Category Archives: Orchestral

In concert – Ryedale Festival: Timothy Ridout, Orchestra of Opera North / Tom Fetherstonhaugh – Bliss: Viola Concerto first performance; Vaughan Williams, Coleridge-Taylor & Elgar

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Timothy Ridout (viola), Orchestra of Opera North / Tom Fetherstonhaugh

Vaughan Williams The Wasps – Overture (1909)
Bliss (orch. Wilby) Viola Concerto, B68a (1933, orch. 2023)
Coleridge-Taylor Solemn Prelude in B minor, Op. 40 (1899)
Elgar Variations on an Original Theme, Op. 36 ‘Enigma’ (1898-99)

Ripon Cathedral
Saturday 19 July 2025

Reviewed by Richard Whitehouse Photos (c) Jonas Cradock

With a variety of activities throughout its region, the Ryedale Festival is now well established among the most wide-ranging of such events 45 years since its inauguration and this evening’s concert showcased the Orchestra of Opera North in the impressive setting of Ripon Cathedral.

The all-British programme centred on the first hearing for a Viola Concerto that Arthur Bliss had always intended to create out of his sonata for that instrument, but has only recently been carried out by Philip Wilby. A former professor of composition at Leeds University, Wilby is best known for his choral and organ music but as was duly confirmed, is an able orchestrator with a keen appreciation of Bliss’ idiom. Hence the successful launch of a piece that deserves to assume its place within the still-limited repertoire of concertante works for this instrument.

That it exists at all was no doubt through the prompting of Lionel Tertis, for whom Bliss wrote his Viola Sonata some 20 years after a single-movement Violin Sonata (never played publicly during his lifetime) as was his only other such duo. Formally it is among his most innovative pieces, the skewed sonata design of its initial Moderato exuding a restive and even impulsive eloquence as responded well to an orchestration which resembles more the intimacy of Bliss’ late Cello Concerto than the full-blooded fervour of his earlier such works for piano or violin.

The ensuing Andante is Bliss at his most personal – its darkly ruminative progress building to an anguished culmination made the more so in this context, before subsiding into the fugitive unease from which it had emerged. There follows a propulsive Molto allegro modelled on the rhythmic syncopation of the Furiant, a scherzo-cum-finale climaxing with a powerful cadenza here forcefully partnered by timpani. After which, the Coda poignantly surveys all that went before in a sustained Andante maestoso as brings about an apotheosis of plangent resignation.

At around 27 minutes, Bliss’s Viola Concerto is equal in its scale as in its expressive reach to comparable works by Hindemith and Walton, so credit to Timothy Ridout (above, among the leading younger violists) that its essence was so tangibly conveyed. Nor was the OON found wanting under the assured direction of Tom Fetherstonhaugh, heard here in an ambience where detail lacked only the final degree of definition. Hopefully a recording will follow of what is likely to be the most important performance scheduled in this 50th anniversary-year of Bliss’ death.

The first half had begun in sparking fashion with the overture Vaughan Williams wrote as part of incidental music for a Cambridge University production of Aristophanes’ satire The Wasps, its incisiveness not precluding an open-hearted response to the ineffable melody at its centre.

A very different proposition duly launched the second half. Solemn Prelude is a characteristic statement by Samuel Coleridge-Taylor that did not merit the total neglect after its premiere at Worcester Cathedral; further hearings only made possible with the score’s belated relocation at the British Library so new parts could be made. Fusing Elgarian nobility with Brucknerian grandeur, any risk of portentousness was countered with an expressive immediacy abetted by Fetherstonhaugh’s flexible control over pace so that a welcome spontaneity came to the fore.

It certainly made an ideal entrée into the ‘Enigma’ Variations. Performances of Elgar’s earliest masterpiece now seem more frequent than ever, and tonight’s had much to commend it. Never fazed by the expansiveness of this acoustic, Fetherstonhaugh opted for mainly swift tempi as might easily have caused blurring in those faster variations had it not been for his scrupulous balance of detail. Elsewhere there was no lack of emotional input, not least during variations VIII-X with the wistfulness of ‘W.N.’ then deftness of ‘Dorabella’ framing a ‘Nimrod’ whose fervour was the greater for its relative urgency. Nor was the ‘E.D.U.’ finale lacking in panache as it brought the whole sequence to a conclusion of ringing affirmation, though it was maybe a pity that this building’s impressive organ could not have been utilized for the closing bars.

What was hardly in doubt was the response that this account received from the near-capacity audience, making one anticipate more such events at Ripon Cathedral in future editions of the Ryedale Festival, as it continues assiduously to promote the cultural life of North Yorkshire.

For more on the festival, visit the Ryedale Festival website, and click on the artist names to read more about violist Timothy Ridout, the Orchestra of Opera North and their conductor Tom Fetherstonhaugh. Meanwhile click to read more on the Arthur Bliss Society and the Samuel Coleridge-Taylor Foundation

Published post no.2,602 – Monday 21 July 2025

In concert – Sheku Kanneh-Mason, CBSO / Kazuki Yamada: Elgar Cello Concerto & Tchaikovsky Symphony no.5

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Sheku Kanneh-Mason (cello), City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra / Kazuki Yamada

Elgar Cello Concerto in E minor Op.85 (1919)
Tchaikovsky Symphony no.5 in E minor Op.64 (1888)

Symphony Hall, Birmingham
Thursday 19 June 2025 2:15pm

Reviewed by Richard Whitehouse Picture of Sheku Kanneh-Mason (c) Andrew Fox

The City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra’s ‘Season of Joy’ ended (at least at its home base) this afternoon with this concert in E minor, featuring major works by two composers whose wresting triumph from out of adversity was by no means always their strongest suit.

It is all too prevalent these days to talk of Elgar’s Cello Concerto as being the ‘end of an era’ statement, so credit to Sheku Kanneh-Mason for leavening any overt fatalism with a lyrical intensity which paid dividends in the musing restiveness of the first movement – its indelible opening gesture rendered with an understated defiance that set the course for what followed. Nor was the Scherzo’s glancing irony at all undersold, its tensile energy seamlessly absorbing the mock nobility of its secondary theme on the way to a conclusion of throwaway deftness.

Others may have summoned greater fervency from the Adagio, yet Kanneh-Mason’s unforced poise in this ‘song without words’ was its own justification and an ideal entrée into the more complex finale. Especially impressive was his methodical while never calculated building of tension towards a climax of tangible emotional intensity, capped with the terse stoicism of its coda. Kazuki Yamada and the CBSO were unfailingly responsive in support. Kanneh-Mason returned with the 18th (Sarabande) of Mieczysław Weinberg’s 24 Preludes (1969) as a sombre encore.

If to imply that by being his most ‘classical’ such piece, Tchaikovsky’s Fifth Symphony may also be his most predictable, Yamada evidently had other ideas. Certainly, there was nothing passive about the first movement’s scene-setting Andante, Oliver Janes palpably ominous in its ruminative clarinet theme. A smattering of over-emphases in phrasing just occasionally impeded the Allegro’s rhythmic flow but was outweighed by the gripping spontaneity of the whole. Even finer was the Andante cantabile, as undulating lower strings launched french horn player Elspeth Dutch’s eloquent take on its ineffable main melody. The eventual climax was curtailed by a brutal intrusion of the ‘fate’ motto, before the music subsided into its calmly regretful close. Whether or not Tchaikovsky’s greatest slow movement, Yamada’s reading made it seem so.

Interesting this conductor made an attacca to the ensuing Valse, which proved effective even if one between the first two movements would have been even more so. Whatever its laissez-faire elegance, this cannily structured movement is more than a mere interlude – not least for the way the motto steals in at its close. Yamada ensured it connected directly into the Finale’s slow introduction, its fervency reined-in so as not to pre-empt the energy of the main Allegro as it surged toward one of the most theatrical ‘grand pauses’ in music. Taking this confidently in its stride, the CBSO was equally in control of an apotheosis whose grandiloquence never risked overkill. The charge of insincerity that its composer found hard to refute might never have gone away, yet heard as an inevitable outcome, this was pretty convincing all the same.

It found the CBSO in formidable shape as it embarks on a two-week tour of Japan under its music director. A handful of UK concerts (including an annual appearance at the Proms) then precedes next season which begins with more Elgar in the guise of The Dream of Gerontius.

For details on the 2025-26 season, Orchestral music that’s right up your street!, head to the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra website. Click on the names to read more about soloist Sheku Kanneh-Mason and conductor Kazuki Yamada

Published post no.2,571 – Saturday 21 June 2025

In concert – Stephen Waarts, CBSO / Mirga Gražinytė-Tyla: Brahms Violin Concerto & Weinberg Symphony no.5

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Stephen Waarts (violin), City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra / Mirga Gražinytė-Tyla

Brahms Violin Concerto in D major Op.77 (1878)
Weinberg Symphony no.5 in F minor Op.76 (1962)

Symphony Hall, Birmingham
Wednesday 11 June 2025

Reviewed by Richard Whitehouse Picture of Stephen Waarts (c) Maarten Kools

Seriously disrupted as it was by the pandemic and attendant lockdowns, the period of Mirga Gražinytė-Tyla as music director of the City of the Birmingham Symphony Orchestra (2016-22) was a successful one, especially in terms of bringing unfamiliar music to the orchestra’s repertoire.

Not least that by Mieczysław Weinberg, his Fifth Symphony tonight receiving only its second UK hearing, almost 63 years after Kiril Kondrashin and the Moscow Philharmonic had given it at the Royal Festival Hall while on tour. Weinberg was unable to attend and the performance attracted minimal comment, but the Fifth is arguably the greatest among his purely orchestral symphonies – a work whose size and scope had merely been hinted at by its predecessors. Six decades on and those qualities confirming its significance then still ensure its relevance today.

The influence of Shostakovich’s Fourth Symphony, written over a quarter century earlier but premiered just months before, has often been noted but whereas this piece is inclusive to the point of overkill, Weinberg’s Fifth has a formal rigour and expressive focus as could only be that of full maturity. Not least in the moderately-paced opening Allegro, its content deriving from the pithy motifs on lower strings and trumpet heard against oscillating chords on upper strings at the outset, and which builds to a febrile culmination before retreating into agitated uncertainty. MGT has its measure as surely as that of the ensuing Adagio, its threnodic string writing palpably sustained prior to a heartfelt climax; either side of which, woodwind comes into its own in a slow movement comparable to that of Shostakovich’s own Fifth Symphony.

Playing without a pause, the latter two movements consolidate the overall design accordingly. Thus, the scherzo-like Allegro alternates furtive anticipation and barbed anger with a dextrous virtuosity that found the CBSO at its collective best – subsiding into a finale whose Andantino marking rather belies the purposefulness with which it elaborates on earlier ideas as it builds towards a searingly emotional apex. Once again, however, the music winds down into a coda whose rhythmic pulsing underpins resigned solo gestures at the close of this eventful journey.

Whether or not Brahms’s Violin Concerto was an ideal coupling, it certainly received a most impressive reading by Stephen Waarts (above). Winner of the 2014 Yehudi Menuhin International and 2015 Queen Elizabeth competitions, this was his debut with the CBSO but there was no lack of rapport – not least an imposing first movement whose technical challenges were assuredly negotiated and with a rendering of the Joachim cadenza that integrated it seamlessly into the overall design. Waarts’ interplay with woodwind in the Adagio was never less than felicitous, then the finale pivoted deftly between panache and insouciance on its way to a decisive close. MGT was as perceptive an accompanist as always, with an encore of the opening ‘L’Aurore’ movement from Eugène Ysaÿe’s Fifth Solo Sonata an appropriate entrée into the second half.

Ultimately, though, this concert was about MGT’s continued advocacy of Weinberg as of her association with the CBSO. Good news that the Fifth Symphony has been recorded for future release by Deutsche Grammophon, so enabling this fine performance to be savoured at length.

For details on the 2025-26 season, Orchestral music that’s right up your street!, head to the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra website. Click on the names to read more about soloist Stephen Waarts and conductor Mirga Gražinytė-Tyla, or composer Mieczysław Weinberg

Published post no.2,564 – Saturday 14 June 2025

In concert – Marie-Christine Zupancic, Sebastian Heindl, CBSO / Kazuki Yamada: Saint-Saëns, Respighi, Takemitsu & Berlioz

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Marie-Christine Zupancic (flute), Sebastian Heindl (organ), City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra / Kazuki Yamada

Berlioz Le Corsaire Op.21 (1844)
Takemitsu I Hear the Water Dreaming (1987)
Respighi I Fontane di Roma P106 (1916)
Saint-Saëns Symphony no.3 in C minor Op.78 ‘Organ’ (1886)

Symphony Hall, Birmingham
Wednesday 4 June 2025

Reviewed by Richard Whitehouse Picture of Kazuki Yamada (c) Benjamin Ealovega

The dashing upsurge at the start of The Corsair launched this evening’s concert by the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra under its music director Kazuki Yamada in fine style. Nor was the pathos in this last of Berlioz’s concert overtures downplayed, and if the main portion lacked the pizzazz of illustrious predecessors, Yamada’s handling of the apotheosis proved an object-lesson in controlled spontaneity – setting the seal on a fine account of a piece that long -standing attendees will recall as a favourite of one-time principal conductor Louis Frémaux.

The music of Tōru Takemitsu was often heard in the era of Simon Rattle, but not I Hear the Water Dreaming. Taking its cue (along with other works of this period) from the ‘Dreamtime’ tradition of Aboriginal art, here a painting from the Papunya region of Western Australia, this short though eventful piece typifies its composer’s final creative phase – the formerly radical tendencies from previous years not so much disowned as finding an accommodation with the impressionist leanings of his earliest maturity. A sonic canvas, moreover, against which solo flute pursues its capricious course, with only a hint of something more confrontational either side of the cadenza-like passage towards its close. Certainly, this was music to which Marie-Christine Zupancic (taking time out as the CBSO’s first flute) sounded unerringly attuned.

CBSO regulars will recall Yamada presenting the whole of Respighi’s ‘Roman Triptych’ at a memorable concert four years ago. Tonight, Fountains of Rome rounded off the first half in a performance at its best in the effervescence of Triton at Morning or the dazzling majesty of Trevi at Midday, fading as if suspended in the Symphony Hall ambience. If Valle Giulia at Dawn felt a little passive in its allure, the enfolding serenity of Villa Medici at Sunset was fully sustained – the delicacy and suppleness of its entwining melodic lines accorded full rein.

The CBSO has been identified with Saint-Saëns’s Organ Symphony since Frémaux’s lauded recording of half-a-century ago, and it remains a work in which this orchestra excels. Yamada was (rightly) intent on stressing its symphonic cohesion, drawing ominous expectancy from the first part’s introduction and building no mean momentum in its ensuing Allegro. Sebastian Heindl’s hushed entry duly set the tone for a raptly eloquent slow movement, measured while never sluggish as it headed toward its heartfelt climax then on to a coda of bittersweet repose.

There was no lack of incisiveness or humour in the scherzo which opens the second part – its scintillating passagework for piano duet artfully integrated into the orchestral texture, with an ideally paced link into the finale with its indelible main melody and methodical build-up to a majestic peroration. Those thunderous initial chords aside, Heindl made less of an impact than might have been expected, but his always resourceful choice of registrations underlined the extent to which both he and Yamada continually had the ‘bigger picture’ uppermost in mind.

Overall, then, a concert which manifestly played to this orchestra’s collective strengths. The CBSO is back next week with its former music director Mirga Gražinytė-Tyla for what will be only a second UK performance, 63 years after the first, for Weinberg’s Fifth Symphony.

For details on the 2024-25 season A Season of Joy, head to the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra website. Click on the names to read more about soloists Marie-Christine Zupancic and Sebastian Heindl, and conductor Kazuki Yamada

Published post no.2,496 – Sunday 6 April 2025

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