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Richard Bratby

~ Classical music writer, critic and consultant

Richard Bratby

Tag Archives: The Birmingham Post

Review: English Symphony Orchestra in Cheltenham

04 Monday Dec 2017

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Brahms, Cheltenham, English Symphony Orchestra, Reviews, The Birmingham Post

Johannes Brahms

JB in the ‘Nham

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 Cheltenham Town Hall on Tuesday 21 November 2017.


“Brahms premiere” said the online listing, and who wouldn’t want to hear that? A couple of years ago Kenneth Woods and the English Symphony Orchestra recorded an orchestral version of Elgar’s Piano Quintet. Now Woods has orchestrated Brahms’s Second Piano Quartet Op.26 to create what’s effectively a completely new Brahms symphony.

I’m sceptical about orchestral versions of chamber works. Woods feels differently, and I’m not going to take issue with that here. This was a labour of love, created over the best part of a decade, and my only serious reservation in this spirited premiere performance concerned Woods’s decision to give the opening motif to a quartet of horns in their fearsome top register: though this was apparently the idea that inspired the whole project. So it’s a case of take it or leave it, and – notwithstanding an occasional feeling that it was all perhaps a little too colourful for Brahms – it was far too enjoyable to leave.

And so many of Brahms’s ideas translated beautifully: clarinet and horn duetting in the slow movement; bassoon plodding under a lilting oboe duet; and leader Tijmen Huisingh sweetly delivering his second movement violin solo as a sort of homage to the First Symphony. Woods’s realisation of the third and most understated movement, in particular, sounded as if Brahms had actually conceived it for the orchestra. Any Brahms lover would be fascinated to hear this orchestration, and under Woods’s direction the ESO played it with whole-hearted commitment and verve.

And if that leaves no space to discuss the first half of the concert, and Alexander Sitkovetsky’s sweeping, heroic performance of Elgar’s Violin Concerto, I can only apologise. It’s just that under Woods’s artistic leadership, the ESO is an orchestra that gives you a lot to talk about.

Review: I Fagiolini at Birmingham Town Hall

21 Tuesday Nov 2017

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Birmingham Town Hall, I Fagiolini, Monteverdi, Reviews, The Birmingham Post

605

Rainy day in Venice

 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 Thursday 9 November 2017.


“The Other Vespers” was the title of this concert by I Fagiolini, and it was a bit of a tease. I Fagiolini approach everything with a twinkle in their eye, and the photos in the programme showed them in Italy, larking about on Vespa scooters (get it?) and generally enjoying la dolce vita. The point was that this wasn’t the famous Monteverdi Vespers of 1610: but a sequence of sacred music by various Italian baroque masters that Monteverdi is known (or plausibly assumed) to have directed in Venice some decades later.

Cue baroque music on a truly luxurious scale. The eight singers of I Fagiolini under Robert Hollingworth were accompanied by a continuo of chamber organ plus various sizes of theorbo, as well as two violins and the six-strong English Cornett and Sackbut Ensemble. Together, the sound they made was refulgent, and glowed rather than dazzled: in works like Gabrieli’s 14-part Magnificat, the harmonies built and shimmered like clouds of incense.

Elsewhere, the ensemble was used more sparingly, and there were some delightful discoveries: an Ave Verum by Palestrina had a warbling solo cornetto (just one) added by the Milanese vocalist Bovicelli – a sound halfway between a cor anglais and a duck-call. Instrumental items, including a marvellously florid violin sonata by Uccellini were interspersed with the sacred numbers.

But everything, sacred or profane, was informed by the same sense of playful inventiveness. It danced, as well as sang, and singers and instrumentalists alike improvised and ornamented their melodies. And if (to modern ears) it felt slightly anticlimactic to end with a solo item – Monteverdi’s Salve, O Regina, sung with languishing sweetness – it was a useful reminder that the real stars here were the composers.

Review: WNO’s The Marriage of Figaro

19 Saturday Mar 2016

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Birmingham Hippodrome, Reviews, The Birmingham Post, The Marriage of Figaro, Welsh National Opera

WNO Figaro Countess

Elizabeth Watts & Mark Stone (Countess & Count Almaviva) – picture by Richard Hubert Smith

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 Birmingham Hippodrome on Wednesday 23 March, a sort of addendum to my Spectator review of the opening night in Cardiff a fortnight earlier. 


At the very end of The Marriage of Figaro, as the Almaviva household’s crazy day races towards its conclusion, the betrayed Countess declines her revenge and instead forgives her jealous, philandering husband. Done well, it’s one of the most poignant moments in all Mozart – in other words, in all of theatre.

In this new production from Welsh National Opera, it wasn’t just the great, compassionate glow that flooded from Lothar Koenigs’ orchestra that made the eyes well up. It wasn’t even Elizabeth Watts’s radiant singing as the Countess. It was the way Watts took the Count (Mark Stone) by the hand and for the first time in the whole evening, looked him in the eye. One little detail, a single moment of human contact – and yet one that summed up everything that made director Tobias Richter’s achievement so utterly glorious.

It fizzed. It sparkled. And with a near-ideal cast, everyone played joyously off each other. In David Stout’s witty, handsomely-sung Figaro and Anna Devin’s sunny, spirited Susanna, Richter had a central couple who were both entirely believable and enormous fun to be around. With her gawky movements and sweet but plangent tone, Naomi O’Connell’s Cherubino was the girl-crazy teenage boy to perfection.

As Basilio, Alan Oke rolled his r’s with deliciously pedantic relish, while Richard Wiegold’s Bartolo and Susan Bickley’s Marcellina managed the transition from pantomime baddies to doting parents with genuine charm. And under Richter’s direction, even the Count evoked sympathy, Stone’s features crumpling with the frustration and puzzlement of a man who’s essentially weak rather than bad.

Sue Blane’s colourful mock-Georgian costumes gave the whole thing the tiniest spice of artificiality – just enough to make it ping off the stage. And to hear the clarity and comic timing these singers brought to their lines (in Jeremy Sams’ translation), with an audience laughing in real time, was a vindication of WNO artistic director David Pountney’s decision to have it sung in English. Ralph Koltai’s semi-abstract sets won’t have been to all tastes, but they focused attention on what really mattered: the warmth of the human comedy unfolding beneath them, and some of the freshest singing and acting you could possibly hope for. In short, if you get a chance to see this production, take it. It’s basically perfect.

Review: Handel’s Orlando

08 Tuesday Mar 2016

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Harry Bicket, Iestyn Davies, Reviews, The Birmingham Post, The English Consort, The Spectator, Welsh National Opera

WNO Figaro

Nicholas Lester in WNO’s The Barber of Seville. Robbie Rotten, I’m telling you.

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 Birmingham Town Hall on Friday 26 February.

Other recent reviews include my takes on WNO’s Figaro Forever trilogy in The Birmingham Post and The Spectator.


Dr Johnson defined opera as “an exotic and irrational entertainment” – and for Exhibit A, he could have taken Handel’s Orlando. No opera can be judged fairly from a concert performance. But with the non-musical drama stripped out, Orlando’s high-voiced heroes, grandiose rhetoric and supernatural interventions veer dangerously towards Monty Python. By the umpteenth time that someone in this concert performance by Harry Bicket and The English Concert threatened to kill themself over love, honour or whatever, the Town Hall audience was openly laughing.

Why wouldn’t they? This was a terrifically entertaining evening, and the performances were uniformly superb. Bicket had assembled a dream cast. Countertenor Iestyn Davies blazed as the antihero Orlando, before delivering more reflective passages in tones so mellow that they almost seemed too lovely for a character who’s basically the ex-boyfriend from hell. In the trouser role of African prince (and dreamboat) Medoro the rich-voiced mezzo Sasha Cooke came across with a really masculine air of pride, while Kyle Ketelsen as Zoroastro looked every inch the magus in white tie and tails – and delivered majestic, ringing sound to match.

But at the centre of the drama are the oriental queen Angelica and the shepherdess Dorinda – and Erin Morley and Carolyn Sampson were ideal in every way. Morley’s light, brilliant soprano despatched Handel’s glittering coloratura with jewel-like clarity and poise, while Sampson’s vocal purity and grace made her the picture of pastoral innocence – until the moment in Act Three when, overcome by emotion, her voice deepened and darkened thrillingly and she brought the house down.

Bicket and his band responded exuberantly to Handel’s every detail, the continuo players swathing Angelica’s entrance in great flourishes of sound, and basses digging grittily in as Orlando descended into madness. The only way they could have served Handel better would have been with a fully-staged production.

 

What I did in February (bits of it)

02 Wednesday Mar 2016

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Gramophone, Monocle, Programme Notes, Reviews, The Arts Desk, The Birmingham Post, The Spectator

Lichfield Snow

Since I posted at the end of January, I’ve written programme notes on the following works. I’ve also published reviews in Gramophone, The Spectator, The Arts Desk and a few times in The Birmingham Post. And – for reasons that still remain unclear to me – appeared on Monocle Radio. This is why I’ve been a bit remiss with the blog. I’ll try to be better…

Albeniz: Suite Espagnole

Bach: D minor Chaconne

Bartók: Violin Concerto No.1

Beethoven: Piano Concerto No.2

Beethoven: Piano Sonata in D minor (“Tempest”)

Beethoven: Piano Trio Op.70 No.2

Brett Dean: Wolf-Lieder

Bridge: Two Old English Songs

Britten: Frank Bridge Variations

Bruch: Eight Pieces Op.83

Debussy: Images

Delius: The Song of the High Hills

Falla: Fantasia Baetica

Glazunov: Grand Adagio from “Raymonda”

Haydn: Fantasia in C

Holst: Song of the Night

Honegger: Pacific 231

Lalo: Symphonie Espagnole

Mendelssohn: Violin Sonata in F (1838)

Oliver Knussen: Ophelia Dances

Rodgers and Hammerstein Gala

Rodrigo: Fantasia para un gentilhombre

Scarlatti: Five Sonatas

Schubert: Rosamunde incidental music

Schubert: Four Moments Musicaux

Schumann: Marchenerzahlungen

Sibelius: Symphony No.5

Sibelius: The Swan of Tuonela

Sibelius: Violin Sonatina

Stravinsky: Four Norwegian Moods

Symphonic Disco Spectacular

Vaughan Williams: A Pastoral Symphony

Vaughan Williams: Linden Lea

Vaughan Williams: Symphony No.4

Vaughan Williams: Tallis Fantasia

Walton: Richard III – Prelude

Waxman: Carmen Fantasy

 

Review: Binchois Consort at the Barber Institute

06 Friday Nov 2015

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Barber Institute, Binchois Consort, Henry V, Reviews, The Birmingham Post

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 the Barber Institute on 28th October 2015.


This day is call’d the feast of Crispian – well, give or take three days, anyway. This Agincourt anniversary celebration was exactly the sort of thing a university concert series should be doing: an evening of vocal music from the reigns of Henry V and VI, painstakingly researched and sung with commitment. With the music grouped to represent different aspects of 15th century court life, Andrew Kirkman gave knowledgeable and enthusiastic spoken introductions to each section. The printed programme was a model of scholarship and presentation: this concert was clearly a labour of love.

What we heard was almost exclusively sacred, almost exclusively in two parts, and almost entirely scored for six or fewer tenors and counter-tenors. The Binchois Consort excels in this repertoire; the singers’ individual tones make a satisfying contrast with each other rather than blending into a homogenised whole. In music such as the anonymous Chant for St John Of Bridlington, that brought much-needed colour to the monody; in more complex items – a Gloria supposedly written by Henry V himself; and the spirited Sub Arturo plebs – it made the most of the tiny flourishes and harmonic clashes that give this music such expressive power as it possesses.

By any standards, this was a challenging evening – and towards the end, the Consort appeared at one point to break down. The arrival of the Birmingham University Singers for a rousing Agincourt Carol brought the first sound all night of basses or female voices, and by this stage it was a welcome contrast. Kirkman and his singers are obviously devoted to this music, but despite moments of piercing beauty, I left the Barber with an overwhelming urge to find a piano and bash out a perfect cadence – just to reassure myself that such a thing still existed.

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