Category Archives: In concert

In concert – BCMG: T R E E Concert

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Neue Vocalsolisten [Johanna Vargas (soprano), Truike van der Poel (mezzo-soprano), Martin Nagy (tenor), Guillermo Anzorema (baritone), Andreas Fischer (bass)]; Finchley Children’s Music Group, Birmingham Contemporary Music Group / Michael Wendeberg

Mason The Singing Tree (2020-3) [BCMG Sound Investment commission: World premiere]
Lachenmann Concertini (2005)

Town Hall, Birmingham
Friday 12 May 2023

Reviewed by Richard Whitehouse

Birmingham Contemporary Music Group’s final concert this season also saw the conclusion of Tree City, a 16-year project that has seen Birmingham’s tree coverage increased by some 10% and an occasion marked by this Sound Investment commission from Christian Mason.

Among the leading UK composers, Mason (b1984) has written ambitious works before but none more so than The Singing Tree, a cantata whose seven movements unfold to a suitably arboreal text by Paul Griffiths. Despite its inclusion as an enlarged format in the programme, this was not easily readable under concert conditions (as its author wryly remarked), but of greater concern was its inaudibility during the actual performance; the intricacy of Mason’s writing for solo voices, children’s choir and large ensemble rather offsetting any such clarity.

A pity when Griffiths’ text, growing from the word ‘Tree’ such that each part multiplies by four (thus 1-4-16-64-256-1024), pertinently evokes the growth process alongside temporal and experiential evolution. Not that balance between the five solo voices, positioned centre-right of the platform, a 13-strong choir arrayed in the organ gallery, and an ensemble rich in timbral or textural possibilities seemed at fault, yet any sense of the music gaining gradually in emotional intensity to complement that of its musical complexity felt intermittent at best.

Most absorbing were those movements when Machaut’s rondeau Puis qu’en oubli threaded through the texture with tangible expressive intent, bringing to mind passages of comparable immediacy in seminal choral works by Berio, Kagel or Pousseur. Mason is demonstrably in that European lineage, making it more regrettable when despite its laudable intent – plus the commitment of Neue Vocalsolisten, Finchley Children’s Music Group and BCMG under the assured direction of Michael Wendeberg – his new piece made only an equivocal impression.

What it lacked in overall impact was given context in the second half, with a performance of Concertini by Helmut Lachenmann. Once notorious for (supposedly) predicating the gestural quality of sound, the composer’s more recent larger works exude a determination to align this with a tangible organic development – as heard in those climactic passages when the disparate sources coalesce for music sustained and visceral in its intent. Comparisons with the ataraxic progress of the lengthy final movement from Mason’s work were not to the latter’s advantage.

Once again, BCMG responded with conviction and no little finesse to Wendeberg’s direction – not least in the last third of this piece which had previously seemed to lose focus, but here readily conveyed the ensemble coming together in an audible while, this being Lachenmann, decidedly oblique resolution. Whatever else, the present work confronts and then overcomes those formal and expressive challenges it encounters to a degree that intrigues, frequently provokes but always engages the listener: something that should never be taken for granted. BCMG: NEXT earlier took the stage – pianist Rob Hao evincing due sensitivity in extracts from Lachenmann’s Ein Kinderspiel and in the eddying resonances of Wiegenmusik, before joining with flautist Emily Hicks for the plaintiveness of Mason’s Heaven’s Chimes are Slow.

You can read all about future events at the BCMG website. For more on the composers, visit sites dedicated to Christian Mason and Helmut Lachenmann – and for more on the performers, click on the names to read about Neue Vocalsolisten, Finchley Children’s Music Group and Michael Wendeberg

In concert – Jörg Widmann, CBSO – Weber, Widmann & Beethoven 7th symphony

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City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra / Jörg Widmann (clarinet)

Weber (arr. Widmann) Clarinet Quintet in E flat major J182 (1815, arr. 2018)
Widmann Con Brio (2008); Drei Schattentänze (2013)
Beethoven Symphony no.7 in A major Op. 92 (1812)

Symphony Hall, Birmingham
Wednesday 10 May 2023

Reviewed by Richard Whitehouse

Jörg Widmann has enjoyed a productive association with the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra, having been Artist in Residence during the 2018/19 season, and tonight’s concert was typical with its playing to his strengths as composer, clarinettist and (by no means least) conductor.

Arranger, too, given this programme commenced with his take on Weber’s Clarinet Quintet. Most ambitious of its composer’s works for Heinrich Baermann, it demonstrably gains from receiving a concertante treatment. The interplay between clarinet and strings pointed up the acute contrasts of mood and motion in the initial Allegro, then transformed the Fantasia into an operatic ‘scena’ of sustained plangency. With its ‘capriccio presto’ marking and teasingly playful manner, no movement could be less like a Menuetto than the scherzo which follows; here and in the final Rondo, Widmann summoned a tensile virtuosity paying dividends in the latter’s impetuous course to a thrilling denouement. Having given us Weber’s ‘Third Clarinet Concerto’, maybe Widmann could add a Fourth by transforming the Grand Duo Concertant?

The stage was reset for Con Brio, most often played of Widmann’s orchestral works and (in other contexts) a curtain-raiser bar none. Commissioned to accompany Beethoven’s Seventh and Eighth Symphonies in a cycle by Mariss Jansons with the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra, it alludes to both pieces while casting an ear – sometimes facetious, always provocative – over two centuries of European art-music. Whether Widmann hears this as running on borrowed time, the closing bars do not so much resolve as atrophy via a break-down of graphic intent.

A darkened stage greeted listeners after the interval, across which was placed the music for each of Widmann’s Three Shadow Dances. These combine extended clarinet techniques with engaging, often playful virtuosity – moving (right to left) from the deadpan jazz gestures of ‘Echo-Tanz’, through the submerged remoteness (with no electronic treatment) of ‘(Under) Water Dance’, to the uproarious routines of ‘Danse africaine’ where the instrument becomes its own percussion outfit as it bounds towards the ‘elephant calls’ that signify its conclusion.

It made sense to round off the evening with Beethoven’s Seventh Symphony, having already been anticipated in the first half. In his opening remarks, Widmann spoke of the life-changing effect this work had at first hearing, and he duly threw caution to the wind with a reading that brimmed over with the excitement of new discovery. Surprisingly, he chose not to divide the violins right and left, as this would have emphasized their dizzying antiphonal exchanges in the outer movements. Having set a challengingly fast tempo for the scherzo, which the CBSO met with assurance, he might profitably have held back marginally for the greater part of the finale – enabling the coda to ‘take off’ with a frisson as could only be inferred here. This was otherwise a performance that conveyed the music’s visceral essence with thrilling immediacy.

It set the seal on an impressive showing for Widmann and this orchestra, who will hopefully be working together again in a future season. Next week sees the CBSO reunited with Mirga Gražinytė-Tyla for a performance of Mahler’s decidedly non-valedictory Tenth Symphony.

You can read all about the 2022/23 season and book tickets at the CBSO website – and for specific information on Mirga conducting Mahler, click here. There are several sites to visit for more info on Jörg Widmann – click here for his official site, here for his profile at publisher Schott Music, and here for information from his management at HarrisonParrott

In concert – Binker Golding @ The Forge

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Binker Golding (saxophone)

The Forge, Camden, London
Thursday11 May 2023

Reviewed by John Earls. Picture (c) John Earls

I once spoke to jazz saxophonist Binker Golding last year just after he had performed a blistering set at London’s Rough Trade East, promoting his excellent Feeding the Machine album with drummer Moses Boyd (very different but exciting musical fare). I told him I’d seen him at Ronnie Scott’s (with a quintet doing some new tunes for a forthcoming album) just as we were coming out of the Covid-19 pandemic. “Oh?” he said, “It was all right, yeah?” I assured him it was. But was quite surprised he felt he had to ask.

This gig at The Forge in Camden with a superb seven piece band was testimony to what a great foundation that Ronnie’s gig was. Right from the off this outfit grabbed the evening and ripped up a storm.

The set mostly comprised of material from last year’s wonderful (and superbly titled) album Dream Like a Dogwood Wild Boy. It’s a great collection of tunes traversing across jazz, Americana, country and blues.

Opening with (Take Me To The) Wide Open Lows we get the mix of melody and solo virtuosity that is a feature throughout the evening whereby the band including Benet McLean (violin), Billy Adamson (guitars) and Daniel Casimir (bass) get to show what they can do collectively and individually. Philip Achille (harmonica) was a particular stand out for taking his instrument to places you didn’t know it could go. 

I have to confess I was more than a little disappointed when I found out that Sarah Tandy and Sam Jones were not going to be performing (as originally advertised). Tandy’s thrilling piano and Jones’ relaxed but sharp drumming – both of which are not only a feature of the album but were a considerable part of a performance at Southbank Centre’s Purcell Room in November 2022 for the London Jazz Festival – were something I was particularly looking forward to.

However, Deschanel Gordon – on organ rather than piano – and Zoe Pascal on drums offered a different but equally compelling dimension to the proceedings.

All Out Of Fairy Tales was a brilliant closer (as it is on the album). A beautifully wistful number.

I love the musicians that Binker Golding puts around him, what he does with them and what he lets them do. They seem to love it too.

Whether he thinks it or not (we didn’t get the chance to speak afterwards this time) this concert was a stunning display of what an assured composer, performer and band leader Binker Golding is. And if he’s reading this, it was more than all right.

John Earls is Director of Research at Unite the Union and tweets at @john_earls

You can listen to the Binker Golding album on Spotify below:

In concert – Jennifer Johnston, Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra / Vasily Petrenko – The Divine Poem

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Jennifer Johnston (soprano, above), Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra / Vasily Petrenko (below)

Deutsch Phantasma (2022) [RLPO co-commission: UK premiere]
Mahler Lieder eines fahrenden Gesellen (1884-5)
Scriabin Symphony no.3 in C minor Op.43 ‘The Divine Poem’ (1902-4)

Philharmonic Hall, London
Thursday 4 May 2023

Reviewed by Richard Whitehouse

He may now be the orchestra’s conductor laureate, but the 15-year partnership between Vasily Petrenko and the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra was always tangible in this evening’s concert – its refreshingly different programme summoning the best from both orchestra and conductor.

Co-commissioning music by Bernd Richard Deutsch was an astute move – the Vienna-based composer now in his mid-40s and among the leading composers of his generation. Taking its cue from the Beethoven Frieze which Gustav Klimt devised for the 14th Vienna Secessionist Exhibition in 1902, this 15-minute piece takes a pointedly dialectical route as it evolves from the fractured uncertainty of yearning and suffering, via the cumulative intensity of a struggle against hostile forces, to the attainment of happiness through poetic creation. To what degree this might be a commentary on Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony (as embodied in the three parts of Klimt’s opus) is uncertain, but the motivic ingenuity and orchestral virtuosity of Deutsch’s response can hardly be doubted – not least in a performance as assured and committed as this.

If the indisposition of Adela Zaharia meant the regrettable omission of Strauss’s rarely heard Brentano-Lieder from tonight’s concert (though Petrenko has scheduled them with the Royal Philharmonic next season), hearing Jennifer Johnston in Mahler’s Gesellen-Lieder was by no means a hardship. The four songs, to the composer’s own texts, comprise an overview of his preoccupations (creative and otherwise) in his mid-20s with numerous anticipations of what became his First Symphony. Outlining a delicate interplay of pensiveness and wistfulness in the initial song, Johnston was no less attentive to its successor’s mingling of innocence with experience, and if the surging histrionics of the third song bordered on the melodramatic, the fatalistic procession of the final number felt the more affecting for its restrained eloquence.

Petrenko (above) set down a highly regarded cycle of Scriabin Symphonies over his tenure with the Oslo Philharmonic, and if the RLPO lacked any of that orchestra’s fastidious poise, the sheer verve and energy of its playing more then compensated. Not least in an opening movement whose unfolding can seem longer on ambition than attainment, but which was held together with unforced conviction – the most often prolix development duly emerging with a tautness to make it more than usually emblematic of this work’s metaphysical Struggles as a whole.

Outwardly more compact, the remaining movements require astute and cumulative handling such as these received here. The alternately enchanting and ominous Delights melded into an enfolding yet never amorphous entity, out of which the more animated motion of Divine Play gradually brought together earlier ideas on its way to an apotheosis whose amalgam of the work’s principal themes yielded grandiloquence without undue bathos. Scriabin’s cosmic aspirations thereby seemed the more ‘real’ for being the expression of purely musical forces. An expanded RLPO (its nine horns arrayed across the upper tier of the platform) was heard to advantage in the ambience of Philharmonic Hall, contributions by trumpeter Richard Cowen and leader Thelma Handy enhancing what was an authoritative and memorable performance.

You can read all about the 2022/23 season and book tickets at the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra website. Click on the artist names for more on Jennifer Johnston and conductor Vasily Petrenko, and for more on composer Bernd Richard Deutsch – who also has a dedicated page at his publisher Boosey

In concert – Birmingham Contemporary Music Group: Blossoming In Birmingham

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Oliver Janes (clarinet), Philip Brett, Stefano Mengoli (violins), David BaMaung (viola), Arthur Boutillier (cello), Birmingham Contemporary Music Group / Otis Lineham, Kazuki Yamada (conductors)

Illean Januaries (2017)
Fujikura Perpetual Spring (2017)
Ligeti String Quartet no.2 (1968)
Hosokawa Blossoming (2007)
Fujikura Secret Forest (2008)

BCMG NEXT [George Blakesley (clarinet), Anna Vaughan (violin), Alma Orr-Ewing (viola), Finley Spathaky (cello), Rob Hao (piano)

Fujikura Scion Stems (2010)
Illean Février (2019)
Fujikura Halcyon (2011)

CBSO Centre, Birmingham
Saturday 29 April 2023 (7pm and 9pm)

Reviewed by Richard Whitehouse

Spring may have arrived tardily this year, but Birmingham Contemporary Music Group was certainly in full bloom with this judiciously balanced and absorbing programme that featured one post-war classic and two pieces by one of the leading composers from the present time.

First, though, the welcome opportunity to hear a work by Lisa Illean, whose understated and fastidiously realized music conceals more than is evident on initial hearing. Such is true of Januaries, inspired by memories of holidays in Queensland together with descriptions of the Australian landscape. Its innate subtlety finding a direct parallel in this composer’s drawing of often ethereal yet always evocative timbres and textures from her 12-strong ensemble; and throughout which BCMG responded with due commitment to the direction of Otis Lineham.

The first of two pieces this evening by Dai Fujikura, Perpetual Spring drew inspiration from the Japanese Garden in Portland (US), notably the idea of growth as a process both ongoing and inexorable. Heard from this vantage, the clarinet represented a conceptual and expressive focal point; around which the string quartet weaved its dense if never claustrophobic texture with audible dexterity. Here, too, the music implied considerably more than was ever stated – no doubt in accord with the ‘‘power of ‘quiet’ nature’’ its composer took as his starting-point.

Although it now tends to be overshadowed by its predecessor, Ligeti’s Second String Quartet remains one of his most significant works – its five movements a compendium of his musical practice during the late 1960s, but with a formal and expressive focus that amply sustains the 20-minute whole. It was a measure of this account that a cumulative impetus carried through not merely to the explosive fourth movement, but also a finale whose textural mirage took in allusions to what went before: the music not so much ceasing as dispersing beyond earshot.

The string quartet was also Toshio Hosokawa’s chosen medium for Blossoming. Taking the image (and most probably its mythical association) of a lotus as its starting-point, the piece opened out in music typical of this composer for its unforced elegance and felicitous aura.

Considerably more engrossing an all-round experience, Fujikura’s Secret Forest is among the most impressive of his ensemble works and not least for its visceral conception. Placed centre-stage, the string nonet was balanced with groups of woodwind and brass either side, and above the auditorium. It was the ensuing interplay between the spatially arrayed sound-sources, strings intense in their eloquence and winds hieratic in their intangibility, that the conductor shaped over its course – not forgetting the solo bassoon, seated in the auditorium, who became a human figure plotting a course through this sonic landscape. The piece was directed with conviction by Kazuki Yamada and promises much for the Fujikura commission Wavering World, which he will premiere with the CBSO in Symphony Hall on January 17th.

A pity not more punters remained for the post-concert performance by musicians of BCMG NEXT, which featured two more works by Fujikura. Scion Stems took string trio as the basis for a wide-ranging discussion of textures made even more immediate by its brevity, whereas Halcyon pursued a more circumspect yet never disengaged interplay between clarinet and string trio. In between, Février found Illean’s writing at its most sensuous in its sequence of exchanges between clarinet, cello and piano to which these players likewise did full justice. The current NEXT line-up performs its final concert on June 11th, while BCMG itself returns to Birmingham Town Hall on May 12th for its TREE Concert featuring a new commission by Christian Mason alongside one of the most impressive compositions by Helmut Lachenmann

For more on future BCMG events, click on the link to visit their website. For more information on the composers featured, click on the names to read about Dai Fujikura, Lisa Illean and Toshio Hosokawa, while you can read about the conductors by clicking on Kazuki Yamada and Otis Lineham