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Richard Bratby

~ Classical music writer, critic and consultant

Richard Bratby

Tag Archives: Elgar

Review: Gerontius at the Three Choirs

01 Tuesday Aug 2017

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Birmingham Post, Elgar, Reviews, Roderick Williams, Three Choirs Festival, Worcester

Worcester Gerontius

Just before Prince Charles arrived

 

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 (ideally you should 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 Worcester Cathedral on Tuesday 25 July 2017.


There’s something very special about hearing The Dream of Gerontius in Worcester Cathedral during the Three Choirs Festival. “There is music in the air”, said Elgar: and when the very stones of the Cathedral seem to vibrate, as they did tonight when the organ held a deep, quiet pedal-note at the end of Part One, you can almost sense Sir Edward’s invisible presence.

So this performance by the Philharmonia Orchestra and the Festival Chorus under Martyn Brabbins had a lot going for it even before a single note had been played. With the performers located (for the first time in many years) at the east end of the nave, the clarity and transparency of the orchestral sound was evident from the outset, as Brabbins gently blended the misty colours of Elgar’s Prelude.

That set the tone for a performance that was expansive (new layout or not, the Cathedral acoustic doesn’t allow much leeway on that front), but consistently lyrical and loving. David Butt Philip was almost a bel canto Gerontius, and while his voice felt perhaps too fresh for the dying man of Part One, his vocal radiance and sense of wonder made Part Two glow. As the Angel, Susan Bickley had “something too of sternness”, cresting her Alleluias like a Valkyrie – but found limitless compassion in her great Farewell. Roderick Williams was both a warmly expressive Priest, and a majestic Angel of the Agony.

Chorus and Orchestra responded in kind, with the Girl Choristers of Worcester Cathedral giving a gleaming golden top to a Festival Chorus whose pianissimos were luminous, even if they struggled for clarity in the Demons’ Chorus and Praise to the Holiest. But the spirit, clearly, was willing: and in The Dream of Gerontius, nothing matters more.

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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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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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.

And relax…

29 Wednesday Jul 2015

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Birmingham Post, Bliss, Elgar, Handel, Hereford, Longborough Opera, The Arts Desk, Three Choirs Festival

Wagner, Verdi and Mozart at Longborough.

Wagner, Verdi and Mozart at Longborough.

Well, not exactly; I’m working on a range of projects this month including programme notes for the Wigmore Hall, a feature on Mahler for the LPO, new orchestral biographies for the CBSO, and laying plans for an exciting new project for Amati Magazine (watch this space).

But things do generally get quieter on the concert scene in August, unless you’re in London or Edinburgh, and after a frantically busy 10 days, my last two long-range review missions will be my last for a couple of weeks, at any rate.

Longborough: dinner is served.

Longborough: dinner is served.

First was Longborough’s final show of the season: Handel’s Xerxes. It takes a lot to make me enjoy a Handel opera but this was…well, read my Birmingham Post review and see for yourself. Taken as a whole, I think it may even have been the most completely successful Longborough production (on all fronts) of the three I’ve seen this year. Longborough is like a little corner of operatic Eden: I’m going to miss that place (and not just for the people-watching and the picnics!)

Longborough - last night of the season.

Longborough – last night of the season.

And then on Monday, to Hereford, for the 300th Three Choirs Festival and a performance of Arthur Bliss’s choral symphony / war requiem Morning Heroes. A rarity like this makes a 180 mile round trip worth while; especially when the work is itself so noble, and the performance so committed. My review for The Arts Desk is here.

Elgar in Hereford.

Elgar in Hereford.

Out in the Cathedral close, Sir Edward Elgar had been suitably garlanded for the Festival week – he looked rather overwhelmed by the sudden attention, I thought.

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It was good to catch up briefly with colleagues Chris Morley  and Clare Stevens (the Festival’s phenomenal one-woman Press & PR team) at the Cathedral. But these long-range reviews can be lonely affairs, so I’d taken Bliss’s memoirs As I Remember along with me for the trip. And as well as giving me an extra level of insight into the strange, dignified but deeply emotional neglected masterpiece that is Morning Heroes itself, this meant that I had the company of Sir Arthur himself over lunch in Ludlow and my late-night pizza in Hereford before the drive north. Did you know he’d received fan-mail from Webern, was a friend of James Joyce, bashed through the sketches of the Symphony in 3 Movements with Stravinsky, and played tennis with Schoenberg? Well, now you do.

Throwback Thursday: 300 years of the Three Choirs Festival

23 Thursday Jul 2015

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Bliss, Elgar, Hereford Cathedral, Saint-Saens, Sibelius, Three Choirs Festival

Hereford Cathedral

The Three Choirs Festival celebrates its 300th anniversary this year, and on Monday next week I’ll be celebrating by fulfilling a long-held ambition and attending my first ever Three Choirs concert as an audience member – a rare chance to hear Bliss’s wonderful choral symphony Morning Heroes. The 300th Festival, as it happens, takes place in Hereford, and I’m actually quite looking forward to the westward drive out over the Malverns as well.

Like much that happens outside the magic circle of the M25, the Three Choirs is much misunderstood in some quarters – to read some coverage you’d think that it was nothing more than an Elgar-obsessed rural nostalgia-fest. That’s nonsense, of course – when I took the CBSO Youth Orchestra to the Festival in 2008 (Worcester that year) they didn’t bat so much as an eyelid at our programme of Arvo Part and Ligeti. The Festival has a list of major premieres (dating from long before, and long after, Sir Edward) that puts Aldeburgh and Cheltenham to shame. Here’s a short article I wrote for the CBSO about one of the more remarkable instances, in 1913.


1913: Luonnotar in Gloucester

When Elgar commented that “the living centre of music in Great Britain is not London, but somewhere further north” he was stating a generally acknowledged fact. No-one in September 1913 would have considered it remarkable that the world premiere of Sibelius’s Luonnotar should be given in the Shire Hall, Gloucester during the Three Choirs Festival; or that the conductor should be the cathedral organist, Herbert Brewer.

Brewer’s commitment to new music was widely-known. A composer himself, he was on friendly terms with Elgar and Parry, and at one point had both Ivor Gurney and Herbert Howells in his choir. For the 1910 Festival, Brewer had commissioned Vaughan Williams’s Tallis Fantasia. And as early as 1909, he’d asked Sibelius – through their mutual friend (and later co-founder of the CBSO) Granville Bantock – to write something for the Festival.

So the premiere attracted attention across the UK. It was “probably [Sibelius’s] very latest work” reported The Times; “at any rate, when asked for the score and parts a fortnight ago, he replied to the Festival authorities that it was ‘still in his head’”. In fact, Sibelius had rehearsed Luonnotar with its dedicatee Aino Ackté before her departure for England. Billed as “New scena for soprano and orchestra”, Luonnotar was premiered on the evening of 10th September. Ackté received six curtain calls.

But the biggest ovation that night went to the Festival’s guest of honour: the 78-year old Camille Saint-Säens, who’d gamely agreed to perform a Mozart piano concerto. By all accounts, Saint-Säens was in ebullient mood, regaling colleagues with his celebrated impression of Cosima Wagner and posing for photographs with Elgar. He was up early the next morning to conduct the premiere of his oratorio The Promised Land, part of a marathon concert that also included new choral works by Stanford and Parry, and Elgar’s Symphony No.2 – then barely two years old.

Parry took the Frenchman to one side, quietly warning him not to expect unreserved enthusiasm from an English cathedral audience. And seated on chilly pews before their breakfast kedgeree had settled, the Gloucester audience might understandably have been a little subdued. But their willingness to turn out on a September morning to hear three solid hours of contemporary music shows that regional English audiences, then as now, took their music intensely seriously. Elgar had a point.

2014 appears to have vanished…

05 Monday Jan 2015

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Birmingham Post, Elgar, English Touring Opera, Henze, Lichfield Cathedral Chorus, Michael Seal, Royal Opera House, Sinfonia of Birmingham, Tippett, Welsh National Opera, Wolverhampton Grand Theatre

Everyone’s doing it so, a few days late, five selected musical highlights of 2014.


Welsh National Opera: Boulevard Solitude I know, I know…I’m supposed to go for WNO’s Moses und Aron, but I can’t help feeling that a really stupendous musical performance – plus an understandable missionary zeal amongst my colleagues – can’t quite make up for a production that basically avoided the issue. (Review here). Henze’s Boulevard Solitude, though…what a score! What a set of performances! And how they all came together to do exactly what this opera is surely supposed to do. (Review here).


English Touring Opera’s Spring Season ETO’s annual spring seasons at Wolverhampton Grand Theatre are a guilty pleasure for me – and a secret one, apparently: you’d think the music-lovers of Birmingham (population 1.1 million) would have worked out by now that with a 20 minute train-ride they could be seeing opera of this quality. Apparently not, judging from the empty seats for the Britten (though it can’t have helped that the Grand’s box office had mixed up the dates for Paul Bunyan and The Magic Flute – leading befuddled first-timers in the audience trying to work out why Papageno was strumming a guitar). They missed a Magic Flute that charmed and probed in equal measure, and, as I hoped, turned out to be the perfect choice of first live opera for my 12-year old godson  (“I didn’t know it would be like panto” he said when we saw it in Sheffield a month later). (Review here) A big-hearted, beautifully-designed Paul Bunyan (Mark Wilde as understatedly magnificent as always) that made the best possible case for – sorry – an absolute car-crash of a piece (Review here). And – thanks to the belated discovery that Cheltenham and back is do-able in a night from Birmingham – a shattering, monumental King Priam. (No review: there purely for pleasure) A tremendous achievement: god, Tippett is undervalued, isn’t he? Quite indecently excited now at the prospect of Birmingham Opera Company’s forthcoming The Ice Break.


Lichfield Cathedral Chorus: The Apostles Local choral societies don’t get national reviews. But I’ve been trying to persuade the Birmingham Post for some time that something a bit special is happening at Lichfield Cathedral (and not just because it’s 3 minutes from my front door). The cathedral’s musical team of Ben Lamb, Cathy Lamb and Martyn Rawles are young, gifted, and ambitious in the best possible way (the budget for the orchestra and soloists for this performance alone apparently cleaned out the Chorus’s coffers for the foreseeable future: respect due). And there’s no getting around the fact that Elgar’s choral writing taxed the Chorus beyond its limits. But the soloists were first-rate, the orchestra (Alex Laing’s DECO) was on fire and the sweep, musicality, and sense of shared adventure about the whole enterprise…well, it glowed in exactly the way it must have done in Elgar’s imagination. Grass-roots music making in the UK, and a living amateur tradition, continues to give us something as stirring – and as profoundly musical – as the most lavishly-funded international orchestra or opera house. (I submitted a review to the local paper but it never appeared in print. Two weeks later a review at three times the length by a writer I don’t know did appear, which I suppose is the main thing, but still…*rolls eyes*.)


Royal Opera House: Die Frau Ohne Schatten I adore Strauss and having missed the last UK production of FrOSch in the 90s, I realised that I couldn’t really risk waiting 20 years for another chance. Having shelled out for the necessary hotels and train tickets, and booked two days off work (in the absence of weekend matinees, the only way to do it from the Midlands) I can only say that boy, it was worth it. I can add nothing to the praise that’s already been heaped on this production: it echoed in my head for days afterwards. Yes, London receives an indefensible 15 times as much arts subsidy per head as the rest of the UK; an attempt to buy a drink in the Floral Hall left images of underfunded education projects, rejected funding grants and decades of shoe-string compromises in the regional arts swirling furiously in my mind. (“We don’t serve Prosecco” sniffed the barman – well, there’s one thing that the Royal Opera House has in common with Wolverhampton Grand Theatre, then.) But with singing like we experienced that night, you can at least hear where the £££s are going. File under “sinful pleasure”. Normal service will be resumed shortly.


Mihkel Poll in Sutton Coldfield It’s received wisdom that small local music clubs are dying out. Martyn Parfect, who runs the Sutton Coldfield Philharmonic Society, merely sees that as a provocation – he thinks big, and never bigger than when he’s twisting the arms of international soloists to play in Sutton’s Victorian linen-cupboard of a Town Hall. Pianistically, Pohl’s performance of Rachmaninov’s Third Concerto with local semi-pro band the Sinfonia of Birmingham was as fine as you’d expect. What lifted this to another level was watching and hearing the effect that an artist of his calibre had on the orchestral players – and the masterly (there’s no other word for it) way that the conductor, my colleague Michael Seal, coloured the music and shaped the concerto’s architecture in one huge, cumulative symphonic line. It’s always nice to be able to give a glowing review to artists you like and admire; in this case, no critical detachment was required. The performance set its own terms (Review here).

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