Tag Archives: Symphony Hall

In concert – Eugene Tzikindelean, CBSO / Kazuki Yamada: Elgar Violin Concerto & Walton Symphony no.2

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Eugene Tzikindelean (violin, above), City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra / Kazuki Yamada (below)

Elgar Violin Concerto in B minor Op.61 (1909-10)
Walton Orb and Sceptre (1952-3)
Walton Symphony no.2 (1957-60)

Symphony Hall, Birmingham
Wednesday 4 December 2024

Reviewed by Richard Whitehouse

His tenure so far as music director of the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra has shown Kazuki Yamada to have real sympathy for British music, hence it was no surprise to encounter this programme of works by Elgar and Walton, which itself proved (unexpectedly?) satisfying.

Following on his highly regarded performances of Nielsen and Walton over previous seasons, CBSO leader Eugene Tzikindelean took on Elgar’s Violin Concerto for a reading which was fine if not consistently so. The opening movement, in particular, lacked forward momentum in its restless first theme so that not enough contrast was established with its rapt successor – the highlights being Yamada’s vigorous handling of its orchestral introduction and a development as powerfully sustained as it was combatively rendered. Tzikindelean was more fully at home with the central Andante, its variously reflective and heartfelt melodies drawn into a seamless continuity enhanced by a notably beguiling response from the CBSO woodwind. Whether or not the most profound of Elgar’s slow movement, this is arguably his most perfectly achieved.

The finale was, for the most part, equally successful – this being hardly the first performance setting off at a suitably incisive tempo, only to lose impetus once the poised second theme has entered the frame. Not that there was insufficient energy to make the emergence of its lengthy accompanied cadenza other than startling – this latter proceeding with a suffused mystery and poignancy, not least in recalling previous themes, as finds Elgar as his most confessional; the movement then resuming its earlier course as it surged on to a decisive and affirmative close.

Although his later orchestral works have never quite fallen into obscurity, Walton’s tended to fare better in the US than in the UK. Not least the coronation march Orb and Sceptre – all too easily denigrated next to the opulent grandeur of predecessor Crown Imperial, but evincing a jazzy lack of uninhibition and, in its trio, a suavity Yamada clearly relished in the company of an orchestra that made benchmark recordings with Louis Frémaux almost half a century ago. Even the latter could not summon the pizzaz conveyed here with that trio’s infectious return.

Walton’s Second Symphony has been equivocally regarded ever since its Liverpool premiere, but Yamada clearly harboured few doubts as to its conviction. The opening Allegro unfolded methodically if remorselessly, its main themes subtly yet meaningfully differentiated not least in bringing out the compositional mastery of sizable orchestral forces. Nor was there any lack of pathos in the ensuing Lento, its ominous tones denoting music shot through with intensely ambivalent emotion. Much the most difficult movement to sustain, the final Passacaglia was no less successful – Yamada binding its successive variations into a tensile if never inflexible whole, while making a virtue of Walton’s premise that a 12-note theme can resolve effortlessly in tonal terms at the peroration: a journey as fascinating as its destination proved exhilarating.

Interesting to note this concert was ‘being recorded for future release;, given the Walton was undoubtedly an account to savour. Yamada is back with the CBSO next week in a programme which pairs Mozart’s penultimate piano concerto and Bruckner’s (unfinished) final symphony.

For details on the 2024-25 season A Season of Joy, head to the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra website. Click on the names to read more about CBSO leader, violinist Eugene Tzikindelean – and the orchestra’s principal conductor Kazuki Yamada

Published post no.2,386 – Saturday 7 December 2024

In concert – Dame Sarah Connolly, CBSO Choruses, CBSO / Sofi Jeannin: The Music Makers

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Dame Sarah Connolly (mezzo-soprano), CBSO Children’s Chorus, CBSO Youth Chorus, CBSO Chorus, City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra / Sofi Jeannin

Weir Music, Untangled (1992)
Muhly Friday Afternoons (2015, orch. 2019) [UK Premiere]
Britten The Young Person’s Guide to the Orchestra Op.34 (1945)
Elgar The Music Makers Op.69 (1912)

Symphony Hall, Birmingham
Wednesday 20 November 2024

Reviewed by Richard Whitehouse Pictures (c) Andrew Crowley (Dame Sarah Connolly), (c) Radio France / Christophe Abramowitz (Sofi Jeannin)

Under the capable direction of Swedish-born Sofi Jeannin (below), the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra tonight took on a varied if cohesive programme featuring two composers with direct links to the city, one of whose works had been performed for the first time here 112 years ago.

Although he might not be so associated with Birmingham, Nico Muhly is hardly an unknown quantity. Friday Afternoons proved a diverting and enjoyable traversal across eight traditional poems – directly yet unaffectedly recalling Britten in their simplicity of choral writing with, in this instance, a resourceful and often evocative orchestration that brought out subtle and quite unexpected nuances from these texts. Qualities that the combined CBSO Youth and Children’s Choruses responded to with alacrity, doubtless owing to the astute guidance of Julian Wilkins.

Beforehand, the orchestra made no less favourable a response in Music, Untangled by Judith Weir, former Master of the Queen’s Music and composer-in-association to the CBSO during 1995-98. Written for the Boston Symphony, this not unreasonably American-sounding piece takes extracts from melodies emanating from the Western isles of Weir’s native Scotland as the basis for a compact if eventful piece where said melodies are gradually fined down from sonic diversity to a single strand through a process of ‘less is more’ typical of this composer.

Closing the first half, what had started out as Britten’s ‘Variations and Fugue on a Theme of Purcell’ received an engaging performance at its best in those variations highlighting specific instruments – in the course of which the excellence of the individual CBSO sections came to the fore. Presentation of the theme itself was a little on the portentous side, a quality which re -surfaced in a fugue whose clarity of texture seemed at the expense of that exuberance when Britten puts his orchestra back-together. An enjoyable take on a timeless masterpiece even so.

Despite its high-profile launch at the 1912 Triennial Festival, Elgar’s The Music Makers has struggled to find general favour – his setting of Arthur O’Shaughnessy’s Ode intensifying the text’s ambivalence and introspection via a wealth of self-quotation such as renders several of his most acclaimed pieces from an unlikely or even disturbing perspective. Together with its near-contemporary work, the symphonic study Falstaff, this is Elgar at his most searching as well as confessional – qualities such as the encroaching ‘Great War’ would duly exacerbate.

Despite its modest (35-minute) duration, The Music Makers is a difficult work to pace and to make cohere and, while Jeannin (an experienced choral conductor) did not wholly succeed in these respects, there was no doubt as to her insight into its content or defining of its emotions. Prepared by Simon Halsey (who first ‘gave’ this work with Simon Rattle some 40 years ago), the CBSO Chorus lacked little in conviction or finesse – and, if Dame Sarah Connolly was not quite at her most assured, the sheer eloquence and conviction of her singing could never be denied.

A fine account, then, of a work still in need of such advocacy for its inherent greatness to be acknowledged. Interesting also that audience response was warm if undeniably muted – as if to confirm, on this occasion at least, the music’s ‘message’ had got through to those listening.

For details on the 2024-25 season A Season of Joy, head to the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra website. Click on the names to read more about soloist Dame Sarah Connolly, conductor Sofi Jeannin and composers Nico Muhly and Dame Judith Weir

Published post no.2,372 – Sunday 24 November 2024

In concert – Steven Osborne, CBSO / Kerem Hasan: Coleman, Grieg & Beethoven

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Steven Osborne (piano), City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra / Kerem Hasan (above)

Coleman Umoja: Anthem for Unity (2001, orch. 2019)
Grieg Piano Concerto in A minor Op.16 (1868)
Beethoven Symphony no.4 in B flat major Op.60 (1806)

Symphony Hall, Birmingham
Thursday 7 November 2024, 2.15pm

Reviewed by Richard Whitehouse Picture (c) Tristan Fewings

Highly regarded for his work with Welsh National Opera and his five years at the helm of the Tyrolean Symphony, British-Cypriot conductor Kerem Hasan’s is a relaxed though attentive presence that resulted in no mean rapport with the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra.

Such was evident from the outset of Valerie Coleman’s Umoja. Written for wind quintet, this ‘Anthem for Unity’ (the latter word in Swahili being the title) went through incarnations for wind sextet and concert band before being expanded to a commission from the Philadelphia Orchestra. Essentially a sequence of free-flowing variations on a theme stated by solo violin after an atmospheric introduction, it emerges in sharply contrasted guises before arriving at   a culminative statement – its evocation of ‘unity’ the more powerful for such overt restraint.

If the remainder of this programme consisted of repertoire staples, there was nothing routine or predictable about the performances. Steven Osborne has doubtless given more consistently accurate accounts of Grieg’s Piano Concerto, but his determination here to throw caution to the wind almost always paid off. Not least in an opening movement at its most perceptive in an unusually cohesive development, then a cadenza which ably sustained emotional tension through to a thunderous close. Building to a fervent rendering of its main theme, the Adagio evinced no lack of pathos, and Hasan secured a seamless transition into the finale – its virile main theme tellingly contrasted with that rapturous flute melody (Marie-Christine Zupancic on fine form), which emerged duly transformed as a majestic apotheosis towards the close.

That Hasan was out to make the case for Beethoven’s Fourth Symphony was evident from an introduction whose speculative mystery was tangibly conveyed, thus making contrast with the first movement’s main Allegro the more potent. Nor was the repeat of the exposition a carbon copy of what preceded it, Hasan channelling its impetus into an eventful development whose hushed transition into the reprise brought a surge of adrenalin no less palpable than that of the brief if thrilling coda. The ensuing Adagio might be felt to lack the drama or heroism of those in the symphonies either side, though its wistful main theme accrued considerable profundity on its successive and varied reappearances – not least through the unforced eloquence of the CBSO woodwind in what becomes something of an all-round showcase for that department.

Hasan drove the scherzo sections of the third movement hard, yet there was never any lack of articulation, while the trio sections had all the ingratiating charm needed. Taking the finale at anything that approaches the composer’s metronome marking can easily become a hostage to fortune, but the CBSO held its collective nerve throughout what was an eventful as well as an exhilarating ride – one fully underpinned by Beethoven’s irreverent humour such as comes to the fore in the tonal and emotional punning of those captivating bars that round off this work.

A persuasive case, then, for Beethoven Four as for Hasan’s conducting. Meanwhile, Sunday afternoon brings an intriguing event in the guise of Bach’s Goldberg Variations arranged by Dmitry Sitkovetsky for string ensemble and directed by CBSO leader Eugene Tzikindelean.

For details on the 2024-25 season A Season of Joy, head to the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra website. Click on the names to read more about pianist Steven Osborne, conductor Kerem Hasan, and composer Valerie Coleman

Published post no.2,357 – Saturday 9 November 2024

In concert – Yeol Eum Son, CBSO / Jonathon Heyward: Still, Prokofiev & Sibelius

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Yeol Eum Son (piano, below), City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra / Jonathon Heyward (above)

Still Threnody: In Memory of Jean Sibelius (1965)
Prokofiev Piano Concerto no.2 in G minor Op.16 (1912-13, rev. 1923)
Sibelius Symphony no.5 in E flat major Op.82 (1914-19)

Symphony Hall, Birmingham
Thursday 24 October 2024

Reviewed by Richard Whitehouse Pictures (c) Laura Tiesbrummel (Jonathon Heyward), Marco Borggreve (Yeol Eum Son)

American by nationality, and currently music director of the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra, Jonathon Heyward is no stranger to orchestras in the UK and this afternoon’s appearance with the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra confirmed a rapport that will hopefully continue in future seasons.

His symphonic output may now be well covered by recordings, but performances of William Grant Still remain infrequent such that his Threnody came as a welcome novelty. Dedicated to Sibelius in the anniversary year of his birth, this finds its composer in understandably sombre mood (akin to that of his masterly concertante piece Dismal Swamp from two decades earlier) and, while there is little about its content that recalls the Finnish master, the interplay between elegy and processional is effectively handled through to its subdued yet highly affecting close.

It might not have enjoyed the popularity of its successor, but the CBSO has given memorable accounts of Prokofiev’s Second Piano Concerto over the decades and the present reading with Yeol Eum Son (above) was as good as it gets in a piece that does not make things easy technically or interpretatively. Starting reticently, the opening movement duly hit its stride in the capricious second theme before the orchestra made way for Son’s electrifying take on a cadenza which encompasses development and reprise; the orchestra’s climactic return being no less visceral.

Wresting coherence out of the unlikely formal design of this work is hardly an easier task but, here again, there was no doubting Son’s insight as she fairly tore through its Scherzo without loss of clarity; she and Heyward then drawing abrasive irony out of an intermezzo which can easily descend into caricature. Nor was there any lack of focus with a Finale whose headlong outer sections frame one of folk-tinged pathos – afforded a cumulative intensity only outdone by the propulsive closing stage where soloist, orchestra and conductor were thrillingly as one.

If the reading of Sibelius’s Fifth Symphony after the interval did not quite maintain this level of excellence, it was no also-ran as a performance. Heyward might have observed the Tempo molto moderato of its initial movement more literally, as his swift underlying pace made for too precipitate a climax into its scherzo-like second half. The accelerating transition between them was adeptly managed, but there was little room left for manoeuvre during the approach to a coda where not even the CBSO’s unfazed commitment could gain the necessary velocity.

Neither did the second movement lack forward motion, though here Heyward found a viable balance between the andante and allegretto elements – its (mostly) ingratiating poise abetted by felicitous playing from CBSO woodwind. Setting off impulsively, the finale rather lacked eloquence in its ‘swan theme’ but the resourceful evolution of its material was never in doubt. Other performances have conveyed greater emotional breadth thereafter yet, as those indelible six closing chords unfolded, there could be no doubting their decisiveness as parting gestures. Overall, then, this was impressive music-making with Heyward evidently a conductor on a mission. Next Wednesday brings a programme of Spanish evergreens conducted by Kazuki Yamada, with Miloš Karadaglić taking centre-stage in a certain guitar concerto by Rodrigo.

For details on the 2024-25 season A Season of Joy, head to the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra website. Click on the names to read more about pianist Yeol Eum Son and conductor Jonathon Heyward – and for a special website devoted to composer William Grant Still

Published post no.2,345 – Monday 28 October 2024

In concert – Leila Josefowicz, CBSO / Thomas Søndergård: Richard Strauss, Adès & Brahms

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Leila Josefowicz (violin, above), City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra / Thomas Søndergård (below)

Richard Strauss Don Juan Op.20 (1888)
Adès Violin Concerto, Op.24 ‘Concentric Paths’ (2004)
Brahms Symphony no.2 in D major Op.73 (1877)

Symphony Hall, Birmingham
Thursday 10 October 2024

Reviewed by Richard Whitehouse Pictures (c) Tom Zimberoff (Leila Josefowicz), Chris McDuffie (Thomas Søndergård)

He may be spending more time in the US than in the UK these days, but Thomas Søndergård tonight made a timely reappearance with the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra in a programme such as placed a highpoint among recent concertos between two established German classics.

Richard Strauss‘s Don Juan poses few technical issues for an orchestra these days – the only proviso about this performance being its almost too easy unfolding, the initial stages seeming suave rather than impetuous and emotional contrasts following on almost too seamlessly. Yet the central ‘love’ episode featured a melting contribution from oboist Lucie Sprague, with horns duly firing on all cylinders in a unison theme ultimately capped by a silence of tangible anticipation then a postlude of hushed resignation – heroic aspiration submerged in an aura of starkest fatalism.

If much of Thomas Adès’ music the past two decades has been of a conceptual brilliance that outweighs its intrinsic content, the Violin Concerto is destined to endure and rightly so given these Concentric Paths complement each other in a finely balanced totality. One, moreover, with which Leila Josefowicz identifies wholeheartedly: despatching its brief outer movements with an energy and a panache so that Rings conveyed a volatility channelled towards greater affirmation in Rounds; between them, the relatively expansive Paths proved a chaconne as methodical in evolution as it was affecting in its suffused intensity. Assured in her handling of the solo part, Josefowicz dovetailed it unerringly into orchestral writing as resourceful as any the composer has written. Those in the audience unfamiliar with it were most likely won over.

Many of those present were no doubt looking forward to Brahms’ Second Symphony after the interval, where Søndergård (above) and the CBSO did not disappoint. Outwardly its composer’s most equable such piece, this yields more than its share of ambiguities and equivocations that were rarely absent here. Not least in the opening movement, its unforced progress duly taking in an eventful development whose granitic culmination set its easeful themes at a notably uncertain remove, then with a coda whose restive horn solo was eloquently rendered by Elspeth Dutch. Søndergård was no less probing in the Adagio, flexibly paced so its autumnal main theme did not override the more whimsical and anxious elements which inform its longer-term progress. Certainly, the closing reflection on that theme cast a potent shadow on what had gone before.

The other two movements are usually thought to present few if any interpretative problems, so credit to Søndergård for finding no mean pathos in those reiterations of the Intermezzo’s main theme – not least when it returns as a winsome coda. Nor was the final Allegro lacking in incident, such as that spellbinding transition into the reprise whose epiphanic aspect was not lost on Mahler. Given its head without sounding at all rushed, the coda then emerged as the ebullient though never grandstanding peroration which Brahms himself surely intended.

A resounding close to an impressive performance, and there should be more music-making on this level next week when the CBSO is joined for the first time in many years by former chief guest conductor Mark Elder for an enticing programme of Brahms, Janáček and Shostakovich.

For details on the 2024-25 season A Season of Joy, head to the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra website. Click on the names to read more about violinist Leila Josefowicz, conductor Thomas Søndergård and composer Thomas Adès.

Published post no.2,331 – Monday 14 October 2024