Tag Archives: classical-music

In concert – Sarah Aristidou, Ensemble Intercontemporain / Pierre Bleuse @ BBC Proms: Boulez & Berio: 20th-Century Giants

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Sarah Aristidou (soprano), Jérôme Comte (clarinet), Lucas Ounissi (trombone), Yann Brécy (IRCAM electronics), Sylvain Cadars (IRCAM sound diffusion), Ensemble Intercontemporain / Pierre Bleuse

Berio Sequenza V (1966)
Boulez Dialogue de l’ombre double (1982-5)
Berio Recital I (for Cathy) (1972)

Royal Albert Hall, London
Wednesday 23 July 2025 (10.15pm)

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

It is a salutary thought that events such as this evening’s later concert were once a ubiquitous feature at the Proms, and it required an anniversary such as the centenaries of both composers heard here to make it possible once again. Not that any of those present would have objected.

The jury might still be out on the precise nature of Luciano Berio’s achievement, but not on the intrinsic value of those works as Sequenza V. One of 14 such pieces that emerged across 44 years, it is arguably the most compact and communicative – not least for its pronounced degree of theatricality. His attire more readily evoked Harpo Marx than Grock the clown, but Lucas Ounissi (above) was fully alive to this music’s extended trombone technique serving a routine humorous though pathos-laden – his exclaimed ‘Why?’ defining the performance as a whole.

Although he eschewed such theatrics, Pierre Boulez was rarely averse to the extra-musical. Inspired by a scene in Paul Claudel’s play Le soulier de satin and the offshoot of work on his major 1980s project Répons, Dialogue de l’ombre double is typical of Boulez’s later thinking with its interplay of live and pre-recorded elements so that the musicians become engaged in a performance with themselves. Here the music proceeds as a continuum between Strophes and Transitions – clarinettist Jérôme Comte as tangible by his presence during the former as he was intangible by his absence during the latter, with all the contrast in perception that this implies. The presence of lighting proved as effective as it was immediate – not least in those framing sections of Sigle initial and Sigle final which act as processional then recessional.

Next to such expressive concreteness, Berio’s Recital I (for Cathy) could feel beholden to its era, but this music-theatre for the composer’s former wife and ongoing collaborator touches on salient aspects of existence as surely as those of performance. As with the more familiar Sinfonia (also revived this season), the plethora of quotations of and allusions to other music – ranging over three centuries from Monteverdi to Berio himself – is absorbed (if not always integrated) into an extended monologue during which the singer evolves from touchy prima-donna to solitary protagonist whose search for meaning in her artistic endeavour has become (and maybe always had been?) elusive. It has to be said that previous Proms hearings, at the Roundhouse then Kensington Town Hall, were better suited to this piece’s relative intimacy than the expanse of the Royal Albert Hall; moreover, for all the eloquence of her assumption, Sarah Aristidou (above) was not wholly suited to a role which requires a singer-actor in the lineage of Cathy Berberian to convey the intensifying emotional meltdown played out during its course.

What could hardly be denied was the alacrity of the instrumental response; the musicians of Ensemble Intercontemporain never less than committed under assured guidance from Pierre Bleuse, who has clearly galvanized this organization in the two seasons since he became its artistic director. Hopefully they will be invited back to the Proms at the earliest opportunity, and not just on the basis of commemorating those composers whose centenaries underscore their significance to a post-war musical culture whose passing has not made less relevant.

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

Click on the artist names to read more about Sarah Aristidou, Jérôme Comte, Lucas Ounissi, the Ensemble Intercontemporain, their conductor Pierre Bleuse – and for more on the BBC Proms

Published post no.2,607 – Saturday 26 July 2025

In concert – Sean Shibe, BBC Philharmonic Orchestra / Anja Bihlmaier @ BBC Proms: Richard Strauss, Mark Simpson ‘ZEBRA’ & Berlioz

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Sean Shibe (guitar), BBC Philharmonic Orchestra / Anja Bihlmaier

Richard Strauss Tod und Verklärung Op.24 (1888-89)
Simpson ZEBRA (or, 2-3-74: The Divine Invasion of Philip K. Dick) (2025) [BBC commission: World premiere]
Berlioz Symphonie fantastique Op.14 (1829-30)

Royal Albert Hall, London
Tuesday 22nd July 2025

Reviewed by Richard Whitehouse Photos (c) BBC / Mark Allan

The current BBC Proms season features several high-profile premieres, not the least of them being tonight’s from Liverpool-born clarinettist and composer Mark Simpson, remembered at these concerts for his orchestral fanfare sparks launching 2012’s Last Night in no uncertain terms.

On one level, ZEBRA (or, 2-3-74: The Divine Invasion of Philip K. Dick) is a straightforward three-movement concerto following the customary formal trajectory. No work that draws its inspiration from one of Sci-Fi’s most distinctive authors could be deemed predictable and so it proved with this musical representation of an epiphany which, experienced in his mid-40s, pervaded his thinking until his untimely death. Whether or not possessing divine overtones, it duly provided an imaginative context for the present work as it unfolds from a combative and even assaultive opening movement, through a mostly ruminative yet sometimes restive elegy, into a finale whose rapidly accruing energy surges towards an apotheosis of theatrical overkill – the ‘Zebra’ of the title as demonstrative as it remained elusive a presence during Dick’s life.

Music whose virtuosity summoned an orchestral response to match – the BBC Philharmonic Orchestra responding with alacrity to Simpson’s often febrile textures and translucent sonorities under the assured guidance of Anja Bihlmaier. Ultimately, of course, this was Sean Shibe’s show – his magnetic presence and mastery of electric guitar making it a notable addition to a genre still lacking in worthwhile contributions. His encore of a dreamily disembodied soundscape might even have been paying oblique homage to the great, happily not so late Robert Fripp.

On another level, Simpson’s concerto chimed ideally with the likely concept of this concert. One that commenced with an unexceptionally fine account of Richard Strauss’s Tod und Verklärung, Bihlmaier characterizing its more inward episodes with affecting poignancy as compensated for a lack of implacability in its early stages or a slightly underwhelming affirmation toward its close. Rarely in doubt was the direction in which this composer’s metaphysical musings were headed, even if the outcome was a performance no more than the sum of its best parts.

Berlioz pursued a rather less elevated ‘death and transfiguration’ in his Symphonie fantastique, but an approach with which Bihlmaier seemed more fully in accord. The lengthy introduction of Rêveries – Passions was eloquently delineated, and if the main portion of this movement (without exposition repeat) was overly self-contained, it elided naturally into Un bal with its ingratiating waltz offset by passages of despondency and elation. The highlight was a Scène aux champs which unfolded seamlessly from its plangent cor anglais solo, through mounting agitation, near catastrophe then uneasy resignation, to its mesmeric ending made more so by undulating timpani chords. After this, Marche au supplice (with first-half repeat) built with ominous tread to a climax almost graphic in its depiction of the ‘hero’ condemned to death.

An outburst of applause suggested many had not anticipated the orgy to come, but Bihlmaier responded with a Songe d’une nuit du Sabbat that, if lacking the ultimate drama, set the seal on an engaging performance with the BBC Philharmonic at something like its collective best.

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

Click on the artist names to read more about Sean Shibe, Anja Bihlmaier, the BBC Philharmonic Orchestra and composer Mark Simpson – and for more on the BBC Proms

Published post no.2,605 – Thursday 24 July 2025

On this day – the death of composer Domenico Scarlatti

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by Ben Hogwood

On this day in 1757, the composer Domenico Scarlatti died in Madrid.

Taking the baton from his father Alessandro Scarlatti, Domenico was a prolific composer wrote no fewer than 550 keyboard sonatas, an unparalleled output that has a fascinating variety, looking forward to Beethoven and even beyond. Here is a great example with which to end the day, from a very fine album devoted to the composer by French-Canadian pianist Anne Quéffelec

Published post no.2,604 – Thursday 23 July 2025

In concert – Ryedale Festival: Timothy Ridout, Orchestra of Opera North / Tom Fetherstonhaugh – Bliss: Viola Concerto first performance; Vaughan Williams, Coleridge-Taylor & Elgar

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Timothy Ridout (viola), Orchestra of Opera North / Tom Fetherstonhaugh

Vaughan Williams The Wasps – Overture (1909)
Bliss (orch. Wilby) Viola Concerto, B68a (1933, orch. 2023)
Coleridge-Taylor Solemn Prelude in B minor, Op. 40 (1899)
Elgar Variations on an Original Theme, Op. 36 ‘Enigma’ (1898-99)

Ripon Cathedral
Saturday 19 July 2025

Reviewed by Richard Whitehouse Photos (c) Jonas Cradock

With a variety of activities throughout its region, the Ryedale Festival is now well established among the most wide-ranging of such events 45 years since its inauguration and this evening’s concert showcased the Orchestra of Opera North in the impressive setting of Ripon Cathedral.

The all-British programme centred on the first hearing for a Viola Concerto that Arthur Bliss had always intended to create out of his sonata for that instrument, but has only recently been carried out by Philip Wilby. A former professor of composition at Leeds University, Wilby is best known for his choral and organ music but as was duly confirmed, is an able orchestrator with a keen appreciation of Bliss’ idiom. Hence the successful launch of a piece that deserves to assume its place within the still-limited repertoire of concertante works for this instrument.

That it exists at all was no doubt through the prompting of Lionel Tertis, for whom Bliss wrote his Viola Sonata some 20 years after a single-movement Violin Sonata (never played publicly during his lifetime) as was his only other such duo. Formally it is among his most innovative pieces, the skewed sonata design of its initial Moderato exuding a restive and even impulsive eloquence as responded well to an orchestration which resembles more the intimacy of Bliss’ late Cello Concerto than the full-blooded fervour of his earlier such works for piano or violin.

The ensuing Andante is Bliss at his most personal – its darkly ruminative progress building to an anguished culmination made the more so in this context, before subsiding into the fugitive unease from which it had emerged. There follows a propulsive Molto allegro modelled on the rhythmic syncopation of the Furiant, a scherzo-cum-finale climaxing with a powerful cadenza here forcefully partnered by timpani. After which, the Coda poignantly surveys all that went before in a sustained Andante maestoso as brings about an apotheosis of plangent resignation.

At around 27 minutes, Bliss’s Viola Concerto is equal in its scale as in its expressive reach to comparable works by Hindemith and Walton, so credit to Timothy Ridout (above, among the leading younger violists) that its essence was so tangibly conveyed. Nor was the OON found wanting under the assured direction of Tom Fetherstonhaugh, heard here in an ambience where detail lacked only the final degree of definition. Hopefully a recording will follow of what is likely to be the most important performance scheduled in this 50th anniversary-year of Bliss’ death.

The first half had begun in sparking fashion with the overture Vaughan Williams wrote as part of incidental music for a Cambridge University production of Aristophanes’ satire The Wasps, its incisiveness not precluding an open-hearted response to the ineffable melody at its centre.

A very different proposition duly launched the second half. Solemn Prelude is a characteristic statement by Samuel Coleridge-Taylor that did not merit the total neglect after its premiere at Worcester Cathedral; further hearings only made possible with the score’s belated relocation at the British Library so new parts could be made. Fusing Elgarian nobility with Brucknerian grandeur, any risk of portentousness was countered with an expressive immediacy abetted by Fetherstonhaugh’s flexible control over pace so that a welcome spontaneity came to the fore.

It certainly made an ideal entrée into the ‘Enigma’ Variations. Performances of Elgar’s earliest masterpiece now seem more frequent than ever, and tonight’s had much to commend it. Never fazed by the expansiveness of this acoustic, Fetherstonhaugh opted for mainly swift tempi as might easily have caused blurring in those faster variations had it not been for his scrupulous balance of detail. Elsewhere there was no lack of emotional input, not least during variations VIII-X with the wistfulness of ‘W.N.’ then deftness of ‘Dorabella’ framing a ‘Nimrod’ whose fervour was the greater for its relative urgency. Nor was the ‘E.D.U.’ finale lacking in panache as it brought the whole sequence to a conclusion of ringing affirmation, though it was maybe a pity that this building’s impressive organ could not have been utilized for the closing bars.

What was hardly in doubt was the response that this account received from the near-capacity audience, making one anticipate more such events at Ripon Cathedral in future editions of the Ryedale Festival, as it continues assiduously to promote the cultural life of North Yorkshire.

For more on the festival, visit the Ryedale Festival website, and click on the artist names to read more about violist Timothy Ridout, the Orchestra of Opera North and their conductor Tom Fetherstonhaugh. Meanwhile click to read more on the Arthur Bliss Society and the Samuel Coleridge-Taylor Foundation

Published post no.2,602 – Monday 21 July 2025

On this day – the birth of composer Gerald Finzi

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by Ben Hogwood

On this day in 1901, the composer Gerald Finzi was born in Oxford.

Finzi’s most popular pieces tend to be in slightly shorter forms, and his unique way of writing for strings has endeared him to many lovers of British music. Here is a great example, a piece more than suitable for a summer’s evening – the Romance for String Orchestra:

Published post no.2,595 – Monday 14 July 2025