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Richard Bratby

~ Classical music writer, critic and consultant

Richard Bratby

Monthly Archives: October 2015

English Touring Opera in Malvern

26 Monday Oct 2015

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Elgar, English Touring Opera, Malvern, The Arts Desk, The Tales of Hoffmann

I made three trips to Malvern on successive days last week, to cover English Touring Opera’s delicious all-French autumn programme in its entirety. I’m glad I did, mostly because their new production of The Tales of Hoffmann (I’m a massive sucker for operetta composers going “straight”) was an absolute zinger. My review of The Tales of Hoffmann and Massenet’s Werther is here, and of Pelleas et Melisande, here.

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But also because as the afternoon sun vanished over Herefordshire it lit up the Malvern Hills like a beacon, and I was able to make a very long-planned trip to the grave of Sir Edward Elgar, his wife Alice and his daughter Carice. It’s clear that there’s a fairly regular stream of visitors, which, in a small way, is a happy thought. He’s where he wanted to be – and people still care.

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Far away, long ago.

19 Monday Oct 2015

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English Touring Opera, Joseph Roth, Slovenia

“The station was tiny, just like the station in Sipolje, which I had dutifully committed to memory. All the stations in the old Dual Monarchy resembled each other, all the little stations in the little provincial towns. Yellow and tiny, they were like lazy cats that in winter lay in the snow, in summer in the sun, sheltering under the crystal glass roofs over the platform, and guarded by the emblem of the black double eagle on yellow ground…”

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I’m gradually coming to realise that when I take holidays, I’m trying to travel to a different time, as much as a different place.

Anyway, I’m back now. Three operas to review this week, and I’m looking forward to them all.

Stane Kumar: Snow on the Karst

Stane Kumar: Snow on the Karst

Attend the tale of Sweeney Todd…

08 Thursday Oct 2015

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Birmingham Post, Stephen Sondheim, Sweeney Todd, Wales Millennium Centre, Welsh National Opera

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Can’t let today pass without sending a huge TOI TOI TOI to everyone at Welsh National Opera for their new production of Stephen Sondheim’s Sweeney Todd, prior to its opening at the Wales Millennium Centre in Cardiff tonight. They were kind enough to show a small party of press around backstage prior to the dress rehearsal on Tuesday; for the first time in years, I was able to make it and see all the backstage features they’ve long been talking about – the wig room:

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the in-house laundry (lots of blood to get out of all those costumes):

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the famous “Scenery Street” that links all their backstage areas and rehearsal rooms:

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…and of course the bar with its huge multilingual inscriptions that double as windows (and which serves G&Ts with Penderyn gin).

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I’ve long known what a decent bunch they are at WNO, but they looked after us famously. The best bit, though – apart from the show itself, which I’ll be previewing in the Birmingham Post and reviewing at the Birmingham Hippodrome next month; meanwhile, take it from me and just GO AND SEE IT – was being literally backstage and seeing a lot of this sort of thing.

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Well, it’s Sweeney Todd, after all…what did you expect? The blood may not be real, but the pies most certainly are. Mmm…pies… Mmmm…Sondheim…

Nicola Benedetti on Tour

05 Monday Oct 2015

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Amati Magazine, Birmingham Post, Mark-Anthony Turnage, Nicola Benedetti, Reviews

Nicola Benedetti - photo (c) Simon Fowler

Nicola Benedetti – photo (c) Simon Fowler

I reviewed Nicola Benedetti’s “Italy and the Four Seasons” tour (complete with Turnage premiere) at Symphony Hall last weekend. The Birmingham Post isn’t currently able to post reviews online, so here’s the review (below). Please do the honourable thing and pop out and buy the print edition once you’ve read it!

And for something completely different (well, OK still string-related) click here for my feature for Amati Magazine on the Royal Academy of Music.


A performance by a youth ensemble. Tchaikovsky’s Souvenir de Florence, in the string sextet version. A new chamber work by Mark-Anthony Turnage. There isn’t a promoter in Birmingham who could fill Symphony Hall for any one of these things. Yet when Nicola Benedetti fronts them, a near-capacity audience rises cheering to its feet.

That’s the thing to take away from this concert by Benedetti, cellist Leonard Elschenbroich and an 11-player ensemble. OK, so other violinists play with a sweeter tone; and not everyone will have appreciated the glossy full-page pictures of Benedetti that filled the expensive programme. But none of that detracts from the hugely positive role Benedetti plays in British musical life, and the seriousness with which she approaches what she does.

Hence the Birmingham premiere tonight of Turnage’s Duetti d’amore, a Ravel-inspired duo for Benedetti and Elschenbroich that veered from tender, skittish humour to full-throated passion. This was Turnage at his most lyrical, and the pair projected even its smallest gestures to the very back of the vast space. Souvenir de Florence for some reason, came across less vividly, despite a smiling performance and some breakneck speeds.

As for Vivaldi’s Four Seasons, what lingered were some gutsy, red-blooded tuttis and the chamber-music delicacy of Benedetti’s solo exchanges with her colleagues. Baroque bows and a lack of vibrato acknowledged period practice, while dramatic tempo-shifts within each movement made clear that Benedetti has her own very definite interpretative ideas.

And it was her idea to bring on a team of young string players from the National Children’s Orchestra – who performed the outer movements of Vivaldi’s concerto RV.310 as joyously and as musically as any professional band we’ve heard (and with a richer sound than some). A special moment in a feelgood evening; let’s hope that Benedetti’s clearly-sizeable fanbase will continue to support music-making like this after she’s left town.

Quote of the Week

03 Saturday Oct 2015

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Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra, Harry Kessler, Richard Strauss, Salome, The Arts Desk

Zinger here from the diaries of Count Harry Kessler – 6 September 1915:


The man without leisure as the greatest obstacle to culture. The man (be he a staff officer, stockbroker, industrialist, scholar) whose profession leaves no time for him to be alone with himself, and so becomes a man without a soul or a heart. This type is seizing exclusive control of the world for itself. Precisely his competence makes him dangerous.


Salome - BSO - Kim Begley (left), Lise Lindstrom (right), photo Kevin Clifford copyright BSO

Photo by Kevin Clifford, (c) BSO

In other news…reviewed Richard Strauss’s Salome last night, in a brave concert performance by the Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra. There really shouldn’t have been any empty seats in Symphony Hall. My review is here.

What I’ve been writing about this week.

01 Thursday Oct 2015

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Boris, Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra, Brahms, Castro, Elgar, Haydn, Hugo Wolf, Ibarra, John Williams, Revueltas, Richard Strauss, Salome, Smetana, Symphony Hall, Verdi

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John Williams’ complete music for Star Wars.

Elgar’s Piano Quartet and Wand of Youth Suite No.1.

Butterworth’s Suite for string quartet.

Hugo Wolf: Italian Serenade.

Haydn: Quartet Op.76 No.1.

Verdi: String Quartet in E minor.

Smetana: Tabór.

Brahms: Piano Concerto No.1.

Revueltas: Sensemayá.

Ricardo Castro’s opera Atzimba.

Bernstein: Symphonic Dances from West Side Story.

…and Richard Strauss’s Berlin lunch with Count Harry Kessler in March 1915.

Tomorrow: Federico Ibarra’s Symphony No.2, then a review of the Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra’s concert performance of Salomé.

My intern has been no help at all.
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