Tag Archives: City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra

In concert – Steven Osborne, CBSO / Kerem Hasan: Coleman, Grieg & Beethoven

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Steven Osborne (piano), City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra / Kerem Hasan (above)

Coleman Umoja: Anthem for Unity (2001, orch. 2019)
Grieg Piano Concerto in A minor Op.16 (1868)
Beethoven Symphony no.4 in B flat major Op.60 (1806)

Symphony Hall, Birmingham
Thursday 7 November 2024, 2.15pm

Reviewed by Richard Whitehouse Picture (c) Tristan Fewings

Highly regarded for his work with Welsh National Opera and his five years at the helm of the Tyrolean Symphony, British-Cypriot conductor Kerem Hasan’s is a relaxed though attentive presence that resulted in no mean rapport with the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra.

Such was evident from the outset of Valerie Coleman’s Umoja. Written for wind quintet, this ‘Anthem for Unity’ (the latter word in Swahili being the title) went through incarnations for wind sextet and concert band before being expanded to a commission from the Philadelphia Orchestra. Essentially a sequence of free-flowing variations on a theme stated by solo violin after an atmospheric introduction, it emerges in sharply contrasted guises before arriving at   a culminative statement – its evocation of ‘unity’ the more powerful for such overt restraint.

If the remainder of this programme consisted of repertoire staples, there was nothing routine or predictable about the performances. Steven Osborne has doubtless given more consistently accurate accounts of Grieg’s Piano Concerto, but his determination here to throw caution to the wind almost always paid off. Not least in an opening movement at its most perceptive in an unusually cohesive development, then a cadenza which ably sustained emotional tension through to a thunderous close. Building to a fervent rendering of its main theme, the Adagio evinced no lack of pathos, and Hasan secured a seamless transition into the finale – its virile main theme tellingly contrasted with that rapturous flute melody (Marie-Christine Zupancic on fine form), which emerged duly transformed as a majestic apotheosis towards the close.

That Hasan was out to make the case for Beethoven’s Fourth Symphony was evident from an introduction whose speculative mystery was tangibly conveyed, thus making contrast with the first movement’s main Allegro the more potent. Nor was the repeat of the exposition a carbon copy of what preceded it, Hasan channelling its impetus into an eventful development whose hushed transition into the reprise brought a surge of adrenalin no less palpable than that of the brief if thrilling coda. The ensuing Adagio might be felt to lack the drama or heroism of those in the symphonies either side, though its wistful main theme accrued considerable profundity on its successive and varied reappearances – not least through the unforced eloquence of the CBSO woodwind in what becomes something of an all-round showcase for that department.

Hasan drove the scherzo sections of the third movement hard, yet there was never any lack of articulation, while the trio sections had all the ingratiating charm needed. Taking the finale at anything that approaches the composer’s metronome marking can easily become a hostage to fortune, but the CBSO held its collective nerve throughout what was an eventful as well as an exhilarating ride – one fully underpinned by Beethoven’s irreverent humour such as comes to the fore in the tonal and emotional punning of those captivating bars that round off this work.

A persuasive case, then, for Beethoven Four as for Hasan’s conducting. Meanwhile, Sunday afternoon brings an intriguing event in the guise of Bach’s Goldberg Variations arranged by Dmitry Sitkovetsky for string ensemble and directed by CBSO leader Eugene Tzikindelean.

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 pianist Steven Osborne, conductor Kerem Hasan, and composer Valerie Coleman

Published post no.2,357 – Saturday 9 November 2024

In concert – Yeol Eum Son, CBSO / Jonathon Heyward: Still, Prokofiev & Sibelius

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Yeol Eum Son (piano, below), City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra / Jonathon Heyward (above)

Still Threnody: In Memory of Jean Sibelius (1965)
Prokofiev Piano Concerto no.2 in G minor Op.16 (1912-13, rev. 1923)
Sibelius Symphony no.5 in E flat major Op.82 (1914-19)

Symphony Hall, Birmingham
Thursday 24 October 2024

Reviewed by Richard Whitehouse Pictures (c) Laura Tiesbrummel (Jonathon Heyward), Marco Borggreve (Yeol Eum Son)

American by nationality, and currently music director of the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra, Jonathon Heyward is no stranger to orchestras in the UK and this afternoon’s appearance with the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra confirmed a rapport that will hopefully continue in future seasons.

His symphonic output may now be well covered by recordings, but performances of William Grant Still remain infrequent such that his Threnody came as a welcome novelty. Dedicated to Sibelius in the anniversary year of his birth, this finds its composer in understandably sombre mood (akin to that of his masterly concertante piece Dismal Swamp from two decades earlier) and, while there is little about its content that recalls the Finnish master, the interplay between elegy and processional is effectively handled through to its subdued yet highly affecting close.

It might not have enjoyed the popularity of its successor, but the CBSO has given memorable accounts of Prokofiev’s Second Piano Concerto over the decades and the present reading with Yeol Eum Son (above) was as good as it gets in a piece that does not make things easy technically or interpretatively. Starting reticently, the opening movement duly hit its stride in the capricious second theme before the orchestra made way for Son’s electrifying take on a cadenza which encompasses development and reprise; the orchestra’s climactic return being no less visceral.

Wresting coherence out of the unlikely formal design of this work is hardly an easier task but, here again, there was no doubting Son’s insight as she fairly tore through its Scherzo without loss of clarity; she and Heyward then drawing abrasive irony out of an intermezzo which can easily descend into caricature. Nor was there any lack of focus with a Finale whose headlong outer sections frame one of folk-tinged pathos – afforded a cumulative intensity only outdone by the propulsive closing stage where soloist, orchestra and conductor were thrillingly as one.

If the reading of Sibelius’s Fifth Symphony after the interval did not quite maintain this level of excellence, it was no also-ran as a performance. Heyward might have observed the Tempo molto moderato of its initial movement more literally, as his swift underlying pace made for too precipitate a climax into its scherzo-like second half. The accelerating transition between them was adeptly managed, but there was little room left for manoeuvre during the approach to a coda where not even the CBSO’s unfazed commitment could gain the necessary velocity.

Neither did the second movement lack forward motion, though here Heyward found a viable balance between the andante and allegretto elements – its (mostly) ingratiating poise abetted by felicitous playing from CBSO woodwind. Setting off impulsively, the finale rather lacked eloquence in its ‘swan theme’ but the resourceful evolution of its material was never in doubt. Other performances have conveyed greater emotional breadth thereafter yet, as those indelible six closing chords unfolded, there could be no doubting their decisiveness as parting gestures. Overall, then, this was impressive music-making with Heyward evidently a conductor on a mission. Next Wednesday brings a programme of Spanish evergreens conducted by Kazuki Yamada, with Miloš Karadaglić taking centre-stage in a certain guitar concerto by Rodrigo.

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 pianist Yeol Eum Son and conductor Jonathon Heyward – and for a special website devoted to composer William Grant Still

Published post no.2,345 – Monday 28 October 2024

In concert – Leila Josefowicz, CBSO / Thomas Søndergård: Richard Strauss, Adès & Brahms

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Leila Josefowicz (violin, above), City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra / Thomas Søndergård (below)

Richard Strauss Don Juan Op.20 (1888)
Adès Violin Concerto, Op.24 ‘Concentric Paths’ (2004)
Brahms Symphony no.2 in D major Op.73 (1877)

Symphony Hall, Birmingham
Thursday 10 October 2024

Reviewed by Richard Whitehouse Pictures (c) Tom Zimberoff (Leila Josefowicz), Chris McDuffie (Thomas Søndergård)

He may be spending more time in the US than in the UK these days, but Thomas Søndergård tonight made a timely reappearance with the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra in a programme such as placed a highpoint among recent concertos between two established German classics.

Richard Strauss‘s Don Juan poses few technical issues for an orchestra these days – the only proviso about this performance being its almost too easy unfolding, the initial stages seeming suave rather than impetuous and emotional contrasts following on almost too seamlessly. Yet the central ‘love’ episode featured a melting contribution from oboist Lucie Sprague, with horns duly firing on all cylinders in a unison theme ultimately capped by a silence of tangible anticipation then a postlude of hushed resignation – heroic aspiration submerged in an aura of starkest fatalism.

If much of Thomas Adès’ music the past two decades has been of a conceptual brilliance that outweighs its intrinsic content, the Violin Concerto is destined to endure and rightly so given these Concentric Paths complement each other in a finely balanced totality. One, moreover, with which Leila Josefowicz identifies wholeheartedly: despatching its brief outer movements with an energy and a panache so that Rings conveyed a volatility channelled towards greater affirmation in Rounds; between them, the relatively expansive Paths proved a chaconne as methodical in evolution as it was affecting in its suffused intensity. Assured in her handling of the solo part, Josefowicz dovetailed it unerringly into orchestral writing as resourceful as any the composer has written. Those in the audience unfamiliar with it were most likely won over.

Many of those present were no doubt looking forward to Brahms’ Second Symphony after the interval, where Søndergård (above) and the CBSO did not disappoint. Outwardly its composer’s most equable such piece, this yields more than its share of ambiguities and equivocations that were rarely absent here. Not least in the opening movement, its unforced progress duly taking in an eventful development whose granitic culmination set its easeful themes at a notably uncertain remove, then with a coda whose restive horn solo was eloquently rendered by Elspeth Dutch. Søndergård was no less probing in the Adagio, flexibly paced so its autumnal main theme did not override the more whimsical and anxious elements which inform its longer-term progress. Certainly, the closing reflection on that theme cast a potent shadow on what had gone before.

The other two movements are usually thought to present few if any interpretative problems, so credit to Søndergård for finding no mean pathos in those reiterations of the Intermezzo’s main theme – not least when it returns as a winsome coda. Nor was the final Allegro lacking in incident, such as that spellbinding transition into the reprise whose epiphanic aspect was not lost on Mahler. Given its head without sounding at all rushed, the coda then emerged as the ebullient though never grandstanding peroration which Brahms himself surely intended.

A resounding close to an impressive performance, and there should be more music-making on this level next week when the CBSO is joined for the first time in many years by former chief guest conductor Mark Elder for an enticing programme of Brahms, Janáček and Shostakovich.

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 violinist Leila Josefowicz, conductor Thomas Søndergård and composer Thomas Adès.

Published post no.2,331 – Monday 14 October 2024

Arcana at the Proms – Prom 43: Paul Lewis, CBSO / Kazuki Yamada – Ravel, Mozart, Holmès & Mussorgsky / Wood

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Ravel Ma mère l’Oye – suite (1910-11)
Mozart Piano Concerto No. 27 in B flat, K595 (1790-91)
Holmès La Nuit et de l’Amour (1888)
Mussorgsky arr. Wood Pictures at an Exhibition (1874, orch. 1915)

Paul Lewis (piano, above), City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra / Kazuki Yamada

Royal Albert Hall, London
Thursday 22 August 2024

reviewed by Ben Hogwood Photos (c) Sisi Burn

A colourful Prom from the CBSO this year, reaching a deafening climax with Proms founder Sir Henry Wood’s arrangement of Mussorgsky’s Pictures At An Exhibition. More of that anon, but the orchestra, under principal conductor Kazuki Yamada, began with music by Ravel – whose orchestration of the Mussorgsky we tend to hear.

Mother Goose was cool to the touch but given a winning performance, Ravel’s colours spread across the orchestra as the music came to life. The CBSO strings were elegant and refined, leaving the starry moments to the woodwind, who excelled – particularly the gruff contrabassoon in Conversation of Beauty and the Beast, winningly played by Margaret Cookhorn. The hues of the closing The fairy garden were ideal, too – though Yamada’s decision to bring the music to a near standstill before the final, wondrous tune won’t have been to all tastes, no matter how skilfully it was achieved.

Elegance was the watchword for Paul Lewis’s Mozart, too – a thoughtful and graceful account of the composer’s last piano concerto, published in his final year but thought to have begun three years prior. This is Mozart in relatively subdued form, but still cracking a smile in the attractive first movement. Soloist and orchestra took a little while to align within the Royal Albert Hall acoustic, but once they did the first movement dialogue, complete with Mozart’s own cadenza, was fluent and balletic. The slow movement lullaby was a treat, Lewis with stylish phrasing of the melodies, while the finale enjoyed its lightfooted dance, a theme so simple and yet so memorable; classic Mozart.

Following the interval we heard the brief but romantic La Nuit et de l’Amour by Augusta Holmès, a pupil of César Franck whose music was appearing at the Proms for the first time. It was a charming miniature with a memorable tune, whose presence shone through. It acted as an upbeat to Sir Henry Wood’s arrangement of Mussorgsky’s tour through the gallery, a version predating the celebrated Ravel by seven years.

Unlike the Frenchman, Wood goes for broke on several occasions during Pictures At An Exhibition. His decision to include only the first Promenade, where Mussorgsky describes his observer walking around the exhibition, means the pictures are a little squashed together, but in this performance the dramatic impact was heightened. Gnomus was frankly terrifying, while The Old Castle was headed by a sensitive and touching euphonium solo; Becky Smith projecting beautifully from the gallery.

Wood’s version is brassy on occasion, and the CBSO players excelled – as did the wind and percussion, whose unpredictable interventions had the audience jumping on several occasions! They were a feature of Bydlo, the old carriage rumbling into action with all its bells rattling, the lower strings and brass in deep toil. Nothing quite prepared the throng for the final Great Gate of Kiev, however – not even the sinister outlines of the preceding Baba Yaga. The gate itself came slowly into view, the toll of the nine bells of the Liverpool Philharmonic bells up in the gallery both solemn and unexpectedly chilling. Soon all notions of reserve were brushed aside, however, Wood’s orchestration demanding the nine bells at full volume – delivered in a brilliant peal from the gallery by Graham Johns. However – from the arena at least – they did rather swamp the combined forces of the orchestra and organ, who were barely audible at times.

Excesses like these no doubt helped Emerson Lake and Palmer in their decision to arrange Pictures for rock group in 1971 – and certainly had a positive impact on the Proms audience, who were thrilled by the drama and the sheer volume. So too was Yamada, who had already been dancing on the podium, but as the Gate reached its tremendous conclusion he pivoted to urge the audience into applause, long before the final chord had rung out. How refreshing to see a conductor living in the moment, reading the occasion and the audience, and crowning a memorable Prom with shattering, exhilarating noise.

The playlist below collects the music from this concert, including the only available recording of the arrangement of Pictures At An Exhibition by Sir Henry Wood:

Published post no.2,283 – Saturday 24 August 2024

In concert – Paul Lewis, CBSO / Kazuki Yamada: Ravel, Mozart, Holmès & Mussorgsky / Wood

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Paul Lewis (piano, above), City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra / Kazuki Yamada

Ravel Ma mère l’Oye – suite (1910-11)
Mozart Piano Concerto No. 27 in B flat, K595 (1790-91)
Holmès La Nuit et de l’Amour (1888)
Mussorgsky arr. Wood Pictures at an Exhibition (1874, orch. 1915)

Symphony Hall, Birmingham
Wednesday 21 August 2024

Reviewed by Richard Whitehouse

Although the CBSO has not put on its own Proms season for many years, a concert featuring the programme for its annual Proms appearance has been a regular fixture and this evening’s event proved to be much more than merely a ‘dry run’ for tomorrow’s Royal Albert Hall date.

Despite the timing, this was indeed the suite as orchestrated by Ravel from his Mother Goose piano duets before being expanded into a ballet. It took a while to get going – Pavane of the Sleeping Beauty feeling impassive and Little Tom Thumb enervated, yet Laideronette had the requisite playfulness. Conversations of Beauty and the Beast was ideally poised between whimsy and pathos, before The Enchanted Garden concluded this sequence with an inward rapture made more so thanks to its exquisite contribution from leader EugeneTzikindelean.

Paul Lewis must have played Mozart’s 27th Piano Concerto on innumerable occasions (and several times with the CBSO) but his perspective constantly varies. The opening movement had a spaciousness resulting in an unusually moderate Allegro, albeit never at the expense of a subtly incremental intensity unerringly sustained through to a cadenza of limpid eloquence. Even finer was the Larghetto – dependent, as with much of Mozart’s late music, on what the performer brings to it; here yielding a serenity informed by not a little fatalism. After which the finale provided an ideal complement in its buoyancy and unforced humour, leading into a cadenza (how fortunate Mozart’s own have survived) of pensive understatement, then a coda launched with a guileless interplay of soloist and string that set the seal on this performance.

Opening the second half was Augusta Holmès’s La Nuit et l’Amour – actually, an interlude from Ludus pro Patria, her ‘Ode-Symphonie’ which, even if it might not sustain the present piece’s enfolding passion, should certainly be worth at least a one-off hearing in its entirety.

In Henry Wood’s orchestration, Mussorgsky’s Pictures at an Exhibition proved a highlight of last season. Wood retains only the first appearance of the Promenade but is not unfaithful to the original’s essence. Hence the shock-horror of Gnomus, sombre aura of The Old Castle with its baleful euphonium, playful insistence of The Tuileries or fatalistic tread of Bydlo with its evocative percussion. The whimsical Ballet of the Unhatched Chicks contrasts with the grim realism of Samuel Goldberg and Schmuÿle or the frantic bustle of The Market at Limoges.

Respighi surely took note of this glowering Catacombs with its plangent recollection of the promenade refrain hardly less effective than in Ravel, and while Baba Yaga is unnecessarily curtailed here, its sudden dispersal more than prepares for the crescendo of offstage bells that launches The Great Gate[s] of Kiev. This set the tone for a realization which, if its opulence borders on overkill, could not prevent the CBSO from projecting Wood’s cinematic sonics to the maximum. Those present once again erupted during that echoing resonance at its close.

Quite a way, then, to end an impressive performance and memorable concert. Kazuki Yamada and the orchestra will be doing it all over again tomorrow evening at their Prom, at which this orchestration of the Mussorgsky will be heard in the environs as envisaged by its orchestrator.

The playlist below collects the music from this concert, including the only available recording of the arrangement of Pictures At An Exhibition by Sir Henry Wood:

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 pianist Paul Lewis and chief conductor Kazuki Yamada

Published post no.2,279 – Friday 23 August 2024