Category Archives: In concert

Online concert – Zoë Beyers, English Symphony Orchestra / Kenneth Woods: Elcock: Violin Concerto

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Elcock Violin Concerto Op.13 (1996-2006)

Zoë Beyers (violin), English Symphony Orchestra / Kenneth Woods

Filmed at the Wyastone Concert Hall, Monmouth, Thursday 26 May 2022. Producer Phil Rowlands / Videographer Tim Burton

by Richard Whitehouse

The English Symphony Orchestra’s online schedule got off to a fine start for this year with a studio account of the Violin Concerto by composer-in-association Steve Elcock. It may have taken shape across nearly a decade, but the work is no less impressive for that. It also marks something of a transition from less ambitious pieces, often conceived with local musicians in mind, to the symphonic works as have recently been performed and recorded to great acclaim – whose formal as well as expressive concerns it anticipates and shares in various instances.

The concerto opens with an Allegro vivo whose rhythmic energy is maintained throughout, yet with sufficient contrast for its second theme to assume greater emotional emphasis in the reprise, prior to a forceful conclusion. The undoubted highlight is a Molto tranquillo whose haunting main theme, first unfolded by the soloist over undulating upper strings in a texture evidently inspired by change-ringing techniques, is a memorable inspiration. A pavane-like idea latterly comes into focus and the closing stage, which opens onto an eloquent plateau before evanescing almost regretfully into silence, lingers long in the memory. The finale is a relatively taut passacaglia whose theme accelerates through five variations from Andante to Presto, culminating in a combative ‘cadenza’ for violin and timpani then a decisive pay-off.

A tough challenge, indeed, for any soloist and one such as Zoë Beyers and the ESO, under Kenneth Woods, met with assurance over its 33 minutes. Aside from its sheer velocity, the first movement is notable for a close-knit interplay between soloist and orchestra here brought off with admirable precision, while the modal subtleties of the slow movement were deftly rendered as enhancements to its overall tonal trajectory. If its sequence of accelerating variations seemed to be over rather too soon, the finale was nevertheless a cohesive entity that saw this piece to a defiant conclusion.

Good to hear that this performance will be released commercially in due course, as a coupling for the Eighth Symphony which the ESO premiered in 2021 and the tone poem Wreck it gave last year – hence making for a persuasive overview of this increasingly significant composer.

This concert can be accessed free until 7 February 2023 at the English Symphony Orchestra website, but remains available through ESO Digital by way of a subscription. Meanwhile click on the names for more on the English Symphony Orchestra and Kenneth Woods, or on composer Steve Elcock

In concert – Members of the Philharmonia Orchestra / Olivia Clarke: Music of Today: Bryce Dessner

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Bryce Dessner
The Forest, Sederunt Principes (2019) (UK premiere)
Lachrimae (2012) (UK premiere)

Members of the Philharmonia Orchestra / Olivia Clarke

Purcell Room, Southbank Centre, London
Thursday 2 February 2023

Reviewed by Ben Hogwood Olivia Clarke picture (c) Rebecca Nead Menear

Bryce Dessner is surely the only composer able to list Taylor Swift, Paul Simon and the Philharmonia Orchestra among their musical accomplices. It is this multi-disciplined CV that makes him an excellent choice as Artist-in-Residence at the Southbank Centre – and this instalment of the Philharmonia Orchestra’s early evening Music of Today series allowed a look at his writing for string ensemble.

As well as namechecking the above artists, rock guitarist Dessner has a number of musical projects currently coming to the boil. His band The National (where his twin brother Aaron also plays) stand on the verge of their 9th album, prefaced by elegant single Tropic Morning News just over two weeks prior.

Meanwhile his string arrangements for the Malmö Symphony Orchestra help encapsulate the musical wonder of Complete Mountain Almanac, a project fronted by his sister Jessica and singer Rebekka Karijord. Their self-titled album, released in late January, has a folk-inflected beauty.

Dessner’s composition work also continues apace, and as this concert illustrated he is amassing an impressive and durable body of work. The Forest, for seven cellos, is not a nature poem as its title might suggest. Rather, it refers to the forest-like interiors of Notre Dame cathedral, all but destroyed in the dreadful fire of 2019. Dessner was in Paris at the time, and was moved to write a musical response. He considered the wood lost in the flames, pondering the sounds it would have absorbed through the ages, going back as far as Perotin’s 12th century motet Sederunt principes.

Taking this as his stimulus, Dessner weaves old and new together with a seamless join, the deeply historical source material given fresh if solemn context. The composer chooses not to use the swell of the cello sound too often, steering clear of cliches often found in writing for this instrumental combination. Instead the sounds are more subtle, the cellos often applying the wood of the bow to the string, decorating the sound and giving it acoustic context. In this way they present an absorbing collage of sounds, meditating on the lost material while projecting well beyond the size of the Purcell Room to evoke the vastness of the cathedral. Olivia Clarke (above) kept a firm hand on proceedings in what was a fine performance.

Lachrimae, as its title suggests, also looks to the distant past for inspiration. The source material here is John Dowland’s song of the same name, expanded by Dessner into a piece for a 12-piece string ensemble that also draws on Bartók’s Divertimento for strings. The piece starts by quoting its source material, but quickly projects it on to a wider musical canvas. In this performance there were pre-echoes of Dessner’s soundtrack for The Revenant three years later, these being colder textures with an equally compelling group of musical ideas.

Michael Fuller’s double bass was a central component of the more expansive writing, and the lower notes were played as though freshly dug from the ground itself. Meanwhile the upper strings traded motifs of power and poise, building energy and momentum impressively and inexorably – until suddenly all was still. The cold haze of a winter morning could be glimpsed in the mind’s eye, and the piece ended in the contemplative mood with which it began.

Olivia Clarke conducted another excellent, concentrated performance, aided by the forthright leadership of cellist Karen Stephenson. It may have been a short encounter, but this was a concert affirming Dessner as a composer whose progress should be closely monitored, fully justifying Steve Reich’s billing as ‘a major voice of his generation’.

You can watch a previous performance of The Forest on Facebook here:

For more information, visit the Bryce Dessner website – and for more on the Philharmonia’s free concert series Music of Today, visit their dedicated page

In concert – Alexandre Kantorow, CBSO / Kazuki Yamada: Tchaikovsky Piano Concerto no.2 & Holst The Planets

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Alexandre Kantorow (piano), CBSO Youth Chorus, City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra / Kazuki Yamada

Tchaikovsky Piano Concerto no.2 in G major Op. 44 (1879-80)
Holst The Planets Op. 32 (1914-17)

Symphony Hall, Birmingham
Thursday 2 February 2023

Reviewed by Richard Whitehouse

He may not take up his role as Chief Conductor for a couple of months, but Kazuki Yamada already has acute rapport with the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra, as was evident tonight in this unlikely though effective coupling of major works by Tchaikovsky and Holst.

While it has never aspired to the popularity of its predecessor, Tchaikovsky’s Second Piano Concerto lacks none of the melodic appeal or emotional heft synonymous with this composer. Growing conviction that piano and orchestra were best heard separately rather than together can give the first movement a rather stop-start trajectory, but with Alexandre Kantorow (below) alive to its bravura and poetic facets there was never a sense of disjointedness in a first movement – emphasis on whose ‘brillante’ and ‘vivace’ markings avoided any risk of portentousness.

Although those aspects of the edition by Alexander Ziloti that simplify the solo writing have now been consigned to history, truncation of the Andante into an intermezzo akin to that of the First Concerto remains common. To do so, however, misses out on the expansiveness of this movement – notably its eventful trialogue between piano, violin and cello as dominates the latter stages, and which here saw a sustained interaction between Kantorow and the CBSO section leaders (Eugene Tzikindelean and an as yet unidentified cellist. Yamada directed with an unobtrusive rightness, then gave the soloist his head in a finale that makes up for its relative brevity with scintillating wit and agility – not least in the coda when, having resisted any temptation for a grand apotheosis, Tchaikovsky allows soloist and orchestra an effervescent race to the close.

Tchaikovsky was never an influence on Holst, and the conventional scoring of the former’s piece is worlds away from that of The Planets with its extended range of ingenious timbres and textures. Finding the right martial pulse at the outset of Mars, Yamada built this first piece to a pulverizing climax – after which, the enfolding raptness of Venus was the more tangible in its serenity and poise. The deftness and insouciance of Mercury was no less to the fore, and the only reservations came in a Jupiter whose bracing outer sections verged  on the dogged; with a central section whose indelible melody took on a ceremonial turgidity which has nothing to do with this music as Holst conceived it. Happily, the remaining three pieces, which all too often seem anticlimactic, emerged as highlights of this performance.

Undeniably the emotional focal-point, Saturn unfolded from initial remoteness to a climax whose sense of crisis was palpably evident, before withdrawing into a radiant evanescence. Contrast with the sardonic humour of Uranus was pronounced – Yamada making the most of its flights of fancy, then lurchingly triumphant parade, before the heart-stopping dissolve near its close. Neptune capped proceedings superbly – its strangeness and insubstantiality allied to searching introspection which afforded cohesion to this venture into the unknown.

Placed high to the left of the auditorium, the CBSO Youth Chorus added its ethereal tones. The final fadeout began almost too remotely to be sustained yet, as this repeating vocalise moved beyond earshot, there was no doubt as to the totality of what had been experienced.

You can read all about the 2022/23 season and book tickets at the CBSO website. Click on the artist names for more on Kazuki Yamada and Alexandre Kantorow – and for more on Gustav Holst, head to The Holst Society

In concert – CBSO / Clark Rundell: Sounds New

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Graves Fanfare
Osborn The Biggest Thing I’ve Ever Squashed
Sweeney Glisk
Zisso A Standing-stonea
Knibbs Strings Bilateral
Maunders In The Land Of Hypocrisy
Morgan-Williams Parti Di-ffinau
Latimer Bellwether
Werner Crossingsb
Crayton Encore
Singh Lament for the Earthc
Baker The Radiance of the Spirit
Järventausta Bourrée
Arakelyan Prelude and Allegro
Nobuto Egress
James Come Show Them the Riverd
Slater Unravelling the crimson sky
Dearden Anthem
Appleby Sonnet 43
Taylor-West Turning Points*

aYfat Soul Zisso, bHéloïse Werner, Bethan Lloyd, dMillicent B James (voices), cSimmy Singh (voice / violin), City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra / Clark Rundell

Symphony Hall, Birmingham
Sunday 29 January 2023 2.30pm

Reviewed by Richard Whitehouse Photos courtesy of (and with thanks to) Aphra Hiscock and Jenny Bestwick

It might have been one of the few positive outcomes to come out of the pandemic, but the decision to programme these 20 pieces by young composers – commissioned by the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra as part of its Centenary Commissions – in a single concert rather than across several seasons, as originally intended, paid dividends in terms of highlighting what was an important strand of the orchestra’s activities and so enabled an overview of present-day creativity that would have been impossible within a more generalized context.

Just how the running-order was determined was unclear, but the various juxtapositions were almost always to the advantage of each piece. Benjamin Graves grasped the nettle with music all about becoming rather than being, and Laurence Osborn implied more than even anarchic humour in intricately enveloping textures. Aileen Sweeney favoured an unabashed cinematic outlook, while Yfat Soul Zisso took centre-stage for her demonstrative take on a relatively circumspect poem by Howard Skempton. Chloe Knibbs drew a halting eloquence from the interweaving string sections, in contrast to the vividly gesticulating essence that doubtless reflected the convictions of Florence Anne Maunders. There was an appealingly whimsical quality to the writing of Bethan Morgan-Williams, then a ruminative aspect to that by Ryan Latimer veering towards the hymnic. Héloïse Werner favoured a gestural approach whose vocalise brought continuity almost despite itself, before Stephane Crayton rounded off the first half with music whose brooding understatement seemed an ironic comment on its title.

Playing violin alongside Bethan Lloyd’s impulsive vocal, Simmy Singh offered a lament of insinuating elegance, then Tyriq Baker focussed on the strings for a study of no mean pathos. Joel Järventausta must have been pleased with the performance of and response to his deftly ominous piece, as too Kristina Arakelyan by the rendering of her diptych with its evocative writing for cor anglais. Ben Nobuto fairly revelled in his capricious portrayal of the concept of ‘exiting’, whereas Millicent B James provided an undeniably charismatic rendition of her text-based setting. Angela Elizabeth Slater intrigued the ear with her fastidiously oscillating textures, while Nathan James Dearden teased out those competing implications from the title of his piece with a tellingly sardonic touch, before Anna Appleby pitched her instrumental take on verse by Elizabeth Barrett at a thoughtfully oblique remove. Ironic that the closing piece was the only one to have been heard before the pandemic, but Liam Taylor-West duly pulled out the stops with music whose scintillating orchestration more than deserved revival.

Throughout this programme, the CBSO gave its collective all over what was a considerable range of idioms – abetted by the assured conducting of Clark Rundell (above), who also introduced each half as well as providing continuity between items whenever necessary. Good to hear that the concert was being recorded by NMC Records for later digital release (with maybe an issue on CD too?), and all due credit to The John Feeney Charitable Trust for continuing to fund the orchestra almost seven decades after its first commission. The story continues…

You can read all about the 2022/23 season and book tickets at the CBSO website

In concert – Cédric Tiberghien, CBSO / Eduardo Strausser: Beethoven ‘Emperor’ Concerto & Prokofiev Symphony no.5

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Wagner Lohengrin – Prelude to Act One (1846)
Beethoven Piano Concerto no.5 in E flat major Op. 73 ‘Emperor’ (1809)
Prokofiev Symphony no.5 in B flat major Op. 100 (1944)

Cédric Tiberghien (piano), City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra / Eduardo Strausser

Symphony Hall, Birmingham
Wednesday 25 January 2023 2.15pm

Reviewed by Richard Whitehouse Picture of Eduardo Strausser (c) Peter Wallis

Is there a more evocative way to begin a concert than the Prelude to Wagner’s Lohengrin? The opera itself may fail (for the most part) to live up to the precedent set, but the quality of this piece has never been in doubt – with composers as distinct as Berlioz and Verdi having been captivated by its almost tangible atmosphere and counterpoint redolent of Palestrina in its supple inevitability. Under the assured direction of Eduardo Strausser, it made a fitting curtain-raiser to this afternoon’s concert by the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra.

It also provided a telling foil to Beethoven’s Fifth Piano Concerto that followed in the first half. Still the most popular of its composer’s such pieces, it is also nowadays the hardest to bring off – particularly the initial Allegro with its unabashed emotional rhetoric and overtly symphonic conception. Playing down the former aspect and rationalizing the latter, Cédric Tiberghien opted for a tensile and unaffected traversal which emphasized cohesion at the expense of grandeur – underlining just why Beethoven never again completed a concerto.

There was little to fault in Tiberghien’s take on the Adagio (save for a few errors to remind one that Beethoven’s slower music is by no means easier to play), and if the transition into the finale was less than spellbinding, that latter movement for the most part brought out the best in the rapport between pianist and conductor. The CBSO responded with the necessary rhythmic agility, and Tiberghien responded to the applause with excerpts from the Eroica Variations he has recently recorded as part of an edition of Beethoven’s works in this genre.

The engaging director of last year’s Viennese New Year concert, Strausser (above) clearly enjoys a rapport with this orchestra as was a hallmark of Prokofiev’s Fifth Symphony following the interval. Itself the most often heard of a diverse and often diffuse cycle (the ‘Classical’ more often encountered on recording than in concert), it presents notable difficulties of balance and pacing – notably the initial Andante, whose accumulating momentum needs careful handling so as not to congeal. Strausser duly had its measure, maintaining focus through to a seismic peroration – the impact from which carried over into a scherzo whose outer sections seemed more than unusually acerbic. Nor did this preclude a more genial response in the trio, its main theme held over from Romeo and Juliet and as captivating a melody as any by this composer.

That the Adagio is the emotional heart of this work only increases the need to prevent it from dragging, and Strausser’s sense of proportion ensured that the sense of dread made explicit at its climax was balanced by the serene eloquence towards its close. Heading (rightly) straight into finale, he steered a secure course through a movement whose poise is constantly being undercut by disruptive elements as take control in the coda – the composer’s perspective on imminent Soviet victory in the ‘Great Patriotic War’ remaining ambivalent even at the close.

A fine reading of a work whose stature is still questioned (and a reminder that Prokofiev’s Second Symphony still awaits its CBSO debut). Chief Conductor-designate Kazuki Yamada returns next week for an unlikely though appealing double-bill of Tchaikovsky and Holst.

You can read all about the 2022/23 season and book tickets at the CBSO website – and head to this page for the Tchaikovsky and Holst programme. Click on the artist names for more on Eduardo Strausser and Cédric Tiberghien