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Richard Bratby

~ Classical music writer, critic and consultant

Richard Bratby

Tag Archives: BCMG

Review: BCMG at the Adrian Boult Hall

31 Tuesday May 2016

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BCMG, Birmingham Conservatoire, Birmingham Post, Howard Skempton, Morton Feldman, Reviews

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 the Adrian Boult Hall on Friday 20 May.


ABH

The ABH: the end of a very short book that no-one enjoyed reading.

I come to bury the Adrian Boult Hall, not to praise it. At the not-exactly-ripe age of 30, it’s scheduled to be the next victim of the orgy of demolition currently wrecking the city centre for another generation. And so BCMG returned to the venue of its very first concerts for the very last time, teaming up with the chamber choir Via Nova for a rather subdued wake – though one that wasn’t without a few quiet smiles.

Those came courtesy of Howard Skempton – a sympathetic presence in tonight’s audience, as he is at so many BCMG concerts. Ulrich Heinen performed Skempton’s Six Figures for unaccompanied cello from memory, and Malcolm Wilson brought a wonderfully deadpan sense of timing to three piano miniatures from Skempton’s Nocturnes and Reflections.

They didn’t need anything more: Skempton’s music thrives on understatement, and the unexpected ending of his a capella suite The Flight of Song, performed by Via Nova, drew a ripple of appreciative amusement from the small audience. Charlotte Bray’s dark, volatile Perseus (performed by Wilson and Heinen) and Betsy Jolas’s chant-like Music to Go (Heinen joined by viola player Chris Yates) completed a distinctly wry first half.

It all came into focus after the interval, when Daniel Galbreath conducted Morton Feldman’s Rothko Chapel. Part ritual, part requiem, part haunting sonic sculpture, it was an inspired choice to mark the passing of a space devoted to music, and Via Nova sang with hushed concentration while three BCMG players calmly sketched the boundaries of a vast, resonant universe around them. It was beautifully done, and this was one of those all-too-rare occasions when the ABH’s atmosphere and acoustic actually felt exactly right. Too bad.

Review: BCMG Songbook

22 Friday May 2015

Posted by richardbratby in Uncategorized

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Academy of Ancient Music, BCMG, Reviews

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 CBSO Centre, Birmingham on 27th February 2015.


There were champagne glasses out at CBSO Centre on Friday night: and rightly. This was the first Birmingham outing for Gerald Barry’s new setting of Tennyson’s Crossing the Bar – the 75th commission, since 1991, in BCMG’s Sound Investment scheme.

Other than that, this was a very BCMG kind of celebration: no frills, just a thought-provoking and beautifully-curated programme played straight and to the highest imaginable standard. The programme was built around the songs that John Woolrich has commissioned from over 200 composers since the late 80s. Each was scored for soprano (Gillian Keith and Rebecca von Lipinski took turns), plus solo strings and two clarinets. Conductor Jonathan Berman provided such guidance as was necessary.

The format made for illuminating contrasts. Certain mannerisms recurred – icy harmonics, juddering sul ponticello tremolandi – but more striking was the way the small form intensified each composer’s individuality. The wiry tangle of Milton Babbitt’s Quatrains sat between the Barry – a typically deadpan bit of Barry provocation, the text chanted in an aggressive monotone by Lipinski, and then sung over clangourous piano chords – and a delicious nonsense scherzo by the late Jonathan Harvey, playfully and affectionately thrown off by Keith.

Thomas Adès’ fidgety, overwritten early Life Story hasn’t worn well; Osvaldo Golijov’s Sarajevo, on the other hand, sounded just as rich and strange as it must have done in 1993. Lipinkski’s warmly responsive singing conjured up the ghost of Mahler in (of all writers) a Flann O’Brien setting by Kurt Schwertsik; Berg haunted Keith’s performance of Detlev Glanert’s Contemplated by a Portrait of a Divine.

But the fragility and poise of Gillian Keith’s voice in three Celan songs by Harrison Birtwistle gave the evening its centre of gravity. Birtwistle’s measured phrases and resonant silences connected with the poetry on what felt like a subconscious level. Again: no frills, just loving, perfectly-judged performances of music that has eloquence to spare.

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