Tag Archives: Symphony Hall

In concert – Katie Trethewey, University of Birmingham Voices, CBSO Chorus & Orchestra / Ludovic Morlot: John Luther Adams – Vespers of the Blessed Earth; Sibelius

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Katie Tretheway (soprano), CBSO Chorus, University of Birmingham Voices, City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra / Ludovic Morlot

John Luther Adams Vespers of the Blessed Earth (2021) [CBSO co-commission: UK premiere]
Sibelius Symphony no.2 in D major Op.43 (1901-02)

Symphony Hall, Birmingham
Thursday 9 May 2024

Reviewed by Richard Whitehouse

Almost eight years ago, the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra and Ludovic Morlot gave the UK premiere of John Luther Adams’ Become Ocean. Tonight they, with the CBSO Chorus and University of Birmingham Voices, gave that of his most recent large-scale work.

It may have been obliquely inspired by Monteverdi, but Vespers of the Blessed Earth is very much a humanist response to those ecological challenges of the present and, to this end, its texts have a concreteness and functionality which is wholly at the service of the music. Thus A Brief Descent into Deep Time sets words as depict the (reverse) geological evolution of the Grand Canyon, its emotional matter-of-factness in contrast to A Weeping of Doves with its unaccompanied setting of the call of the Papuan fruit dove in what is one of Adams’ most ravishing inspirations. Hardly less affecting is Night-Shining Clouds – an interlude, in the form of a chaconne, for strings that follows what the composer calls a ‘sub-harmonic’ series with its slowly spiralling descent to the depths for a graphic evocation of cloudly pollutants.

The fourth and climactic section, Litanies of the Sixth Extinction divides the choruses into four parts which between them chant the names of species in the process of or likely to face extinction – closing ominously with Homo Sapiens. It was here that an antiphonal placing of strings and percussion, along with choirs of woodwind and brass placed along either side of the upper circle, came into its own but, typically for Adams, the effect was one of cumulative if not intensifying emotion. Aria of the Ghost Bird followed with its transcribed rendering of the call from the now-extinct Kaua’i O’ō, tonight taken by Katie Tretheway (above) in what was a finale of the gentlest eloquence. It duly remained for offstage flute and chimes, here placed up in the grand tier, to see this inconsistent while always absorbing work to its wistful close.

In his thoughtful introductory remarks, Morlot spoke of the appositeness when juxtaposing Adams with Sibelius and the latter’s Second Symphony, which followed the interval, made his point admirably. Once the most popular such piece by Sibelius (and, indeed, of the last century), latter-day performances too often fight shy of its innate rhetoric or overt emotion. Without being disengaged, this account succeeded because of its methodical trajectory, not least a first movement whose restraint was never at the expense of its overall incisiveness.

With its stark contrast between conflict and consolation, the slow movement can easily fall into overkill but not here – Morlot evincing a keen sense of cohesion through to its baleful ending. The scherzo likewise secured keen cohesion from its alternate energy and raptness, then its surging transition into the finale brought an emotional frisson maintained through to an apotheosis whose grandeur never felt self-conscious or overbearing. Whether the triumph expressed is cultural or personal, the underlying essence of its affirmation was not in doubt.

It certainly set the seal on a memorable evening – one that confirmed the undoubted rapport between orchestra and conductor, while bridging the conceptual divide and almost 120 years between these pieces. Hopefully the CBSO and Morlot will be working together again soon.

Click on the link to read more on the current CBSO concert season, and on the names for more on soprano Katie Trethewey, conductor Ludovic Morlot, the University of Birmingham Voices and the CBSO Chorus. Meanwhile you can click on the name for more on composer John Luther Adams

Published post no.2,203 – Saturday 8 June 2024

In concert – Mark Bebbington, Czech National Symphony Orchestra / Steven Mercurio: Delius, Beethoven, Smetana & Dvořák @ Symphony Hall, Birmingham

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Mark Bebbington (piano, below), Czech National Symphony Orchestra / Steven Mercurio

Delius The Walk to the Paradise Garden (1906)
Beethoven Piano Concerto no.5 in E flat Op.73 ‘Emperor’ (1809)
Smetana Má vlast – Vltava (1874)
Dvořák Symphony no.8 in G major Op.88 (1889)

Symphony Hall, Birmingham
Tuesday 21 May 2024

Reviewed by Richard Whitehouse

Although it might not see the number of visiting orchestras that it once did, Symphony Hall still hosts a number of such concerts and the season’s representation ended tonight with this welcome appearance by the Czech National Symphony Orchestra and music director Steven Mercurio.

Opening with Delius’ The Walk to the Paradise Garden (from his opera A Village Romeo and Juliet) found these players evincing real affinity with its powerful if elusive idiom, Mercurio securing a poetic response from the woodwind and no mean ardour during its climactic stages.

Despite coming from and being based in or around Birmingham for most of his career, Mark Bebbington (above) is less known locally than he might be and his account of Beethoven’s Emperor Concerto confirmed a sure grasp of its expansive formal structure, with his secure and never inflexible technique more than equal to its pianistic demands. After those commanding initial exchanges, the initial Allegro felt just a little under-characterized until hitting its stride in the development; from where this reading proceeded with tangible conviction through to an agile ‘anti-cadenza’ then combative coda. The Adagio’s winsome variations could have had greater inner rapture, yet the eloquence of Bebbington’s response was not in doubt while the hushed transition into the Rondo produced an emotional frisson as carried through this finale overall.

Throughout the movement, Bebbington’s scintillating pianism duly galvanized the CNSO into a forthright response right up to the life-affirming close – after which, he acknowledged the enthusiastic applause with his limpid take on Chopin’s Nocturne (no.20) in C sharp minor.

Following the interval, Czech music not unreasonably took centre-stage. The players might have been surprised by reference to the ‘Moldau’, but Mercurio directed a fluent Vltava with such passages as its wedding dance or traversal of St John’s Rapids nothing if not evocative.

Having been at the helm of the CNSO since March 2019 (in succession to the much-missed Libor Pešek), Mercurio has certainly put his own stamp on its repertoire and presentation. He gave an account of Dvořák’s Eighth Symphony (sometimes referred to as the ‘English’ due to being published by Novello, but actually the most Czech-sounding of his mature symphonies) that, if affording few revelations, underlined its structural innovations as surely as its melodic immediacy. The opening Allegro made a virtue out of eliding the customary formal divisions on route to a resounding peroration, then the Adagio was even finer for the way that its pathos and grandeur were melded into a seamless and methodical yet cumulative design; one where the composer’s Romantic instincts and his Classical inclinations find especially potent accord.

The lilting Allegretto sees Dvořák at its most felicitous – Mercurio aptly taking its boisterous pay-off as a lead-in to the final Allegro, with its variations on an easeful theme for the strings that ingeniously shadow the outline of a sonata design prior to a coda of headlong brilliance.

Conductor and orchestra duly responded with two encores – a rhythmically incisive piece by Iranian-Canadian composer Iman Habibi, then a bossa nova as gave first trumpet and CSNO co-founder Jan Hasenöhrl the spotlight and brought the whole evening gently down to earth.

Click on the names to read more about the Czech National Symphony Orchestra, conductor Steven Mercurio, pianist Mark Bebbington and composer / pianist Iman Habibi

Published post no.2,186 – Wednesday 22 May 2024

In concert – CBSO Chorus & Orchestra / Joshua Weilerstein: Haas, Bernstein, Shaw & Dvořak

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Michael Mulroy (treble), CBSO Chorus, City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra / Joshua Weilerstein

Haas Study for Strings (1943)
Bernstein Chichester Psalms (1965)
Shaw Music in Common Time (2014)
Dvořak Symphony no.9 in E minor Op.95 ‘From the New World’ (1893)

Symphony Hall, Birmingham
Wednesday 15 May 2024

Reviewed by Richard Whitehouse Picture (c) Yuri Pires Tavares

In recent seasons, Joshua Weilerstein has presided over several of the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra’s most thought-provoking concerts and tonight’s programme was no exception in its potent mix of the recent and unfamiliar, alongside a symphonic evergreen.

It was thanks to the conductor and Auschwitz survivor Karel Ančerl that Study for Strings by Pavel Haas survived its immediate context, as propaganda for a Nazi documentary on cultural activity at the Theresienstadt transit-camp, to become one of this composer’s defining works. Felicitously combining Czech folk music with traditional Jewish inflections and (in its central section) more expressionist undertones, alongside a compact and quasi-symphonic design, it is a potent indication as to where post-war Czech music might conceivably have been headed.

It duly brought a vivid and energetic response from the CBSO strings, who were then joined by brass and percussion in Bernstein’s Chichester Psalms. Commissioned by the Dean of the city’s cathedral, it enabled the composer to pull together a number of earlier or aborted ideas in three Psalm-settings given focus by being heard in Hebrew translation with an authentic (if impractical as regards the percussion) scoring. Weilerstein drew the requisite verve from its initial setting, and if Michael Mulroy seemed tentative in its successor (discreet amplification might have helped), the contrast between his plaintiveness and edginess of the male-chorus interludes was pertinently drawn. Its anguished prelude for strings powerfully rendered, the final setting had an affecting eloquence through to the serene unaccompanied closing chorus.

After the interval, the CBSO Chorus was heard in rather more restrained guise with Music in Common Time by Caroline Shaw. Its brief and oblique text might have come from a late song by Talk Talk, but it yet provides the framework for a cannily unfolding fantasia in which the eddying textures of John Adams frame a speculative section with its string writing more than a little redolent of early Penderecki. Throughout, voices and instruments were finely melded in a composition that certainly suggests a plausible way out of any post-minimalist impasse.

What to say about the New World Symphony? Firstly, that it fitted judiciously into the overall programme as to conception; secondly, that it brought out the best in this partnership. Right from its evocative introduction, Weilerstein was alive to those many expressive ambiguities in the initial Allegro (a pity, though, that he omitted the exposition repeat as this undermines the formal balance overall), then drew a rapt and often searching response from the CBSO in the Largo – Rachel Pankhurst making the most of its indelible cor anglais melody. Nor was there any lack of bite or (in its trio section) gracefulness in the scherzo; such incisiveness of ensemble consistent throughout the finale, whose rhythmic impetus ensured the coda was not merely decisive but crowned the whole work in an apotheosis as conclusive as it was joyous. In his thoughtful initial remarks, Weilerstein spoke of this programme as being defined by its complexity, nuance and confrontation: qualities not always evident in present-day music, or in present-day discourse, but whose absence is our loss – as this concert eloquently confirmed.

Click on the link to read more on the current CBSO concert season, and on this link to read about the CBSO’s 2024/25 season. Click on the names for more on conductor Joshua Weilerstein, the CBSO Chorus and composer Caroline Shaw

Published post no.2,181 – Friday 17 May 2024

In concert – Elizabeth Llewellyn, CBSO Youth Chorus & Orchestra / Jérémie Rhorer: Debussy, Ravel & Stravinsky

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Elizabeth Llewellyn (soprano, below), CBSO Youth Chorus (chorus-master, Julian Wilkins), City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra / Jérémie Rhorer

Debussy Nocturnes L98 (1899)
Ravel Shéhêrazade M41 (1903)
Debussy Prélude à l’après-midi d’un faune L86 (1894)
Stravinsky Symphony in Three Movements (1945)

Symphony Hall, Birmingham
Thursday 9 May 2024

Reviewed by Richard Whitehouse Picture of Jérémie Rhorer (c) Caroline Doutre, Elizabeth Llewellyn (c) Frances Marshall

Programmes featuring no Austro-German content are rarer than might be thought these days, so making this evening’s concert from the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra with the highly regarded conductor Jérémie Rhorer not only more unexpected but also more welcome.

There could be few more understated openings to such a programme than the Nocturnes that Debussy completed near the start of the 20th century, when the ‘impressionist’ tag randomly applied to his music was at its most relevant. Without denying its essentially rarified quality, Rhorer brought out the ominous undercurrents in Nuages, its emotional eddying abetted by Rachel Pankhurst’s soulful cor anglais while duly complemented by those fervid imaginings of Fêtes, where the central processional felt tangible in its implacability. Nor was there any undue reticence in Sirènes, the CBSO Youth Chorus here repeating its contribution from a couple of seasons ago with a response whose androgynous sound-world did not preclude an expressive poise coming to the fore through the remote ecstasy of this piece’s closing pages.

Among the most potent expressions from its composer’s early maturity, Ravel’s Shéhêrazade made for a natural follow-on. Less a cycle than a sequence of songs, it tends to be dominated by its initial Asie, which made Elizabeth Llewellyn’s performance the more admirable. Not that she ever under-characterized the images of wonder and terror such as pervade the poem’s ‘‘outdated language and cultural depictions’’ (to quote the rider in tonight’s programme), but these were harnessed to a cumulative build-up of intensity that held good over the capricious elegance of La Flûte enchantée, as enhanced by the artful finesse of flautist Marie-Christine Zupancic, then on to the sensuous ambiguity of L’Indifférent with its predictably equivocal close. Rhorer secured playing of subtlety and refinement throughout this memorable reading.

A suitably enervated if never flaccid account of Debussy’s Prélude à l’après-midi d’un faune launched the second half. Distinguished once more by Zupancic’s playing as well as an airily euphonious response by CBSO woodwind, Rhorer teased out the purpose behind any inertia.

Although it could not have made other than a jarring impression in this context, Stravinsky’s Symphony in Three Movements provided an instructive contrast (Roussel’s Third Symphony would have been more apposite – maybe another time?) in its presaging of rhythmic tensility over harmonic langour. Rhorer had the measure of the opening’s movement’s animation, for the most part simmering rather than overt (and some not quite spot-on entries a reminder that this music remains a stern test of technical accuracy), but the highlight was a central Andante whose alternating between the whimsical and beatific confirmed the film-world’s loss as the concert-hall’s gain. The transition into the finale saw a frisson of expectancy, duly confirmed by its remorseless progress toward what is the most visceral outcome in latter-day Stravinsky.

A fine showing, then, from the CBSO and a notable appearance by Rhorer who will hopefully return soon. Next week sees a welcome reappearance by Joshua Weilerstein, major works by Bernstein and Dvořák being set in relief with shorter pieces by Pavel Haas and Caroline Shaw.

Click on the link to read more on the current CBSO concert season, and on the names for more on soprano Elizabeth Llewellyn, conductor Jérémie Rhorer and the CBSO Youth Chorus

Published post no.2,177 – Monday 13 May 2024

In concert – Jeremy Denk, CBSO / Kazuki Yamada: Gershwin, Clyne, Ravel & Mussorgsky / Wood

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Jeremy Denk (piano, above), City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra / Kazuki Yamada

Gershwin An American in Paris (1928)
Clyne ATLAS (2023) [CBSO Co-Commission: UK Premiere]
Ravel Pavane pour une infante défunte (1899, orch. 1910)
Mussorgsky orch. Wood Pictures at an Exhibition (1874, orch. 1915)

Symphony Hall, Birmingham
Wednesday 1 May 2024

Reviewed by Richard Whitehouse

This evening’s concert by the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra may have taken its overall title from the final work, but ‘pictures’ were everywhere in evidence and not merely those ‘at an exhibition’ – not least with Kazuki Yamada as enthusiastic as ever at the helm.

While it loses out to his Rhapsody in Blue in the popularity stakes, Gershwin’s An American in Paris is surely the most successful of his orchestral pieces for matching its immediacy of imagery to a resourceful structure. Encouraging the CBSO to a bracing response in the outer sections, and with Jason Lewis’s nostalgic trumpet initiating that pathos-laden central phase, Yamada secured a response whose full-on expression was offset by too sectional an approach – the music proceeding in a stop-start fashion rather than unfolding organically as it should.

Over recent years, the New York-based Anna Clyne has emerged among the leading British composers of her generation, with this first UK hearing for her piano concerto ATLAS keenly anticipated. Inspired by the eponymous and epic collection of the artist Gerhard Richter, this likewise falls into four ‘volumes’ rather than movements, which also underlines their relative formal freedom. Certainly, the ingenious interplay between soloist and orchestra is a tough challenge which Jeremy Denk met head-on – whether in the coursing energy then yielding eloquence of the opening Fierce, alluring textural overlaps of Freely, intimate, the lilting nonchalance of Driving or cumulative activity of the final Transparent with its surge to an emphatic close that (as with this work overall) was capricious and allusive in equal measure.

Doubtless motivated by Denk’s coruscating virtuosity, the CBSO gave its collective all in a work which (rightly) appealed to those present – the pianist responding with his deft take on the Heliotrope Rag co-written by Scott Joplin and the tragically short-lived Louis Chauvin.

After the interval, a rare moment of calm – Ravel’s Pavane for a Dead Princess given with a studied if never stolid grace, Elspeth Dutch’s horn and Katherine Thomas’ harp enhancing its appeal. As with Fauré’s Pavane, this is ideal music for opening the second half of a concert.

And so, to Mussorgsky’s Pictures at an Exhibition – heard here in the orchestration by Henry Wood which preceded and was duly superseded by Ravel’s. Wood is more interventionist, not least by reducing the recurrent ‘Promenade’ to a stealthy introduction, but not necessarily less faithful to the piano work’s spirit – hence the scabrous immediacy of Gnomus, sombre aura of The Old Castle (Andrew McDade’s tuba balefully intoning on high above stage-right), or fatalistic tread of Bydlo with its evocative percussion. Respighi was probably taken by this glowering depiction of Catacombs with a ghostly recollection of the promenade hardly less effective, and if Baba Yaga gets summarily curtailed here, the crescendo of bells launching The Great Gate[s] of Kiev set the tone for a treatment whose opulence borders on overkill.

Not that this inhibited the CBSO from projecting Wood’s organ-clad texture to the maximum, to the enthusiasm of an audience that erupted in the lingering resonances at its close. Quite a way to end an impressive performance, and a memorable concert, on a day that saw Yamada become this orchestra’s Music Director and the CBSO launch ‘A Season of Joy’ for 2024/25.

Click on the link to read more on the current CBSO concert season, and also to read about the recently announced 2024/25 programme. Click on the names for more on pianist Jeremy Denk, conductor Kazuki Yamada, and composer Anna Clyne

Published post no.2,168 – Saturday 4 May 2024