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Richard Bratby

~ Classical music writer, critic and consultant

Richard Bratby

Monthly Archives: June 2015

Finzi vs Bridge

29 Monday Jun 2015

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Armonico Consort, Birmingham Post, Finzi, Frank Bridge, Rachmaninoff, Reviews, Tardebigge

Tardebigge Steeple - photo by Annette Rubery.

Tardebigge Steeple – photo by Annette Rubery.

Two interesting reviews over the last few days: a beautiful Rachmaninoff Vespers (we’ll forgive then for spelling it “Rachmaninov” – grrr…) at St Mary’s Church, Warwick, and a song recital at Tardebigge church yesterday. It’s a fascinating place – a crumbling Georgian pile on a hill in the fields outside Bromsgrove, whose churchyard apparently contains the grave of the Queen of the Gypsies (we couldn’t find it). We were there for the annual Celebrating English Song series, and a setting like that naturally makes you think “English pastoral”. Sure enough, there was Finzi’s Dies Natalis at the top of the programme, beautifully performed but sounding a little threadbare without its full string orchestra.

But it went down well, and the Finzi Trust put up a good showing during the interval, complete with sales stall. Old Gerald clearly has a enthusiastic audience, and I’m gradually coming to see past his rather watery (IMHO) ideas and find something a bit knottier underneath: though the Clarinet Concerto and the Christmas cantata In Terra Pax are still the only two pieces of his that I’d actually go out of my way to hear. Maybe it’s the whole English cathedral choral thing; boy sopranos, modal harmonies, the aura of damp stone and dull Sunday teatimes that so many folk seem to find so magical, and which gives so much really rather feeble vocal music the status of cherished national treasure. I’ve never really been part of that world.

But the concert ended with a series of songs by Frank Bridge. No supporters’ club for him – the soprano Elizabeth Watts actually went out of her way to explain who he was. And yet – just as I, at least, expected – there it all was: freshness, clarity, craftsmanship, a depth of emotion combined with an almost classical grace, transparency and lightness-of-touch. In a word: inspiration – the real thing.

I’ve been finding all this in Frank Bridge for so many years: in his superb chamber music and his lovely, luminous orchestral scores. Why one neglected composer strikes a widely-felt chord and attracts a cult following, while another equally gifted (I’m being charitable to Finzi here) composer continues to need special pleading, I honestly don’t know. The suspicion rises – not for the first time – that my ears are simply wired differently from those of my musical fellow countrymen.

West and East

22 Monday Jun 2015

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Amati Magazine, Andris Nelsons, CBSO, Ella Fitzgerald, Longborough Opera, Newark Violin School, Simon Rattle, Tristan und Isolde

Cotswold Bayreuth

Cotswold Bayreuth

I’ve been covering some fairly substantial mileage, both physically and in terms of repertoire, over the last seven days. Here, slightly delayed, is my review of Longborough Festival Opera’s Tristan und Isolde: another superb show whose musical glory wasn’t quite matched by directorial vision.

Newark Violin School

Newark Violin School

Then on Friday I was off to the far side of Nottinghamshire to visit the remarkable Newark Violin School, where I was made to feel extremely welcome. It’s a wonderful institution: you feel as if you’ve wandered into a modern-day medieval guild. Part of me simply wished I could just throw everything in and enrol myself. Maybe I will some day! That was another assignment courtesy of Jessica Duchen (whom I was delighted to see at Longborough – an island of sanity amidst all the black ties, vintage cars and popping champagne corks of country house opera: still a very disconcerting experience for me) for The Amati Magazine. Watch this space for the full report, probably next week.

Newark Violin School

Newark Violin School

Meanwhile – I’ve been writing sleeve notes for Warner Classics’ forthcoming 50-CD box of Simon Rattle‘s recordings with the CBSO. It was bittersweet, to say the least, to be writing those in the week when my former colleagues were marking the departure of Andris Nelsons – and a timely reminder that it takes more than just great conducting to make a great music director. And then, programme notes for the CBSO’s forthcoming Ella Fitzgerald tribute night. Talk about a  labour of love…Ella’s Rodgers and Hart Songbook was one of those albums that entered my life at the exact moment when it could strike deepest; she’s one of the only non-classical artists whose name on a CD sleeve will make me buy it on sight. I still can’t listen to A Ship Without a Sail without feeling crushed inside. Anyway, it’s an absolutely gorgeous programme…maybe someone will ask me to review it..?

Pelleas og Isolde

16 Tuesday Jun 2015

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David Pountney, Longborough Opera, Pelleas et Melisande, Tristan und Isolde, Welsh National Opera

WNO: Pelleas et Melisande, directed by David Pountney. Picture (c) WNO

WNO: Pelleas et Melisande, directed by David Pountney. Picture (c) WNO

Here’s my regretfully-qualified Birmingham Post review of WNO’s Pelleas et Melisande. The last seven days have been amongst the most interesting in my reviewing life, and it must be fairly unusual to see two potentially great productions of two not-exactly-everyday operas (Nielsen’s Saul og David in Copenhagen and Pelleas in Birmingham) both holed under the waterline by the same director. What David Pountney has done for Welsh National Opera as a company is magnificent, and huge amounts of what he does is so compelling. And yet, time and again…

But anyway: Tristan und Isolde at Longborough this afternoon. Hopefully my review will be available on the Post website within the next 48 hours.

Despatch from Denmark

15 Monday Jun 2015

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Amati Magazine, Carl Nielsen, Copenhagen, Longborough Opera

Carl Nielsen as Orpheus (or Tamino?): ceiling mosaic adjacent to the Royal Theatre, Copenhagen.

Carl Nielsen as Orpheus (or Tamino?): ceiling mosaic adjacent to the Royal Theatre, Copenhagen.

My article for The Amati Magazine about last week’s Carl Nielsen anniversary events in Copenhagen and Odense is now live. And – after a hectic week and a couple of false starts, I am now going to review Longborough Festival Opera’s new production of Tristan und Isolde tomorrow. So, if you’ll excuse me while I iron clothes, plan picnics, try to remember how to tie a tie, etc…

Birmingham, Stratford and Funen

12 Friday Jun 2015

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Birmingham Conservatoire, Birmingham Post, Carl Nielsen, Orchestra of the Swan, Welsh National Opera

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The Birmingham Post seems to have overcome its late difficulties with posting reviews – so here are my most recent: Birmingham Conservatoire’s baroque double bill, an interesting programme from the Orchestra of the Swan and Raphael Wallfisch and Welsh National Opera’s production of Richard Ayres’ Peter Pan. And the latest of my articles about favourite classical music books is now up on Amati Magazine – not for the faint-hearted!

As for my big Nielsen anniversary jaunt to Denmark – watch this space. Here’s a couple of pictures for starters. And have a look at this lovely blogpost from my esteemed colleague David Nice – who was wonderfully congenial company as we explored Copenhagen and Nielsen’s “home patch” around Odense on the island of Funen.

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Throwback Thursday: Tristan und Isolde at 150

11 Thursday Jun 2015

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Longborough Opera, Mark Wigglesworth, Metro, Tristan und Isolde, Wagner, Welsh National Opera

I won’t get to review the new Tristan und Isolde at Longborough this summer, and I didn’t get to review Welsh National Opera’s most recent either. Same problem in both cases – the senior critics snaffle all the plum gigs (and plums don’t get much juicier than Wagner at Longborough). I only know that – based on what I saw of the 2013 Longborough Ring Cycle – it’ll be extraordinary. Michael Tanner once told me that in his view, Longborough embodies the spirit of Bayreuth more than Bayreuth itself, these days.

Meanwhile, here’s something I did write about Tristan for Metro, in 2006 – WNO’s revival of Yannis Kokkos’ 1993 production. Mark Wigglesworth conducted, and in light of his subsequent appointment to ENO, I think what he had to say then is still of some interest.


“Since I have never in my life known the true bliss of love, I will raise a monument to this most beautiful of all dreams – in which, from first to last, love shall be completely fulfilled”. Say what you like about Richard Wagner – he was a man of his word. In Tristan und Isolde, his 1865 re-telling of the Celtic legend of Sir Tristram and Princess Yseult, Wagner created a love story so overwhelming that even he started to wonder whether he’d gone too far: “Only mediocre performances can save me – good performances will drive people mad!”

So perhaps Welsh National Opera’s Tristan und Isolde should carry a health warning. Conductor Mark Wigglesworth certainly has some sympathy: “It gets inside you, more than any other music. It’s bad for your health!” And he should know. The buzz about this revival of Yannis Kokkos’ 1993 production is coming from a pair of remarkable young Wagnerians. One is Annalena Persson (Isolde) – the Swedish soprano who stole last season’s WNO Flying Dutchman from under Bryn Terfel’s nose. And the other – conducting Tristan for the very first time – is Wigglesworth himself.

Though it’s not his first brush with Wagner. Wigglesworth conducted The Mastersingers of Nuremberg at Covent Garden in 2002. Good training? “No – It’s absolutely no use to Tristan”. Because this opera, he explains, is a very special case indeed. “Mastersingers is a very human piece, with lots of action and genuine historical characters. Tristan is much more difficult – you’re relating to the emotions rather than the characters. Even though it’s shorter than Mastersingers, the sheer intensity that you need to maintain over the whole evening is incredible. I expect it to be much more draining”.

And it turns out that Wigglesworth has, after all, been in training for the challenge. “Starting early is the best thing. I started work two years ago – though you can’t really get to grips with the structure until you’re rehearsing full acts”. But you can begin to immerse yourself in the extraordinary emotional and philosophical world of this huge work. Tristan’s plot – an eternal love-triangle – is deceptively simple. But Wagner, as he wrote the opera, was embroiled in a passionate affair, not just with a friend’s wife, but with the writings of Arthur Schopenhauer. It’s this philosophical dimension that lifts Tristan’s central love story onto a cosmic level.

Wigglesworth’s done his homework. “As a conductor, I have to be interested in the drama – I can’t make a musical decision divorced from the dramatic situation. The idea of just conducting the orchestra is impossible for me.” And he likes what he sees on stage – “I first saw Kokkos’ production back in 1993. It just tells the story; it’s very simple. It’s not a Konzept production, with a capital K”. That’s important for him. “A lot of directors hide behind complex ideas. You can get a bit bogged down, and forget that this is a great story with extraordinary music. Our job is to tell that story.”

But how – practically – do you tell a story that begins with a cry of longing and ends, nearly four hours later, in a quarter-hour musical orgasm? For Wigglesworth, the secret’s in the pacing. “From the very first note, it flows right through to the very last note. It fulfills itself, musically and emotionally, only at the very end” he explains. “You don’t want to peak too early!”

Four hours of deferred ecstasy – no wonder some listeners find Tristan und Isolde slightly more than they can bear. And yet Wigglesworth can’t contain his enthusiasm: “Wagner was just the most extraordinary musical genius we’ve ever had – even more than Mozart”. So it’s worth it? “Tristan’s the greatest love story.  Ever. And it’s told in the most romantic music. Ever. It can transform you”. There’s your answer. Why listen to Tristan und Isolde? Well, why fall in love?


Review: Orchestra of the Swan – Dobrinka Tabakova premiere

10 Wednesday Jun 2015

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Dobrinka Tabakova, Orchestra of the Swan, Reviews, Stratford

The Birmingham Post isn’t always able to post online everything that I’ve written for its print edition, so – after a suitable time lag (you should really go out and buy the paper!) – I’ll be posting my recent reviews here. As per the print edition, they’re all fairly concise – just 250 words. This is of a performance at Stratford Arts House on 22nd May 2015.


Immediately before the world premiere of her new work High Line, Dobrinka Tabakova thanked conductor Davd Curtis and the Orchestra of the Swan for having the courage to programme an entire half-concert of contemporary music. And whether the large crowd was there principally to hear Tabakova’s music or Fauré’s Requiem, the way Curtis and Tabakova introduced High Line – a friendly discussion, illustrated with brief examples from the orchestra – was a masterclass in getting a potentially reluctant audience on side.

High Line itself – a musical picture of the famous New York park, with solo violin (Tamsin Waley-Cohen, making a sumptuous sound) and flugelhorn (Hugh Davies, relaxed and effortlessly jazzy) – drew a warm response. Distantly evoking Copland’s Quiet City, it’s an attractive score, perhaps slightly longer than its material could sustain, but nonetheless a strong contender for pole position in the not-exactly-crowded field of concertos for violin and flugelhorn.

Earlier we’d heard Tabakova’s Centuries of Meditations, a choral setting of Thomas Traherne originally composed for the 2012 Hereford Three Choirs Festival. Like John Adams in Harmonium, Tabakova generates a slowly-building sense of rapture over shimmering minimalist figuration. The excellent Orchestra of the Swan Chamber Choir sang with glowing fervour.

They brought the same conviction and beauty of sound to Fauré’s Requiem, in its original, viola-led scoring for chamber orchestra. Simon Oberst and Naomi Berry took the solos from within the choir: Berry’s dark-hued soprano and expressive vibrato made the Pie Jesu a more emotionally-charged experience than we’re used to. Slightly more nuanced phrasing from the orchestra might have lifted this performance from highly enjoyable to truly memorable.

Happy 150th birthday, Carl Nielsen.

09 Tuesday Jun 2015

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Carl Nielsen, Copenhagen

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…and I’m fortunate enough to be spending it with a terrific group of colleagues in Copenhagen itself, on assignment for The Birmingham Post and The Amati Magazine. We’ve heard a rehearsal of the 4th Symphony with the Danish National Symphony Orchestra in its stunning new concert hall, been shown round Nielsen’s old stamping-ground at the Royal Theatre by the wonderfully friendly and knowledgeable Michael Schonwandt, and tonight it’s David Pountney’s new production of Saul and David at the opera. Off to the great man’s birthplace near Odense tomorrow.

Full reports follow presently. Meanwhile the sky is blue, the Carlsberg is ice-cool and here’s the birthday boy himself in the foyer of the old Royal Theatre, looking remarkably spry at 150.

Review: Sinfonia of Birmingham & Michael Seal

05 Friday Jun 2015

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Birmingham Post, Michael Seal, Reviews, Sinfonia of Birmingham

The Birmingham Post isn’t always able to post online everything that I’ve written for its print edition, so – after a suitable time lag (you should really go out and buy the paper!) – I’ll be posting my recent reviews here. As per the print edition, they’re all fairly concise – just 250 words. This is of a performance at Sutton Coldfield Town Hall on 18 May 2015.


There’s more than one great conductor / orchestra partnership in Birmingham. Michael Seal has been principal conductor of the Sinfonia of Birmingham since 2002, and they’ve grown together. To hear them is to experience something that’s rare even with professional orchestras: a conductor who knows exactly how to get the best from his orchestra, and a band that knows exactly how to respond. We’ve heard things from this team at Sutton Coldfield that, for pure musicality and communicative power, have far outstripped certain big-name concerts at Symphony Hall.

Those thoughts followed naturally from a performance of Nielsen’s Four Temperaments symphony that seemed to make every one of those points: taut, powerful and ebullient, yet with moments both of lyrical sweetness and real danger. Seal found space for detail, and to let his players sing (the Sinfonia has a wonderfully characterful woodwind section) while still maintaining the long line of the symphony’s architecture and propelling the music forward. The third, “melancholic”, movement grew imperceptibly from expressive oboe and cor anglais solos to two positively volcanic climaxes: the Sinfonia’s low brass made the floor shake.

Earlier, we’d heard violinist Charlotte Moseley in Tchaikovsky’s Violin Concerto; an accomplished, energetic performance with a big heart – the tone of her lower strings as she duetted with the clarinet in the Canzonetta was particularly treasurable. And Sibelius’ Finlandia grew as if in one single phrase from snarling opening to defiant finish. The last time we heard it done so convincingly, the conductor was Sakari Oramo.

Throwback Thursday: To slate or not to slate?

04 Thursday Jun 2015

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Lichfield Mercury, Reviews

This is a review I wrote for the Lichfield Mercury in 2009 – a guitar recital by someone who billed himself as a seasoned pro. Within a few minutes it became clear that he was nothing of the sort. I can only assume he’d hired the venue as a vanity project, perhaps with the encouragement of well-meaning friends. The only thing that made it bearable was the fact that – to all appearances – he seemed entirely unaware of just how badly he was playing.

I’d committed to write the review, and he was enthusiastically expecting it. (I don’t know if he ever read it: soon afterwards he asked me to be his Friend on Facebook, so I can only assume not.) But I didn’t want to be completely frank – he was clearly playing in good faith, and no-one’s in this business to be gratuitously cruel. Plus, at that point in time the Mercury subs simply cut out any negative comments. This is what I wrote in the end – I’ve changed his name.


Andrew Shilling’s solo guitar recital at the Lichfield Garrick Studio was billed as “From Paris to Buenos Aires”. Beginning in Napoleonic Paris, the programme finished in the twentieth century with two preludes and a Choro by Heitor Villa-Lobos, taking in Tarrega’s evergreen Recuerdos de la Alhambra along the way. It looked an attractive evening – on paper, at least.

The reality was toe-curlingly different.  From the very first notes of the first work – Antonio Nava’s four winsome “Seasons” sonatas – it was clear that something was badly wrong. Halting, fumbling, head buried in the score, Mr Shilling played as if he was seeing these pieces for the first time. Pushing on at a near-uniform volume and tempo, his performances of Ferdinando Carulli’s Solo Op.20 and Dionisio Aguado’s Fandango Varié were so garbled as to be unrecognisable.

Mr Shilling seemed slightly more at ease after the interval, and there were occasional flashes of confidence – even character – in his performance of Máximo Pujol’s first Suite del Plata. But even this was disfigured by the same faults that marred almost every bar of this concert: mis-struck chords, faulty tuning, trapped strings buzzing harshly, and a sense of rhythm that was vague to the point of non-existence. Quite simply, and with the best will in the world, this was not the performance of a professional artist – or even a competent amateur.

It was hard to know what to think, though the (roughly) one third of the audience who left at the interval had obviously made up its mind. The most charitable interpretation is that Mr Shilling was suffering from nerves. The sensation of fingers suddenly ceasing to obey mid-performance; of what went right in rehearsal inexplicably going wrong, is sickening for an artist, and no-one who’s ever performed in public would treat it lightly.

Nonetheless, a professional musician needs to confront and overcome this problem before they step on stage. Mr Shilling is by all accounts a well-respected guitar teacher, and his love for his instrument seems sincere. But this performance should never have been put in front of a paying audience in a professional venue.

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