Tag Archives: Ilan Volkov

News – CBSO launch new season…including the 1,000th performance of the CBSO Chorus!

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posted by Ben Hogwood, with text from the press release. Pictures (c) Andrew Fox and Hannah Blake-Feathers (bottom)

The City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra’s 2026-27 concert season launches today, with a family of incredible musicians, choirs and youth ensembles, making music that matters to the people of Birmingham, the West Midlands and beyond. The season’s opening concert marks a special milestone for the CBSO Chorus, which will celebrate its landmark 1,000th performance this evening.

The City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra (CBSO) season launch follows the success of ‘CBSO in the City’– an ambitious and ground-breaking city-wide music festival, which saw Birmingham’s orchestra deliver over 20 free performances in five days across the city. The event, as with the new season, reaffirms the CBSO’s commitment to engage with the broadest possible audience – and the ensemble’s pride to be Birmingham’s orchestra on the local and international stage.

New season highlights include the CBSO’s return to Coventry Cathedral in November for Britten’s War Requiem, a full cycle of Beethoven’s symphonies, new commissions, and a wide‑ranging programme embracing film, popular music and cross‑genre collaborations.

CBSO: Beatle Mania. Conductor: Stuart Morley.

Fresh perspectives

The CBSO embraces new energy in this upcoming season with brand-new additions to the orchestra’s creative team. Ilan Volkov makes his debut as Principal Guest Conductor with Bruckner’s 7th Symphony, Messiaen’s Turangalila and a Shakespeare-inspired programme. The orchestra also welcomes its first Composer in Residence, GRAMMY-nominated composer Anna Clyne, who presents the world premiere of her new viola concerto ‘Resonant Forms’ with Lawrence Power, plus performance and recording projects.

New Collaborative Artists pianist Alice Sara Ott, saxophonist Jess Gillam and composer‑producer Rushil Ranjan, will also make their mark. The 2026-27 season will feature major concerto and chamber performances from Alice Sara Ott, solo concerts, presenting and education projects with Jess Gillam and a collaboration with Rushil Ranjan’s Orchestral Qawwali Project, a unique blend of Sufi poetry, Indian Classical dance and symphony orchestra.

Marking history

Kazuki Yamada (above with CBSO CEO Emma Stenning and Director of Artistic Planning Cath Arlidge) and the CBSO mark 200 years since Beethoven’s death in the 2026-27 season with a cycle of all nine of the German composer’s symphonies in 2027, as well as performances of his Violin Concerto and chamber music.

The orchestra also makes its return to Coventry Cathedral for Remembrance Day with a performance of Britten’s War Requiem which marks both the 50th anniversary of the composer’s death and 64 years since the CBSO gave the world premiere of the piece at the Cathedral in 1962. The 11 November performance will be followed by a European tour.

The upcoming season will also delight film fanatics with concerts celebrating 50 years of Star Wars and 75 Years of Bollywood as well as tributes to legendary film composers John Williams and Quincy Jones. 

Pop fans won’t be left behind either. On 27 February, the CBSO presents its tribute to guitar legends with music by Black Sabbath, Muse, Jimi Hendrix, Guns N Roses, Queen, David Bowie and more before turning truly Scandinavian with Symphonic Abba on 22 April.

Family favourites and festive fun

Across the season, the CBSO’s Family and Notelets concerts aim to spark a lifelong connection with music. For under‑6s, Notelets interactive performances give children a space to sing, dance and discover orchestral instruments for the very first time. For older children, the orchestra’s Halloween Spooktacular invites ghosts and ghouls aged 6 and over to don their spookiest costumes for a night of Halloween-themed music at Symphony Hall on 25 October.

Christmas at Symphony Hall starts on 5 December with three festive masterpieces by Benjamin Britten, presented in collaboration with choral charity Ex Cathedra, before Kazuki Yamada takes the podium to lead the orchestra in three interpretations of The Nutcracker. Christmas pop favourites from ‘Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer’ to ‘All I Want for Christmas is You’ are on the menu for the CBSO Christmas Party on 17 December, then the spotlight turns on the orchestra’s vocal groups for Choral Christmas on 18 December. 

Emma Stenning, CBSO Chief Executive, comments: “When I look at this season, I see an orchestra that knows who and what it’s for. It’s not for a particular kind of audience, or a particular kind of music. It’s for Birmingham and for the Midlands, and it’s in demand across the world.  It’s for the die-hard orchestral fans, and for anyone who has never been and thinks it is not for them. It’s for the people who have been coming for decades and for the six-year-old who picks up a triangle at the end of a Notelets concert and cannot put it down.”

Kazuki Yamada, CBSO Music Director, comments: “With every season, the relationship between the orchestra and I deepens and strengthens. I am delighted to continue our Mahler cycle, as well as exploring all of Beethoven’s symphonies across this season. I am also looking forward to bringing the orchestra back to Coventry Cathedral for a landmark performance of Britten’s poignant and powerful War Requiem, as well as bringing joyous festive music to Symphony Hall this Christmas. We look forward to welcoming diverse audiences from Birmingham and beyond – everyone is welcome.”

The CBSO would also like to thank the many guest musicians, soloists and ensembles that will join them for the 2026–27 season. For full details, visit the CBSO website.

Published post no.3,018 – Wednesday 15 September 2026

In concert – CBSO / Ilan Volkov: Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring & Stokowski transcriptions

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City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra / Ilan Volkov (above)

Frescobaldi arr Stokowski Gagliarda Seconda (1627/1934)
Purcell arr Stokowski Dido’s Lament (1689/1949)
Debussy arr Stokowski The Sunken Cathedral (1910/1930)
Mussorgsky arr Stokowski Boris Godunov: Coronation Scene (1874/1936)
J.S. Bach arr Stokowski Toccata and Fugue in D minor BWV565 (c1708/1927)
Stravinsky The Rite of Spring (1911-13)

Symphony Hall, Birmingham
Wednesday 3 June 2026

Reviewed by Richard Whitehouse Picture (c) Hannah Blake-Fathers

He might not officially become Principal Guest Conductor of the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra until next season, but Ilan Volkov – a valued collaborator over the past two decades – gave notice of his intentions with this enterprising programme of Stokowski and Stravinsky.

Stokowski, that is, in his role as an arranger often interventionist, frequently provocative while always compelling. The first four of these pieces played without break – the hieratic poise of Frescobaldi’s Gagliarda Seconda, with its layering of wind and strings, leading into Purcell’s Dido’s Lament with its soulful interplay of solo and massed strings. This sequence moved up a gear with The Sunken Cathedral, here becoming the most evocative of Debussy’s Préludes as its washes of percussion prepared for an apparition of sonorous splendour before returning to the murky depths. Volkov will hopefully schedule Stokowski’s entire Symphonic Synthesis from Mussorgsky’s Boris Godunov at a future concert though, for now, the Coronation Scene offered a tantalizing taster as its ringing ostinato patterns built toward a cinematic apotheosis.

It made sense to round off this sequence with Toccata and Fugue, most characteristic of the conductor’s numerous Bach reworkings and the most archetypal of all his arrangements. Its sonic opulence is balanced by an analytical acuity with the orchestral sections stratified so to bring out the motivic intricacy of its Toccata as well as the mounting impetus of its Fugue on the way to a glowering peroration. The CBSO gave its collective all in a piece that, whether or not this is actually by Bach, could not be an arrangement by anyone other than Stokowski.

Stokowski directed the American premiere of Stravinsky’s The Rite of Spring in Philadelphia some 104 years ago and the questing zeal heard in his 1930 recording seemed no less evident in Volkov’s performance – assuredly no powerhouse conception and all the more impressive because of it. With bassoonist Nikolaj Henriques given his head in its plangent Introduction, the first part proceeded stealthily and its myriad shades of detail or expressive nuance given focus through the music’s unfolding at a consistent while unbroken pulse. Such as the innate violence in Ritual of Abduction and inexorable Ritual of the Rival Tribes were drawn into an indivisible whole whose accruing tension found release in a seismic Dance of the Earth.

If the second part emerged more episodically, this was owing more to its actual content than to any interpretative failing. Certainly the diaphanous haze of its Introduction segued with due seamlessness into Mystic Circles of the Young Girls of ominous import. Nor was there any wanton pictorialism in Ritual Action of the Ancestors, with the trenchancy at the start of the Sacrificial Dance a telling foil to the unbridled impetus which followed. Others may have drawn a purely visceral frenzy from this music, but relatively few can have channelled such impetus through to so conclusive and (strange as this sounds) satisfying a final gesture.

Impressive music-making, then, that augurs well for Volkov’s three concerts with the CBSO next season. Hopefully there will also be an opportunity for this conductor to expand on his extensive discography, as part of what should prove an arresting and productive relationship.

To read more about the CBSO’s 2025/26 season, visit the CBSO website. Click on the name to read more on conductor Ilan Volkov, while you can watch him in action in a number of videos below:

Jorge E Lopez | Symphony No.4

Ilan Volkov conducts works by Schreker and Strauss – YouTube

Tchaikovsky: Symphony No. 4 in F minor, Op. 36 – Brussels Philharmonic & Ilan Volkov – HD

Published post no.2,908 – Friday 5 June 2026

Arcana at the Proms – Prom 35: BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra / Ilan Volkov – Ellington, Braxton and Mary Lou Williams

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Ellington orch. Gould Solitude (1934), Mood Indigo (1930), Sophisticated Lady (1932), Caravan (1936)
Mary Lou Williams Zodiac Suite (1944-6) [UK premiere]
Braxton Composition no.27 (+ nos. 46, 59, 63, 146, 147, 151 & Language Music) (1972-91) [Proms premiere]

Mikaela Bennett (soprano), Aaron Diehl (piano), James Fei (saxophone/conductor), Gregory Hutchinson (drum kit), Ingrid Laubrock (saxophones), Brandon Lee (trumpet), Chris Lewis (clarinet/saxophone), David Wong (double bass), Katherine Young (bassoon/conductor), BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra / Ilan Volkov

Royal Albert Hall, London
Thursday 15 August 2024

reviewed by Richard Whitehouse Photos (c) Sisi Burn

Never a conductor to take the path of least resistance, Ilan Volkov centred his latest Prom with the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra (whose Creative Partner he remains) around jazz – not that there was anything orthodox about the repertoire or the follow-through in what was heard.

The four Duke Ellington numbers heard tonight became standards in the Depression era, their pioneering spirit stylishly offset in orchestrations by Morton Gould (the first three on 1957’s Blues in the Night and the fourth on 1956’s Jungle Drums). Solitude ranks among Ellington’s most affecting tunes, while his sultry Mood Indigo proved an inspired co-write with Barney Bigard. The present arrangement fully enhanced the teasing elegance of Sophisticated Lady, before the expressive impetus of the Juan Tizol co-write Caravan left its evocative imprint.

Pianist and arranger for artists from Ellington to Cecil Taylor, Mary Lou Williams’ music only posthumously came to the fore. She wrote nothing more ambitious than Zodiac Suite – a series of 12 tributes to musicians born under various star signs, as went through several incarnations at the end of the Second World War and remains a trailblazer for symphonic jazz. As realized here, each item left room for contributions by the assembled jazz or orchestral musicians: thus the incisiveness of Brandon Lee’s trumpet or mellifluousness of Chris Lewis’ clarinet and alto sax, besides stealthy interplay by the Aaron Diehn Trio (above) or a soulful violin solo by guest-leader Kate Suthers. The sequence concluded with Pisces and an agile vocal (lyrics not printed) by Mikaela Bennett – its manner (surprisingly?) redolent of mid-20th century American art-song.

From here to Anthony Braxton proved a fair conceptual leap, but a meaningful one within this context. One, moreover, for which Volkov has prepared painstakingly across almost a decade – working with several of Braxton’s longer-term collaborators (notably George Lewis), while performing several Braxton compositions duly rendered as the superimposed totality he openly encourages. What resulted was Composition No. 27 as a framework for this performance, into which elements from six later ‘Compositions’ were integrated – this whole entity underpinned by recourse to Language Music, collating 12 musical parameters in what is the codification of Braxton’s practice over six decades. The creative aspect arises at a point when the fullest extent of compositional systematization links with the furthest extent of improvisational spontaneity.

The interaction between jazz and orchestral musicians was intricate and unpredictable, so that saxophonist James Fel and bassoonist Katherine Young – but not the always inventive Ingrid Laubrock (above) – were often conductors next to Volkov in determining the overall trajectory. There were occasions when continuity felt tentative or uncertain, yet these were outweighed by the translucent allure in much of the ensemble playing as well as the resolve with which all those participating headed toward a culmination the more definite for its seeming inconclusiveness. Not that this performance commended itself to all those present, with several dozen exiting the auditorium as though insects under siege. Those who stayed were rewarded with music-making such as encouraged an active participation all too rare in present-day concertgoing.

For more on this year’s festival, visit the BBC Proms website. For further information, click on the artist names for more on Ilan Volkov and the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra, and on the composer names for information on Duke Ellington, Mary Lou Williams and Anthony Braxton.

Published post no.2,275 – Monday 16 August 2024

In concert – Stewart Goodyear, CBSO / Ilan Volkov: Ives, Zappa, Lewis & Gershwin

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Stewart Goodyear (piano), City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra / Ilan Volkov (above)

Ives Three Places in New England (1911-14, rev. 1929)
Zappa Bob in Dacron and Sad Jane (1982-3)
Lewis Memex (2014)
Gershwin orch. Grofé Rhapsody in Blue (1924, rev. 1942)

Symphony Hall, Birmingham
Wednesday 27 March 2024

Reviewed by Richard Whitehouse

Ilan Volkov is always a welcome presence on the Symphony Hall podium, and this evening he conducted the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra in a fascinating programme of works by American composers – three of them established in music notably removed from classical.

The concert was framed by what have now become repertoire pieces, but Ives’s Three Places in New England had to wait over half a century to be accorded this status. Using what sounded to be the most recent edition, Volkov stressed its late-Romantic impulsiveness and rhetorical eloquence, though some over-emphatic pauses or phrasing slightly undersold the cumulative majesty of The Saint Gaudens and coursing energy of Putnam’s Camp – which latter still teetered (rightly) on chaos at its close. If the build-up in The Housatonic at Stockbridge felt unduly precipitate, Rachel Pankhurst’s rendering of its cor anglais melody had ideal pathos.

The three decades since Frank Zappa’s untimely death have brought into focus his sheer range of musical preoccupations, though his pair of early 1980s albums with the London Symphony Orchestra made plain that being one of rock music’s finest guitarists and leading provocateurs was never enough. Despite their linkage via a ballet with its somewhat dubious scenario, Bob in Dacron and Sad Jane are individual entities and their respective two movements underline Zappa’s concern for musical and expressive diversity – whether in the reckless overkill of the male protagonist or halting fatalism of the female. Volkov secured dedicated playing from the CBSO as brought out Zappa’s debt to ‘third stream’ jazz as much as his modernist forebears.

George Lewis is another figure whose creativity ranges over multiple media – not least that of the orchestra which, thanks not least to Volkov’s advocacy, has gained some familiarity in the UK. Its title referring to a theoretical device for establishing connections across an otherwise unregulated body of information, Memex is typical of the composer through its complexity of textures which affords a heady virtuosity but also a measure of subtlety and inwardness, not least in those final stages when the earlier volatility gradually coalesces into something akin to resolution; as if all that information was, if not dispersed, at least finding discipline. Such, at least, was the impression left by this committed reading of a striking and absorbing piece.

It might have been a conceptual leap too far from here to Gershwin’s galvanizing of the ‘jazz age’ aesthetic almost a century earlier, though Rhapsody in Blue has lost relatively little of its edge during the interim – especially when Stewart Goodyear projected the steely spontaneity of its solo part with such gusto. Admittedly the large orchestral forces (a feature of each work heard tonight) lacked a degree of co-ordination in tutti sections, but Volkov was at one with his pianist in conveying the breezy and often brittle excitement of music which sounded as   if evolving in real-time – not least the final stages that emerged as a high-octane apotheosis.

No little excitement, then, was generated over the course of this performance as of this concert overall: just the sort of event the CBSO should be putting on each season, which latter would certainly be the poorer were artists such as Volkov not encouraged to follow their convictions.

Click on the link to read more on the current CBSO concert season, and on the names for more on pianist Stewart Goodyear, conductor Ilan Volkov and composers Frank Zappa and George Lewis.

Published post no.2,133 – Saturday 30 March 2024

In concert – Isata Kanneh-Mason, CBSO / Ilan Volkov: Sibelius, Prokofiev & Freya Waley-Cohen

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Isata Kanneh-Mason (piano), City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra / Ilan Volkov

Sibelius The Oceanides, Op. 73 (1914)
Prokofiev Piano Concerto No. 3 in C, Op. 26 (1921)
Waley-Cohen Demon (2022) [CBSO Centenary Commission: World Premiere]
Sibelius Symphony No. 5 in E flat, Op. 82 (1915-19)

Symphony Hall, Birmingham
Wednesday 22 February 2023

Reviewed by Richard Whitehouse

A frequent visitor during the past quarter-century, Ilan Volkov’s concerts with the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra are always to be anticipated, and so it proved with this evening’s programme which brought together the familiar and the new to engaging effect.

Sibelius provided a potent framework, The Oceanides (of which the CBSO made a fine recording with Simon Rattle now almost four decades ago) heard in a reading of unusual breadth and deliberation. Not that this ever impeded the progress of music whose almost impressionistic eddying goes hand in hand with inexorability of motion; the outcome a double climax whose spiralling intensity – visceral even in the context of Sibelius’s later music – makes way for a coda whose understated fatalism was affectingly conveyed here.

Along with her brother Sheku, Isata Kanneh-Mason has had a major impact on the UK music scene – her skill and insight evident throughout this performance of Prokofiev’s Third Piano Concerto. There was no lack of élan in passagework where the composer sought to confirm his own pianistic credentials as he built a career in the West, but also a tendency to brittleness as arguably sold the music short. It was in more reflective sections that Kanneh-Mason came fully into her own – the limpid musing on its main theme at the centre of the first movement, the spectral half-lights of its successor’s third variation, or the warmly expressive melody at the heart of the finale in which her rapport with Volkov was tangible. If the electrifying close brought less than the ultimate frisson, it still set the seal on a reading of impressive potential.

After the interval, another in the CBSO’s Centenary Commissions – the well-regarded Freya Waley-Cohen (above) duly responding with Demon. Its scenario evoking the more ominous of folk stories, this piece packed a considerable amount of incident into its 11 minutes – a Ligetian playfulness offsetting its frequently intricate polyphony to diverting and, throughout the final stages, impulsive effect. Drawing an incisive and precise response, Volkov seemed intent on presenting this colourful curtain-raiser as well worthy of further and repeated performance.

Volkov’s accounts of Sibelius’s Third and Fourth Symphonies were highlights of a complete cycle at the 2015 Proms, and this account of the Fifth found his advocacy undimmed. Others have found greater atmosphere in the first movement’s earlier stages, but the purposefulness with which he built to its defining climax was undoubted; as too a corresponding build-up of momentum in its ‘scherzo’ – Matthew Hardy’s volleys of timpani spearheading the propulsive coda. More intermezzo than slow movement, the Andante had an appealingly winsome aura for all its darker undertones (with some delectable woodwind playing), while the finale made the most of its contrasts in motion – the ‘swan melody’ eloquently rendered – on the way to an apotheosis whose surging affirmation was driven home by those indelible closing chords.

An impressive performance, then, such as brought this concert to a suitably inspiring close. Volkov is on the podium again this Sunday – directing the CBSO Youth Orchestra in a new piece by Bergrun Snaebjörnsdottir, heard alongside music by Grażyna Bacewicz and Berlioz.

You can read all about the 2022/23 season and book tickets at the CBSO website. Click on the artist and composer names for more on Ilan Volkov, Isata Kanneh-Mason and Freya Waley-Cohen