Tag Archives: City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra

News – the CBSO are Bringing The Light

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published by Ben Hogwood from the original press release

This winter, the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra will illuminate Birmingham’s Symphony Hall with Bringing the Light – a remarkable celebration of music, culture and community, featuring three brand-new pieces by Roxanna Panufnik, Joan Armatrading and Cassie Kinoshi alongside A.R. Rahman’s Slumdog Millionaire Suite arranged by Matt Dunkley.

Taking place on Sunday 7 December at 5pm, this uplifting afternoon of music and storytelling harnesses the full strength of the CBSO, the CBSO Chorus, CBSO Youth and Children’s Choruses, alongside presenter Satnam Rana, conductor Michael Seal and sitar soloist Akash Parekar. The programme blends orchestral and choral brilliance, contemporary composition and global influences, promising an unforgettable celebration of togetherness and creativity.

Emma Stenning, Chief Executive of the CBSO said: “This concert shines a light on Birmingham’s extraordinary diversity and creativity. ‘Bringing the Light’ will fill Symphony Hall with music that uplifts, connects and inspires – a true celebration of what makes this city so special. After a year that has been characterised by so much division and polarisation, this concert will do a great deal to remind us of what we as people all have in common – and the power of music as a force to unite us all.

“At the CBSO, we’re passionate about creating experiences that feel both rooted in our home city and open to the world. This concert brings together voices from different traditions, faiths and generations to reflect the vibrancy of Birmingham today.”

At the heart of the concert is Aurora a new work by composer Roxanna Panufnik and writer and librettist Jessica Duchen, co-commissioned by the CBSO, Royal Choral Society and the Arktisk Filharmoni. It is a powerful piece that explores the power of light as a universal symbol of hope, connection and unity – drawing inspiration from festivals of light from around the world. Developed in close collaboration with 14 UK faith leaders and devotional musicians, the text of each movement represents a different faith: Christian Christmas; Muslim Milad un Nabi; Sikh, Jain and Hindu Diwali; Jewish Hanukkah; Tibetan Buddhist Gaden Ngamchoe and ending with a beautiful, musical depiction of the Aurora Borealis for those of all faiths and none.

Roxanna Panufnik said: “When we hear about different faiths in the media it’s too often about conflict between them and very rarely about their respective beauty and the common themes we all share. We have planned this work over the past 10 years, and it has been hugely inspirational collaborating with our phenomenal consultants: 14 UK Faith leaders and their respective devotional musicians. The CBSO is perfectly placed, in a city with a fabulous and dynamic diversity of cultures and faiths, to premiere this work. Our 270 singers will be of multiple ages and faiths – so will, we hope, our audience. This is a piece for EVERYONE.”

Jessica Duchen adds: “The overarching image of Aurora: Faith in Harmony is the Northern Lights, a miracle of nature that can inspire the kind of awe in us all that some people find in faith. Embracing the secular community alongside a range of world faiths that have festivals of light in the depths of winter, the piece celebrates the virtually universal human longing for light in darkness, which we hope can help to bring people of all cultures together. It has been an incredible journey for us both – and Roxanna has excelled herself in writing music of extraordinary beauty.”

The performance opens with a world premiere of Homeland by singer-songwriter Joan Armatrading CBE– which she describes as her “love letter” to Birmingham.

Joan Armatrading comments: “Homeland is a piece that highlights the city of Birmingham and its people, reflecting their strong sense of community, resilience and warmth. It is a tribute to a place to which I am bonded, and one I will always hold with affection and pride. Through both words and music, the piece weaves together the sounds, energy, and rhythms of the city while reaching out into its vast surrounding countryside. This is Birmingham not simply as a backdrop, but as a living, breathing presence – an often-underrated landscape where industry and nature exist side by side in quiet beauty.”

The concert also includes a new commission by Mercury Prize-nominated and Ivors Academy Award-winning composer and saxophonist Cassie Kinoshi with lyrics by poet Lydia Luke.

Cassie Kinoshi said: “I was in the state of mind to stay centres on how nature grounds and steadies us within the constant movement of city life. It captures the ways young people find calm and connection in fleeting everyday moments; rain against a bus window; flowers at a market stall; or the scent of trees through an open window; and celebrates the beauty of finding stillness amid the noise. Created with input from the Southwark Playhouse Youth Company, the piece offers a portrait of the city through young people’s eyes: a place where nature and metropolitan life coexist. It is about recognising how these small, tender moments can bring comfort, belonging, and a sense of balance in an increasingly hectic world. Rather than portraying nature as something distant or idealised, the piece treats it as part of daily life: a source of connection to oneself, and a reminder that even in the most built-up places, the natural world remains ever-present.”

The CBSO acknowledges the generous gift from Frances and Barry Kirkham, whose support helped ​make Aurora and i was in the state of mind to stay possible.

Leading up to the performance, there will be lantern-making workshops in partnership with the Canal and River Trust and Crafting Community. As well as a beautiful lantern walk along Birmingham’s canals, accompanied by narrowboats decorated by light artist Sophie Handy and featuring local musicians, which begins at Roundhouse Birmingham and ends at the ICC with a performance by the CBSO’s community choir SO Vocal.

Audiences are warmly invited to this vibrant celebration of culture and light which unites communities from across the city and beyond to share a moment of joy, hope and reflection.

Full details can be found on the CBSO’s website

Published post no.2,721 – Monday 17 November 2025

CBSO in the City 2025: Birmingham Comes Alive with a Week of Free Orchestral Events in Unexpected Places

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The CBSO performing in the Bullring, Birmingham.

From the press release:

The City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra (CBSO) returns this summer with its acclaimed week-long musical takeover, CBSO in the City. Running from Wednesday 23 to Monday 28 July 2025, this much-anticipated second edition reaffirms the CBSO’s commitment to reach new audiences across the West Midlands and develop deeper connections with the city it calls home.

Building on the success of 2024’s inaugural CBSO in the City, which saw over 25 free performances in iconic and everyday locations across Birmingham, the 2025 programme blends rich musical experiences with moments of joyful spontaneity – taking the orchestra out of the concert hall and into the heart of the community.

This year’s festival offers an exciting series of free, un-ticketed performances right across the city, bringing CBSO musicians to some of Birmingham’s most recognisable venues. Highlights include:

New Street Station: pop-up performances for commuters

Library of Birmingham: including a space-themed family concert & string quintet with sitar in their wellbeing space

Ikon Gallery and RBSA Gallery: showcasing chamber groups in gallery settings

Birmingham Museum & Art Gallery: featuring flute and harp duets

Birmingham Botanical Gardens: string quartets & wind quintets in serene garden surroundings

Black Country Living Museum: brass quintets adding musical flair to the historic setting

West Midlands Metro: a clarinet trio bringing music on the move

Each performance is designed to meet audiences where they are – whether in transit, at leisure, or exploring with family – while showcasing the full diversity of the orchestra. From Star Wars and Brahms in New Street Station, to strings & winds among the blooms at Birmingham’s Botanical Gardens, a string quartet at the Ikon Gallery, and even a clarinet trio riding the West Midlands Metro.

As part of the celebrations, the orchestra is calling on Birmingham residents to nominate their street for the chance to host an unforgettable pop-up performance later this year.

CBSO Music Director Kazuki Yamada (above) leads the spirit of this initiative. He says: “For me, music is about connection. Taking the orchestra outside the concert hall helps us meet people where they are – and share something powerful, beautiful and unexpected.”

CBSO Chief Executive Emma Stenning adds: “CBSO in the City promises to once again fill Birmingham with incredible music, reimagining the city’s spaces as stages for celebration and musical discovery. From familiar faces to new friends, we’re excited to delight audiences, share special moments, and celebrate the vibrant spirit of our city. We believe music is for everyone – and this is one of the most joyful ways we bring it to life.”

CBSO in the City is generously supported by John Osborn CBE and NBB Law.

While all events are free and unticketed, standard admission applies at the Birmingham Botanical Gardens, RBSA Gallery, and Black Country Living Museum.

Full event listings and times can be found at the CBSO website

Published post no.2,591 – Thursday 10 July 2025

In concert – Sheku Kanneh-Mason, CBSO / Kazuki Yamada: Elgar Cello Concerto & Tchaikovsky Symphony no.5

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Sheku Kanneh-Mason (cello), City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra / Kazuki Yamada

Elgar Cello Concerto in E minor Op.85 (1919)
Tchaikovsky Symphony no.5 in E minor Op.64 (1888)

Symphony Hall, Birmingham
Thursday 19 June 2025 2:15pm

Reviewed by Richard Whitehouse Picture of Sheku Kanneh-Mason (c) Andrew Fox

The City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra’s ‘Season of Joy’ ended (at least at its home base) this afternoon with this concert in E minor, featuring major works by two composers whose wresting triumph from out of adversity was by no means always their strongest suit.

It is all too prevalent these days to talk of Elgar’s Cello Concerto as being the ‘end of an era’ statement, so credit to Sheku Kanneh-Mason for leavening any overt fatalism with a lyrical intensity which paid dividends in the musing restiveness of the first movement – its indelible opening gesture rendered with an understated defiance that set the course for what followed. Nor was the Scherzo’s glancing irony at all undersold, its tensile energy seamlessly absorbing the mock nobility of its secondary theme on the way to a conclusion of throwaway deftness.

Others may have summoned greater fervency from the Adagio, yet Kanneh-Mason’s unforced poise in this ‘song without words’ was its own justification and an ideal entrée into the more complex finale. Especially impressive was his methodical while never calculated building of tension towards a climax of tangible emotional intensity, capped with the terse stoicism of its coda. Kazuki Yamada and the CBSO were unfailingly responsive in support. Kanneh-Mason returned with the 18th (Sarabande) of Mieczysław Weinberg’s 24 Preludes (1969) as a sombre encore.

If to imply that by being his most ‘classical’ such piece, Tchaikovsky’s Fifth Symphony may also be his most predictable, Yamada evidently had other ideas. Certainly, there was nothing passive about the first movement’s scene-setting Andante, Oliver Janes palpably ominous in its ruminative clarinet theme. A smattering of over-emphases in phrasing just occasionally impeded the Allegro’s rhythmic flow but was outweighed by the gripping spontaneity of the whole. Even finer was the Andante cantabile, as undulating lower strings launched french horn player Elspeth Dutch’s eloquent take on its ineffable main melody. The eventual climax was curtailed by a brutal intrusion of the ‘fate’ motto, before the music subsided into its calmly regretful close. Whether or not Tchaikovsky’s greatest slow movement, Yamada’s reading made it seem so.

Interesting this conductor made an attacca to the ensuing Valse, which proved effective even if one between the first two movements would have been even more so. Whatever its laissez-faire elegance, this cannily structured movement is more than a mere interlude – not least for the way the motto steals in at its close. Yamada ensured it connected directly into the Finale’s slow introduction, its fervency reined-in so as not to pre-empt the energy of the main Allegro as it surged toward one of the most theatrical ‘grand pauses’ in music. Taking this confidently in its stride, the CBSO was equally in control of an apotheosis whose grandiloquence never risked overkill. The charge of insincerity that its composer found hard to refute might never have gone away, yet heard as an inevitable outcome, this was pretty convincing all the same.

It found the CBSO in formidable shape as it embarks on a two-week tour of Japan under its music director. A handful of UK concerts (including an annual appearance at the Proms) then precedes next season which begins with more Elgar in the guise of The Dream of Gerontius.

For details on the 2025-26 season, Orchestral music that’s right up your street!, head to the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra website. Click on the names to read more about soloist Sheku Kanneh-Mason and conductor Kazuki Yamada

Published post no.2,571 – Saturday 21 June 2025

In concert – Stephen Waarts, CBSO / Mirga Gražinytė-Tyla: Brahms Violin Concerto & Weinberg Symphony no.5

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Stephen Waarts (violin), City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra / Mirga Gražinytė-Tyla

Brahms Violin Concerto in D major Op.77 (1878)
Weinberg Symphony no.5 in F minor Op.76 (1962)

Symphony Hall, Birmingham
Wednesday 11 June 2025

Reviewed by Richard Whitehouse Picture of Stephen Waarts (c) Maarten Kools

Seriously disrupted as it was by the pandemic and attendant lockdowns, the period of Mirga Gražinytė-Tyla as music director of the City of the Birmingham Symphony Orchestra (2016-22) was a successful one, especially in terms of bringing unfamiliar music to the orchestra’s repertoire.

Not least that by Mieczysław Weinberg, his Fifth Symphony tonight receiving only its second UK hearing, almost 63 years after Kiril Kondrashin and the Moscow Philharmonic had given it at the Royal Festival Hall while on tour. Weinberg was unable to attend and the performance attracted minimal comment, but the Fifth is arguably the greatest among his purely orchestral symphonies – a work whose size and scope had merely been hinted at by its predecessors. Six decades on and those qualities confirming its significance then still ensure its relevance today.

The influence of Shostakovich’s Fourth Symphony, written over a quarter century earlier but premiered just months before, has often been noted but whereas this piece is inclusive to the point of overkill, Weinberg’s Fifth has a formal rigour and expressive focus as could only be that of full maturity. Not least in the moderately-paced opening Allegro, its content deriving from the pithy motifs on lower strings and trumpet heard against oscillating chords on upper strings at the outset, and which builds to a febrile culmination before retreating into agitated uncertainty. MGT has its measure as surely as that of the ensuing Adagio, its threnodic string writing palpably sustained prior to a heartfelt climax; either side of which, woodwind comes into its own in a slow movement comparable to that of Shostakovich’s own Fifth Symphony.

Playing without a pause, the latter two movements consolidate the overall design accordingly. Thus, the scherzo-like Allegro alternates furtive anticipation and barbed anger with a dextrous virtuosity that found the CBSO at its collective best – subsiding into a finale whose Andantino marking rather belies the purposefulness with which it elaborates on earlier ideas as it builds towards a searingly emotional apex. Once again, however, the music winds down into a coda whose rhythmic pulsing underpins resigned solo gestures at the close of this eventful journey.

Whether or not Brahms’s Violin Concerto was an ideal coupling, it certainly received a most impressive reading by Stephen Waarts (above). Winner of the 2014 Yehudi Menuhin International and 2015 Queen Elizabeth competitions, this was his debut with the CBSO but there was no lack of rapport – not least an imposing first movement whose technical challenges were assuredly negotiated and with a rendering of the Joachim cadenza that integrated it seamlessly into the overall design. Waarts’ interplay with woodwind in the Adagio was never less than felicitous, then the finale pivoted deftly between panache and insouciance on its way to a decisive close. MGT was as perceptive an accompanist as always, with an encore of the opening ‘L’Aurore’ movement from Eugène Ysaÿe’s Fifth Solo Sonata an appropriate entrée into the second half.

Ultimately, though, this concert was about MGT’s continued advocacy of Weinberg as of her association with the CBSO. Good news that the Fifth Symphony has been recorded for future release by Deutsche Grammophon, so enabling this fine performance to be savoured at length.

For details on the 2025-26 season, Orchestral music that’s right up your street!, head to the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra website. Click on the names to read more about soloist Stephen Waarts and conductor Mirga Gražinytė-Tyla, or composer Mieczysław Weinberg

Published post no.2,564 – Saturday 14 June 2025

In concert – Marie-Christine Zupancic, Sebastian Heindl, CBSO / Kazuki Yamada: Saint-Saëns, Respighi, Takemitsu & Berlioz

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Marie-Christine Zupancic (flute), Sebastian Heindl (organ), City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra / Kazuki Yamada

Berlioz Le Corsaire Op.21 (1844)
Takemitsu I Hear the Water Dreaming (1987)
Respighi I Fontane di Roma P106 (1916)
Saint-Saëns Symphony no.3 in C minor Op.78 ‘Organ’ (1886)

Symphony Hall, Birmingham
Wednesday 4 June 2025

Reviewed by Richard Whitehouse Picture of Kazuki Yamada (c) Benjamin Ealovega

The dashing upsurge at the start of The Corsair launched this evening’s concert by the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra under its music director Kazuki Yamada in fine style. Nor was the pathos in this last of Berlioz’s concert overtures downplayed, and if the main portion lacked the pizzazz of illustrious predecessors, Yamada’s handling of the apotheosis proved an object-lesson in controlled spontaneity – setting the seal on a fine account of a piece that long -standing attendees will recall as a favourite of one-time principal conductor Louis Frémaux.

The music of Tōru Takemitsu was often heard in the era of Simon Rattle, but not I Hear the Water Dreaming. Taking its cue (along with other works of this period) from the ‘Dreamtime’ tradition of Aboriginal art, here a painting from the Papunya region of Western Australia, this short though eventful piece typifies its composer’s final creative phase – the formerly radical tendencies from previous years not so much disowned as finding an accommodation with the impressionist leanings of his earliest maturity. A sonic canvas, moreover, against which solo flute pursues its capricious course, with only a hint of something more confrontational either side of the cadenza-like passage towards its close. Certainly, this was music to which Marie-Christine Zupancic (taking time out as the CBSO’s first flute) sounded unerringly attuned.

CBSO regulars will recall Yamada presenting the whole of Respighi’s ‘Roman Triptych’ at a memorable concert four years ago. Tonight, Fountains of Rome rounded off the first half in a performance at its best in the effervescence of Triton at Morning or the dazzling majesty of Trevi at Midday, fading as if suspended in the Symphony Hall ambience. If Valle Giulia at Dawn felt a little passive in its allure, the enfolding serenity of Villa Medici at Sunset was fully sustained – the delicacy and suppleness of its entwining melodic lines accorded full rein.

The CBSO has been identified with Saint-Saëns’s Organ Symphony since Frémaux’s lauded recording of half-a-century ago, and it remains a work in which this orchestra excels. Yamada was (rightly) intent on stressing its symphonic cohesion, drawing ominous expectancy from the first part’s introduction and building no mean momentum in its ensuing Allegro. Sebastian Heindl’s hushed entry duly set the tone for a raptly eloquent slow movement, measured while never sluggish as it headed toward its heartfelt climax then on to a coda of bittersweet repose.

There was no lack of incisiveness or humour in the scherzo which opens the second part – its scintillating passagework for piano duet artfully integrated into the orchestral texture, with an ideally paced link into the finale with its indelible main melody and methodical build-up to a majestic peroration. Those thunderous initial chords aside, Heindl made less of an impact than might have been expected, but his always resourceful choice of registrations underlined the extent to which both he and Yamada continually had the ‘bigger picture’ uppermost in mind.

Overall, then, a concert which manifestly played to this orchestra’s collective strengths. The CBSO is back next week with its former music director Mirga Gražinytė-Tyla for what will be only a second UK performance, 63 years after the first, for Weinberg’s Fifth Symphony.

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 soloists Marie-Christine Zupancic and Sebastian Heindl, and conductor Kazuki Yamada

Published post no.2,496 – Sunday 6 April 2025