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Richard Bratby

~ Classical music writer, critic and consultant

Richard Bratby

Tag Archives: Lichfield Festival

Seven days, seven reviews.

13 Monday Jul 2015

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Amati Magazine, Birmingham Post, CBSO, David Matthews, David Nice, Donizetti, Ex Cathedra, Gavin Plumley, Jessica Duchen, Lichfield Festival, Longborough Opera, Newark, Salzburg Festival, The Arts Desk

It’s been a busy week, but gratifyingly, a lot of my reviews seem to have gone up nice and promptly. Here’s everything I haven’t already posted up here:

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My debut feature for The Arts Desk: and what a pleasant surprise when my colleague (and recent travelling companion in Denmark) David Nice and his husband Jeremy arrived unexpectedly in Lichfield on Saturday for an impromptu visit in which (I’d like to think, anyway) this article may have had some hand…

The CBSO and Lahav Shani play Beethoven, Mendelssohn and David Matthews. Let’s just pray no-one’s seriously trying to line this chap up to follow in the footsteps of Andris Nelsons (at least not for a few years yet, anyway).

Ex Cathedra at Lichfield Festival – it takes something fairly special to get me this enthusiastic about a capella choral music.

Longborough

Don Pasquale at Longborough – god, I love Longborough, where a picnic can cost £60 a head and still taste delicious.

Purfling Powerhouse

And my visit to the wonderful Newark School of Violin Making is up on Amati Magazine: my thanks, again, to Jessica Duchen for entrusting me with such a fascinating assignment and Ben Schindler at the School for making me so welcome.

Now, one more Salzburg Festival programme note to polish off – Mozart’s Symphony No.1 K.16 (Salzburg’s commissioning editor, Gavin Plumley, has an uncanny knack for spotting the bits of repertoire that only I could fall in love with) – and then we’re off to stay at the Gellert Hotel, Budapest: four nights of operetta (Kalman’s Die Csardasfurstin), art nouveau spas, goose liver, Tokaj and general Habsburg-era fun.

And I don’t have to write a single word about it! (Though I probably shall…)

Review: Lichfield Festival – The Juliet Letters

09 Thursday Jul 2015

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Birmingham Post, Elvis Costello, Jon Boden, Lichfield Festival, Reviews, Sacconi Quartet, The Arts Desk

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The Lichfield Festival is in full swing – and living just five minutes from the Cathedral, it’s hard not to feel you’re in the middle of something special even when you’re just walking to the shops! I’ll be producing a full round-up for The Arts Desk tomorrow, but meanwhile, since The Birmingham Post is experiencing difficulties posting my reviews of individual concerts to its website, I’ll be posting them here while the Festival is still under way. Even critics like to feel as if they’re part of something, after all…

(NB: No star ratings here –  editors and PRs love ’em but critics hate them, and I’m no exception. If you really do need to attach a score to an artistic performance like it’s a spelling test or something, they can be seen in the print edition of The Birmingham Post, available now).


Is it really 22 years since The Juliet Letters? In 1993, we mistook it for crossover: there was a lot of it about back then. Elvis Costello’s song cycle with the Brodsky Quartet seemed to follow in the tradition of George Martin’s quartet arrangements for the Beatles, or Sinatra’s recordings with the Hollywood Quartet. But crucially, The Juliet Letters comprised entirely original music: the joint product of Costello’s art as a songwriter and the creative instincts of the individual Brodskys. The result?

Well, as we discovered in this late night Lichfield Festival concert with Jon Boden and the Sacconi Quartet the result was something that, two decades on, requires neither Costello nor the Brodskys in order to make a powerful impact. Inevitably, there were glitches: microphones never sit easily with chamber groups. Costello aficionados hoping to hear a slick reproduction of the studio album will have been disappointed.

For the rest of us, though, the rough edges made this music speak more directly – more passionately – than ever. Not that Boden’s light, softly-shaded tenor wasn’t ideally suited to the Sondheim-esque wit of numbers like Romeo’s Seance and This Offer is Unrepeatable.

But Boden and the Sacconis played off each other, seeming to find a shared intensity in the searching, Berg-like Dear Sweet Filthy World, making tone-colour match curdling harmonies, and transforming I Thought I’d Write To Juliet into a miniature music-drama. Boden’s expression as Robin Ashwell’s viola solo in Last Post sobbed out into the vast space of the darkened cathedral said it all: this was chamber music of a high order.

Review: Lichfield Festival – The Magic Flute

09 Thursday Jul 2015

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Birmingham Post, Lichfield Cathedral, Lichfield Festival, Reviews, The Arts Desk, The Magic Flute

009

The Lichfield Festival is in full swing – and living just five minutes from the Cathedral, it’s hard not to feel you’re in the middle of something special even when you’re merely walking to the shops! I’ll be producing a full round-up for The Arts Desk tomorrow, but meanwhile, since The Birmingham Post is experiencing difficulties posting my reviews of individual concerts to its website, I’ll be posting them here while the Festival is still under way. Even critics like to feel as if they’re part of something, after all…

(NB: No star ratings here –  editors and PRs love ’em but critics hate them, and I’m no exception. If you really do need to attach a score to an artistic performance like it’s a spelling test or something, they can be seen in the print edition of The Birmingham Post, available now).


There’ve been times since 2010 when we’ve despaired of the Lichfield Festival. Now there’s a new artistic director, Sonia Stevenson and, on the basis of this opening concert performance of The Magic Flute, every reason to hope that things are back on course.

The sheer ambition was inspiring, even if the end result had a distinctly improvised, “let’s do the show right here” sort of feeling. There was no orchestra (Anthony Kraus and Ian Ryan played a re-working of Zemlinsky’s piano reduction), no chorus, and the sole gesture towards costume was Papageno’s pair of denim shorts.

But the singing was truly impressive – Kate Valentine as the First Lady was real luxury casting. Anna Dennis stole the show: her nuanced voice and understated intensity made Pamina a tragic figure, never more poignant than in her quartet with the Three Boys, sung with wonderful freshness and ensemble by ex-Cathedral choristers Jemima Richardson-Jones, Amber Jordan and Alice Windsor.

Alexander Sprague (Tamino) made up in tone for what he might have lacked in ardour. Richard Wiegold (Sarastro) had a voice of black velvet and Samantha Hay was a Queen of the Night of laser-like ferocity and focus. Adrian Thompson played Monostatos as a sleazy bank-manager, while as a long-suffering Papageno, you sensed that Jonathan Gunthorpe was fighting the urge to give a bigger, funnier performance than this staging allowed.

That was the single biggest problem: the spoken dialogue had been entirely cut and replaced with a hit-and-miss narration by Janice Galloway, spoken by Guy Henry. The Flute is not a long opera, and without the dialogue that Mozart expected, his characters are only half-complete. So it’s a tribute to the musical quality of this performance that we left with smiles on our faces – and a sense that the Festival’s heart is finally back in the right place.


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Lichfield
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