, this multi-day festival with its theme of ‘Building the World of Tomorrow’ thrown into ironic relief given the outbreak of war in Europe three months later.

The first half of tonight’s concert by the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra duly replicated that on June 10th, beginning with Five Variants of Dives and Lazarus which Vaughan Williams wrote for the event. One of the few non-symphonic orchestral works from his later years, its scoring for divided strings and harp gives a warmly evocative context to this succession of paraphrases whose steadily unforced evolution is rounded off by one of its composer’s most radiant codas. Various solo passages provided the RPO’s section-leaders with their moment in the spotlight.

That concert 85 years ago continued with the Piano Concerto that Arthur Bliss had written for Solomon which enjoyed frequent revival over the next quarter-century. This 50th anniversary of its composer’s death provided an ideal opportunity to reassess a work conceived within the late-Romantic lineage, notably an opening movement whose thunderous initial gestures set in motion this large-scale sonata design whose overt rhetoric is tempered by an expressive poise and more ambivalent asides which make it anything but the epigone of an already bygone era.

Among a few present-day pianists to have this piece in his repertoire, Peter Donohoe tackled its many technical challenges head-on; the RPO and Martyn Brabbins (who had never before conducted it) overcoming some occasional moments of mis-coordination so as to present it to best advantage. He brought a lighter touch and no little emotional poise to bear on the central Adagietto, its inwardness carried over into a finale whose probing introduction was a perfect foil to the bravura that followed. Whatever qualms Bliss may have had regarding the ‘world situation’, there was little sense of doubt as the music surged to its emphatic and affirmative close – thereby setting the seal on this memorable performance and a work which, whatever it lacks in distinctive invention, vindicates Bliss’s overall ambition to an impressive degree.

A pity that logistics (and economics!) made revival of Bax’s Seventh Symphony, which had originally featured in those New York concerts, impracticable but hearing Brabbins direct so perceptive an account of Elgar’s Enigma Variations was no hardship. Perhaps because of the immediacy of the Cadogan Hall acoustic, it was also one in which the relatively brief livelier variations came into their own – hence the unbridled impetus of the fourth (W.M.B), seventh (Troyte) or 11th (G.R.S) variations, though there was no lack of eloquence in the first (C.A.E) and fifth (R.P.A) variations, or suffused fervour in the ninth (Nimrod). The 10th (Dorabella) variation was made into an intermezzo halting if whimsical, and the 13th became a romanza such as opened out this work’s expressive remit onto an altogether more metaphysical plane.

Those having heard Brabbins conduct this work in the Royal Albert Hall quite likely missed that organ-reinforced opulence afforded the 14th (E.D.U) variation yet, as this finale built to its triumphal conclusion, the unfailing conviction of this performance could hardly be denied.

For details on their 2024-25 season, head to the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra website. Click on the artist names to read more about pianist Peter Donohoe and conductor Martyn Brabbins, and also to discover more on The Arthur Bliss Society

Published post no.2,509 – Monday 21 April 2025