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Richard Bratby

~ Classical music writer, critic and consultant

Richard Bratby

Monthly Archives: September 2015

Full Ahead

25 Friday Sep 2015

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Amati Magazine, Birmingham Post, Carl Nielsen, CBSO, Christopher Morley, Cristian Macelaru, Royal Academy of Music, Royal Danish Orchestra, Simon Trpceski, The Arts Desk

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After 20 years in the business, you’d think I’d be used to it – but the new season has kicked in with a vengeance, and suddenly I haven’t a spare moment. That meant two separate reviews last week of the Birmingham concert by my charming hosts in Denmark back in June – Birmingham Post here and The Arts Desk here, and this week, yesterday’s season opener by my old colleagues at the CBSO.

Simon Trpceski was the soloist, and he was as glorious as we’ve come to expect.  But we’re well into the post-Nelsons interregnum in Birmingham now and the conductor – Cristian Macelaru – was new both to me and to Brum. I have to say, I liked him. OK, I wasn’t picking up “music director” vibes from the friends I spoke to in the orchestra, but I think everyone was still pretty impressed. Review here.

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And on Wednesday, I made my first ever visit to the Royal Academy of Music in connection with an exciting new project I’m working on for The Amati Magazine. Watch this space for more details of that, but meanwhile, I had no idea that the Academy itself was such a shrine to musical history. It’s got a lovely little public museum (why did no-one ever tell me about this before?): Mendelssohn’s letters, Maxwell Davies and Michael Kamen manuscripts, Ligeti and Tavener autographs – plus the manuscript score of The Mikado.

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And the college building itself is a real treasure house of music-related paintings and sculpture. They’ve got the stone composers’ busts rescued from the rubble of Queen’s Hall when it was bombed. They’ve got paintings of the Griller Quartet and Harrison Birtwistle.

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They’ve even got John (or “Giovanni” as he was then) Barbirolli’s baby-violin and waistcoat. And a whole room devoted to the saucy bedroom exploits of Harriet Cohen and Arnold Bax. OK, not quite. But apparently there’s a Chagall in there. I’m determined to get back in there some time soon, purely to have a proper look.

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Meanwhile: my Birmingham Post boss, mentor and colleague Chris Morley – the Midlands’ pre-eminent music critic for well over 30 years – has taken the plunge and joined Twitter.  Follow him on @cfmorley47

Visiting Sir Edward

14 Monday Sep 2015

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Amati Magazine, Elgar, Elgar Birthplace Museum, Sakari Oramo

I don’t know why we had the sudden urge on Friday to return for the first time this decade to Elgar’s birthplace. As the man himself said, there is music in the air, and when it’s early autumn in the English Midlands, that music has nobilmente written over it. The St Petersburg Enigma at the Proms last week may have been a factor, but anyway, it suddenly just felt necessary, like an overdue visit to a very old and dear friend.

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I was last there for the launch of Michael Foster’s book on the Apostles trilogy in about 2003 – when there was cake, bubbly and a speech from Sakari Oramo, but no time to look around the new visitor centre and exhibition. And the time before that was in 1993, when there was no visitor centre: just the cottage itself, packed with relics and with a shop crammed into a tiny back room. That time, I took the train from Oxford to Worcester and cycled through the lanes to Broadheath. It was a sunny day in early summer; they had the cottage door open and the Violin Concerto was drifting softly out into the garden and mingling with the birdsong.

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There was a lot of controversy about the building of the visitor centre in the late 1990s – I was on the “anti-” side of that argument at the time. Arriving on Friday, I had to admit that it’s barely noticeable and beautifully done. The traffic on the lane seems busier, but the lovely rural isolation of the cottage has been preserved, and you park your car in the middle of an apple-orchard. On this September day every tree was weighed down with fruit.

Elgar apples

I can’t quite recall, but the cottage seemed a bit emptier than I remembered, though many of the most wonderful relics – Elgar’s apparatus for making Sulphuretted Hydrogen, the framed signed photos from Henry Wood and Richard Strauss, and Elgar’s desk, complete with manuscript paper marked up by Lady Elgar and the rough-looking pen-holders he made out of branches that he picked up in the woods around Brinkwells while he was writing the Cello Concerto – are certainly still there.

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Probably most of the really priceless relics that used to be in the cottage are now in the visitor centre, where they have excellent displays (including the manuscript of the Second Symphony) friendly staff and a wry sense of humour.

Elgar Graffiti

And the cottage garden – where, more than anywhere in the world, you feel like the spirit of Elgar himself is standing right next to you – is as magical as ever; well looked-after but not too manicured. The late summer flowers were just starting to fade, the grave of his dogs Marco and Mina are well-tended and the summer house needs a bit of urgent TLC.

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But one magical new surprise remained, dating from 2007 – a familiar figure on a bench in the bottom corner of the garden, legs outstretched, looking out across the lane towards the Malvern Hills – which were just starting to vanish in the haze as we left.

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We were glad to see that they keep the hedge trimmed down at exactly that spot, so he can forever enjoy the view that he loved above all. We left him there, and listened to the Vienna Philharmonic’s Proms Dream of Gerontius in the car as we sped back north up the Severn valley.

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Back at the desk, meanwhile, I wrote this article for The Amati Magazine, inspired by my experiences with my own beloved CBSO Youth Orchestra, and a few more-or-less reprehensible memories from my own Merseyside and Wirral Youth Orchestra days. I’m keen to know what people think.

Thought for the Day

09 Wednesday Sep 2015

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BBC Proms, Beecham, Birmingham Post, Presteigne Festival

The Albert Hall, of course, is a joke. Nothing can be heard save the echo. Sir Thomas Beecham was once rehearsing there when the hammering of some workmen caused him to exclaim: ‘Splendid! They’re pulling the damned place down at last!’

Bernard Shore: The Orchestra Speaks (1938)

On a completely unrelated note, here’s my final despatch from the Presteigne Festival.

Double Danish

03 Thursday Sep 2015

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Birmingham Mail, Birmingham Post, Carl Nielsen

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The Birmingham Post liked my article on Carl Nielsen so much that they’ve let the Birmingham Mail print it too – my first appearance in the Mail. Compare and contrast both versions here:

Birmingham Post – Nielsen Article

Birmingham Mail – Nielsen

And here’s the full-length version of the final two paragraphs:


“We’re very excited to be coming to Symphony Hall, which I’ve been to twice, and consider to be the finest concert hall in Britain” says Müller. “We’re also excited to be doing Nielsen’s Fifth Symphony, because it doesn’t involve words – and as an opera orchestra, what we do here usually involves a lot of words! But we’re doing it with Nørgård and Schoenberg – a serious, substantial programme.”

And on the strength of the Royal Danish Orchestra’s performance in Saul and David, it’ll be a gripping one, too. Nielsen’s lust for life seems to have rubbed off on his old orchestra. A challenging concert? “In every man or woman there is something which, in spite of all defects and imperfections, we will like once we get to know it” writes Carl Nielsen in My Funen Childhood. Which is why the best possible birthday present to that quirky, exuberant country lad from Funen is a concert that acknowledges no musical boundaries.

Presteigne Festival

02 Wednesday Sep 2015

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Birmingham Post, Charlotte Bray, David Matthews, George Vass, Presteigne Festival, Stephen Johnson, Symphony Hall, The Arts Desk

For me, the last weekend of August has traditionally been the time when I take a deep gulp, and look straight into the oncoming headlights of the new concert season. This is it, the party’s over – no sleep till Christmas and a range of mountains to climb first. This year is different: it’s an inexpressible relief, and genuinely inspiring, to be standing on the brink of a new season, and to think of all the fantastic concerts to go to, and the seriously exciting writing projects I’ve got ahead.

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And there could have been no nicer way to say farewell to the summer Festival season than with two visits deep into the Welsh Borders, for the Presteigne Festival. Presteigne is one of those small Marches towns that, deprived of its railway half a century ago, has cheerfully reasserted itself. Like Ludlow to the east and Hay on Wye a couple of valleys to the south, it’s acquired a remarkable subculture of resident artists, foodies, craftspeople and writers determined to make the place thrive. Quirky little bookshops, creaky old coaching inns, artisan bakers, new-age bead shops and family butchers, all clustered round a couple of streets and set against rolling hills. It’s the kind of place that makes you wish you owned a muddy Labrador.

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It’s also got an arts festival with serious ambition. The Festival is chamber-scale – the size of St Andrew’s Church puts a natural ceiling on what can be done. But under George Vass’s artistic direction, there’s no ceiling on the quality of the artists who perform, or the Festival’s commitment to contemporary music. Presteigne has quietly become the pre-eminent showcase for a certain kind of British new music which, if you wanted to label it (and there’s nothing dogmatic about Vass’s approach) might be called post-post-war: composers of the quality of David Matthews (who was in the audience last night), Cecilia MacDowall, Robin Holloway, Anthony Payne, Michael Berkeley (who lives just over the hill in Knighton) and the late John McCabe, to whose memory last night’s concert was dedicated. My review of that concert will appear in The Birmingham Post shortly.

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As I said, though, there’s no dogmatism about Presteigne: the Festival opened last Thursday with a strikingly contrasted double bill of chamber operas by Thomas Hyde and the superb Charlotte Bray, one of the boldest and most original voices on the current scene. My review for The Arts Desk is here. The point is, that in this tiny Marches town, these concerts – all of which contained new music, and many of which featured substantial premieres – played to a full house (well, church). And that both before and after the concerts, audience members could be heard praising, abusing, discussing and enthusing over these works in pubs and restaurants around the town. (Oh, and no-one clapped between movements either).

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That’s the nice thing about Presteigne: the town’s small enough and the atmosphere is so welcoming that as an audience member, even for one night, you feel like you’re taking part. I was delighted to see some dear colleagues there –  Clare and David Stevens, who live in Presteigne and seem to turn their home into a hotel for itinerant musicians during the Festival, and Stephen Johnson (who lives near Hereford), with the terrific news that one of his orchestral works is to be played at Symphony Hall next spring. I’d wondered about the Presteigne Festival for years; now I’ve finally made it down the valley and across the border, I have a feeling I’ll be going again.

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