On Record – MahlerFest 36 & 37: Mahler & The Mountains: Kenneth Woods conducts Symphony no.4 & selections from Des Knaben Wunderhorn

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April Fredrick (soprano), Brennen Guillory (tenor – Trost im Unglück, Der Tambourg’ sell; Revelge), Colorado MahlerFest Orchestra / Kenneth Woods

Mahler
Symphony no.4 in G major (1892; 1899-1900)
Des Knaben Wunderhorn: Lied des Verfolgten im Turm; Des Antonius von Padua; Fischpredigt; Trost im Unglück; Rheinlegendchen; Der Schildwache Nachtlied; Der Tambourg’sell; Revelge

Colorado MahlerFest 195269364564 [two discs, 89’22”]
Producer Jonathan Galle Engineer Tim Burton
Live performances at Macky Auditorium, Boulder, Colorado, 20 May 2023 (Des Knaben Wunderhorn), 19 May 2024 (symphony no.4)

Reviewed by Richard Whitehouse

What’s the story?

Recorded coverage of Colorado’s MahlerFest continues with these performances taken from the past two editions, duly confirming the significance of this event in the annals of Mahler interpretation and the increasing excellence of the orchestral playing under Kenneth Woods.

What are the performances like?

It may be the shortest of his cycle and the one which initially gained his music acceptance in the UK and US, but Mahler’s Fourth Symphony received as rough a reception as any of his premieres and it remains a difficult work fully to make cohere. While he undoubtedly has its measure, Woods might have pointed up those expressive contrasts in its opening movement a little more directly; the music only finding focus with a development where the emotional perspective opens out to reveal an unforeseen ambiguity. The remainder is unfailingly well judged, while the scherzo impresses through a seamless transition between the sardonic and the elegance of its trio sections. Alan Snow sounds just a little tentative with his ‘mistuned’ violin, but the unexpected panorama of enchantment prior to its coda is meltingly realized.

At just over 20 minutes, the Adagio feels relatively swift (surprisingly so), even if Woods is mindful never to rush its unfolding double variations and what becomes a contrast between intensifying expressive states whose Beethovenian antecedent is not hard to discern. If the climactic ‘portal to heaven’ lacks little in resplendence, it is that hushed inwardness either side such as sets the seal on a reading of this movement to rank among the finest in recent years. Nor is its segue into the finale other than seamless – Mahler having realized that an earlier vocal setting was the natural culmination to where his symphony had been headed. Suffice to add that April Fredrick’s contribution is of a piece with Woods’s conception in its canny mingling of innocence and experience prior to an ending of deep-seated repose.

The second disc features seven songs taken from Mahler’s settings of folk-inspired anthology Des Knaben Wunderhorn. April Fredrick is truly in her element with a Rheinlegendchen of winning insouciance and a Des Antonius von Padua Fischpredigt of deftest irony. Brennen Guillory comes into his own with the final two numbers, Der Tamboursg’sell distilling the darkest humour as surely as Revelge conveys that innate fatalism behind the resolve with which the soldier meets his destiny. Woods provides an astute and sensitive accompaniment.

Does it all work?

Yes, insofar as the collection of folk-inspired poetry proved central to Mahler’s evolution as both a song and symphonic composer. It might have been worthwhile to include the original version of Das himmlische Leben, not least as its appreciably different orchestration shows just how far the composer’s thinking had come during eight years, but the present selection is nothing if not representative. Hopefully those Wunderhorn songs not featured will appear on a future issue from this source, maybe in tandem with the Rückert songs of the next decade.

Is it recommended?

Yes it is. The symphonic cycle emerging from MahlerFest is shaping up to be a significant addition to the Mahler discography, with the latest instalment no exception. Hopefully this year’s account of the Sixth Symphony will find its way to commercial release before long.

Listen / Buy

For further purchase options, visit the MahlerFest website – and for more information on the festival itself, click here. Click on the names for further information on conductor Kenneth Woods, soprano April Fredrick and tenor Brennen Guillory

Published post no.2,681 – Wednesday 8 October 2025

In concert – Kleio Quartet @ Wigmore Hall: Elgar, Webern & Haydn

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Kleio Quartet [Juliette Roos, Katherine Yoon (violins), Yume Fujise (viola), Eliza Millett (cello)]

Elgar String Quartet in E minor Op.83 (1918)
Webern 5 Movements for String Quartet Op.5 (1909)
Haydn String Quartet in D major Op.50/6 ‘Frog’ (1787)

Wigmore Hall, London
Monday 6 October 2025 (1pm)

On the evidence of this BBC Radio 3 Lunchtime Concert, the Kleio Quartet – members of the station’s New Generation Artists scheme – are ones to watch. Not least for their programming, for it was refreshing to see a Haydn string quartet given top billing at a concert rather than making up the numbers.

The concert began with an account of Sir Edward Elgar’s sole String Quartet notable for its poise, elegance and understated emotion. Elgar’s ‘late’ works are best experienced in concert at this autumnal time of year, though the dappled sunlight evoked here was compromised by a subtle yet lasting foreboding. For the youthful Kleio Quartet to capture the thoughts of a man in his early 60s with such clarity was impressive indeed. They did so through a first movement taking the ‘moderato’ of Elgar’s tempo marking to hand – deliberate but never plodding. The dense, Brahmsian counterpoint was deftly unpicked, while the nostalgic elements of the second movement gave the feeling of an ensemble performing in an adjacent room, the listener asked to imagine an elegant salon setting. The purposeful finale snapped us out of this reverie with vigorous exchanges, though there was time for affection in its second theme. Ultimately the music revelled in the Sussex outdoors enjoyed by Elgar and wife Alice, though the Autumnal chill remained present.

Memories of a very different kind coursed through Webern’s 5 Movements for String Quartet, written in the wake of his mother’s death. These remarkable compositions illustrate an unparalleled gift for intense, compressed expression. None of the movements last longer than two minutes, yet so much concentrated feeling is loaded into their short phrases, pushing against tonality with oblique melodies and rich yet desolate harmonies.

The Kleio Quartet found those qualities and more in a deeply impressive account, with the alternate moods of the first movement, argumentative and then delicate, and the forthright third. Countering these moods were the soul searching second and the sparse, eerie fourth, where the ticking motif of Yume Fujise’s viola suggested a period of insomnia. The bare bones of Webern’s anguish were made clear in the final movement, in the high, inconsolable violin of Juliette Roos and the empty closing chords.

Following this with one of Haydn’s most amiable quartets was an inspired move, the Wigmore Hall audience smiling feely as the composer’s humour was repeatedly revealed. The so-called ‘Frog’ quartet, named for the croaking repeated notes of the finale’s main theme, shows Haydn completing his Op.50 set of six quartets with a panache that would surely have delighted their beneficiary, Frederick William II of Prussia.

The Kleio had fun with the unpredictable first movement, spirited yet restless, and the harmonic twists and turns of the Poco adagio, led by expressive flourishes from Roos. The quirky Menuetto revelled in melodic inflections and cheeky asides, with the pregnant pauses of the trio section adding to the irregular rhythms within the triple time meter. All of which set up the fun and frolics of the finale, where the occasional slip of ensemble tuning could be easily forgiven in the spirit of the Kleio’s performance, Haydn charming his audience to the very end.

Listen

You can listen to this concert as the first hour of BBC Radio 3’s Classical Live, which can be found on BBC Sounds until Tuesday 4 November.

Published post no.2,680 – Tuesday 7 October 2025

In concert – Jennifer France, London Philharmonic Orchestra / Edward Gardner @ Royal Festival Hall – Abrahamsen & Mahler

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Jennifer France (soprano), London Philharmonic Orchestra / Edward Gardner

Abrahamsen let me tell you (2012-3)
Mahler Symphony no.4 in G major (1892, 1899-1900)

Royal Festival Hall, London
Friday 3 October 2025

Reviewed by Richard Whitehouse

Tonight’s London Philharmonic Orchestra concert featured the welcome revival of a 21st-century classic. Hans Abrahamsen’s recent output may be relatively sparing, but the works that have emerged represent a triumph of quality over quantity and not least let me tell you.

Set to fragmentary lines drawn by Paul Griffiths from his eponymous novel, this centres on the character of Ophelia – its seven songs falling into three larger parts whose outlining of a ‘before, now and after’ trajectory gives focus to the arching intensity of its 30-minute span. The first, fourth and sixth of these anticipate what comes to fruition during the second, fifth and seventh – the exception being the third whose speculative vocal line is underpinned by a stealthy progress in the lower registers evoking the motion, if not the form, of a passacaglia. Elsewhere the voice evinces an intricacy and translucency that effortlessly carries the word-setting as it pivots between thought of oblivion and transcendence, before eventually being subsumed into the orchestra for a conclusion among the most affecting in recent memory.

The LPO acquitted itself ably in music which is texturally complex for all its harmonic clarity, though it was Jennifer France (above) who (not unreasonably) most impressed with a rendering of the solo part as did ample justice to its high-lying melisma and airborne flights of fancy. Edward Gardner directed with an innate sense of where this music was headed, not least in those final bars with their tapering off into silence. Relatively few pieces are recognized as seminal from the outset, but let me tell you is one such and seems destined to remain so well into the future.

France then returned (or rather stole in) for the finale of Mahler’s Fourth Symphony after the interval. His setting of ‘Das himmlische Leben’ from the folk-inspired anthology Das Knaben Wunderhorn had actually been written almost a decade earlier and was once envisaged as the finale to the Third Symphony, but it makes a natural conclusion to a successor whose relative understatement is sustained right through to this movement’s intangible end: a ‘child’s vision of heaven’ whose intended innocence becomes informed with no little experience by the close.

Gardner had steered a convincing trajectory through the preceding movements – not least the opening one whose mingled whimsy and wistfulness took on a more ominous demeanour in its eventful development, before conveying unalloyed resolve in a warm-hearted reprise and beatific coda. What is among the most striking of Mahler’s scherzo’s proceeded with audible appreciation of its pivoting between the sardonic and sublime, Pieter Schoeman’s ‘mistuned’ violin being first among equals in music whose soloistic textures were thrown into relief by the homogenous stability of the Adagio. Its double variations unfolded with a fluid intensity capped by a coda whose ‘portal to heaven’ yielded thrilling resplendence as subsided into a transcendent raptness that, in other circumstances, could have made a satisfying conclusion.

That this lead so seamlessly into the vocal finale says a great deal for Mahler’s foresight, but also Gardner’s ability to fashion so cohesive a symphonic entity. As the music subsided into subterranean chords on harp, the audience was (necessarily) held spellbound a while longer.

Click on the links for more information on the London Philharmonic Orchestra, conductor Edward Gardner, soprano Jennifer France and composer Hans Abrahamsen

Published post no.2,679 – Monday 6 October 2025

On this day – the premiere of Vaughan Williams’ Serenade to Music

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Picture: By uncredited press photographer, public domain

by Ben Hogwood

On this day in 1938, the premiere of Serenade to Music, one of Vaughan Williams‘ best-loved pieces, took place at the Royal Albert Hall. Conducted by Sir Henry Wood, the orchestra was a blend of players from the London Symphony Orchestra, BBC Symphony Orchestra and London Philharmonic Orchestra.

In the audience was a certain Sergei Rachmaninoff, who had performed his own Piano Concerto no.2 in the first half of the concert, and who was moved to tears by Vaughan Williams’ new work.

Serenade To Music is led by a group of 16 solo singers, a starry line-up including the likes of Isobel Baillie, Elsie Suddaby, Heddle Nash and Walter Widdop. The account below is conducted by John Wilson, from the Concordia Foundation 15th Anniversary Gala at the Queen Elizabeth Hall. 22nd November 2010:

Published post no.2,678 – Sunday 5 October 2025

In concert – The Gesualdo Six & Matilda Lloyd @ Wigmore Hall

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The Gesualdo Six [Guy James (countertenor), Alasdair Austin (countertenor), Joseph Wicks (tenor), Josh Cooter (tenor), Simon Grant (baritone) and director Owain Park (bass)]

Roth Night Prayer (2017)
Tallis O nata lux de lumine (pub. 1575)
Pritchard The Light Thereof (2020)
MacMillan O Radiant Dawn from The Strathclyde Motets (2005)
Tallis Dum transisset Sabbatum (1575)
Hildegard of Bingen O gloriosissimi (с.1163-1175)
Bingham Enter Ghost (2002)
Owain Park Sommernacht (2022)
Rheinberger Abendlied from 3 Geistliche Gesänge Op. 69 (pub.1873)
Barnard Aura (2020)
Roxanna Panufnik O Hearken (2015)
Burgon Nunc dimittis (1979)

Wigmore Hall, London, 2 October 2025

by John Earls. Photo credits unknown (above), John Earls (below)

The Gesualdo Six have recently released their tenth album (for Hyperion) Radiant Dawn. It finds them combining consistently high standards of choral music with imaginative programming featuring classic and contemporary compositions spanning over 800 years of music. It also sees them introducing a new element to the mix, namely the inclusion of the trumpet for a number of pieces superbly played by Matilda Lloyd.

The new album was the focus for this hour-long lunchtime concert at a packed Wigmore Hall with all pieces performed coming from it (and a few omitted). The theme of the album, as explained by The Gesualdo Six’s director and bass (and recently named new chief conductor of the BBC Singers) Owain Park, is “musical responses to light” in a whole variety of contexts.

First up in the set (and on the album) was Alec Roth’s Night Prayer, an almost dreamy reflection of the Compline hymn Te lucis ante terminum that introduces Lloyd’s trumpet and the remarkable effect it has when married with these magnificent voices.

Next was Thomas Tallis’s O nata lux de lumine, one of two shorter pieces (both just over 2 minutes) along with Roxanna Panufnik’s O Hearken, but their duration made them no less impactful. Both featured just voices, and I loved finding out from the programme that O Hearken started life as a raffle ticket prize. Another Tallis piece Dum transisset Sabbatum saw Matilda Lloyd’s trumpet taking the soprano voice to powerful effect.

There are two of James MacMillan’s Strathclyde Motets on the album. Only one of them, O Radiant Dawn, from which the album gets its title, gets performed here. It’s harmonically inspired by Tallis’s O nata lux de lumine and has a yearning to it befitting of the Advent season it relates to.

Richard Barnard’s Aura (commissioned for the album) sets music to the text of Emily Barry’s poem about the loss of her mother. Credit to the programme editors for faithfully reproducing the poem’s arresting layout – two parallel columns reflecting the emotional fracture involved (Owain Park’s programme notes were also excellent). This fracturing dissipates musically as the piece progresses with the trumpet acting as a bridge between two groups of singers. It was one of the most affecting pieces of the concert with the composer in the audience to hear it.

Another composer in the audience was Deborah Pritchard whose The Light Thereof (also commissioned for the album) sets words from the Book of Revelation and demonstrated deftly the ability of the trumpet (muted at times) to evoke different shades of light.

Matilda Lloyd’s virtuosity on the trumpet was to the fore in Judith Bingham’s Enter Ghost, an interpretation of a passage from Shakespeare’s Hamlet mixing music with spoken word, the drama enhanced by her walking off stage (and returning) whilst playing.

Other pieces sung a cappella included Hildegard of Bingen’s O gloriosissimi (from the back of the hall) and beautiful performances of Owain Park’s own Sommernacht and Joseph Rheinberger’s Abendlied.

The programme ended (as does the album) with Geoffrey Burgon’s Nunc dimittis which some may remember as the closing music from the BBC’s television adaptation of John le Carré’s Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy. It was yet another example of how effective this glorious combination of voices and trumpet is and proved a fitting conclusion to a most illuminating concert.  

John Earls is Director of Research at Unite the Union and posts at @johnearls.bsky.social on Bluesky and @john_earls on X. You can subscribe (free) to his Hanging Out a Window Substack column here: https://johnearls.substack.com/

Published post no.2,677 – Saturday 4 October 2025