Category Archives: Song

In Concert – Mark Padmore & Jonathan Biss @ Wigmore Hall: Schubert & Schumann

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Mark Padmore (tenor, above), Jonathan Biss (piano, below)

Wigmore Hall, London
Thursday 24 September (lunchtime)

Schubert Der Wanderer an den Mond D870 (1826), Im Freien D880 (1826), Der Einsame D800 (1825), Der Winterabend D938 (1828)
Schumann Kerner Lieder Op.35

Reviewed by Ben Hogwood Photo credits Marco Borggreve and Benjamin Ealovega

Storytelling is of course an essential part of any Lieder recital, but the extent to which Mark Padmore and Jonathan Biss brought the seventeen songs of this BBC Radio 3 Lunchtime Concert to life was a joy to behold.

Padmore is one of Britain’s finest tenors, a versatile artist at ease in contemporary music as he equally is in Bach or Britten, for instance, with one of his strongest qualities an elegance to the delivery that suited these brighter examples of Schubert’s song output. So, too, did the pianism of Jonathan Biss, finding and projecting all of the composer’s countermelodies with consummate ease.

The pair began in the moonlight – naturally – Der Wanderer an den Mond beginning in strident fashion before the brighter light of its major key second half. Biss then led the phrasing for a beautifully poised account of Im Freien, before the chirpy crickets of Der Einsame raised a smile. In a magical account of Der Winterabend, from the early part of Schubert’s final year, time was taken to evoke the long evening and the slowly falling snow, with a memorable turn towards blissful peace, as tenor and pianist found themselves in easy, slow moving alignment.

The calm repose cast by this song was rudely broken by Schumann’s arresting Lust der Sturmnacht, the switch from sonorous B flat major to turbulent E flat minor something of a jolt. In his Kerner Lieder, Schumann writes less of a thematically linked cycle, but a common thread to the songs are their capture the feverish passions, good and bad, of his new marriage to Clara. Though there is union and delight in the potential happiness ahead, some of the songs are fraught and wracked with worry, making the group ripe for dramatic concert performance.

Padmore and Biss (above) homed in on the drama of Justinus Kerner’s verse, the tenor allowing his voice to fray a little when the emotion of the song demanded it. Such moments occurred towards the top of the register in Stille Liebe and Stirb’, Lieb’ und Freud’!, where earlier in the song he had clasped his hands in reverent prayer.

Auf das Trinkglas eines verstorbenen Freundes was a captivating centre piece of the cycle, majestic and sombre in equal turn, while the rousing Wanderung had the musical effect of putting on boots and coat for a long walk. Heights of expression were found in the devotional love expressed in Sehnsucht nach der Waldgegend, a Christmas present for Schumann’s new wife in the year of composition.

The extremes of movement made the stillness of Alte Laute all the more affecting, Padmore’s control held to perfection while Biss ensured once again that the phrases of Schumann’s countermelodies were beautifully sculpted.

As Padmore said, few encores could be entertained in the light of such a moving musical paragraph, yet one fitted perfectly – Schubert’s Frühlingsglaube, D686, lightening the mood without changing the tonality or elegance of delivery.

Padmore and Biss continue to finish each other’s sentence in this ideally matched partnership, at ease in each other’s company to forego obvious gestures other than the musical – which in this case resulted in a very special hour of music indeed.

You can listen back to this concert until 4 November on BBC Sounds

Published post no.3,039 – Tuesday 6 October 2026

In concert – Fleur Barron, CBSO / Carlo Rizzi: Puccini in Rome

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Fleur Barron (mezzo-soprano), City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra / Carlo Rizzi

Puccini arr. Rizzi Tosca – Symphonic Suite (1900, arr. 2020)
Respighi Il Tramonto (1917-18)
Puccini arr. Rizzi Madama Butterfly – Symphonic Suite (1904, arr. 2020)
Respighi Pini di Roma (1923-4)

Symphony Hall, Birmingham
Thursday 16 April 2026

Reviewed by Richard Whitehouse Photo of Fleur Barron by Victoria Cadisch

Carlo Rizzi has long been a familiar presence in Birmingham – though as music director (for 13 years) at Welsh National Opera rather than conducting the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra, with whom his rapport was nevertheless undoubted as tonight’s concert confirmed.

The theatrical essence of Puccini’s operas inevitably detracts from their orchestral mastery, but there is no reason why their music cannot be adapted for the concert hall – as Rizzi duly demonstrated with these two ‘symphonic suites’ created during the COVID lockdown. The incentive had come earlier when conducting the suite from Richard Strauss’ Der Rosenkavalier, and anyone familiar with that rather crassly assembled concoction will surely concur that Rizzi has performed a much greater service for two of the Italian composer’s most famous operas.

As regards Tosca, its unwavering concentration makes it difficult to extract purely orchestral passages of any length – thereby vindicating making Rizzi’s decision to adapt this music as   it stands and not ‘instrumentalize’ the vocal lines. Centred on the ill-fated lovers Tosca and Cavaradossi, his suite pivots between high emotion and fraught pathos while still managing to encompass the extent of the drama throughout the two hours of its unfolding. Put another way, those unfamiliar with this opera would be left in little doubt as to its dramatic potency.

If the overtly discursive quality of Madam Butterfly makes it less amenable for being distilled in this way, its score offers an abundance of orchestral finesse and local colour of which Rizzi has made the most. Here the emphasis comes even more on the eponymous heroine, her main set-pieces diminished only incrementally when shorn of their vocal component. Nor does this suite overlook the searing cruelty of the denouement, achieved here through a shattering burst of orchestral violence which felt scarcely less visceral than in operas from Janáček and Berg.

In between these high-octane encapsulations, a modicum of restraint (though hardly serenity) was conveyed by The Sunset. When setting Shelley’s typically over-wrought poem from 1816, Respighi was evidently guided by the disjunctive if not necessarily jarring transition between its rapt initial stages and its anguished continuation towards an ending of fatalistic repose. Its richly enveloping string-writing was fastidiously rendered – an apposite context for Canadian mezzo Fleur Barron (above) to project vocal writing no less suffused with radiant emotional warmth.

Respighi in more familiar guise concluded this programme. His Pines of Rome was accorded an insightful reading – whether in the raucous animation of those ‘of the Villa Borghese’, the sombre opulence of those ‘near a Catacomb’, the enfolding ecstasy of those ‘at the Janiculum’ (pre-recorded nightingale ascending headily through the expanse of Symphony Hall) then the surging majesty of those ‘of the Appian Way’, with its overwhelmingly cinematic peroration. Music expressly intended to bring the house down, which was certainly true on this occasion.

It set the seal on an imaginatively programmed and superbly played concert, making one hope that Rizzi will soon be returning. Next week, however, brings music of a very different nature when Ryan Wigglesworth takes the podium in commemorative music by Purcell and Brahms.

To read more about the CBSO’s 2025/26 season, visit the CBSO website. Click on the names for more on conductor Carlo Rizzi and mezzo-soprano Fleur Barron

Published post no.2,863 – Monday 20 April 2026

In Concert – Hans Christian Aavik, Estonian National Symphony Orchestra / Neeme Järvi & Olari Elts @ Estonia Concert Hall, Tallinn

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Hans Christian Aavik (violin), Estonian National Symphony Orchestra / Neeme Järvi, Olari Elts

Verbytsky / Chubynsky National Anthem of Ukraine
Eller Homeland Tune (1918/1953)
Sibelius Andante festivo (1922/1938)
Tüür Violin Concerto no.2 ‘Angel’s Share’ (2018)
Sumera Symphony no.2 (1984)

Estonia Concert Hall, Tallinn
Wednesday 15 April 2026

Reviewed by Ben Hogwood Pictures (c) Ben Hogwood

There was a celebratory air to this concert in the Estonian National Symphony Orchestra’s Violin Concerto series, which began with powerful solidarity as the orchestra played the Ukrainian National Anthem to a standing audience.

They were conducted by the return of the much-loved Neeme Järvi, soon to be 89 – the unofficial godfather of an Estonian conducting dynasty now spreading well beyond his own sons Paavo and Kristjan. Järvi also conducted Homeland Tune by the pioneering Estonian composer Heino Eller, whose stints at Tartu and Tallinn musical establishments found him teaching the likes of Arvo Pärt and Tubin. The burnished string tone of the Estonian NSO strings was to be savoured in this affectionate rendering, as it was in a warm account of Andante Festivo, the popular Sibelius encore.

The impish Järvi, playing to the gallery, was then joined on stage by Martin Cullingford (above) editor of Gramophone magazine. While there were mischievous asides from the conductor there were serious points too – the merits of composer Joachim Raff, the latest in a long list of countless musical discoveries, and the concluding exhortation that without music, life is nothing. It was difficult to disagree, Järvi showing just why he is held in such great esteem.

So, too, is composer Erkki-Sven Tüür, in his fifties but with a thirty-year career in which he has established himself on the world stage as a composer whose evolution is compelling to witness. Tüür writes with great fluency in established classical forms, and his Violin Concerto no.2 shows his ability to apply an emotive program to those structures. ‘Angel’s Share’ refers to the pocket of air appearing in a barrel of whisky during the ageing process, a phenomenon applied to the maturing of an adult.

The silvery edge to the tone of violinist Hans Christian Aavik was the ideal spur for music that engaged in luminous dialogue, while laced with folksy references. The frequency spectrum of this piece is wide, from the metallic percussion of the first gesture to the important part played by the double basses, providing notable depth, their counter melodies central as the concerto pushed forward. Aavik’s virtuosity was key, convincingly delivering with spacious phrasing. This concerto needs repeated listening but is on its way to becoming a repertoire regular.

The same fate should befall the Second Symphony of Lepo Sumera, a 20-minute single movement span that proved something of a revelation. Sumera is not often heard beyond his own country, but this work completely validated his compositional approach, blending an American-style minimalism – admired by John Adams, no less – with fresh melodies and open textures that could only be Baltic in origin.

The work began with the two harps (Sara Siria D’Amico and Saale Kivimaker) who played exquisitely, their distinctive motifs the seeds from which the music grew, forming like a sped-up motion picture of the growth of a tree, its branches extending outwards and upwards in twisting figures, germinating new ideas at every turn while all the while building a majestic canopy.

Olari Elts oversaw this process with admirable surety, aided by unexpected interventions from the trombones, and double basses, with wild whoops and guttural phrases introducing a more primal edge. The climactic section confirmed Sumera’s continental approach, for the tree could now be in the American plains given the wide-open textures around, and also his tight grasp of structure, with barely a note out of place. Gradually the music returned to earth, and to the harps of the beginning, its story told in a singularly powerful voice.

Sumera’s output numbers seven symphonies, each earmarked for release in recordings by this conductor and orchestra on the Finnish label Ondine. Judging by this rediscovered masterpiece, we are in for a treat – and for Sumera, whose life was cut tragically short at the age of 50, recognition of his talents looks set to go well beyond this appreciative Tallinn concert hall.

Published post no.2,862 – Sunday 19 April 2026

In Concert – Nelson Goerner, City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra / Kazuki Yamada: Hindemith, Rachmaninoff & Bartók

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Nelsen Goerner (piano) City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra / Kazuki Yamada

Hindemith Symphonic Metamorphosis of Themes by Carl Maria von Weber (1943)
Rachmaninoff Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini Op.43 (1934)
Bartók Concerto for Orchestra BB123 (1943)

Symphony Hall, Birmingham
Thursday 9 April 2026

Reviewed by Richard Whitehouse Pictures (c) Andrew Fox (above) and Marco Borggreve (below)

There was a pleasing overall balance to this evening’s concert from the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra and its music director Kazuki Yamada: the three works, written within a decade of each other, drawing extensively on earlier composers or, indeed, traditional music.

If not as familiar as it once was (and not least in Birmingham), Symphonic Metamorphosis of Themes by Carl Maria von Weber is always worth revival – not least for finding Hindemith at his most approachable and uninhibited. It was this latter aspect which came over most vividly here – Yamada securing a forceful though never blowzy response in the opening Allegro, then making the most of its ‘Turandot’ Scherzo’s freewheeling play on Weber’s already recalcitrant overture to which the CBSO responded in like fashion. Easily to underestimate, the Andantino emerged as music of no mean pathos as well as a foil to the final March’s breezy treatment of incisive then jocular melodies, with a close of real panache. Did a smile on the face of certain older punters indicate the latter tune’s audible resemblance to a once popular wartime song?

Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini has become increasingly familiar in recent decades, as has Rachmaninoff’s music as a whole, and tonight’s performance amply underlined why. He may not have partnered the CBSO for several years, but Nelson Goerner secured a rapport from the outset – the initial 15 variations pivoting between impetuosity and inwardness with dextrous assurance, then those three which constitute a ‘slow movement’ rendered with a soulfulness and, in the evergreen Variation XVIII, a deftness such as banished any hint of sentimentality. The closing six variations duly unfolded as a ‘finale’ capricious and scintillating, Goerner at one with the orchestra in rounding off this work with a deathless payoff. Impeccably played if emotionally aloof, Brahms’ Intermezzo in A major (Op. 118/2) was the less than apposite encore.

The CBSO has an association with Bartók’s Concerto for Orchestra itself going back decades with the present account notable, above all, for its sheer virtuosity of playing. Interpretatively things was not quite this consistent – the expressive contrasts in its Introduzione just a little inflexibly drawn so that the movement felt no more than the sum of its admittedly impressive parts, with the succession of duets in Presentando le coppie a little too detached from each other for this to become the genial though equally vulnerable scherzando it ideally should be.

Conversely, the Elegia had an ideal balance between wrenching anguish and that unworldly ‘night music’ from which it emerges and into which it ultimately withdraws, while the quirky interplay of styles and parodies – whether Léhar or Shostakovich seems beside the point – in the Intermezzo interrotto never sounded at all contrived. Neither did the Finale disappoint as it navigated between pulsating energy and brazen high jinx, on route to a coda of hushed anticipation capped by a peroration which set the seal on this work in an exhilarating QED.

Overall, a fine showing for the CBSO and Yamada in the wake of their latest European tour. The orchestra returns next week in an enterprising programme of Respighi and Puccini, the latter represented by syntheses from two of his operas devised by the conductor Carlo Rizzi.

To read more about the CBSO’s 2025/26 season, visit the CBSO website. Click on the names for more on their principal conductor Kazuki Yamada and pianist Nelson Goerner

Published post no.2,854 – Saturday 11 April 2026

In Concert – Ailish Tynan, Pauline Murrihy, Robin Tritschler & Iain Burnside @ Wigmore Hall: Ina Boyle – A Rediscovery

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Ailish Tynan (soprano), Paula Murrihy (mezzo-soprano), Robin Tritschler (tenor), Iain Burnside (piano)

Boyle A soft day, thank God (1912); Looking Back: Carrowdore (1961-6); The Joy of Earth (1914); 2 Christmas Songs: Blyssid be the Tyme (1923-4); Himself and his Fiddle (1929); Have you news of my boy Jack (1916); Looking Back: O ghost, that has gone
Vaughan Williams Orpheus with his Lute (1925)
Boyle Looking Back: The mill-water
Vaughan Williams The Water Mill (c1922)
Maconchy Sun, Moon and Stars from Sun, Moon and Stars (1977)
Boyle Spring goeth all in white (1924); A Song of Enchantment (1921-2)
Wood The blackberry blossom (1897)
Boyle Roses (1909)
Wood Oh! Skylark, for thy wing! (1884)
Boyle All Souls’ Flower (1928)
Wood Darest thou now, O Soul (1897)
Boyle The Last Invocation (1913)

Wigmore Hall, London
Tuesday 9 March, 1pm

Reviewed by Ben Hogwood Photo (c) Ben Hogwood

“I think it is most courageous of you to go on with such little recognition,” wrote Vaughan Williams to his pupil, Irish composer Ina Boyle. “The only thing to say is that it does come finally.”

This Wigmore Hall concert gave the strongest possible proof of recognition at last for Boyle’s work, her songs brought to life by a starry cast of singers with pianist Iain Burnside. The program helpfully complemented her work with that of teacher Vaughan Williams, cousin by marriage Charles Wood, and good friend Elizabeth Maconchy.

The texts reflected a love of the outdoors, surely gained during her relative seclusion in home territory at County Wicklow, and also celebrated the season of spring, evident to all arriving at the Wigmore Hall for this lunchtime recital.

The brightly voiced A soft day, thank God, took us outdoors immediately, the ‘scent of drenching leaves’ and the rain that ‘drips, drips, drips from the leaves’ brought to life from Winifred M Letts’ words. They were sung with clarity by Robin Tritschler in the first verse and a brightly voiced Ailish Tynan in the second. Boyle’s songwriting is simple – not a criticism – and direct in its communication, reflecting the shy disposition of its composer but growing in assurance as her style developed.

This was evident in the selections from the song cycle Looking Back, with Carrowdore lost in thought through Paula Murrihy’s thoughtful account. The elusive and more playful O ghost, was laced with humour by Tritschler, while Murrihy’s full-bodied vocal was complemented by the flowing current of Burnside’s piano in The Mill Water.

The Joy Of Earth was noticeably more demonstrative, while Blyssid be the Tyme benefitted from both Tynan’s effortless projection and Boyle’s clean melodic line. Murrihy did extremely well with the wordy Himself and his Fiddle, accentuating the song’s folksy triple time with Burnside, while the brief but bright Robert Bridges setting, Spring goeth all in white, was beautifully phrased by Tynan.

Boyle’s inwardly facing songs were the most moving, notably A Song of Enchantment, a setting of De la Mare given mysterious light and shade from Tritschler, who held the stillness of twilight exquisitely as the shadows advanced. The tenor also kept the inner questions of Roses in a confidential tone, while Burnside’s wandering right hand line aided the wonder of All Souls’ Flower, where the three singers took a verse each. Most affecting of all Boyle’s songs here was a setting of Rudyard Kipling’s First World War poem, Have you news of my boy Jack?, Murrihy and Tritschler playing a tense scene of anxious questions, with answers that a mother dreaded to hear.

Vaughan Williams was represented by a beautifully sung account of Orpheus with his Lute from Tynan, then a vividly pictorial account of The Water Mill from Tritschler, where Burnside’s characterisations of the roaring waters, the ticking of the mill clock and the miller’s tabby cat were exquisite.

The composer Charles Wood, Boyle’s cousin by marriage, is known primarily for Anglican church music rather than exploits in the concert hall, so it was satisfying that the centenary of his death this year was marked with three characterful songs. Paula Murrihy worked wonders with another wordy composition, the frivolous The blackberry blossom, and with the serious tones of Whitman setting Darest thou now, O Soul. Tynan was in her element for the soft tones of Oh! Skylark, for thy wing!, Burnside allowing her room to spread her wings.

Elizabeth Maconchy nearly stole the show with Sun, Moon and Stars, a modern song of striking musical language reflecting the ‘new and strange’ of its first line. The top notes reached for celestial highs, and were found unerringly in an exceptional performance by Tynan.

Wrapping up a memorable hour of music was Boyle’s The Last Invocation, an impassioned setting of Whitman throwing open the doors with the strongest possible advocacy from Robin Tritschler. It completed a concert where the songwriting craft of Ina Boyle was confirmed beyond doubt, her voice at last projecting further afield.

You can listen to the music from this concert in a Tidal playlist, including songs by Ina Boyle recorded by the artists at the Wigmore Hall for Delphian in 2020.

Published post no.2,827 – Thursday 12 March 2026