Tag Archives: LSO St Luke’s

In Concert – PRS Presents – Classical Edition: Manchester Collective @ LSO St Luke’s

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Manchester Collective [names not given in the programme but assumed to be Rakhi Singh (violin, director), Jonathan Martindale (violin), Alex Mitchell (viola), Christian Elliott (cello)]

Mason Muttos from Sardinian Songbook
Finnis String Quartet no.2
Wallen Five Postcards
Campbell 3AM
Mason Eki Attar from Tuvan Songbook
Tabakova Insight
Hamilton In Beautiful May
Glass String Quartet no.4 ‘Buczak’ (2nd movement)
Meredith Tuggemo

Wigmore Hall, London
Wednesday 25 September 2024

Reviewed by Ben Hogwood

This inspiring concert, the first in a series presented by the enterprising team at the Performing Rights Society (PRS), revealed the innovation afoot even in the most traditional classical music forms. The string quartet has been an established medium for close on 300 years, but the four players assembled by the Manchester Collective showed where future possibilities lie.

Christian Mason’s work reproduces throat singing for the medium, often with vocal contributions from the players themselves – and the Collective’s performances of Muttos and Eki Attar were gripping and rhythmically vital.

Grabbing the attention in a very different way were quieter works by Edmund Finnis and Jocelyn Campbell. The former’s String Quartet no.2 inhabited the rarefied atmosphere that Finnis seems able to conjure at will, with interlocking phrases and melodies given an unexpectedly tender accent. The Manchester Collective played with beautiful sonority, enhanced by microphones – which in the case of Jocelyn Campbell’s 3AM was an asset, portraying the streets of London in the hour of the day where they are at their most deserted. The slights of hand, the nocturnal rustlings, the shadows we couldn’t quite make out – all were beautifully rendered and sculpted by a composer whose painting in sound is uncommonly vivid.

This was before the elephant in the room – Andrew Hamilton’s In Beautiful May – was dealt with. A piece for solo violin and electronics, it was delivered with great virtuosity by Rakhi Singh, who warned us ahead of the performance that it would be a ‘marmite’ piece. She was absolutely right, playing music that was definitely not for everyone’s enjoyment – and certainly not this reviewer. Hamilton’s collage of jarring violin phrases and pop song snippets meant we jumped between Singh and snatches of Shalamar’s I Can Make You Feel Good, Take That’s Back For Good and Will Young’s Evergreen. The short attention span of the music was infuriating, its cut and paste approach chopping the music into small bits and spitting it against an unforgiving wall. Yet personal feelings should be qualified, as Hamilton’s piece got one of the strongest reactions of the night!

Perhaps surprisingly the second movement from Philip Glass’s String Quartet no.4, Buczak, provided some much-needed balm, with an elegance not normally associated with the American composer. The Manchester Collective gave a beautiful legato performance allowing time for reflection.

Meanwhile Dobrinka Tabakova’s Insight made a strong impression, its folk melodies and rhythms winningly played and melded into an extremely convincing whole, offering further proof of the Bulgarian composer’s assured and compelling writing for strings in particular.

Errollyn Wallen’s Five Postcards, for violin and viola, were given a brilliant performance by Singh and Alex Mitchell. These were a lot of fun, ranging from bluesy musical chats to intimate asides, and a reminder that the combination of violin and viola – used so effectively by Mozart but surprisingly few composers since – is well worth revisiting.

Finishing the concert was Tuggemo by Anna Meredith, using the old English word for a swarm of birds or flies. It made for a suitably hedonistic note on which to finish the concert, with its driving four to the floor beat and jagged quartet riffing. While meant to be loud, the beat swamped the quartet on this occasion, its ultimate destination the middle of a dancefloor before the piece broke off and left us hanging.

This was, however, another example of Manchester Collective’s remarkable virtuosity and further evidence of their clever programming. Both elements combined to make this a memorable and highly stimulating concert.

Published post no.2,313 – 26 September 2024

Online music recommendations – Summer sessions in London

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With the continued restrictions on live performance preventing orchestras from performing in the conventional sense, ensembles have been giving concerts and subscriptions online. Two of the biggest London orchestras have been running series through the summer which are highly recommended.

The London Symphony Orchestra have been giving a series of Summer Shorts at LSO St. Luke’s through July and August, and is set to conclude in thrilling fashion with a concert from the LSO Percussion Ensemble on Friday 21 August at 1pm. You can watch it on the LSO website here

The programme begins with Chick Corea’s Duet Suite, arranged by Simon Carrington, before two pieces from Gwilym Simcock – his Quintet, which the ensemble have already recorded, and the shorter piece Barber Blues.

Also available to watch is the concert from the Friday just gone, given by the piano trio Belinda McFarlane (violin), Jennifer Brown (cello) and pianist Elizabeth Burley. Their intriguing hour of music begins with Judith Lang Zaimont’s Nocturne, before A Winged Spirit, the new piece from Hannah Kendall. Wrapping things up is Rachmaninov’s passionate but seldom heard Trio élégiaque no.1:

Across town in the Henry Wood Hall, the different sections of the London Philharmonic Orchestra have been giving concerts for reduced forces. Their Summer Sessions began on July 15 with a rather lovely set for strings, including the Elgar Serenade for Strings, the first Concerto Grosso of the Op.6 set by Corelli and Grieg’s sunny Holberg Suite:

Then the winds stepped up on two weeks later, playing Rossini’s Sonata no.1, Mozart’s wonderful Serenade in E flat major K375 and Janáček’s Mládí:

Brass and percussion were next, with a program of fanfares and divertimenti featuring works by Sir Malcolm Arnold, Richard Bissill, Leonard Salzedo, Stanley Woods and Simon Carrington:

Finally the orchestra will celebrate the 250th anniversary of Beethoven’s birth with a vibrant program including the Septet in E flat major, the Quintet for piano and wind and the lesser known Trio for piano, flute and bassoon. You can catch that concert on the London Philharmonic Orchestra’s YouTube channel here

Live review – Nash Ensemble: War’s Embers – Elgar Piano Quintet & John Ireland Piano Trio no.2

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Nash Ensemble (above) [Ian Brown (piano), Stephanie Gonley, Michael Gurevich (violins), David Adams (viola), Adrian Brendel (cello) (N.B. the line-up pictured above is not the same as the one appearing at this concert)

LSO St Luke’s, Friday 12 October 2018 (lunchtime concert)

Ireland Piano Trio no.2 (1917)
Elgar Piano Quintet in A minor Op.84 (1918)

Written by Ben Hogwood

The First World War had a profound effect on composers of classical music. Many of them served or were closely involved with the conflict, and even those who weren’t used their music as a vehicle for the shock and dismay felt at the turn of events.

John Ireland expressed his horror through two chamber works completed in 1917, the Violin Sonata no.2 and the Piano Trio no.2. The latter work began this concert from the Nash Ensemble, part of their War’s Embers series focusing on music written around the War in England. Set in one compact movement, it is a powerfully expressive utterance, even when the music is quiet – as it was when the first cello melody began – to when it reaches peaks of intensity in the march sections, depicting the war itself. Ian Brown, Stephanie Gonley and Adrian Brendel were united in voice, their three instruments often linked in melody, while Brendel’s eloquent solo at the start set the solemn tone.

Stylistically the work draws part of its inspiration from Debussy and Ravel, and these links were nicely played up by the trio, but the opening music dominated to the point of obsession, sweeping all before it. As evidenced in an interview with BBC Radio 3 host Fiona Talkington after the performance, the players had a clear understanding of Ireland’s writing, and his still underrated status in chamber music form.

Ireland’s trio was first heard at the Wigmore Hall in June 1917, and at the same venue nearly two years later audiences heard the premiere of Sir Edward Elgar’s Piano Quintet. Composed in Sussex, this autumnal work, written just prior to the Cello Concerto, reflects a fascination the Elgars held with a group of dead trees in Flexham Park, their branches twisted ‘in an eerie manner’.

The spidery tendrils of the first few bars reflected this eerie vision, and refused to release their grip on the piece despite a first movement that really got into top gear in this performance, passionately played and majestically poised. There was an affecting second theme before we heard for the first time some Spanish rhythms, also inspired by legend around the dead trees and refracted through a prism in Elgar’s mind, strangely sketched but never fully coloured-in.

The relative serenity of the slow movement, was countered by an emotional distance, as though here Elgar was conscious of the War, itself audible to him through the use of artillery just across the Channel. Perhaps because of this the trees made themselves known in closer proximity as the finale began, though here Elgar – and the Nash Ensemble – threw off the shackles to power through to an upward looking conclusion.

This was a fine performance of a work the Nash – and certainly Ian Brown – have had in their repertoire for more than 25 years. Brown displayed a natural instinct with the tricker phrases and was helped by a lovely string tone from the quartet in a performance that made sense of some of Elgar’s more distorted rhythms.

War’s Embers will come to BBC Radio 3 on Tuesday 13 November and I urge you to hear it, placing this elusive work in the context of a fine performance.

Further listening

You will be able to listen to this concert on BBC Radio 3 on Tuesday 13 November. In the meantime recordings of the works heard are on the Spotify playlist below:

For further information on the Nash Ensemble’s War’s Embers series, visit the diary section on the ensemble’s website