Tag Archives: City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra

In concert – Daniel Lozakovich, CBSO / Fabien Gabel – Beethoven Violin Concerto & Berlioz Symphonie fantastique

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Beethoven Violin Concerto in D major Op. 61 (1806)
Berlioz Symphonie fantastique Op. 14 (1829-30)

Daniel Lozakovich (violin, above), City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra / Fabien Gabel

Symphony Hall, Birmingham
Wednesday 2 February 2022

Written by Richard Whitehouse. Photo credit (Lozkanovich) Maison Simons

Juxtaposing these works in a single concert made good sense such that one wonders why this coupling has not been played more often, not least when the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra sounded fully aware of the very different motivations which lay behind each piece.

One of several concertos in-itself a first half, Beethoven’s Violin Concerto was performed by Daniel Lozakovich – who, just into his 20s, already has a worldwide reputation. His finespun if never meagre tone proved eminently suited to this most inward of its composer’s orchestral works, as was his deftly inflected vibrato. The expansive first movement proceeded securely, Fabien Gabel galvanizing tuttis and preventing the development from losing momentum (due credit to Matthew Hardy’s immaculate timpani playing) before a heady surge into the reprise.

Any sense of Lozakovich – who gave the Kreisler cadenza with real fervour – eschewing ‘give and take’ with the orchestra had gone by the Larghetto, its variations unfolded eloquently and with no lack of expressive contrasts, abetted by felicitous playing from the CBSO woodwind. His impulsive approach to the linking passage into the ensuing Rondo then set the course for a finale which, though just a shade headlong compared with what went before, had a vitality and insouciance such as carried through to the close. The pathos that Lozakovich brought to its central episode and whimsy teased out of its coda (whose closing chords were a little too emphatic) were undoubted highpoints, and the soloist returned to acknowledge considerable applause with an artless reading of the Allemande that commences Bach’s Second Partita.

Whereas Beethoven’s concerto took over half a century to enjoy wider acceptance, Berlioz’s Symphonie fantastique was immediately recognized (however grudgingly) as a trailblazer in the emergent Romantic aesthetic. It was left to later generations to equal out its ‘symphonic’ undertow with its ‘fantastic’ overlay, Gabel’s astute handling of the prolix if never unwieldy structure making for the best of both worlds – not least his conveying the sonata design that focusses the alternate dejection and elation of Rêveries-Passions, or those ominous asides which offset the ingratiating charms of Un bal. The highlight, though, was an unfailingly cohesive Scène aux champs – its fraught culmination emerging inevitably from then back into the evocative outer sections with plangent cor anglais playing from Rachel Pankhurst.

Having (rightly) included the first movement’s repeat, Gabel did not take that in the Marche au supplice which consequently was over all too soon, though its high drama prepared well for a final Songe d’une nuit du Sabbat whose heightened flights of fancy were once again held in check by a sure sense of where this music was headed. Offstage contributions were convincingly drawn into the overall texture, and if the closing pages can yield even more of a ‘white-knuckle ride’, the visceral impact of Berlioz’s garish imaginings was never in doubt.

Nor, for that matter, was the sheer unanimity of the CBSO’s response across what is so much more than an extended showpiece. After next week’s Rush Hour Concert, the orchestra can be heard in a scarcely less virtuosic programme that concludes with Stravinsky’s Firebird suite.

For more information on the current CBSO season, visit their website. Meanwhile click on the links for information on the artists Daniel Lozakovich and Fabien Gabel.

In concert – CBSO Centre Stage: Mozart and Brahms Quintets

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Mozart Horn Quintet in E flat major K407 (1782)
Brahms String Quintet no. 1 in F major Op. 88 (1882)

CBSO Soloists: Mark Philips (horn), Philip Brett and Charlotte Skinner (violins),Christopher Yates and Catherine Bower (violas), Arthur Boutillier (cello)

CBSO Centre, Birmingham
Thursday 3 February 2022 2pm

Written by Richard Whitehouse

The Centre Stage series, featuring musicians from City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra, continued this afternoon with an attractive coupling of quintets written exactly a century apart and which are among the most characteristic works of their respective composers’ maturities.

His first piece for the virtuoso Joseph Leutgeb (quite frequently the butt of Mozart’s scabrous humour, though for whom he went on to write four concertos) the Horn Quintet remains one of Mozart’s most engaging chamber pieces – not least through the presence of two violas that yield additional tonal depth to the lively outer Allegros, besides reinforcing the limpid pathos of the Andante. A little reticent toward the outset, Mark Philips came into his own during that central movement with its wistful poise and elegant interaction with those middle registers of the strings. Nor was there any lack of wit in the scintillating finale, its writing for the horn of no less agility than that found in the parallel movements of Mozart’s concertos; all the while suggesting the association between composer and musician was, after all, an endearing one.

Although he had originally intended his Piano Quintet to be a string quintet with two cellos, Brahms only got round to composing what became his First String Quintet as he was nearing fifty. Eschewing both the immediacy of his sextets and the austerity of his quartets, this piece typifies the ruminative warmth but also the expressive ambivalence of his music henceforth – not least an opening movement whose emotional surges are kept in check by the burnished richness of ensemble. The highlight, of the work as of this performance, is a slow movement that offsets its underlying introspection with two scherzo-like episodes whose effervescence carries over the finale – an Allegro of an impetus not so often encountered in Brahms’s later music, while culminating in a coda such as reinforces the home-key with exhilarating effect.

Such, at any rate, was the impression left by an assured and involving performance of a piece which conveyed the extent of this ‘dark horse’ among Brahms’s chamber compositions. Next week sees an ensemble from the CBSO tackle the epic expanse of Schubert’s String Quintet.

You can read more about that next Centre Stage recital, and book tickets, on the CBSO website

In concert – CBSO Centre Stage: CBSO strings play Kodály & Korngold

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Kodály Serenade, Op. 12 (1919-20)
Korngold String Sextet in D major, Op. 10 (1914-16)

CBSO Strings: Kate Suthers & Charlotte Skinner (violins), Adam Römer & Jessica Tickle (violas), Miguel Fernandes & Helen Edgar (cellos)

CBSO Centre, Birmingham
Thursday 27 January 2022 2pm

Written by Richard Whitehouse

Two unfamiliar while appealing works were featured in this afternoon’s Centre Stage recital given by string players from the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra, written during the early stages and in the aftermath of the First World War at a pivotal time in European culture.

The focus on choral and pedagogic music of Kodály’s later years makes his earlier chamber works the more valuable, and while the Serenade for two violins and viola is by no means the most imposing, its deftness and finesse of writing for this unusual line-up cannot be gainsaid. The lively outer movements abound in those allusions to and inflections of folk melodies that Kodály explored extensively in his maturity, with the central Lento touching upon a vein of ‘night music’ less inwardly intense than if equally evocative to that found in the music of his contemporary Bartók. Its relatively extended formal trajectory can make the final Vivo seem unduly prolix, yet in so buoyant and finely integrated a performance, there was no likelihood of this movement forgoing any sense of direction on its way to a decidedly nonchalant close.

Kodály was around 30 when writing this piece, whereas Korngold was barely out of his teens when he finished the Sextet as draws equally on very different (if by no means incompatible) stylistic traits evident in works for this medium by Tchaikovsky and Schoenberg. If the latter composer is to the fore in the lengthy initial Moderato with its intricate thematic interplay and frequent density of texture, the Adagio exudes a melodic eloquence denoting those operas or film-scores to come. The ensuing Intermezzo is arguably the most characteristic movement in its suavity and teasingly coy charm, while the Finale looks back to Brahms and even Dvořák (whose Sextet would be a welcome inclusion in these recitals) for its underlying vitality and easy-going humour as makes the coda’s rush to the finish the more unexpected and engaging.

Such was the impression left by a finely prepared reading by no means lacking in spontaneity or those flights of fancy such as denote the ‘confidence of youth’. Quintets are the order of the day for the next Centre Stage recital, which features contrasting works by Mozart and Brahms.

You can read more about that next Centre Stage recital, and book tickets, on the CBSO website

In concert – CBSO Centre Stage: Poulenc Chamber music

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Poulenc Sonata for Clarinet and Bassoon, FP32 (1922); Trio for Oboe, Bassoon and Piano, FP43 (1924-6); Sextet for Wind Quintet and Piano, FP100 (1931-2, rev. 1939-40)

City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra Members: Marie-Christine Zupancic (flute),Emmet Byrne (oboe), Oliver Janes (clarinet), Nikolaj Henriques (bassoon), Elspeth Dutch (horn), Robert Markham (piano)

CBSO Centre, Birmingham
Friday 21 January 2022 2pm

Written by Richard Whitehouse

It made sense to devote a programme in the Centre Stage series – put on by musicians of the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra – to the chamber music of Poulenc, which is hardly less representative than those vocal and choral pieces that likewise run throughout his output.

Increasing in size and substance, the three works this afternoon were also a viable overview of the composer’s evolution during the interwar period. The Sonata for Clarinet and Bassoon finds Poulenc teasing out the expressive potential of Stravinsky’s often inscrutable chamber music from the previous decade; its Allegro and Final movements pursuing an agile dialogue whose harmonic astringency is offset by the wistful insouciance of its central ‘Romance’, in which the interplay between Oliver Janes and Nikolaj Henriques was at its most persuasive.

Stravinsky evidently had a direct output into the composition of the Trio for Oboe, Bassoon and Piano which, cut from similar stylistic cloth to the earlier piece, reveals greater emotional range. Not least in the opening movement’s pointed contrast between its wistful introduction and headlong Presto, or the Andante’s haunted charm – here emphasized by plaintive oboe playing from Emmet Byrne – whose ‘vulnerability behind the façade’ is duly swept away by a finale in which the breezy humour of the ballet Les biches comes unmistakably to the fore.

The Sextet cost Poulenc fair effort before reaching definitive form at the start of the Second World War but is arguably his most representative work at that stage. Not least in the way its animated opening Allegro makes a virtue of any imbalance between piano and wind quintet – Robert Markham keeping matters securely grounded – or sheer timbral and textural variety of the Divertissement with piquant contributions from flautist Marie-Christine Zupancic and horn player Elspeth Dutch. Nor was there any lack of verve in a Finale whose recollection of the work’s opening, now suffused with greater pathos, must surely be a comment on the times.

Eloquently realized, it brought to an end an admirable showcase for both music and musicians. Next week sees a no less engaging programme of Kodály and Korngold by the CBSO strings.

Further information on future CBSO Stage concerts can be found here

In concert – Fatma Said, CBSO / Kazuki Yamada – Mozart, Mahler & Richard Strauss

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Richard Strauss Don Juan, Op. 20 (1888)
Mozart Vado, ma dove?, K583 (1789)
Mozart La Clemenza di Tito, K621 (1791) – Non più di fiori
Mahler Symphony No. 4 in G major (1899-1900)

Fatma Said (soprano), City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra / Kazuki Yamada

Symphony Hall, Birmingham
Wednesday 19 January 2022

Written by Richard Whitehouse

It may still be over a year before Kazuki Yamada becomes chief conductor and artistic advisor of the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra, but concerts such as tonight’s afford ample indication of just what can be expected from this already engaged and productive partnership.

If there any ongoing theme to this programme, it was one of transcendence – admittedly, one of negation in Richard Strauss’s Don Juan, though Yamada relished those encounters chivalrous and amorous during its course. The ‘carnival’ episode drew some especially incisive playing from woodwind and brass, and while the climactic restatement of the horns’ aspiring theme lacked nothing in grandiloquence, it did not detract from the starkness of a coda whose fatalism was to be encountered within this composer’s tone poems more regularly than might be supposed.

Strauss’s lifelong devotion to Mozart made two of the latter’s arias an appealing complement. Written as a replacement number for a long-forgotten opera by Vicente Martín y Soler, Vado, me dove? enjoys frequent revival as a standalone aria and, when elegantly rendered by Fatma Said, it was not hard to hear why. One of the (relatively few) highpoints from Mozart’s final opera La Clemenza di Tito, Vitellia’s aria makes greater expressive challenges to which Said rose accordingly – the trajectory of its ‘Ecco il punto’ recitative subsiding from anguish into that resignation from where the aria itself proceeds unerringly to the resolve at its close. All of which was eloquently conveyed, and while a further aria – the mellifluous Nehmt meinen Dank? – would have been welcome, there was more to come from this impressive singer.

Namely the finale of Mahler’s Fourth Symphony – hardly the rarity it was when Adrian Boult introduced it to Birmingham audiences 95 years ago, but easy to underestimate in the context of this composer’s overall output. As ‘unhurried’ as its heading indicates, the first movement exuded no little ambiguity – Yamada pointing up those myriad timbral and textural shadings that permeate the development and so make possible the heightened equanimity of the reprise. Sardonic but not unduly malevolent, the scherzo was tangibly evocative (Eugene Tzkindelean switching adeptly from his violin to its retuned doppelganger) – with breath-taking change of tonal perspective at the arcadian vision near its end. Visionary was no less apt to describe the slow movement, its variations alternating between fervour and anguish with seamless accord.

Felicitous playing from CBSO woodwind informed its progress on the way to its climax, with ‘heaven’s door’ briefly yet thunderously ajar prior to the transfigured calm of the closing bars. Stealing in just before, Fatma Said was an appealing guide to the setting of ‘Das himmlische Leben’ with its not always blissful recounting of the joys awaiting those who arrive there. Of particular note was the easefulness that spread across the final pages, when the singing ceases and the orchestra withdraws stealthily while raptly to leave just the harp’s pulsing resonance.

A lucid, often captivating performance of a work whose enticements Yamada realized in full measure. Anyone who can make it along to Symphony Hall for tomorrow afternoon’s repeat should certainly do so, while Kazuki Yamada will be back with the CBSO during this spring.

For more information on this concert visit the CBSO website. Meanwhile click on the links for information on the artists Fatma Said and Kazuki Yamada.