A personal post for today, which marks the 10th anniversary of the passing of my mother Coralie. If you’ve been reading Arcana for a while you might know that I have a lot to thank my mum for, not least in terms of musical inspiration! Here is a post I wrote nearly ten years ago, detailing her influence.
Here, though, I would like to leave one of her favourite classical pieces, Dvořák‘s Symphony no.8 in G major – not least because it’s a beautiful spring day in the UK, which she would have loved! Keep resting peacefully, Mum.
The City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra (CBSO) today announces its 2025-26 season, presenting a compelling programme of concerts deeply connected to the city’s vibrant cultural identity.
Findings from the orchestra’s new “Listening Project” – a West Midlands focused research initiative reveals Birmingham’s strong cultural confidence. The new research shows 60% of Birmingham residents consider attending arts and cultural events to be a vital aspect of their free time. In addition, public support for Birmingham’s music venues is strong: 79% of people say they have attended a Birmingham venue in the last year – and 57% say they haven’t felt the need to travel beyond the city for music concerts.
In line with this, the CBSO has crafted a season that brings together world-class classical performances, diverse cultural collaborations, and accessible community events that reflect what Birmingham audiences value most.
CBSO Music Director, Kazuki Yamada, comments: “Our 2025-26 season celebrates both our classical heritage and Birmingham’s diverse cultural voices. We’re bringing orchestral music directly to communities across the city – honouring traditional masterworks while creating experiences that reflect what Birmingham audiences have told us they value most.”
The CBSO’s 2025-26 season at a glance
Classical tradition at its finest
The 2025-26 season offers ambitious classical programming:
· Kazuki Yamada enters his second year as Music Director by beginning a full Mahler Symphony Cycle with Symphony No.1, and leading more than 10 concerts in Birmingham, including as part of CBSO in the City.
· Elgar’s The Dream of Gerontius opens the season with the full CBSO Chorus.
· Puccini’s Tosca in concert featuring Natalya Romaniw, Gwyn Hughes Jones and Sir Bryn Terfel.
· The CBSO season has drawn top international soloists, including; Isata Kanneh-Mason, Benjamin Grosvenor, and Lisa Batiashvili.
Celebrating Birmingham’s cultural diversity
Building on successful past collaborations, the CBSO continues to champion the city’s rich cultural tapestry:
· Black Lives in Music brings a taste of their celebrated classical music festival to Birmingham with the return of award-winning singer-songwriter Laura Mvula to her hometown.
· The CBSO & The Orchestral Qawwali Project, a glorious blend of Sufi poetry, Indian Classical dance and symphony orchestra returns to Birmingham.
· Rushil Ranjan leads an evening that celebrates the musical and spiritual connections between western and eastern classical music.
· Satnam Rana presents Bringing the Light, an evening dedicated to celebrating light and winter festivals, including new commissions from contemporary voices including Cassie Kinoshi, Joan Armatrading and Roxanna Panufnik.
Taking music to Birmingham’s communities
The CBSO continues its commitment to bringing music directly to communities across the city:
· CBSO in the City week (23-28 July 2025) will return – as the CBSO delivers free music in public spaces throughout Birmingham.
Music for everyone
The season includes accessible programming designed to welcome new audiences:
· The complete Star Wars Original Trilogy performed over a full weekend, with live orchestra (24-26 October 2025). · Symphonic Queen celebrating one of the UK’s greatest-ever rock bands. · Charlie Chaplin’s The Gold Rush with live orchestra.
Inspiring music experiences for children and students
The CBSO’s 2025-26 season will also feature a strong focus on young people, giving more than 20,000 young people enriching music experiences through 36 concerts specifically designed for young people:
· Targeted Schools’ Concerts for different key stages, reaching thousands of children who might otherwise never experience live orchestral music. · Notelets performances specifically designed for toddlers and young children’s first music experiences – these fun-filled interactive concerts give children the freedom to dance, sing and learn about musical instruments for the first time. · Relaxed Concerts created for pupils attending Special Schools to enable pupils to experience live music in a supported, accessible and engaging environment. · Four dedicated family concerts including “Music from the Movies”, “CBSO Family Christmas”, “Tunes & Tales” and “Dance Across America.”
“Our new season is a magnificent celebration of music” says Emma Stenning, CBSO Chief Executive, who promises that 2025-26 will deliver “joy filled concerts for everyone, whether you find us at Symphony Hall, across Birmingham and the West Midlands, or on national and international tour led by our incredible Music Director, Kazuki Yamada”.
She adds: “Birmingham is our inspiration. Our home city is fantastically musical, and full of diversity and creative adventure. This new season is drawn from exactly that spirit, and presents us to the world as a truly future facing orchestra, that both celebrates the great classical repertoire, and dares to try something new”.
“As you delve into what’s on offer, we hope that you will discover music that moves you, uplifts you and offers you moments of celebration and reflection. We very much look forward to welcoming you to a concert soon”.
Catherine Arlidge, Director of Artistic Planning and former CBSO violinist, added: “Our season marries the global with the local. Whilst the diversity of our season programming is informed by understanding our wide-ranging audiences locally, we are also delighted that so many top international artists are joining us for the new season – Sir Bryn Terfel, Lisa Batiashvili, Osmo Vänskä, Vilde Frang and the Jussen brothers to name but a few. At a time of international geo-political tensions, our concerts celebrate different geographies and cultures – and remind us all about music’s power to unite people. Through our research, we have a strong sense of the musical experiences that speak for the city today – yet in terms of repertoire, guest artists and composers, the season is richly international in flavour. It is a season about celebrating home – but on the world stage.”
To explore the 2025-26 CBSO season in full visit the CBSO website. Tickets for the new season go on sale from Wednesday 21 May 2025, 10am.
Bruckner, ed. Kito Sakaya Symphony no.9 in D minor WAB109 (1887-96) with performing edition of finale by Nicole Samale, John A. Phillips, Benjamin-Gunnar Cohrs and Giuseppe Mazzuca (1983-2012) as revised by John A. Phillips (2021-22)
Hallé / Kahchun Wong
Hallé CDHLD7566 [two discs 88’24’’] Producer Steve Portnoi Engineers Tony Wass, Edward Cittanova
Recorded 26 October 2024 at Bridgewater Hall, Manchester
Reviewed by Richard Whitehouse
What’s the story?
The Hallé furthers its association with principal conductor and artistic advisor Kahchun Wong in this recording of Bruckner’s Ninth Symphony, the finale heard in a new edition prepared by John A. Phillips as the ostensible culmination of a process extending back across four decades.
What’s the music like?
Although his introductory note leaves no doubt as to his advocacy for Bruckner Nine, Wong’s approach is not an unqualified success overall. Doubts such as they are centre on the opening two movements, the first of which lacks that sustained inevitability and cumulative intensity necessary to make its extensive span cohere. Aptly contrasted in themselves, its three themes follow on each other without establishing any greater continuity and while the approach to its development yields tangible ominousness, the ensuing climax conveys less than the ultimate terror, though its coda does attain a fearsome majesty. Wong’s take on the second movement succeeds best in its trio’s speculative flights of fancy, which only makes the relative stolidity and emotional disengagement of its Scherzo sections the more surprising and disappointing.
The highlight is undoubtedly the Adagio. Without intervening unduly in its evolution, Wong ensures cohesion over a movement manifestly riven if not outright fractured by the starkness of its thematic contrasts. The journey towards its seismic culmination feels as eventful as it is absorbing and while that climax is less shattering than it can be, the clarity afforded its dense harmonies could not be bettered. Wong is mindful, moreover, not to allow its coda to broaden into an extended postlude but instead to keep this moving in anticipation of what is to follow.
This is hardly the place to go into the whys or wherefores of the ‘SPCM’ edition of the Finale. Given his intensive research into the issues of what is extant and what Bruckner intended for the crowning movement of his grandest symphonic design, Phillips is ideally placed in making his revisions to a completion which renders some striking yet often disparate material from a focussed and convincing perspective. The main alterations are those made to its latter stages, more streamlined and with less overt rhetoric than in the 2011 revision as recorded by Simon Rattle (Warner) though, to this listener at least, the 2008 revision as recorded by Friedemann Layer (Musikalische Akademie) still remains the most convincing in context. Whatever else, Wong conveys the extent of this gripping torso right through to the elation of its apotheosis.
Does it all work?
How well this performance succeeds depends on how one judges the necessity of that closing movement and the persuasiveness of Wong’s interpretation as a whole. Pertinent comparison might be made with the Hallé’s previous recording (also on its own label) – Cristian Mandeal drawing a response that, in the first two movements, has a power and intensity in advance of this newcomer. Interesting he should eschew the finale while instilling into those three earlier movements a sense of completion which, whether or not intentionally, is its own justification.
Is it recommended?
It is, whatever the reservations here expressed. This is not the final word on a four-movement Bruckner Nine any more than on Wong’s evolving interpretation though, with realistic sound alongside Phillips’s detailed while informative annotations, it is evidently a mandatory listen.
Listen / Buy
You can read more about this release and explore purchase options at the Hallé website
Mozart Piano Sonata no.13 in B flat major K333 (1783-4) Debussy Images Set 1: Reflets dans l’eau (1901-5); Suite Bergamasque: Clair de lune (c1890, rev. 1905) Dupont Les heures dolentes: Après-midi de Dimanche (1905) Hahn Le Rossignol éperdu: Hivernale; Le banc songeur (1902-10) Koechlin Paysages et marines Op.63: Chant de pêcheurs (1915-6) Schmitt Musiques intimes Book 2 Op.29: Glas (1889-1904)
Wigmore Hall, London Monday 28 April 2025 (1pm)
by Ben Hogwood picture of Anne Queffélec (c) Jean-Baptiste Millot
The celebrated French pianist Anne Queffélec is elegantly moving through her eighth decade, and her musical inspiration is as fresh as ever. The temptation for this recital may have been to play anniversary composer Ravel, but instead she chose to look beneath the surface, emerging with a captivating sequence of lesser-known French piano gems from the Belle Époque, successfully debuted on CD in 2013 and described by the pianist herself as “a walk in the musical garden à la Française.”
Before the guided tour, we had Mozart at this most inquisitive and chromatic. The Piano Sonata no.13 in B flat major, K.333, was written in transit between Salzburg and Vienna, and the restlessness of travel runs through its syncopation and wandering melodic lines. Queffélec phrased these stylishly, giving a little more emphasis to the left hand in order to bring out Mozart’s imaginative counterpoint. She enjoyed the ornamental flourishes of the first movement, the singing right hand following Mozart’s Andante cantabile marking for the second movement, and the attractive earworm theme of the finale, developed in virtuosic keystrokes while making perfect sense formally.
The sequence of French piano music began with two of Debussy’s best known evocations. An expansive take on the first of Debussy’s Images Book 1, Reflets dans l’eau led directly into an enchanting account Clair de Lune, magically held in suspense and not played too loud at its climactic point, heightening the emotional impact.
The move to the music of the seldom heard and short lived Gabriel Dupont was surprisingly smooth, his evocative Après-midi de Dimanche given as a reverie punctuated by more urgent bells. Hahn’s Hivernale was a mysterious counterpart, its modal tune evoking memories long past that looked far beyond the hall. Le banc songeur floated softly, its watery profile evident in the outwardly rippling piano lines. The music of Charles Koechlin is all too rarely heard these days, yet the brief Le Chant des Pêcheur left a mark, its folksy melody remarkably similar to that heard in the second (Fêtes) of Debussy’s orchestral Nocturnes.
Yet the most striking of these piano pieces was left until last, Florent Schmitt’s Glas including unusual and rather haunting overtones to the ringing of the bells in the right hand. Queffélec’s playing was descriptive and exquisitely balanced in the quieter passages, so much so that the largely restless Wigmore Hall audience was rapt, fully in the moment. Even the persistent hammering of the neighbouring builders, a threat to concert halls London-wide, at last fell silent.
Queffélec had an encore to add to her expertly curated playlist, a French dance by way of Germany and England. Handel’s Minuet in G minor, arranged by Wilhelm Kempff, was appropriately bittersweet and played with rare beauty, completing a memorable hour of music from one of the finest pianists alive today.
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. The Spotify playlist below has collected Anne Queffélec’s available recordings of the repertoire played:
April Fredrick (soprano), Angharad Lyddon (mezzo-soprano), Robert Murray (tenor) Paul Carey Jones (bass), Dr Rowan Williams (narrator); Côr Heol y March, BBC National Chorus and Orchestra of Wales / Adrian Partington
Lyrita SRCD442 [66’41’’] Latin / Welsh text and English translation included Producer / Engineer Adrian Farmer, Engineer Simon Smith
Recorded 20-21 January 2024 at BBC Hoddinott Hall, Cardiff
Reviewed by Richard Whitehouse
What’s the story?
Lyrita continues its coverage of Grace Williams (1906-1977) with her largest concert work, Missa Cambrensis, in a recent studio recording which confirms it as the defining statement from a composer who, almost half a century since her death, is only now receiving her due.
What’s the music like?
As Paul Conway observes in his typically thorough booklet notes, Missa Cambrensis is one among a number of works by Williams that is Welsh only in a titular sense. Premiered at the Llandaff Festival in 1971, it was well received by fellow composers, critics and public alike but not heard again until 2016 in a performance one recalls as originally intended for release on Lyrita and which can be heard via the composer’s dedicated website. Not that the present account is other than successful in conveying the essence of this powerful yet elusive piece.
Many settings of the Mass since Haydn have unfolded a symphonic trajectory, but Williams goes further with the division into five clearly defined movements. The initial Kyrie Eleison not only introduces most of those salient motifs but also establishes that tone, mystical in its undulating equivocation, such as characterizes this work’s long-term expression: the contrast here between choral and soloistic textures duly accentuated by their hieratic and supplicatory quality. This duly sets up an emotional contrast intensified in the Gloria, outwardly the most straightforward part of the work but with a calmly ecstatic response at Laudamus te then an eloquent Dominus Deus that are nothing if not personal, together with an intensely wrought Cum Sancto Spiritu whose culminating Amen’s convey a distinctly ambivalent affirmation.
As most often, the Credo is the most substantial portion but Williams rings the changes by dividing this into halves, a pertinent division coming at Et homo factus est and Crucifíxus étiam pro nobis. In between are interpolated a setting of Saunders Lewis’s Carol Nadolig (A Christmas Carol) for children’s voices with viola, cello and harp of melting pathos, offset by a starkly narrative treatment of the ‘Beatitudes’ prior to a mostly ruminative resumption of the Credo. Pivoting between contemplation and elation, the Sanctus is rounded off by a joyful Hosánna in excélsis which is not to be heard again after the subdued eloquence of the Benedictus. An anguished response to the Agnus Dei feels the more acute, as also a searching Dona Nobis Pacem which brings the work full circle to its contemplative close.
Does it all work?
Yes, and with an understated while readily identifiable personality that surely makes this the most potent setting of the Mass from a Welsh composer. Subliminal influences might not be hard to discern, among them Britten’s War Requiem, but they never detract from Williams’s own idiom. The soloists cannot be faulted in terms of commitment, with Rowan Williams a notably incisive reciter, while Adrian Partington secures a lustrous response from his choral and orchestral forces. Overall, it is hard to imagine the work given with greater conviction.
Is it recommended?
It is indeed, not least in the hope that further live hearings of Missa Cambrensis may prove forthcoming. Good news, moreover, that Lyrita has now acquired the premiere performance of Williams’s only completed opera, The Parlour, which is scheduled for imminent release.
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