Category Archives: In concert

In concert – Ensemble intercontemporain – Boulez 100 @ The Barbican

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Ensemble intercontemporain / Nicolò Umberto Foron, NikNak (turntables), tyroneisaacstuart (choreographer & dancer), Julien Creuzet (visuals), Nathan England-Jones (electronics technical support)

Hannah Kendall shouting forever into the receiver
Cassie Kinoshi [untitled]
Pierre Boulez Sur Incises

Barbican Hall, London, 27 May 2025

by John Earls. Photo credits (c) John Earls

Billed as part of the Boulez 100 series* to celebrate what would have been Pierre Boulez’s 100th birthday year, it was exciting to see a concert by Ensemble intercontemporain, the group the great iconoclast founded in France in 1976 (I can’t help but also tell you that this was with the support of the then French Secretary of State for Culture).

Recognising Boulez’s championing of new voices, the programme combined a classic Boulez piece with new works by two younger generation British composers. First up was Hannah Kendall’s shouting forever into the receiver. The title comes from Ocean Vuong’s novel On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous and refers to the description of a tiny plastic toy soldier yelling into its handheld radio transceiver. In this piece, spoken extracts, initially from the Book of Revelation and then verses from Ezekiel, are passed back and forth between two performers using walkie-talkie radios and sat on opposite sides of the stage. This is combined with arresting musical accompaniment including pre-programmed music boxes playing familiar works such as Beethoven’s Ode to Joy, dampened piano and a contemplative harmonica chorale. It was a fascinating opening 15 minutes.

Second on the programme was the world premiere of composer, arranger and saxophonist Cassie Kinoshi’s [UNTITLED]. Inspired by Boscoe Holder, the Trinidadian artist, dancer, choreographer and musician it “pays tribute not only to historic Caribbean artforms…but also to the continued evolution of these forms in modern diasporic contexts”. This is reflected in this multi-disciplinary piece combining music, choreography, improvisation, technology and visual art “embracing the kind of fluid creativity that Boscoe Holder explored throughout his lifetime”.

At the very start choreographer and dancer tyroneisaacstuart circles the stage before literally passing on the baton to conductor Nicolò Umberto Foron (currently Assistant Conductor of the London Symphony Orchestra). Throughout the evening Foron’s angular gestures complemented the music perfectly. Something of a dance in itself.

tyroneisaacstuart’s own dancing involved spins, weaving through sections of the orchestra, running on the spot and at one point appearing to hit a forcefield during a dramatic build-up of repetitive beats. Rhythm featured strongly throughout the piece including beats from NikNak on turntables (Nathan England-Jones provided electronics technical support) and we were frequently never far from an albeit eclectic dancefloor.

The dancer was all dressed in white contrasting with the fiery red visuals (by Julien Creuzet) on a large screen featuring the slower movements of blurred figures. Kinoshi’s intention is that the “on-stage presence invites the audience to not only hear but to see rhythm”. I don’t know whether when the orchestra, dancer and visuals are on stage together it makes it difficult to focus properly, but at times it felt a bit too busy. That said it is a stimulating and brave piece.

[left to right: Cassie Kinoshi, Nathan England-Jones, NikNak, Nicolò Umberto Foron, tyroneisaacstuart]

After the interval, nine members of the Ensemble performed Pierre Boulez’s Sur Incises (1996-1998) for three pianos, three harps and three percussion parts (including vibraphone, marimba, glockenspiel, steel drums, and tubular bells).

The stage setting alone with the instrumentalists set some distance apart (a bit like Covid times) with the harps centre stage was striking. It’s quite a sonic experience too. Heavy percussion and lustrous harmonies combine in an ebb and flow of crashes and trills that both comfort and have a sense of foreboding. Boulez’s music has a reputation for being difficult, but when played like this it is utterly captivating.

John Earls is Director of Research at Unite the Union. He posts on Bluesky and tweets / updates his ‘X’ content at @john_earls

*It was a bit strange, not to say disappointing, that the concert programme labelled this as part of the Boulez 100 series but contained nothing on Boulez himself or the piece of his being performed. The notes on the other two pieces, written by the composers themselves, were, not least for this reviewer, very useful.

For more on the ensemble, visit the Ensemble Intercontemporain website

Published post no.2,547 – Wednesday 28 May 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

Summer Music in City Churches 2025 – Eternal Light

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from the press release and website:

Summer Music in City Churches is a festival in the City of London. Founded in 2018, it presents beautiful music to engage, divert and inspire, in ancient and architecturally stunning churches in the Square Mile. Standing cheek by jowl with City offices, these churches are glorious settings in which to listen and reflect: oases of history, beauty and peace amidst the 24-7 hurly-burly of City life.

It’s only a month until the opening night of this year’s Summer Music in City Churches. If you haven’t got your tickets yet, don’t lose any time.

‘Eternal Light’ is a series of stunning concerts presented during evenings and lunchtimes from 18th to 27th June. Along with some of the great choral requiem settings (Fauré, Duruflé, Verdi), you’ll find an enticing variety of luminous music performed in beautiful, historic churches.

It is our pleasure to welcome back the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, conducted this year for the first time by Sir John Rutter. Other returning festival favourites include string quartet Brother Tree Sound, Tier3 Trio, RPO Brass, and pianists Iain Farrington, Mark Bebbington and Viv McLean.

We are thrilled to feature a number of up-and-coming talented young musicians, including: duo Eleanor Grant (voice and double bass) & Gus McQuade (guitar); soprano soloist Hannah Dienes-Williams; organist Paul Greally; award-winning guitarist Jack Hancher; and the exquisite sound of Corvus Consort.

There’s a special chance to hear Lucy Parham‘s composer portrait of Debussy, ahead of a sell-out performance at the Wigmore Hall later in the year.

Finally, don’t miss Verdi’s immortal Requiem in the remarkable new version by Richard Blackford performed by the City of London Choir under Daniel Hyde.

Evening concerts take place in St Giles Cripplegate; at lunchtimes we visit light-filled St James Garlickhythe, St Mary Abchurch and St Botolph-without-Bishopsgate for the first time. Click below for full details and to book tickets.

As a subscriber to our newsletter, you can buy tickets to all concerts – lunchtime and evening – with 20% off by quoting KESEL20 when you book. Or buy a season ticket to the whole festival for just £100.

For details and booking, head to the Summer Music in City Churches website

Published post no.2,543 – Saturday 24 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