Alice Sara Ott (piano), City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra / Kazuki Yamada
Bax Tintagel (1917-19) Grieg Piano Concerto in A minor Op.16 (1868) Clyne Restless Oceans (2018) Debussy La mer L109 (1903-05)
Symphony Hall, Birmingham Tuesday 22 September 2026
Reviewed by Richard Whitehouse Photo (c) Hannah Blake-Fathers
The sea, in various manifestations, was a dominant factor in this evening’s concert by the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra. One which began with Tintagel, long the most familiar (if not the only one now being revived) of Bax’s tone poems, where Kazuki Yamada showed a sure grasp of music more a reflection of its composer’s involvement with the pianist Harriet Cohen than of Arthurian times or places. Its ‘love music’ lacked nothing in rapture, yet it was the seascape from which it emerges then to which it returns that made the lasting impression.
Grieg’s Piano Concerto might not convey any overt maritime associations, but its expressive ambience is audibly that of the outdoors (unlike that of the Schumann concerto that provided its model in many particulars) and Alice Sara Ott – CBSO Collaborative Artist these next two seasons – responded with playing as impetuous and soulful as its opening movement requires. Fleeting hesitancies aside, there was no mistaking the rapport between her and Yamada; with its cadenza an emotional culmination in every respect. Soulful while never inert expressively, the central Adagio exuded inward warmth as found ideal contrast in the bracing energy of the finale – its poetic middle section artlessly rendered, and its apotheosis opulent with no undue bathos. Ott’s limpid rendering of John Field’s Ninth Nocturne made for an appealing encore.
The second half got off to a short if by no means sweet start with Restless Oceans, a compact yet eventful celebration of female identity from Anna Clyne – CBSO Composer in Residence for the current season – that lacked little in presence. Rhythmically incisive and harmonically expressive ideas, alternating purposefully on their way to the tersely unequivocal conclusion, were offset by vocal and gestural contributions from the musicians that added a layer of vivid theatricality. Further and more extended instances of Clyne’s music will follow in due course.
Bax can only have been too aware when writing Tintagel of Debussy’s La mer – this latter a game-changer in terms of orchestral composition, whose influence continues to radiate some 120 years on. Right from the opening of From dawn to midday on the sea, it was apparent Yamada had found the balance between the placing of detail within an overall structure that, if not symphonic per se, has a formal integration and expressive sweep as feels nothing if not symphonic – witness the majestic peroration with which this opening movement culminates.
Much the most elusive of these symphonic sketches, Play of the Waves yielded a lightness of touch and deftness of motion that only emphasized its emotional ambivalence. Unerringly phrased, its coda prepared ideally for Dialogue of the Wind and the Sea, a finale where the combative and alluring are brought together for what proved a thrilling culmination (though Yamada might have dispensed with those trumpet entries which Debussy subsequently and unwisely added). Certainly it brought this concert to its unequivocal and impressive close.
Yamada returns to Birmingham just before Christmas and Ott does likewise next May, while the CBSO is back in a week’s time with a programme featuring Elgar’s Enigma Variations as well as a second hearing for the co-commissioned Saxophone Concerto by Gwilym Simcock.
Fairfield Halls, Croydon Tuesday 15 September 2026
Reviewed by Richard Whitehouse
Ever enterprising, the London Schools Symphony Orchestra ended its season with this wide ranging exploration of music inspired or pervaded by the sea. Conductor in residence Sitali Dewan duly took the podium for a performance of the overture to Ethel Smyth’s opera The Wreckers as more than made up for what it lacked in cohesion with vibrant characterization of its thematic contrasts – energetic, introspective and hymnic – towards a culmination that accorded the ultimately redemptive essence of what is a very human drama tangible focus.
Preferable though it might have been to place Anna Clyne’s Restless Oceans next instead of at the start of the second half, this brief if eventful celebration of female identity lacked nothing in presence. Its alternating rhythmically incisive and harmonically expressive ideas, building to a tersely unequivocal close, was enhanced by a contribution from the musicians that made for a vividly theatrical conclusion. The sort of piece, moreover, that doubtless left its mark on those participants at the World Economic Forum in Davos – where it was first heard in 2019.
Enyi Okpara had been no less assured when directing John Pickard’s Sea-Change. A typically unequivocal instance of his early music, its title refers less to Shakespeare than to the layered eddying of waves, currents and tides; their contrasts in motion given focus by consistency of pulse and a tonal trajectory centred, however obliquely, around E. Music which is visceral as well as inevitable in its progress, this demands a committed response and the LSSO was not found wanting; whether in its impetuous opening phase, mounting aggression at its centre or that remorseless accumulation whose ultimate catharsis is shot through with ominous import. This is a piece written for while making no concessions to younger players, and those tonight clearly enjoyed the encounter as much as Okpara relished making it his own interpretatively.
If it inhabits far more descriptive terrain, Rimsky-Korsakov’s Scheherazade was not without its formal and emotional subtleties in this insightful reading. Thus there was no lack of drama in The Sea and Sinbad’s Ship to offset its repetition of motion and material, while The Tale of the Kalender Prince had no absence of pathos to balance the quirky humour of its call-and-response between brass or thrilling defiance of its last crescendo. Nor was The Young Prince and the Young Princess less than rapturous in the coming together of its contrasted melodies.
A culmination in every respect, The Festival at Baghdad brings back earlier ideas in varied and ingenious guise; all the while generating a momentum that made its seismic culmination the more impressive and the enfolding resignation of those closing pages the more affecting. Throughout this performance, the LSSO principals were heard to advantage – none more so than leader Erin Healy, her rendering of the violin solos that punctuate each movement of a poise and eloquence such as endowed Rimsky’s technical wizardry with unfailing humanity.
A fitting conclusion, then, to a memorable concert that the LSSO rounded off with a lively medley of maritime melodies that evidently went down a storm on TikTok and in which all participants (not least both conductors) gave their collective all in what was a heady encore.
The multi-disciplined composer and songwriter talks to Ben Hogwood about his first foray into symphonic form – with a distillation of some of his most successful orchestral and pop writing.
Now in his sixth decade of composing, Mike Batt is exploring new horizons. Having mastered the art of the catchy pop song (most notably with The Wombles), writing with great success for other artists (Katie Melua and many more) and producing evocative soundtracks such as Watership Down, Caravans and The Dreamstone, he has now made his first foray into the world of the symphony.
This new departure occupies our chat, for Batt has written a symphony specifically for and about the troubles in Ukraine. It is a powerful and deeply heartfelt work, an impressive achievement – words Batt is grateful to hear. “I think there’s emotion in most music”, he says, “even if it is negative or aggressive. It happens that in this symphony, because it’s about war, it’s not just about Ukraine. But I even get people saying to me there’s a kind of melancholy in a lot of the Wombles songs. I’m about to use one of the expressions I hate hearing people say, but it’s in my DNA! There is a kind of melancholy in whatever I do, whether it’s a pop song for kids – which is never just for kids, it’s always for adults and myself. But the emotion in my symphony is from music being a powerful way of expressing oneself, and if you’re feeling simpatico towards the people being attacked in a war, and a certain amount of anger on their behalf, and a certain amount of defiance, it’s bound to happen, that emotion will be detected in the music.”
As a form, the symphony carries a certain amount of academic baggage. “You’ve touched a nerve there”, he says. “When I sat down to write this, I thought the “classical” scene is seemingly split two ways – observing, rather than attacking anybody. It seems to be minimalistic on the one side, which generally speaking I find quite boring. Not to say there aren’t geniuses doing good stuff…but on the other side is what I call modern classical music, which has academic elements that to me alienates a lot of people, and prioritises cleverness over feeling. For me, music is for invoking feeling in people.”
Has his work in film soundtracks helped form the backbone of what he has achieved here? “I think it goes back further than that. I’m a sensitive sort of guy, and my emotional sensors are always attuned. I would love to have done more film soundtracks than I have done, though the work for The Dreamstone deserved a symphonic soundtrack, and I managed to persuade them to do it with the London Philharmonic Orchestra. I then wrote an orchestral suite, which I needed to develop into a format you would describe as classical music, but there’s a sort of ‘conservatoire doctrine’ baked into modern classical thinking, and you don’t get into that club. I’ve always tried to make the best art, with a small a, but a film is an opportunity to form an artistic partnership with the director, the actors and everyone involved in the film, but it doesn’t stop you from making it as artistically good as you can. It develops your skills as a descriptive writer. Film music went through a time when all they wanted was bangs and crashes, and I survived by not being invited to do films.”
He pinpoints this to around 10-20 years ago. “People would say if you can hear a theme, then you’ve failed because people shouldn’t be concentrating on that. You’ve distracted people. That’s like saying you can’t talk about Meryl Streep’s acting! If you notice a thing is well directed, nobody complains – so why should they for the music? I did a classical choice for Radio 3 yesterday, and I chose Lawrence of Arabia, the subtly chromatic, almost Borodin-sounding theme. That tune comes in almost exactly the same way as Tchaikovsky uses the love theme in his Romeo and Juliet Fantasy Overture. How can you artistically complain about that? Suddenly the music becomes the star! To come back to the point, music is to express something!”
The symphony being a case in point. “There was a certain amount of angst before I started writing this. I find it so hard to do what in film terms is director speak, where you say all the right things to sound artistically deep. When you know you’re going to deliver something which you hope will have some artistic depth, you allow yourself to be yourself as you’re talking, not putting on that pretentious speak, which I’m afraid I do notice in a lot of modern composers. When I was beginning the symphony, I was thinking, “Am I really gonna have to write that kind of stuff in order to be accepted?” And the answer of course is no, because that would be a sad result. I’m not going to imitate the modern academic trend in order to please the people who are currently alive today and criticising in one way or the other. It’s a bit like when punk rock came along, and I was doing pop music and films. I never, ever thought I had better start writing punk!”
The influence did seep in subtly, however. “When I wrote Six Days In Berlin, I did allow my Bartókian, Stravinsky-esque influences to spill out and mix with my quite oddball rock ideas, and mix it up and be me, in a free way. Lo and behold, that was my least selling album! But it was freedom, my version of punk. I allowed the trend to free me rather than ensnare me, and I’d like to think I’ve done that with this Symphony.”
He applies this realistically. “A friend of mine said he really liked it, and said, “I noticed notes of Shostakovich!” To be honest with you, I’ve had such a whirlwind musical life, that I hadn’t really got into Shostakovich. I didn’t really know much about him. I love all kinds of music, and started on Schubert’s Ninth Symphony, which is what first ensnared me. It got me, and yet I don’t know all his symphonies. I love Stravinsky, especially Petrushka, I love the way the textures are mangled together like flying feathers, and it still has accessible melodies – yet it’s still modern! Very often I think people look back, and that’s why people like Mahler got discovered properly after he died. When the critics are not the contemporary of the composer, you find they are more critical of that composer but not adhering to the style of the moment. I think I might get a bit of that backlash on this symphony, because they might say, he’s not doing the modern thing that we all do, he’s trying to do Shostakovich. Well, I’m not! I’m trying to shy away from being pretentious!”, he says laughing.
Certainly the moods within Batt’s symphony align with those of Shostakovich, and in the moody disposition of the bass strings in particular. “Basses are a wonderful resource”, he enthuses, “they can be so dramatically dark but can be the opposite, mischievous and ‘stabby’. They are such an underappreciated resource. If anyone asks me to write for string quartet, I always advise other composers to use a bass as well, and make it a quintet. That frees up the cello to be melodic, and vice versa – they can swap over.”
Batt’s composition within the symphony feels extremely instinctive, as though he found a rich stream of musical consciousness. “That’s nice to hear”, he says. “What I didn’t do with this symphony was to make a plan first, other than the night before. I sat at the kitchen table and scribbled a four-movement plan, with what the movements would be called. I thought they would be about ten minutes each. It ended up being about 38 minutes altogether. It’s like a painter, with the discipline to keep within the canvas. Yet having decided that, it all went away when I was writing. The ideas did flow freely, but there were times when they didn’t, when I couldn’t get anything. The reason was the particular sort of truck I was driving…sorry, it must be weird talking to me with these analogies!…I was going from left to right across the page, in full orchestration. I wasn’t sketching a first or second subject, I was in an open key, it goes wherever it wants. I didn’t preconceive any tunes, as you would with a film.”
Following the courage of his convictions, Batt moved on. “I just knew the first movement was going to be a certain mood, and the second, and I knew what they would be. I wrote the opening in full score, and moved onto the next, and gradually, I knew a musical theme would have to emerge, a musical theme – not a subject, like in a sonata form. When it did, I wanted a little tune of a kid skipping along happily. I used an oboe, orchestrating before writing the tune – as I would when I need a brass moment. I got this melody and realised later that if I used a cor anglais, and used muted strings, that made a very romantic, sad tune, full of pathos – and born out of the moment where I was just trying to describe a little kid skipping along quite happily. It was rewarding to know the tunes and themes were flowing, but from the ongoing textural orchestral thought. Having just told you I’m trying not to be pretentious, I’ve just been through a whole realm of composer speak!”
He finds a suitable comparison from earlier in his output. “When I did The Hunting of the Snark, it’s more light-hearted – with the ridiculousness of Lewis Carroll and his brilliance of nonsense. It’s got a full classical orchestra and rock instruments. In that particular score I booked the orchestra three months ahead, six sessions with the London Symphony Orchestra in 1984, and that gave me three months to write the piece – a real incentive, to avoid an anxiety-ridden nightmare, turning up to Abbey Road studios with no music written!” Returning to the symphony, he says, “Anyone who knows my music doesn’t seem to know all of it…but I know it all, and it covers a lot of different genres while coming from the same place. My solo albums were actually pretty successful outside of the UK because they hadn’t heard of The Wombles. I could be a rock star in Germany! I got listened to more seriously in other countries because they hadn’t heard of The Wombles.”
His work in that area had lasting benefits, however. “Some people have said to me, “It was listening to The Wombles that got me interested in classical music in the first place. I love to hear that, because I was just using my own musical passions, and I had to teach myself orchestration and conducting as well, learning as I went along. I sometimes felt that if I had gone into higher education in music, I would have come out slightly different. I was floundering about to start with, and had to sink or swim, and that’s how I came out of the way I did.”
His stature in Germany and other countries also had advantages. “I did some serious solo albums, Schizophonia in 1977 and then Tarot Suite in 1979. Tarot Suite is about the major arcana cards of the tarot pack, and the songs are all based on the themes of the major arcana. That’s where I get into the mixture of instruments, because one of the rules I had was not to use a rhythm section – which is exactly what a lot of the academics these days are deciding to use, because they want to seem modern! Twenty years ago I had a band called The Planets, and they were number one in classical charts for three months solid, but Classic FM said we love the album but we can’t play electric guitars on the radio!”
That problem was negotiated through judicious use of acoustic guitars, enabling the re-record of several tracks to fulfil the station’s ‘album of the week’ criteria – but Batt finds resonance between that incident and the new album. “For this symphony, I want to be seen as the person I’ve always been, and the music to be genuine – I’m not flitting like a butterfly from one thing to another. This is just me! I just happened to be writing a symphony and not a bubblegum commercial. But when I wrote the album Tarot Suite, there’s a lot of what I’d call Bartókian, Stravinsky-esque moments in there, with heavy guitars and a little bit of heavy metal at the same time. While I didn’t steal anything from him melodically for my Tarot Suite, what I might have stolen is some of Bartók’s attitude, the freedom of thought within harmony.”
“It’s extremely clever”, says Batt about Bartók’s writing. “I did something for Classic FM with the Hallé in Bradford, 30 years ago, and I programmed a piece from the Concerto for Orchestra but it was so bloody hard to conduct I dropped it from the program! I’d be able to make a better fist of it these days but it’s not easy stuff, and neither should it be. Bartók to me is modern, and Stravinsky too.”
The reaction to Tarot Suite was intriguing, to say the least. “The rock people were great with it, but to people in classical music it was prog rock – and that’s not what I do. So before I began, I decided not to use a rhythm section, as it would indicate to the ‘classical community’ that this was a symphonic piece. In order for this piece to be clearly seen as a symphony, I’ve stripped myself of the ability to what might be considered orchestrally progressive sounds, like drums. I wrote straight for what I would call a traditional, double woodwind, classical orchestra. This is my symphony rather than another rock-based symphonic solo album.”
Would Batt be inclined to repeat the composing experience? “I’d be very much inclined to. I’m getting into what I call the teatime of my life now, but I would love to write a Cello Concerto or a Clarinet Concerto! I’d also love to write a concerto for orchestra. One of my favourite pieces ever is Bartók’s Concerto for Orchestra!”
Mike Batt’s Symphony no.1 ‘Ukraine’ is out now on Dramatico…and you can explore purchase options on the Presto Music website
Published post no.3,017 – Monday 14 September 2026
Simone Lamsma (violin), Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra / Andrew Manze
Vaughan Williams Fantasia on a Theme by Thomas Tallis (1910) Britten Violin Concerto in D minor Op.15 (1938-9) Smickersgill A Brick Thrown with Love (2026) [BBC co-commission: World premiere] Vaughan Williams Symphony No. 9 in E minor (1956-7)
Royal Albert Hall, London Friday 4 September 2026
Reviewed by Richard Whitehouse Photos (c) BBC / Chris Christodoulou
Andrew Manze’s eleventh appearance at the Proms, during which 28 years he has moved from being a Baroque violinist and director to a symphonic conductor, drew on just over a century of British music for what proved a typically thoughtful and absorbing programme.
Not consistently successful, though – hence an account of Vaughan Williams‘ Tallis Fantasia whose avoiding of old-school eloquence leant it a certain uniformity of expression. In particular, the second (nine-piece) orchestra sounded rather un-atmospheric placed just behind the main body, leaving it to the solo quartet to instil a degree of intensity as the piece built toward its fervent if generalized climax before heading into subdued retrospection. Assured playing among the ranks of the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra strings did not make it other than an unexceptional reading.
The surprise about Simone Lamsma’s Proms appearance was this being her first, but anyone having heard her in Saint-Saëns’s Third Concerto knows her to be a soloist of the first order -as was the case with Britten’s Violin Concerto. The Moderato’s alternating of enervation and incisiveness was deftly handled, then the Vivace’s impetus did not omit a soulful response in its central episode with a magical transition on piccolos and tuba back to its initial animation. Nor was the cadenza other than integrated thematically into an overall structure as concludes with one of Britten’s most deeply felt passacaglias. Spanish elements which keenly offset any formal severity with expressive spontaneity bring about its powerful climax; the equivocation between hope and resignation unerringly judged at the end of what was a memorable reading.
Those responsive to her earlier ensemble works should have found Carmel Smickersgill’s new Proms piece no less intriguing. Its three (more or less) continuous sections of A Brick Thrown with Love provide an unforced trajectory where reckless negativity is countered with diverse responses, before the coming together in a mood of determined positivity. Lucid textures and iridescent scoring banish any hint of agit-prop with an appealing demonstration of orchestral prowess; one whose warm reception the composer chose to acknowledge from the rear stalls.
Vaughan Williams’s Ninth Symphony receives more hearings than ever in the seven decades since it premiered to a lukewarm response. Manze had the measure of the opening Moderato with its luminous scoring for three saxophones and a restiveness allayed if not resolved by its twilit coda. The ensuing Andante drew potent contrast from its hieratic and human elements, thrown into relief by a flugelhorn refrain (evocatively played by Tom Fountain) that reaches back into the composer’s distant past, then the Scherzo purposefully offset its capricious and militant aspects with a haunting lyricism as comes into its own in the finale. Less protracted than on Manze’s recording (Onyx), this unfolds in ever more elaborate arcs of accumulating activity to what is less a coda than an apotheosis which here was inevitable and unequivocal.
Just what those closing bars are conveying has been the subject of considerable speculation over time. Without overstating his case, Manze allowed this ‘journey of a life’ to envelop the Albert Hall’s expanse in what was an affecting end to a memorable evening’s music-making.
Julie Roset (soprano), Sinfonia of London Strings / John Wilson
Berkeley Serenade for Strings Op.12 (1938-9) Bridge Lament H117 (1915) Britten Les illuminations Op.18 (1939) Imogen Holst Suite for String Orchestra (1943) Britten Variations on a Theme of Frank Bridge Op.10 (1937)
Royal Albert Hall, London Sunday 6 September 2026, 11am
Reviewed by Richard Whitehouse Photos (c) BBC / Chris Christodoulou
Just weeks after the heady excess of Respighi’s ‘Roman Triptych’, John Wilson and Sinfonia of London were back at the Proms with a typically resourceful programme of British works for and with string orchestra. One which opened with the fourth appearance at these concerts for Lennox Berkeley’s Serenade for Strings, its modest dimensions belying an intensifying trajectory from the high-spirited Vivace, through a suave Andantino then impetuous Allegro, to a Lento whose inward plangency is a sure reflection of events in the latter months of 1939.
Following on naturally, Frank Bridge’s Lament – remembering a nine-year-old girl drowned with the sinking of RMS Lusitania in May 1915 – found a more apposite context than its two previous Proms appearances; not least as Wilson drew such fastidious poise from his players.
Although hardly ineffective given with tenor, Britten’s Les illuminations conveys its essence more fully as conceived with soprano and Julie Roset’s rendering (above) of Arthur Rimbaud’s often disquieting texts was nothing if not idiomatic. From the insistent activity of Villes, via the suspenseful Phrase and elegant Antique to the portentous Royauté and playful Marine – this was a reading to savour. As enticing were the yearning sensuality of Being Beauteous then capricious contrasts of Parade; this latter’s climactic setting of lines first encountered in Fanfare then Interlude as if completing a circle, from where Départ brings the whole sequence to a resigned though fulfilled conclusion. Roset’s insights were ably underpinned by the strings, even if a slightly more visceral response would at times have been welcome.
Her output can suggest an ambition waylaid if not frustrated at every turn, but Imogen Holst left numerous works of intrinsic as opposed to practical worth. Not least her Suite for Strings, its inquiring spirit evident in a restless Prelude then taciturn Fugue with a tellingly queasy final cadence. Despite its title, the Intermezzo that follows makes for a slow movement of unforced eloquence; one whose barely concealed depths inform the final Jig such that the latter’s impetus is not without a growing ambivalence only just dispelled towards its close.
Commemorating Britten at these concerts in the 50th anniversary of his death means, almost by definition, focussing on those works for orchestra largely absent from his post-war output. Among which, Variations on a Theme of Frank Bridge remains among the most impressive – not least in a performance as finely conceived and executed as this. As if mindful of an early comment that ‘‘neither [Britten’s] seriousness nor his levity is intense enough’’, Wilson duly pushed expressive contrasts across its 10 variations to their limits. Characterful as were those earlier vignettes, it was in the sequence of glowering Funeral March, ominous Chant then closing Fugue and Finale that his approach came into its own – not least in the way that the latter’s animation came to a standstill before its belated if impulsive surge to a decisive close.
A pity that Wilson did not consider including an encore (one or other of Bridge’s Two Old English Songs would have been ideal for this context) but the all-round excellence of what was heard, at what might be thought a ‘Proms matinee’, was assuredly its own justification.
