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Richard Bratby

~ Classical music writer, critic and consultant

Richard Bratby

Tag Archives: Sakari Oramo

Forward

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Andris Nelsons, Birmingham, CBSO, Forward, Mirga Grazinyte-Tyla, Sakari Oramo, Simon Rattle

Cover Image

Forward: 100 Years of the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra is published by Elliott and Thompson on 29 November 2019, and is available from the CBSO website on 14 November 2019.

It’s been a while since I wrote here, and the only real excuse I can offer is that in January 2018 I was commissioned by Stephen Maddock and Abby Corfan of the CBSO to write a new illustrated history of the orchestra to celebrate its centenary in 2020. It was a thrilling commission to receive, but also an overwhelming one. With a copy deadline of Christmas 2018 – and no relaxation in my usual working schedule – that meant devoting almost all of my free time in 2018 to research in the CBSO Archive, reading some 61 books on the general subject, conducting interviews with over 30 living witnesses of the CBSO story (including Sir Simon Rattle, Andris Nelsons, Mirga Grazinyte-Tyla, Sakari Oramo and Simon Halsey), and then untangling various (often conflicting) narratives to write the story – trying all the while to make it both historically rigorous and an entertaining read. The aim was to create a sort of ‘100th birthday gift’ from the CBSO to its supporters: something that they could genuinely enjoy.

And then, after submitting the manuscript, there was almost as much work to be done again: proofreading, rewriting and discussing the design with my brilliantly sympathetic and patient editor Olivia at Elliott and Thompson; then seeking out around 100 historical images and obtaining the necessary legal permissions – a task in which I was helped, with enormous patience, imagination and enthusiasm, by my old CBSO colleague Maria Howes. The CBSO Archive is full of rarely-seen treasures; the aim was to get a few of them out there for people to enjoy. This sort of thing, for example:

Harold Gray grimace

CBSO associate conductor Harold Gray rehearses a group of management and music staff in Haydn’s ‘Toy Symphony’ some time in the 1970s – percussionist Annie Oakley (left) assists.

You wouldn’t imagine how much legwork is involved – even obtaining the necessary permissions for the cover image, Concerto by Alexander Walker, took us about two months of research. Who owns the intellectual property of a deceased Catholic monk, who had taken a vow of poverty? This was exactly the sort of thing I didn’t expect to learn when I started out on this project, and which kept me, Maria, Abby, and Olivia and her team busy right through until the end of last month (Even the index required weeks of work). Whereupon we all breathed an enormous sigh of relief and I, for one, cleared off on holiday to look at more Austro-Hungarian relics in Transylvania.

 

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Even the title took some thought and a few drafts. Forward is the motto of the City of Birmingham, and the book is about the city as much as its orchestra. The two cannot be separated and both share the same ambitious, forward-looking, sometimes impatient outlook – a subject that I’ve written on before now.

Anyway, it’s with the printers now – and rather to my surprise I feel distinctly nervous. It feels a bit like waiting to go onstage; there’s already been some press and part of me is terrified to see what glitches and howlers we missed (there are always some), just as an equal, if quieter, part of me is excited to see how people react. Above all, I hope that readers enjoy it, and that it deepens their enjoyment of and appreciation of the CBSO. It’s on sale from the CBSO website from 14 November and from Amazon and all good real-world bookstores from 28 November 2019. I may well be talking about it again…

Review: CBSO, Daniele Rustioni, Vadim Gluzman

04 Wednesday Nov 2015

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Birmingham Post, Brahms, CBSO, Daniele Rustioni, Mussorgsky, Reviews, Sakari Oramo, Symphony Hall, Welsh National Opera

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 by the CBSO on 29th October 2015.


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Daniele Rustioni is nothing if not watchable. Small and dapper with a mop of floppy hair, he darts, he gesticulates, he bounces clear into the air. And in this CBSO concert he rocketed straight out of the blocks with a suave, streamlined account of Dvorak’s Carnival overture that left a midweek matinee crowd yelling with excitement.

It was easy to hear the strengths of this 32-year old Italian, whose spirited, idiomatic conducting was probably the best thing about WNO’s 2013 Donizetti Tudor trilogy. Rustioni can shape a phrase and make it sing (who mentioned bel canto?): he way he accompanied Kyle Horch’s creamy sax solo in Ravel’s orchestration of Mussorgsky’s Pictures at an Exhibition was almost sensuous. He takes a tactile pleasure in orchestral colours, bringing out the succulence of a pizzicato chord, and subtly pointing up a quiet bottom note from the bass clarinet.

His weaknesses – well, wasn’t it Richard Strauss who advised young conductors never to look at the brass: it only encourages them? And there was the strange, frustrating business of a Brahms Violin Concerto that never quite sounded at ease: fidgety, foursquare and punctuated by noisy blasts. Soloist Vadim Gluzman’s wiry tone and workmanlike delivery probably didn’t help, though it was noticeable that even in the Dvorak, Rustioni was cheerfully summoning up the kind of fortissimos that Sakari Oramo used to save for the end of Mahler symphonies.

But it was hard not to thrill to the jangling, tingling conclusion of Rustioni’s Pictures at an Exhibition, or to enjoy the full-fat low string sound of Samuel Goldenberg and Schmuyle, and the way Rustioni made Gnomus dance. To experience this kind of freshness and verve in such a familiar warhorse is reason enough to hope that we see Rustioni at Symphony Hall again.

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.

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