Tag Archives: CBSO Chorus

In concert – Janai Brugger, CBSO / Kazuki Yamada: Copland, Tower, Price & Adams

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Janai Brugger (narrator/soprano), CBSO Chorus (Julian Wilkins, chorus-master), City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra / Kazuki Yamada

Copland Fanfare for the Common Man (1942); Lincoln Portrait (1942)
Tower Fanfare for the Uncommon Woman (1989)
Price orch. Rosner The Heart of a Woman (c1930-50)
Adams Harmonium (1980-81)

Symphony Hall, Birmingham
Saturday 4 July 2026

Reviewed by Richard Whitehouse

Marking the 250th anniversary of American independence, the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra and music director Kazuki Yamada duly pulled out the stops with a programme that placed musical achievements from the past century within an unlikely yet stimulating context.

The first half unfolded as two diptychs focussing, respectively, on male and female concerns. Thus a brazen but never brash take on Copland’s Fanfare for the Common Man preceded his Lincoln Portrait – its sentiments as apposite to World War Two as to the American Civil War, after whose Battle of Gettysburg Lincoln made his famous ‘Address’. Yamada drew nobility and fervour from its lengthy preamble, then Janai Brugger delivered its subsequent narration with enough poise and understatement to offset any risk of hubris during the climactic stages.

Initiated by a visceral reading of Joan Tower’s Fanfare for the Uncommon Woman, its brass and percussion deployed in notably combative manner, the female response continued with Florence Price’s The Heart of a Woman. Not so much a song-cycle as a ‘themed’ collection which has only recently been assembled from its composer’s extensive contribution to this genre, its 10 settings of black American authors have been orchestrated by Israeli-American composer Lior Rosner with no mean subtlety and eloquence, though on occasion softening the harmonic piquancy with which Price seeks to highlights aspects of her own experience.

Wistful and rapturous by turns, these merge into a rather generalized sequence lacking any more cumulative intensity to justify it as a whole; the exception being Don’t you say no to me which, with its vivid (if slightly self-conscious) elements of blues and ragtime, sounds like a number such as Ella Fitzgerald might have recorded in her youth. Brugger (with kit-percussionist Alex Henshaw-Van den Bos) made the most of its insouciance, with Yamada encouraging the orchestra to a warmly empathetic response elsewhere. Hardly a revelatory discovery, but attractive and affecting music such as reinforced the impression that Price is at her best freed from those formal constraints encountered in her symphonies or concertos.

After the interval came Harmonium, by which John Adams established his wider reputation almost 45 years ago. Now as then, its overall impact belies its relative concision and, while its streamlined ebb and flow arguably overrides the manifest ambivalence in John Donne’s Negative Love then emphasizes predictability over pathos in Emily Dickinson’s Because I could not stop for Death, the integration of chorus and orchestra is unfailing. To this end, coordination was not all that it might have been though the seminal passages were tellingly realized – not least that seismic build-up into a setting of Dickinson’s Wild Nights whose heady crescendos then raptly inward ending, both among its composer’s finest inspirations, were conveyed with conviction boding well for the CBSO performance at this year’s Proms.

Before that London concert, however, audiences in Birmingham can enjoy more Adams when Edward Gardner conducts his epic Harmonielehre and Edgard Varèse’s ambitious Amèriques, with the CBSO and CBSO Orchestral Residency Musicians at Symphony Hall on July 17th.

To read more about the CBSO’s 2026/27 season, visit the CBSO website. Click on the names to read more on chief conductor Kazuki Yamada, soloist Janai Brugger, the CBSO Chorus and composers Joan Tower and Florence Price

Published post no.2,939 – Monday 6 July 2026

In concert – Sophie Bevan, Gareth Brynmor John, CBSO Chorus & Orchestra / Ryan Wigglesworth: Brahms: A German Requiem

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Sophie Bevan (soprano), Gareth Brynmor John (baritone), CBSO Chorus (chorus-master, David Young), City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra / Ryan Wigglesworth

Purcell Funeral Music for Queen Mary Z860 (1695)
Brahms Ein deutsches Requiem Op.45 (1865-68)

Symphony Hall, Birmingham
Thursday 23 April 2026

Reviewed by Richard Whitehouse

Having begun five years ago in the (relative) aftermath of the pandemic, ‘CBSO Remembers’ has become a means of recalling those associated in some way with the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra and opportunity to schedule appropriate works with the CBSO Chorus.

This evening saw A German Requiem, Brahms’ largest and most-encompassing piece whose emotional impact is out of all proportion to its modest forces – not least compared with those settings of the Latin text by Berlioz or Verdi. Compiling his own text from the German Bible, Brahms drew attention not only to its linguistic basis but also the essentially humanist nature of its content. A work whose concern lies less with those departed than with those still living thereby conveys a message which, if not spiritually affirmative, is none the less one of hope.

The present account was nothing if not focussed on this latter quality, right from the outset of the initial ‘Blessed are they that mourn’ with its deft eliding between the ruminative and the aspiring. There was inexorable power to the fatalistic tread and fateful climaxes of ‘For all flesh is as grass’, with no lack of wistfulness in its central interlude then of joyousness in its unlikely if resolute continuation. To those earlier stages of ‘Lord, teach me’, as of ‘For here we have no abiding place’, Gareth Brynmor John conveyed earnest supplication with just a hint of strain; the ensuing fugues – energetic then defiant – retaining the requisite buoyancy thanks to a vividly incisive response by the CBSO Chorus and Ryan Wigglesworth’s astute marshalling of orchestral textures whose outward sombreness yielded a burnished richness.

In between these most dramatic movements, ‘How lovely are thy dwelling places’ unfolded as an oasis of unaffected calm, then ‘You now have sorrow’ brought a radiant response from Sophie Bevan in what was an afterthought for the work overall as well as its most personal, even confessional statement. It remained for ‘Blessed are the dead, who die in the Lord’ to place the foregoing triumph in relief as it gradually retraced its musical steps toward an end of rapt acceptance; one whose understated depth characterized this performance as a whole.

At some 70 minutes the Brahms does not make a full programme on its own terms, so it was an inspired decision to preface this with Purcell’s Funeral Music for Queen Mary. Barely 15 minutes as to duration, its hieratic opening March is followed by a Canzona whose elliptical harmonies look forward almost 250 years to Tippett and which alternates with the setting of ‘Thou knowest, Lord, the secrets of our hearts’ whose three stages move from stark anguish towards searching resignation: understandable, while eternally regrettable, this music should have been heard at its composer’s own funeral eight months later. A pity, too, on this occasion that the Purcell could not have elided seamlessly into the Brahms though, given the logistics when incorporating offstage brass into the onstage orchestra, this was most likely unfeasible.

More importantly, it anticipated the main work with absolute sureness. One looks forward to Wigglesworth’s future appearances with the CBSO which, next Wednesday, tackles Brahms’ Violin Concerto and then Rachmaninoff’s First Symphony alongside Stanislav Kochanovsky.

To read more about the CBSO’s 2025/26 season, visit the CBSO website. Click on the names for more on soloists Sophie Bevan and Gareth Brynmor John, conductor Ryan Wigglesworth and the CBSO Chorus

Published post no.2,869 – Sunday 26 April 2026

In Concert – Sir Stephen Hough, Soloists, CBSO Chorus, City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra / Omer Meir Wellber: Beethoven & Haydn

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Sir Stephen Hough (piano, below), Lauren Urquhart (soprano), Georgia Mae Ellis (mezzo-soprano), Luis Gomes (tenor), Alexander Grassauer (bass), CBSO Chorus (above), City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra / Omer Meir Wellber (conductor & harpsichord/director)

Beethoven (/Hough) Piano Concerto no.3 in C minor Op.37 (1800, rev. 1803)
Haydn Missa in Angustiis, Hob.XXII/11 (‘Nelson Mass’) (1798)

Symphony Hall, Birmingham
Thursday 19 February 2026

Reviewed by Richard Whitehouse

That tonight’s concert from the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra featured music by Beethoven and Haydn might have been indicative of a straight-ahead or mainstream concert but, as things turned out, neither programme nor music-making could be deemed predictable.

Sir Stephen Hough has no doubt played Beethoven’s Third Concerto many times with, moreover, his take on the outer movements not far removed from his much-praised Hyperion recording. The initial Allegro was lithe and impetuous if at times a touch hectoring (and Matthew Hardy was uncharacteristically reticent in that spellbinding passage after the cadenza), with the final Rondo treading a fine line between humour and irony at its most distinctive in the modulatory transition to the main theme, or that improvisatory solo flourish prior to the nonchalant coda.

Interest naturally centred on the slow movement – a Largo designated Con gran espressione in its ‘re-imagining’ by Hough (above). Itself part of a project instigated by this evening’s conductor, Omer Meir Wellber, to re-examine works in the core repertoire, this duly retains Beethoven’s instrumentation but renders the main theme, introduced by the soloist, as a hushed chorale for strings which pervades what follows. All well and good had that chorale become more than a static backdrop, against which Hough’s welter of skittish figuration sounded overly confined to the upper register. Neither was the climactic return of the first movement’s principal theme other than an affectation, nor the upsurge leading directly into the finale without contrivance. One respected Hough’s following of his muse, even if the outcome felt less than convincing.

Having not unreasonably given Hough the benefit of any doubt, the audience was nonplussed with his encore – the last of Schoenberg’s Six Little Pieces that, written after Mahler’s funeral on 17th June 1911, yields a rapt eloquence even at less than the ‘very slow’ tempo prescribed.

As searching products of his late maturity, the six ‘name day’ Masses that Haydn wrote around the turn of the 19th century remain too little heard at orchestral concerts; save for the ‘Nelson Mass’ whose actual title, Mass in Troubled Times, makes explicit the cultural turmoil from of which it arose. This must also have occasioned its unyielding orchestration with trumpets and timpani but no woodwind, plus a dextrous continuo part allotted here to harpsichord and from which Wellber directed with a sure sense of where this most combative of masses was headed.

Vocally the solo writing favours soprano and bass, with Alexander Grassauer making the most of his mellifluous contributions and those of Lauren Urquhart impassioned yet tonally uneven in more animated passages. Georgia Mae Ellis and Luis Gomes handled their secondary roles with real finesse, while chorus-master David Young drew a laudable response from the CBSO Chorus (arrayed on stage with what might be felt the choral equivalent of ‘free bowing’). Taut and incisive, the epithet ‘symphonic’ as applied to this work can rarely have been so apposite.

The performance certainly set the seal on a concert which rightly encouraged a reassessment of both works and, by so doing, underlined Wellber’s own interpretative convictions. Having last appeared with the CBSO almost six years before, his return should be so long in coming.

To read more about the CBSO’s 2025/26 season, visit the CBSO website. Click on the names for more on conductor Omar Meir Wellber, pianist Sir Stephen Hough and soloists Lauren Urquhart, Georgia Mae Ellis, Luis Gomes and Alexander Grassauer.

Published post no.2,804 – Friday 20 February 2026

In concert – Dame Sarah Connolly, CBSO Choruses, CBSO / Sofi Jeannin: The Music Makers

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Dame Sarah Connolly (mezzo-soprano), CBSO Children’s Chorus, CBSO Youth Chorus, CBSO Chorus, City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra / Sofi Jeannin

Weir Music, Untangled (1992)
Muhly Friday Afternoons (2015, orch. 2019) [UK Premiere]
Britten The Young Person’s Guide to the Orchestra Op.34 (1945)
Elgar The Music Makers Op.69 (1912)

Symphony Hall, Birmingham
Wednesday 20 November 2024

Reviewed by Richard Whitehouse Pictures (c) Andrew Crowley (Dame Sarah Connolly), (c) Radio France / Christophe Abramowitz (Sofi Jeannin)

Under the capable direction of Swedish-born Sofi Jeannin (below), the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra tonight took on a varied if cohesive programme featuring two composers with direct links to the city, one of whose works had been performed for the first time here 112 years ago.

Although he might not be so associated with Birmingham, Nico Muhly is hardly an unknown quantity. Friday Afternoons proved a diverting and enjoyable traversal across eight traditional poems – directly yet unaffectedly recalling Britten in their simplicity of choral writing with, in this instance, a resourceful and often evocative orchestration that brought out subtle and quite unexpected nuances from these texts. Qualities that the combined CBSO Youth and Children’s Choruses responded to with alacrity, doubtless owing to the astute guidance of Julian Wilkins.

Beforehand, the orchestra made no less favourable a response in Music, Untangled by Judith Weir, former Master of the Queen’s Music and composer-in-association to the CBSO during 1995-98. Written for the Boston Symphony, this not unreasonably American-sounding piece takes extracts from melodies emanating from the Western isles of Weir’s native Scotland as the basis for a compact if eventful piece where said melodies are gradually fined down from sonic diversity to a single strand through a process of ‘less is more’ typical of this composer.

Closing the first half, what had started out as Britten’s ‘Variations and Fugue on a Theme of Purcell’ received an engaging performance at its best in those variations highlighting specific instruments – in the course of which the excellence of the individual CBSO sections came to the fore. Presentation of the theme itself was a little on the portentous side, a quality which re -surfaced in a fugue whose clarity of texture seemed at the expense of that exuberance when Britten puts his orchestra back-together. An enjoyable take on a timeless masterpiece even so.

Despite its high-profile launch at the 1912 Triennial Festival, Elgar’s The Music Makers has struggled to find general favour – his setting of Arthur O’Shaughnessy’s Ode intensifying the text’s ambivalence and introspection via a wealth of self-quotation such as renders several of his most acclaimed pieces from an unlikely or even disturbing perspective. Together with its near-contemporary work, the symphonic study Falstaff, this is Elgar at his most searching as well as confessional – qualities such as the encroaching ‘Great War’ would duly exacerbate.

Despite its modest (35-minute) duration, The Music Makers is a difficult work to pace and to make cohere and, while Jeannin (an experienced choral conductor) did not wholly succeed in these respects, there was no doubt as to her insight into its content or defining of its emotions. Prepared by Simon Halsey (who first ‘gave’ this work with Simon Rattle some 40 years ago), the CBSO Chorus lacked little in conviction or finesse – and, if Dame Sarah Connolly was not quite at her most assured, the sheer eloquence and conviction of her singing could never be denied.

A fine account, then, of a work still in need of such advocacy for its inherent greatness to be acknowledged. Interesting also that audience response was warm if undeniably muted – as if to confirm, on this occasion at least, the music’s ‘message’ had got through to those listening.

For details on the 2024-25 season A Season of Joy, head to the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra website. Click on the names to read more about soloist Dame Sarah Connolly, conductor Sofi Jeannin and composers Nico Muhly and Dame Judith Weir

Published post no.2,372 – Sunday 24 November 2024

In concert – CBSO Chorus & Orchestra / Joshua Weilerstein: Haas, Bernstein, Shaw & Dvořak

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Michael Mulroy (treble), CBSO Chorus, City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra / Joshua Weilerstein

Haas Study for Strings (1943)
Bernstein Chichester Psalms (1965)
Shaw Music in Common Time (2014)
Dvořak Symphony no.9 in E minor Op.95 ‘From the New World’ (1893)

Symphony Hall, Birmingham
Wednesday 15 May 2024

Reviewed by Richard Whitehouse Picture (c) Yuri Pires Tavares

In recent seasons, Joshua Weilerstein has presided over several of the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra’s most thought-provoking concerts and tonight’s programme was no exception in its potent mix of the recent and unfamiliar, alongside a symphonic evergreen.

It was thanks to the conductor and Auschwitz survivor Karel Ančerl that Study for Strings by Pavel Haas survived its immediate context, as propaganda for a Nazi documentary on cultural activity at the Theresienstadt transit-camp, to become one of this composer’s defining works. Felicitously combining Czech folk music with traditional Jewish inflections and (in its central section) more expressionist undertones, alongside a compact and quasi-symphonic design, it is a potent indication as to where post-war Czech music might conceivably have been headed.

It duly brought a vivid and energetic response from the CBSO strings, who were then joined by brass and percussion in Bernstein’s Chichester Psalms. Commissioned by the Dean of the city’s cathedral, it enabled the composer to pull together a number of earlier or aborted ideas in three Psalm-settings given focus by being heard in Hebrew translation with an authentic (if impractical as regards the percussion) scoring. Weilerstein drew the requisite verve from its initial setting, and if Michael Mulroy seemed tentative in its successor (discreet amplification might have helped), the contrast between his plaintiveness and edginess of the male-chorus interludes was pertinently drawn. Its anguished prelude for strings powerfully rendered, the final setting had an affecting eloquence through to the serene unaccompanied closing chorus.

After the interval, the CBSO Chorus was heard in rather more restrained guise with Music in Common Time by Caroline Shaw. Its brief and oblique text might have come from a late song by Talk Talk, but it yet provides the framework for a cannily unfolding fantasia in which the eddying textures of John Adams frame a speculative section with its string writing more than a little redolent of early Penderecki. Throughout, voices and instruments were finely melded in a composition that certainly suggests a plausible way out of any post-minimalist impasse.

What to say about the New World Symphony? Firstly, that it fitted judiciously into the overall programme as to conception; secondly, that it brought out the best in this partnership. Right from its evocative introduction, Weilerstein was alive to those many expressive ambiguities in the initial Allegro (a pity, though, that he omitted the exposition repeat as this undermines the formal balance overall), then drew a rapt and often searching response from the CBSO in the Largo – Rachel Pankhurst making the most of its indelible cor anglais melody. Nor was there any lack of bite or (in its trio section) gracefulness in the scherzo; such incisiveness of ensemble consistent throughout the finale, whose rhythmic impetus ensured the coda was not merely decisive but crowned the whole work in an apotheosis as conclusive as it was joyous. In his thoughtful initial remarks, Weilerstein spoke of this programme as being defined by its complexity, nuance and confrontation: qualities not always evident in present-day music, or in present-day discourse, but whose absence is our loss – as this concert eloquently confirmed.

Click on the link to read more on the current CBSO concert season, and on this link to read about the CBSO’s 2024/25 season. Click on the names for more on conductor Joshua Weilerstein, the CBSO Chorus and composer Caroline Shaw

Published post no.2,181 – Friday 17 May 2024