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Richard Bratby

~ Classical music writer, critic and consultant

Richard Bratby

Tag Archives: Mahler

Lobster, chips and G&S

17 Monday Aug 2015

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Amati Magazine, BBC Proms, Edinburgh Festival, Gilbert and Sullivan, Glazunov, Jamie Phillips, LPO, Mahler, RLPO, The Arts Desk, The Spectator, Vaughan Williams

By mid-August, concert life in the UK has narrowed down to two basic locations: the Edinburgh Festival, and the Royal Albert Hall. Having already been to the Proms, I wasn’t planning on going to Edinburgh until ten days ago and out of the blue I received a review commission that…well, let’s just say I couldn’t refuse. Watch this space for more details.

A lot’s changed in Edinburgh since I last went to the Festival in 2004. The new trams, whatever their troubled history, are a huge asset to the city, and very handy indeed when sky-high August hotel prices have driven you out to the wilds of Haymarket. But it’s still just as hard to find somewhere decent to eat when you’ve emerged from a show that finishes at 10.30pm – and at my advanced age, my preferred Edinburgh late-night snack of deep-fried white pudding is no longer an option. Nor too is lobster and chips, at least not every day. Sadly…

Street Food, Edinburgh Festival style.

Street Food, Edinburgh Festival style.

And the place is still as maddening and exhilarating as ever in Festival season. I was delighted to bump into my colleague Anna Picard for the first time in person (rather than on Twitter) and I managed to duck out of the mayhem of the Royal Mile for a couple of hours for an afternoon catch-up and pint with a particularly brilliant conductor friend – bringing the Halle Youth Orchestra to town as part of a summer tour.

At the Edinburgh Festival, even the graffiti is meta.

At the Edinburgh Festival, even the graffiti is meta.

Anyhow – watch this space for my Edinburgh report. Meanwhile, we headed up the road again to beautiful Buxton to raid Scrivener’s bookshop (surely the only second-hand bookshop in the UK equipped with a fully-functioning harmonium) and see HMS Pinafore – it being a basic maxim of mine never to miss a chance to see G&S done professionally. Happily, at The Arts Desk, I have an editor who understands exactly where I’m coming from.

Scrivener's bookshop, Buxton.

I’ve also been writing about Berio’s Folk Songs and Vaughan Williams’ Eighth Symphony for the RLPO, and interviewing Vladimir Jurowski about Mahler for the LPO’s in-house magazine – always an astonishingly insightful and provocative (in the best possible way) interviewee. Oh and my official birthday tribute to my beloved Alexander Glazunov has gone live on The Amati Magazine – a bit of self-indulgence, very generously indulged by my terrific editor Jessica Duchen. Next stop: Rachmaninoff, Martinu and Rebecca Clarke!

Resurrection

02 Tuesday Jun 2015

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Mahler, Manchester, Richard Howarth, Wrexham Symphony Orchestra

1 Bridgewater 2

No reviews this weekend – here’s what I was doing instead. I’ve been playing  on and off with the Wrexham Symphony Orchestra since 1997. I love them not just because they’re a friendly bunch but because they have such a thirst to explore the repertoire – to “have a go”. They play music that excites them, and there are no finance managers, critics or jaded pros there to tell them that amateur orchestras can’t play Mahler 3, Nielsen 1, Prokofiev 7 or Bruckner 5; or Paul Creston, Bernard Herrmann, Lars Erik Larsson, Alun Hoddinott or Jean Francaix. So they just play it, and I’ve had some of the best musical experiences of my adult life at the William Aston Hall. I’m always frustrated when work or travel (it’s a bit of a trek from Lichfield to Wrexham) causes me to miss a show.

1 wrexham

But there was one concert that I was determined not to miss – the Resurrection Symphony, the highlight so far of the Orchestra’s 10-year Mahler cycle. For the occasion, the orchestra had hired the Bridgewater Hall, Manchester – the biggest and most high-profile venue it’s ever played in – and teamed up with no fewer than four Cheshire and North Wales choral societies. Richard Howarth – formerly of the Manchester Camerata – conducted.

1 Bridgewater

So there I was, at the back of the cello section, as astonished as anyone in the orchestra by the transformation that the Bridgewater Hall acoustic wrought on our sound and quietly relieved that after a week of rehearsal, my creaky fingers were finally starting to produce something resembling Mahler’s cello part. It was a welcome reminder, too, of the unique perspective that you get on a piece of music once you’re on the inside, as it were – actually playing it.

It’s incredible how clearly the form of the piece simply lays itself out in front of you as you play – and the details you notice. I was shocked at just how lazy my listening had become. When, in listening to the first movement, had I ever genuinely noticed the passage where Mahler semi-quotes (or at any rate, evokes in unmistakable terms) first Die Walkure, and then Tristan? And later, a huge subito piano tutti clearly cribbed from the end of Gotterdammerung? There they all were, jumping off the page at me as, with one eye on the baton, another on the semiquavers on the next line, I struggled not to run out of bow.

As for the performance itself – it’s hardly my place to say. But I can say that the two soloists, Rebecca Afonwy-Jones and April Fredrick both sent little tingles running down my back, that I’ve never heard an amateur choral society with so many, and so sonorous, male voices…and that backstage, post-show, we were already talking about “when” we do Mahler 8…

Review: Chandos Orchestra’s “Resurrection” Symphony

19 Tuesday May 2015

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Mahler, Michael Lloyd, Reviews, Tewkesbury Abbey

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 Tewkesbury Abbey on 21 March 2015.


You don’t have to be very old to remember when Mahler was still considered a cult composer. Yet here was a capacity audience in rural Gloucestershire, braving the bone-numbing chill of Tewkesbury Abbey to hear a superbly-prepared performance of the Resurrection symphony by an amateur orchestra and chorus based in Malvern.

From the powerful tone of the mens’ voices to the beautifully produced programme book, everything about this performance by the Chandos Symphony Orchestra and Chorale, under their music director Michael Lloyd, spoke of confidence. The opening was electrifying, and the big climaxes – superbly paced by Lloyd – delivered the necessary roof-raising thrills. He even kept a tight grip on the offstage brass: no mean feat in the Abbey acoustic, although the low temperature may have had an unavoidable effect on their intonation.

That acoustic was both the performance’s greatest ally and its worst enemy. There was a real spaciousness to the outer movements; the pounding, dissonant climax of the first has never sounded so much like Bruckner. But (from the seats at the rear of the Abbey, anyway) the woodwinds were generally inaudible within the orchestral texture, and the chorus’s first entry – that spine-tingling “Aufersteh’n” – was, presumably of necessity, far from Mahler’s whispered pianississimo.

But at its finest – like when mezzo Wendy Dawn Thompson’s Urlicht floated out into that great resonant space, and Kelly McCusker’s solo violin twined around it, or in the soul-shaking, organ-thundering final bars – this Resurrection hit home exactly as Maher must have hoped. A noble achievement.

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