Tag Archives: Orchestra of the Swan

Review: Orchestra of the Swan

02 Friday Jun 2017

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Orchestra of the Swan

Orchestra of the Swan

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 Birmingham Town Hall on Wednesday 24 May 2017.

A change, they say, is as good as a rest. It’s rare that we get to hear the Orchestra of the Swan conducted by anyone other than David Curtis. But it’s no reflection upon Curtis’s tireless work to say that under the American guest conductor Franz Anton Krager, they sounded like a band renewed. Krager served as OOTS’s principal guest conductor back in the noughties, but this was his Town Hall debut, and on the strength of this performance it’d be good to have him back rather sooner next time.

True, Schubert’s Fifth Symphony and the teenage Mozart’s Third Violin Concerto aren’t the stuff of which ovations are made. Still less, the symphony formerly known as Mozart’s 37th – actually a work by Michael Haydn to which Mozart, for reasons known only to himself, added a short introduction. Under Krager, OOTS played it in big, buoyant phrases, propelled by buccaneering horns and a real feeling for this underrated music’s ebullient personality.

That verve and sense of colour were even more noticeable in the Schubert, with some of the most stylish playing I’ve heard from OOTS. Krager brought out the shadows in this usually sunny symphony, letting woodwind lines sing through the texture, and weighting the stormier string passages towards the basses to generate a powerful momentum. It all went with a terrific swing, as did Jennifer Pike’s larger-than-life account of the concerto – delivered by Pike with a glinting tone and a series of brilliant, startlingly Romantic cadenzas. Krager and the OOTS were more than ready to meet her on the same terms. Played by a symphony orchestra, these three pieces can seem like miniatures. Here, they became whole worlds.

Birmingham, Stratford and Funen

12 Friday Jun 2015

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The Birmingham Post seems to have overcome its late difficulties with posting reviews – so here are my most recent: Birmingham Conservatoire’s baroque double bill, an interesting programme from the Orchestra of the Swan and Raphael Wallfisch and Welsh National Opera’s production of Richard Ayres’ Peter Pan. And the latest of my articles about favourite classical music books is now up on Amati Magazine – not for the faint-hearted!

As for my big Nielsen anniversary jaunt to Denmark – watch this space. Here’s a couple of pictures for starters. And have a look at this lovely blogpost from my esteemed colleague David Nice – who was wonderfully congenial company as we explored Copenhagen and Nielsen’s “home patch” around Odense on the island of Funen.

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Review: Orchestra of the Swan – Dobrinka Tabakova premiere

10 Wednesday Jun 2015

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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 Stratford Arts House on 22nd May 2015.

Immediately before the world premiere of her new work High Line, Dobrinka Tabakova thanked conductor Davd Curtis and the Orchestra of the Swan for having the courage to programme an entire half-concert of contemporary music. And whether the large crowd was there principally to hear Tabakova’s music or Fauré’s Requiem, the way Curtis and Tabakova introduced High Line – a friendly discussion, illustrated with brief examples from the orchestra – was a masterclass in getting a potentially reluctant audience on side.

High Line itself – a musical picture of the famous New York park, with solo violin (Tamsin Waley-Cohen, making a sumptuous sound) and flugelhorn (Hugh Davies, relaxed and effortlessly jazzy) – drew a warm response. Distantly evoking Copland’s Quiet City, it’s an attractive score, perhaps slightly longer than its material could sustain, but nonetheless a strong contender for pole position in the not-exactly-crowded field of concertos for violin and flugelhorn.

Earlier we’d heard Tabakova’s Centuries of Meditations, a choral setting of Thomas Traherne originally composed for the 2012 Hereford Three Choirs Festival. Like John Adams in Harmonium, Tabakova generates a slowly-building sense of rapture over shimmering minimalist figuration. The excellent Orchestra of the Swan Chamber Choir sang with glowing fervour.

They brought the same conviction and beauty of sound to Fauré’s Requiem, in its original, viola-led scoring for chamber orchestra. Simon Oberst and Naomi Berry took the solos from within the choir: Berry’s dark-hued soprano and expressive vibrato made the Pie Jesu a more emotionally-charged experience than we’re used to. Slightly more nuanced phrasing from the orchestra might have lifted this performance from highly enjoyable to truly memorable.