Tag Archives: classical-music

In concert – Heath Quartet @ London Chamber Music Society, St John’s Church Waterloo – Haydn, Bacewicz, Locke & Beethoven

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Heath Quartet [Maja Horvat & Sara Wolstenholme (violins), Gary Pomeroy (viola), Christopher Murray (cello)]

Haydn String Quartet in G major Op.33/5 ‘How Do You Do?’ (1781)
Bacewicz String Quartet no.6 (1960)
Locke Suite III in F (c1660)
Beethoven String Quartet no.16 in F major Op.135 (1826)

St John’s Church, Waterloo, London
Sunday 28 September 2025, 6pm

Reviewed by Richard Whitehouse

This early evening concert marked not just the start of London Chamber Music Society’s new season but also that of its first at St John’s Waterloo, following some 17 seasons in residence at King’s Place. The actual programme, however, could not have been more typically LCMS.

What better than to start with a Haydn quartet? His Op. 33 abounds in ‘less is more’ writing, not least the fifth in this set whose buoyant opening Vivace features a cadential figure which provides the nickname, then a Largo whose keening melody for first violin and cadenza-like passage betrays likely operatic origin. The Heath Quartet was equally inside the Scherzo with its amiable impulsiveness, while the final Allegretto had a genial humour that carried through to its good-natured payoff. A piece deserving of greater prominence within the Haydn canon.

As does the Sixth Quartet in Grażyna Bacewicz’s output. Evidently a breakthrough in terms of her writing for strings, its stealthy yet never brazen Modernism is clear from the opening movement in its subtle overhaul of sonata design, then the Vivace with its intensive rhythmic interplay. A ‘song without words’ centred on cello, the slow movement is a soulful interlude prior to a final Allegro as makes inventive play with rondo design – the widening expressive gulf between its stable refrain and its unpredictable episodes deftly sidestepped at the close.

Purcell’s music for consort might be the most directly acknowledged precursor of the string quartet, but that by Matthew Locke is hardly less significant and preceded it by almost two decades. This third of his six four-part suites is no exception – the substantial and teasingly discursive Fantasia being followed with an elegant Courante and a soulful Ayre then a (surprisingly?) trenchant Saraband. Throughout, the Heath’s seamless interplay was such as to relativize any distinction between a consort of viols and the ensemble of strings it became.

An ensemble taken to a peak of perfection on the cusp of the Romantic era with Beethoven’s last string quartet. Here the Heath judged the equable poise of its opening Allegretto then the quixotic humour of its scherzo to perfection. Neither was there any lack of feeling in a slow movement whose pathos becomes the greater for its understatement; the ‘difficult decision’ that informs the finale duly rendered with a sure sense of this music’s venturing towards its playful conclusion. Beethoven was rarely so profound as when he was being this disarming. A persuasive start to a new season and a new chapter in the illustrious history of the LCMS. A wide range of recitals is scheduled between now and June, while those unfamiliar with St John’s need have no doubt as to the excellence of its acoustic or attractiveness of its setting.

Click on the links for more information on the Heath String Quartet, the London Chamber Music Society and events at St. John’s Church, Waterloo. You can also click for more on composer Grażyna Bacewicz

Published post no.2,676 – Friday 3 October 2025

In concert – BBC Singers / Martyn Brabbins @ St Paul’s Knightsbridge – Holst, Britten, Garrard, Elgar & Pickard

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BBC Singers, Elizabeth Bass (harp), Richard Pearce (piano), Andrew Barclay (percussion) / Martyn Brabbins

Holst Choral Hymns from the Rig Veda – Group 3, H90 (1910)
Britten The Ballad of Little Musgrave and Lady Barnard (1943)
Garrard Missa Brevis (2017-18)
Elgar Five Part-Songs from the Greek Anthology Op.45 (1902)
Pickard Elemental (2024-25) (BBC commission: World premiere)

St Paul’s, Knightsbridge, London
Friday 19 September 2025

Reviewed by Richard Whitehouse

The upsurge of interest in and performances by the BBC Singers in the wake of its intended demise shows little sign of abating, and there could be few vocal ensembles able to put on a programme as stylistically inclusive or as technically demanding as that heard this afternoon.

Nowhere more so than Elemental by John Pickard, its first performance occupying the second half. Never absent from the composer’s output, choral music came into own with the powerful Mass in Troubles Times (premiered nearby at St Peter’s, Eaton Square in 2019) and the present work can be heard as a continuation in terms of its underlying concept. A further collaboration with author and theologian Gavin D’Costa, its form is of a journey through the elements such as Pickard had favoured earlier in his output but here with its emphasis firmly on the spiritual arising out of human concerns. Whether individually or collectively, the writing for 18 voices could hardly be more varied and imaginative, while the obbligato roles for harp plus a single percussionist playing across the spectrum of instruments enhances these settings accordingly.

After the evocative Prologue with its Paracelsian take on living matter, Earth draws on the recollections of those in the Tham Luang Cave Rescue – notably teenagers of the Wild Boars football team – in music whose initial bravado gradually assumes a near metaphysical import. Fire integrates its Shakespeare quotations into consideration of this most transformative and cathartic of elements. Air centres on Bessie Coleman with her ambition, racially rather than personally motivated, to become the first professional pilot from African-American ancestry – her combative and ultimately ill-fated career depicted with often graphic immediacy. Water then illustrates the Biblical flood narrative from an oblique and even ambivalent perspective, before Epilogue returns to evocation of the numinous as it builds with a frisson of emotion.

Not that the first half was any mere preparation. Most intimate and alluring of four such sets, the third group of Holst’s Choral Hymns from the Rig Veda traverses the ethereal, the limpid, the hieratic then the questing in the company of female voices and harp. The former were no less attuned to the greater astringency of Sara Garrard’s Missa Brevis – its bracing inclusion of traditional Estonian music offset by the greater introspection elsewhere; these contrasted aspects finding at least a degree of release with the emotional immediacy of the Agnus Dei.

Heard in alternation, the male voices duly came into their own with Britten’s The Ballad of Little Musgrave and Lady Barnard – its folk melody (Matty Groves) stretched through this plangent wartime setting with piano of illicit love, innocent betrayal, desperate revenge and stark lament. Facets that barely feature in Elgar’s Five Part-Songs from the Greek Anthology yet these brief if characterful treatments of translations by Alma Strettell, no less typical than his major choral and orchestral works from this period, were dispatched here with due relish.

Whatever else, this showcase with substance was conducted with unfailing insight by Martyn Brabbins, whose prowess in choral repertoire needs hardly more reiterating than his advocacy of Pickard, and is absolutely worth hearing when broadcast by BBC Radio 3 this Wednesday.

You can hear the BBC Radio 3 broadcast on Wednesday 24 September by clicking here

For more information on the artists, click on the names: BBC Singers, Martyn Brabbins, Elizabeth Bass, Richard Pearce and Andrew Barclay, and composers John Pickard and Sara Garrard

Published post no.2,664 – Sunday 21 September 2025

In concert – Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra / Franz Welser-Möst @ BBC Proms: Mozart & Tchaikovsky

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Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra / Franz Welser-Möst (above)

Mozart Symphony no.38 in D major K504 ‘Prague’ (1786)
Tchaikovsky Symphony no.6 in B minor Op.74 ‘Pathétique’ (1893)

Royal Albert Hall, London
Tuesday 9 September 2025

Reviewed by Ben Hogwood Photos (c) BBC / Chris Christodoulou

The music of Mozart is the lifeblood of the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra, so to describe their performance of the composer’s Prague symphony as routine is to say that everything was present and completely idiomatic.

Completed in Vienna, the Prague deserves to be mentioned with the last three symphonies as among Mozart’s greatest. In the hands of guest conductor Franz Welser-Möst, its phrases were stylishly turned, violins silky-smooth but keeping clear of full fat over-indulgence. This performance drew the audience in, with a chamber orchestra sound that acquired more beef when needed in the first movement, which had appropriate drama, or the boisterous passages of the finale. The woodwind were superb throughout.

Most intriguing was the Andante, a thoughtful repose whose chromatic melodies were lovingly shaped, while the central section was notable for its autumnal frissons whenever the music headed for a minor key. Meanwhile the faster music was imbued with the spirit of the dance, a performance carefully considered but let off the leash when appropriate.

Tchaikovsky’s Pathétique symphony took a while to get going, revealing the composer’s own Mozartian influence in the process. Initially the first movement felt underpowered, its sense of dread kept to a minimum and the second theme kept within itself – though that did mean a particularly beautiful clarinet solo from Matthias Schorn. This turned out to be an effective interpretative ploy on the part of Welser-Möst, for the impact of the stormy section was heightened, the orchestra suddenly playing hell for leather.

The 5/4 metre of the second movement was persuasively realised, the lilt of its dance compromised by unexpected syncopations, alternating between charming and disturbing. By this point the Proms audience notably rapt in their attention, and still between movements.

The scherzo felt Viennese yet acquired a manic need to please more in keeping with Mahler – not encouraged as much by Welser-Möst as previous Vienna Philharmonic incumbents (Herbert von Karajan, for example) but effective, nonetheless. It all set up the devastating pathos of the finale, taken relatively smooth and never lingering, but still uncommonly moving. Double basses were appropriately knotty, while the effect of the stopped horns, playing low and loud, was genuinely chilling. The fabled gong stroke, on the light side, was still a telling moment in the hall, as was the silence following the last note, Welser-Möst giving us over a minute to consider the masterpiece we had just heard. After that, there could be no encore.

Franz Welser-Möst is a subtle conductor who over the years has developed a close relationship with his charges in Cleveland and Vienna particularly. His poised approach brings optimum virtuosity and watertight ensemble, to which can be added artistic approaches with a great deal to commend them. In this case both Mozart and Tchaikovsky were the beneficiaries.

You can listen back to this Prom concert on BBC Sounds until Sunday 12 October.

Click to read more about the BBC Proms

Published post no.2,653 – Wednesday 10 September 2025

In concert – Lukas Sternath, BBC Singers, Symphony Chorus & Orchestra / Sakari Oramo @ BBC Proms: Bliss ‘The Beatitudes’, Grieg & Gipps

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Lukas Sternath (piano), Elizabeth Watts (soprano), Laurence Kilsby (tenor), BBC Singers, BBC Symphony Chorus, BBC Symphony Orchestra / Sakari Oramo

Gipps Death on the Pale Horse Op.25 (1943) [Proms premiere]
Grieg Piano Concerto in A minor Op.16 (1868 rev.1907)
Bliss The Beatitudes F28 (1961)

Royal Albert Hall, London
Sunday 7 September 2025

Reviewed by Richard Whitehouse Photos (c) BBC / Chris Christodoulou

This evening’s Prom – launching the final week of the present season – was billed as ‘Grieg’s Piano Concerto’, no doubt the reason why many in the audience were attending while hardly being the most interesting aspect of a typically adventurous programme from Sakari Oramo.

In the event the Grieg received a responsive reading from Lukas Sternath (below, with Oramo), the Viennese pianist who, still in his mid-20s, was most at home in more inward passages. The second theme of the initial Allegro was enticingly taken up after a heartfelt rendering by cellos, as was the Adagio’s eloquent melody and that first emerging in the finale on flute, where it was soulfully rendered by Daniel Pailthorpe. Nor were the more demonstrative aspects underplayed – Sternath having the measure of a cadenza whose mounting rhetoric was pointedly reined-in, while the finale’s outer sections were incisively inflected prior to an apotheosis which felt the more exhilarating through its absence of bathos. A melting take on Richard Strauss’ early song Morgen!, transcribed with enviable poise by Max Reger, served to reinforce Sternath’s formidable pianistic credentials.

The 50th anniversary year of Sir Arthur Bliss’s death has seen a gratifying number of revivals, few more significant than that of The Beatitudes. The misfortune of its premiere having been moved from Coventry’s new Cathedral to its Belgrade Theatre, thus freeing up rehearsal time for Britten’s War Requiem, rather condemned it as an also-ran from the outset. Yet Bliss had created a piece unerringly suited for the consecration in what, in itself, remains an impressive conception. Unfolding as 14 short sections which can be grouped into six larger movements, this is less a cantata than a choral symphony. Setting all nine Beatitudes, Bliss none the less merged several of these and interspersed them with settings from three 17th-century and one 20th-century ‘metaphysical’ poets to commemorate the past from the vantage of the present.

The texts, drawn from Henry Vaughan, George Herbert and Jeremy Taylor, anticipate a future redemption – as, more ambivalently, does Dylan Thomas in And death shall have dominion which builds implacably to the climactic Ninth Beatitude and Voices of the Mob prior to the hard-won serenity of the Epilogue. That The Beatitudes has enjoyed relatively few revivals is less to do with its intrinsic quality than the demands of its choral writing, to which the BBC Symphony Chorus and BBC Singers did notable justice. Elizabeth Watts responded with real sensitivity and perception to some radiant soprano writing and while Laurence Kilsby was a little effortful in the more demonstrative passages, he brought conviction to a tenor role both fervent and compassionate. Nor did Richard Pearce disappoint with his extensive organ part.

Oramo paced the 50-minute entity superbly as to make one hope he will tackle more works by Bliss – not least the masterly Meditations on a Theme by John Blow, which has inexplicably fallen through the net this year. He had started tonight’s concert with a most welcome revival for Death on the Pale Horse – the succinctly eventful tone poem by Ruth Gipps which, while it might not capture the visceral drama of Blake’s eponymous engraving, distils an evocative atmosphere from pithy initial ideas that audibly reflects the circumstances of its composition.

Click on the artist names to read more about soloists Elizabeth Watts, Laurence Kilsby and Lukas Sternath, the BBC Singers, BBC Symphony Chorus and BBC Symphony Orchestra, and their conductor Sakari Oramo. You can also click to read more about composers Arthur Bliss, Ruth Gipps and the BBC Proms

Published post no.2,652 – Tuesday 9 September 2025

In concert – Chineke! Orchestra / Jonathon Heyward @ BBC Proms: Coleridge-Taylor, Coleman, James Lee III & Shostakovich

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Chineke! Orchestra / Jonathon Heyward

Coleridge-Taylor The Bamboula Op.75 (1910)
Coleman Fanfare for Uncommon Times (2021) [UK premiere]
James Lee III Visions of Cahokia (2022) [European premiere]
Shostakovich Symphony no.10 in E minor Op.93 (1953)

Royal Albert Hall, London
Friday 5 September 2025

Reviewed by Richard Whitehouse Photos (c) BBC / Andy Paradise

Sir Simon Rattle may have stood down from his second Prom this season, but as his replacement for Chineke! Orchestra’s eighth appearance here was the highly regarded Jonathon Heyward (current music director of the Baltimore Symphony), a positive outcome was all but ensured.

Curious, if not unexpected, that Samuel Coleridge-Taylor’s The Bamboula enjoyed 16 Prom performances in 22 seasons before going into oblivion for 91 years. Although this ‘Rhapsodic Dance’, inspired by a West African drum that found its way into Haitian spiritual practice, is not among its composer’s major works, the increasingly fluid juxtaposition of animated and soulful dances makes for highly sophisticated light music of its period. Certainly, it came up newly minted in this effervescent and responsive reading under Heyward’s assured guidance.

Two pieces from American composers of the middle generation afforded productive contrast in this first half. Aside from its titular play on Copland’s evergreen, Fanfare for Uncommon Times found Valerie Coleman reflecting societal as well as musical ambiguities in a piece that builds not a little ominously in waves of activity towards a latter half whose interwoven brass and percussion conveys a vibrant if disturbing impression: her call to ‘‘face these ‘uncommon times’ with a renewed sense of hope and determination’’ shot through with not a little anxiety.

From here to James Lee III’s Visions of Cahokia was to be transported back into a Medieval settlement which became a centre for Mississippian culture until its still-unexplained demise in the 14th century. Whatever else, this provided inspiration for an orchestral triptych whose fusing elements from Stravinsky with those of Villa Lobos or even Revueltas was evident in the music’s variegated textures and evocative colours. Effectively a ‘concerto for orchestra’ of compact dimensions yet immediate impact, it might well prove a highlight of this season.

As, interpretively speaking, might the performance of Shostakovich’s Tenth Symphony after the interval. Interesting that this piece is currently the most often heard here of its composer’s symphonies – this being its 36th appearance – with Heyward having its measure not least in an opening Moderato such as built methodically yet assuredly from sombre beginnings to a powerful central climax before regaining its initial introspection. After this, the brief Allegro provided explosive contrast as made its being allegedly a ‘portrait’ of Stalin more irrelevant.

Unexceptionally fine as was Chineke!’s playing in these two movements, it came into its own with the Allegretto that ranks among Shostakovich’s most distinctive and personal creations – not least for its motivic interplay of boundless subtlety capped by a stentorian motto on horn to which Pierre Buizer was in accord. Heyward paced it ideally, as also the lengthy Andante whose plangency is swept aside only to return intensified by the finale’s ensuing Allegro; at the close, giving this music its head on route to a decisive and almost affirmative conclusion.

A memorable reading that rounded off a worthwhile concert and likely this orchestra’s most impressive Proms showing yet. Hopefully Chineke! will go on to tackle further symphonies of the later 20th century – maybe a much-needed UK premiere for Allan Pettersson’s Sixth?

Click on the artist names to read more about the Chineke! Orchestra and conductor Jonathon Hayward, and composers Coleridge-Taylor, Valerie Coleman, James Lee III and Dmitri Shostakovich – and the BBC Proms

Published post no.2,650 – Sunday 7 September 2025