Dorothea Röschmann, soprano & Joseph Middleton, piano Saturday 1 November 2025, 7.30pm Bliss Song Series, Pembroke Auditorium, Cambridge
Don’t miss this exceptional recital by Grammy Award-winning soprano Dorothea Röschmann and world-renowned pianist Joseph Middleton, featuring an evocative programme of Schubert, Brahms, Schoenberg and Weill.
Celebrated for her “superbly expressive and richly coloured” voice (The Guardian), Röschmann is one of the most compelling recitalists of her generation. Her artistry brings rare emotional depth to repertoire ranging from the Romantic to the cabaret-influenced songs of 20th-century Berlin. She is joined by Joseph Middleton, praised by The New York Times as “the perfect accompanist” and Artistic Director of the Bliss Song Series—the East of England’s leading platform for song.
Experience two of the world’s finest recital artists in an evening of profound storytelling, wit, and beauty.
Here they are in concert at the Leeds Lieder Festival in 2022:
Their program on Saturday is as follows:
SCHUBERT
Romanze aus Rosamunde
Des Mädchens Klage
Auf dem Wasser zu singen
Der Tod und das Mädchen
Die junge Nonne
Nachtstück
Nacht und Träume
Der Zwerg
BRAHMS
Vier ernste Gesänge
– Interval –
SCHOENBERG
Galathea
Gigerlette
Der genugsame Liebhaber
Mahnung
Arie aus dem Spiegel von Arkaien
KURT WEILL
Berlin im Licht
Je ne t’aime pas
Klops Lied
Nana’s Lied
Youkali
🎟 Student tickets: £5 + £2.50 booking fee
Pre-concert talk: 6.45pm Dr Jane Hines, specialist in German Romantic poetry, Gonville & Caius College Dr Jane Hines | Gonville & Caius
Published post no.2,703 – Thursday 30 October 2025
Today marks the centenary of the birth of composer and conductor Pierre Boulez, a towering figure in 20th century classical music.
There are so many recordings conducted by Boulez that I thought it best to share a playlist centred on memories of concerts I saw him conduct, largely from the 1990s and 2000s.
My first encounter with him was a rare appearance with the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra at the Royal Festival Hall. There he conducted Bartók’s Piano Concerto no.1 with customary clarity, soloist Krystian Zimerman delivering a memorable performance of percussive drive as he does here. On the second half of the concert was Stravinsky’s Petrushka, well-represented here by Boulez’s recording for DG in Cleveland.
Another South Bank visit in the 1990s brought an unusual appearance for Schoenberg’s monodrama Erwartung, sung memorably by soprano Jessye Norman. I remember vividly several visits to the Barbican to see Boulez conduct the London Symphony Orchestra in the 1990s, and one performance that particularly stands in the memory was that of Ravel’s Valses nobles et sentimentales, a colourful yet brisk performance that danced with a glint in its eye.
One other eyeopener, which I will never forget, was Boulez conducting Prokofiev’s Scythian Suite at the Barbican – a work he never recorded. Simultaneously on the bill was Szymanowski’s Violin Concerto no.1. Here was a composer Boulez seemingly re-evaluated later in his life, recording the concerto with violinist Christian Tetzlaff for DG.
From the recorded side I have included Maurizio Pollini’s pioneering account of Boulez’s own Piano Sonata no.2, a challenging piece that I must admit I have not yet conquered – but whose importance is clear.
To finish, my favourite Boulez recording, which finds him back in Cleveland conducting Debussy’s Nocturnes, a recording notable for its ideal pacing, beautiful colouring and immaculate rhythmic direction.
You can listen to this selection on Tidal by clicking on the playlist link below:
Last week the British conductor Sir Simon Rattle celebrated his 70th birthday. Since the 1980s Rattle has played a hugely important part in classical music in the UK, with important conducting posts at the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra, Berliner Philharmoniker and London Symphony Orchestra. In 2023 he returned once more to Germany, as principal conductor for the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra.
In that time, Rattle has made a huge range of recordings, from Haydn to Adès via Beethoven, Grainger and Schoenberg. Resisting temptation to compile a playlist of snippets, I have opted for a small number of heavyweight recordings, including Adès‘ Asyla, Schoenberg‘s Chamber Symphony no.1 and Stravinsky‘s Le Sacre du Printemps, his first recording on starting with the LSO in 2017. Topping the bill, however, is his CBSO recording of Mahler‘s Second Symphony, the Resurrection, the piece with which he opened Birmingham’s Symphony Hall in 1991. You can listen to the playlist on Tidal below:
On this day in 1905, the world premiere of Schoenberg’s orchestral piece Pelleas und Melisande took place, in Vienna’s Musikverein.
This is a remarkable piece, an example of Schoenberg’s ultra-intense style as he began to show signs of breaking with tonality. The story unfolds in an unbroken span of over 40 minutes, during which the large orchestra bathe in rich harmony and lush colouring on the part of the composer’s skilful instrumentation.
The piece can be heard here with the Frankfurt Radio Symphony Orchestra and David Markham:
Alexander Roslavets (narrator / bass), Gidon Kremer (violin), London Philharmonic Choir (men’s voices), London Philharmonic Orchestra / Andrey Boreyko
Schoenberg A Survivor from Warsaw Op.46 (1947) Weinberg Violin Concerto in G minor Op.67 (1959) Shostakovich Symphony no.13 in B flat minor Op.113 ‘Babi Yar’ (1962)
Royal Festival Hall, London Wednesday 27 November 2024
Reviewed by Richard Whitehouse Pictures (c) Richard de Stoutz (Andrey Boreyko), Angie Kremer (Gidon Kremer)
Anyone who heard one or other of these works for the first time at this concert by the London Philharmonic Orchestra could be forgiven for thinking that the twentieth century, if not a ‘dark century’ per se, was at the very least a troubled one for all that the quality of its music was undeniable.
With its elements of melodrama and cantata, Schoenberg’s A Survivor from Warsaw is one of his most original conceptions and necessarily so, given the unnerving immediacy of its text in which a speaker has to take on the roles of survivor and officer in just six minutes. Alexander Roslavets rose to this challenge, bringing out emotional contrasts as surely as he instilled his words with that ominous dread whose culmination in the prayer Shema Yisrael was intoned by the London Philharmonic Choir with the right balance between desperation and defiance.
One composer who witnessed something of such atrocities was Mieczysław Weinberg, and if his Violin Concerto demonstrably continues the ‘Romantic’ tradition, this is still an inherently personal statement. Gidon Kremer has championed the composer extensively in recent years and, while technical issues seemingly inhibited the respectively incisive and impetuous outer movements, the restless searching of its intermezzo-like Allegretto then confiding eloquence of its Adagio were abundantly in evidence. For all its outward virtuosity, the music’s essential inwardness is what prevails as the soloist remains musing when the orchestra fell silent at the close of the finale. Kremer was in his element here, as in a touching rendition of Silvestrov’s Serenade which made for an apposite encore and was dedicated to all the people of Ukraine.
Best known for giving the posthumous premiere of Gorecki’s Fourth Symphony with the LPO 10 years back, Andrey Boreyko is well established as an exponent of Shostakovich so that his take on the Thirteenth Symphony did not disappoint. At a distance of over six decades, it can be hard to recapture the provocation of that most eminent Soviet composer using verse by the most populist younger poet, as Yevgeny Yevtushenko then was, but this setting of Babi Yar retains all its expressive force through the immediacy and resourcefulness in which it relates official indifference to the Jewish massacre as that ravine outside Kyiv was transformed into landfill. Broodingly restrained, Roslavets emerged into his own with Humour – its scabrous send-up of bone-headed officialdom inspiring one of Shostakovich’s most scurrilous scherzos.
Fashioning the last three movements into a cohesive if cumulative unity, Boreyko underlined the potency of Shostakovich’s creative vision as he takes the Soviet establishment to task for various failings economic as In the Store, political as in Fears and cultural as in A Career. Implacable then volatile, these first two are rounded off by Yevtushenko’s considering of the relationship between society and the individual; framed by an undulating melody, for flutes then strings, which is one of its composer’s most evocative as well as affecting inspirations.
It duly brought this work, and this performance, to its subdued yet spellbinding close. As the relationship between East and West becomes ever more confrontational, Shostakovich’s 13th remains a testament to rationality and compassion whose denigration is to everybody’s cost.
Arcana.fm 