Showing posts with label Brighton Festival. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Brighton Festival. Show all posts

Tuesday, 19 May 2026

Brighton Philharmonic play their socks off at the Brighton Festival

Joanna MacGregor conducting the
Brighton Philharmonic Orchestra
© Fernando Manoso

William Kentridge (director)
Joanna MacGregor (conductor)


8pm, Sunday 17 May 2026

★★★★




Shostakovich, Dmitri (1906-1975): Symphony No. 10 in E minor, Op. 93

Oh To Believe in Another World
- film by William Kentridge
'Could (the BPO) rise to the challenge of Shostakovich’s mighty Tenth Symphony? Happily, yes they could, with some of the best playing I have ever heard from them'.

'Their skittering race fitting well with Kentridge’s ironic imagery on film of bustling transport and crowds, later skewering the idea of relentless progress with shots of the realities of harsh manual labour'

'Principal Horn Alexei Watkins delivered Elmira’s motif with secure warmth, while the flutes and piccolos screamed the D-S-C-H motto'.

'From the orchestra, we had a wonderfully acerbic solo from bassoonist Jonathan Price, and the brass hammering out that D-S-C-H motto at the conclusion certainly cried out defiance'.

'Neither the film nor the music gave us a clear answer, but the combined effect was nevertheless emphatically powerful'. 

Read my full review on Bachtrack here.

Posted by at 10:00 0 comments
Labels: , , , , , ,

Saturday, 20 April 2024

Classical Music at the Brighton Festival 2024

Antonio Pappano
Brighton Festival is soon upon us, and as ever, there is a great line-up of classical music on offer. Opening the Festival, new Chief Conductor, Sir Antonio Pappano brings the London Symphony Orchestra to the Dome Concert Hall to play Rachmaninov’s Symphony No. 2. They open with Barber’s Adagio for Strings, and are joined by pianist Bertrand Chamayou for Ravel’s Piano Concerto in G major (Saturday 4 May, 7pm).

 

Harpsichordist Mahan Esfahani is joined by Britten Sinfonia soloists for a concert of Bach at Glyndebourne, performing two Keyboard Concertos, and the Brandenburg Concertos Nos 2 & 5 (Sunday 3 May, 3pm). Slipping through the net of the printed brochure, a late addition to the Festival is the wonderful Baroque ensemble, Solomon’s Knot, performing Scarlatti, Bach and Handel’s Dixit Dominus (Thursday 9 May, 8pm, Corn Exchange).

 

12 Ensemble
12 Ensemble will perform Strauss’ Metamorphosen alongside an immersive holographic visual experience created by Ben Ditto. A new work by Edmund Finnis drawing on Byrd, and an instrumental aria by Oliver Leith from his opera about Kurt Cobain’s suicide will sit alongside Claude Vivier’s Zipangu (Thursday 16 May, 8pm, Corn Exchange). Then The Heath Quartet will be in the glorious Music Room at the Royal Pavilion to play Haydn, Korngold, Lyadov and Henriëtte Bosmans (Wednesday 22 May, 8pm).

 

Ed Hughes' new opera, States of Innocence, based on John Milton’s Paradise Lost, will be premiered at the Corn Exchange, with cast including Sir John Tomlinson. Texts are adapted from Milton by Peter Cant, and Ian Winters provides video projection design (Sunday 19 May, 6.30pm & 8.45pm). 

 

Danielle de Niese
Soprano Danielle de Niese, lead in this summer’s Glyndebourne production of The Merry Widow, comes to the Corn Exchange to share an evening of song by Debussy, Gershwin, Sondheim and James MacMillan (Monday 20 May, 7.30pm). And contralto Hilary Summers and pianist Andrew West take a humerous swipe at opera in What’s So Great About Opera? (Wednesday 8 May, 6pm, Studio Theatre). 

 

The Brighton Festival Youth Choir, conducted by Juliette Pochin, perform Cecilia McDowall’s cantata, The Girl from Aleppo (Saturday 11 May, 6pm, All Saints, Hove). For more on this piece, I reviewed the National Children’s Choir of Great Britain’s recording of it back in 2020 here. They are followed the same evening by the Brighton Festival Chorus, performing the UK premiere of Kim André Arnesen’s The Stranger, weaving together refugee poems and multi-faith texts emphasising our common humanity (Saturday 11 May, 8.30pm, All Saints). Meanwhile, Brighton and East Sussex Youth Orchestra bring us Rimsky-Korsakov’s Scheherazade, with storyteller Alia Alzougbi retelling some of the tales of the 1001 nights. Former BESYO trumpeter, Alan Thomas returns to join the orchestra to perform Artunian’s Trumpet Concerto (Monday 13 May, 7.30pm).

 

Apollo's Cabinet
Lunchtime concerts return to the Dome complex. In the newly refurbished Studio Theatre, Pianist Hao Zi Yoh plays Haydn, Ravel, Rachmaninov & Albéniz, as well as a piece by Malaysian pianist composer, Chong Lim Ng (Tuesday 7 May, 1pm), then counter-tenor Hugh Cutting and mezzo-soprano Rebecca Leggett, with George Ireland on piano, perform words and music by Butterworth, Belloc, Vaughan Williams and Virginia Woolf (Wednesday 8 May, 1pm). BREMF Live! artists, Apollo’s Cabinet explore the travels of Charles Burney, with music by Telemann & Schmelzer (Thursday 9 May, 1pm), then the Elmore Quartet play Webern and Brahms (Friday 10 May, 1pm). There are two more pianists – first Lithuanian Ignas Maknickas plays Schumann, Bortkiewicz, Chopin and Charles Vine (Wednesday 15 May, 1pm), then over to the Corn Exchange for Japanese pianist, Shunta Morimoto, playing Schubert, Bach, Chopin and Schumann (Friday 22 May, 1pm). In between, the Fibonacci Quartet play Mozart & Mendelssohn (Friday 17 May, 1pm) and the ever-popular Glyndebourne Jerwood Young Artists perform a range of favourites – this year, two sopranos and two tenors (Monday 20 May, 1pm). 

 

Details of all concerts, venues and tickets here.

Posted by at 08:57 0 comments
Labels: , , , , , , ,

Tuesday, 5 July 2022

CD Reviews - July 2022

You may have caught Cesca Eaton’s film, Cuckmere: A Portrait back in the 2018 Brighton Festival, shown with a live score by Lewes-based composer Ed Hughes (b.1968) (I reviewed the recording of his score here back in April 2020). The local landscape continues to be an inspiration for his music, and his latest recording is titled Music for the South Downs. Once again there is a film connection – in 2021, Hughes was commissioned by the South Downs National Park Authority to provide a score for a film by Sam Moore celebrating the National Park’s 10th anniversary. This music formed the first movement of his Nonet, here in full, and you can view the film below or here. The Nonet is in three movements, for strings, flute, clarinet, horn, trumpet and piano, performed here by the New Music Players. The opening movement is obviously filmic, with a pastoral flow, gently pulsing brass and rippling violins creating a sense of calm motion. There is a slight sense of ease in the second movement, despite its Tranquil marking, with its use of repeated notes like slightly agitated birdsong, and the atmosphere darkens as the movement progresses. Flowing motion returns in the final movement, with minimalist repletion of figures burbling below slow moving lines, and pulsing chords in the piano part. This combination of steady momentum and lyrical atmosphere runs through the other works here too, with more immediate energy and swirling repletion in the opening movement of Flint, for example – requiring deft precision from the New Music Players. The Sussex landscape is here again, as well as a connection to a Sussex folk song transcribed by George Butterworth in 1912, which inspired the central slow movement. Its tonal lyricism is interrupted with occasional jarring interjections by the violin, disturbing the otherwise gentle calm. Unease is more prevalent in the final movement, with tonal themes trying to burst through the increasingly chromatic turbulence. The two studies, Lunar I & Lunar II were inspired by Isamu Noguchi’s sculptures, exhibited at the Barbican in 2021. There is a lilt to the first study, with lyrical lines weaving around darker harmonies, and the lilting triple time of the second study is put against insistent arpeggios, and swirling, rising flute lines, finally subdued for its quiet ending. Chroma is a single movement work for just strings, and Hughes makes great use of sudden dynamic changes to shift the energy here, from unsettled, quiet rumblings to insistent repeated rocking between chords, with a perpetual motion running beneath in the violins. The final work here, The Woods so Wild, is for piano quartet, and is performed by the Primrose Piano Quartet. The title comes from a Tudor song, ‘Will Yow Walke the Woods soe Wylde’, which also inspired Byrd and Gibbons to write variations, as well as Dowland, who quotes the tune in his ‘Can She Excuse My Wrongs?’. Hughes’ piece explores the consolation provided by the landscape around us, and he began writing it during lockdown. There is a definite sense of consolation in the rippling piano part of the opening movement, with gentle string lines above. Hughes makes use of rich low piano textures in the middle movement, and the final movement has a rolling triple time, with tricky cross-rhythms and pulsing energy. There are strong performances throughout here, and Hughes’ music is always stimulating and full of contrast. Despite being largely landscape-inspired, he never gets stuck in creating a single pastoral atmosphere – there is a constant sense of life, movement and vibrant change here.

Hughes, E. 2022. Music for the South Downs. New Music Players, Primrose Piano Quartet, Ed Hughes. Compact Disc. Divine Art Recordings/Métier msv 28623. 


And now for two Shostakovich Symphonies from the BBC National Orchestra of Wales, conducted by Steven Lloyd-Gonzalez. Dmitri Shostakovich’s (1906-1975) Symphony No. 6, following the success of the fifth, promised originally a large-scale setting of a poem about Lenin, but in the event the symphony that he produced was purely instrumental. The structure is also unusual, with a weighty opening slow movement taking up more than half of its duration, followed by two relatively short, faster movements. The moods are also highly contrasting. The Largo has a searing opening with brooding strings, and a keening flute, and instantly here the BBC NOW strings present an intense sound, achieving a sense of sadness without tipping over into a harshness of tone. Lloyd-Gonzalez expertly steers the orchestra through this momentous movement, and the climax is full of heartfelt intensity. The contrast with the second movement couldn’t be stronger, with a tumbling clarinet leading into capering strings, with shrill woodwind outbursts, and here it is the BBC NOW woodwind players turn to shine, with adept playing throughout, particularly from the bassoons. The finale sets off at a gallop, and dances along, leading to a bright, humorously crashing finish. Written in 1945, again, Shostakovich had trailed a different narrative for Symphony No. 9, that this would be a celebration of Soviet victory over the Nazis. But what transpired was altogether more complex, its neo-classical humour certainly not overtly heroic. It opens in playful mood, with bustling strings against a sardonic piccolo theme, and punchy brass. Lloyd-Gonzalez keeps the insistent repetition motoring along to the end, and this is followed by a much more plaintive mood in the second movement, with a tentatively mournful clarinet solo followed by gently throbbing strings, and a lumbering rhythm. A typically Shostakovich gallop follows, with bright woodwind and precise articulation from the strings here. Not for the first time in this recording, the bassoon impresses, with a touching solo from Joshua Wilson. The finale has a building sense of energy, and the BBC NOW strings avoid their picky textures becoming too short. Lloyd-Gonzalez drives the momentum to the emphatic full orchestral climax, and a fiendishly galloping coda brings things to a lively end. These are strong performances of these two tricky symphonies, and I look forward to seeing more from Lloyd-Gonzalez.

Shostakovich, D. 2022. Symphonies Nos. 6 & 9. BBC National Orchestra of Wales, Steven Lloyd-Gonzalez. Compact Disc. First Hand Records FHR120. 


(Edited versions of these reviews first appeared in Scene, July 2022) 

Posted by at 03:06 0 comments
Labels: , , , , , , , , ,

Friday, 20 May 2022

Singing melodies and rapid-fire showmanship from Alexei Grynyuk in Brighton


1pm, Thursday 19 May, 2022 


★★★★








Felix Mendelssohn (1809-1847): Variations Sérieuses in D minor, Op. 54

Franz Schubert (1797-1828): Four Impromptus, D899

Franz Liszt (1811-1886): Litanie, S562/1, piano transcr. from Schubert's Am Tage Aller Seelen, D343

Franz Liszt: Hungarian Rhapsody No. 9 in E flat major 'Carnival in Pest', S244/9

Mendelssohn:
'From his opening prayerful statement of the theme onwards, he ensured the melody sang through at all times'.

Schubert:
'Grynyuk opened the C minor with a captivating pianissimo, and the dynamic contrasts here were arresting'.

Liszt/Schubert:
'Grynyuk’s warm tone made the lyrical melody sing out of the rich texture'.

Liszt:
'Grynyuk also took great delight in the jaunty rhythms and cheeky ornamentation as each melody was introduced – I’m sure there was a twinkle in his eye once or twice – before the fireworks took over each time'.

Read my full review on Bachtrack here.
Posted by at 08:41 0 comments
Labels: , , , , , , ,

Thursday, 8 June 2017

Brighton Festival 2017


















Posted by at 05:05 0 comments
Labels: , , , , , , , , , ,

Monday, 29 May 2017

Three Monteverdi 'Epics' - Les Talens Lyriques come to Brighton Festival

Christophe Rousset (© Eric Larrayadieu)

 Christophe Rousset

Singers from Dutch National Opera

Sunday 21 May 2017


★★★



Monteverdi:
Il ballo delle Ingrate
Lamento d'Arianna
Il combattimento di Tancredi e Clorinda

 Soprano Ginette Puylaert: 'Puylaert’s style was more suited to Monteverdi’s music, and it allowed her greater flexibility for the complexity of rhythms and text delivery'.

 Les Talens Lyriques: 'The strings were particularly energetic and perky in the dance rhythms of Il ballo delle ingrate, and they relished the battle sounds of striking swords and horses’ hooves in Combattimento'.

 Christophe Rousset: 'Rousset directed with clarity and precision from the keyboards'.

 'A performance with many strengths, not least from Rousset and the players of Les Talens Lyriques, and it is great to see these works performed here in Brighton'.

 Read my full review on Backtrack here.
Posted by at 04:22 0 comments
Labels: , , , , , ,

Wednesday, 12 April 2017

CD Reviews - April 2017


Alexander Scriabin (1872-1915) was born just one year before fellow pianist-composer, Rachmaninov, with whom he also studied at the Moscow Conservatory.  Of course Rachmaninov outlived Scriabin by many years, but also Scriabin’s music quickly went in a much more dissonant and individual direction than the ostensibly more accessible and tonal music of his contemporary.  Scriabin was fascinated by synesthesia (where people ‘see’ sounds as colours, for example).  Whilst it is unlikely that he was actually synesthetic himself, it had a strong influence on his harmonic theory, together with a fascination with mysticism and theosophy.  Consequently, his music can be hard to make immediate sense of, but then as his ten Piano Sonatas demonstrate, once you join his soundworld, there is much to reward your attention.  Peter Donohoe remarkably performs all ten sonatas in a single concert (well over two hours of music).  There is a lot to be said for hearing all ten in sequence, as they amply demonstrate the composer’s progression through the 21 years of their composition, and the building complexity of his style draws you in.  In the first four sonatas, he alternated between a four-movement structure and his more favoured two-movement form of a slow/fast combination.  From the fifth sonata onwards, he used a single movement, although often still following that slow/fast pattern.  The first sonata was written when he was 20, when he had damaged his right hand from over-practising virtuosic works, and thought it was the end of his performing career.  It is moody and dark, with a funeral march as its finale, already looking forward from its Chopinesque roots.  A freer second sonata, inspired by his first sight of the sea in Latvia, is followed by the deeper, soul-searching third, with its chromatic lines and turbulent mood.  The Wagnerian harmonies of the fourth are almost jazz-like and improvisatory in places, and the fifth has an incredibly passionate climax, with hammering chords.  By the sixth sonata, conventional tonality is almost gone, and the mysterious harmonies are deeply unsettling – even Scriabin found it ‘frightening’ and wouldn’t play it in public.  The ‘White Mass’ nickname of the seventh builds on the combination of weighty textures, contrasted with extensive use of rippling trills.  The eighth is more anxious than overtly turbulent, which Donohoe brings out well, with some almost skittish, impetuous passages, before disappearing away to nothing. The ninth, ‘Black Mass’, is full of ‘satanic’ tri-tones and chromatic scales, whereas the final sonata, which he described as his ‘sonata of insects’, is full of light and radiance.  This two-disc set is rounded off by one of Scriabin’s last works from the year before his death.  ‘Vers la Flamme’ is his representation of rising heat, growing from nothing to brilliance, with the heat of the sun eventually destroying the world.  So, a mammoth range here, and Donohoe takes us on a wild journey through these highly individual works.  The weight of his playing, particularly in the rapturous seventh, as well as his anxious filigree in the eighth, and the full-on romantic flourishes of the fourth and fifth amply demonstrate his phenomenal range.  The virtuosic command on show here is almost forgotten as the depth of his performances of these dark and complex works engulfs you. 

Scriabin, A. 2017. The Complete Piano Sonatas. Peter Donohoe. Compact Disc. Somm SOMMCD 262-2.

German mezzo-soprano Gerhild Romberger, together with pianist Alfredo Perl, has recorded three of Gustav Mahler’s (1860-1911) most well-known song cycles.  Most of the songs present here are better known in their orchestrated versions, so it is good to hear them in this form.  One might assume the piano versions came first, but in fact some were written after the orchestrated versions.  Here we have the Rückert-Lieder, the Kindertotenlieder (also with texts by Friedrich Rückert), and the Lieder eines fahrenden Gesellen (‘Songs of a Wayfarer’).  Romberger has a rich mezzo voice, well suited for Mahler, and can regularly be heard in performances of the symphonies, appearing several times at the Proms.  Her full tones are demonstrated in ‘Blicke mir nicht in die Lieder’ from the Rückert-Lieder, yet in the first of this set, ‘Liebst du um Schönheit’, his private piece for Alma and the only one he didn’t orchestrate himself, the tender lifts to the high notes have great poise.  Romberger gives a heartfelt performance of ‘Ich bin der Welt abhanden gekommen’, although perhaps a little over controlled for this desperate plea.  The ‘Lieder eines fahrenden Gesellen’ have strong links with the first symphony, the rustic ‘Ging heut morgen…’ and the melancholic ‘Die zwei blauen Augen’ both appearing there.  However, it is in the third song here, ‘Ich hab’ ein glühend Messer’, that Romberger gives full vent, with wild anguish and high drama.  In the heartfelt Kindertotenlieder, which draw on some of the 428 poems Rückert wrote following the death of his two children, Romberger again shows great control in the rising lines of ‘Nun seh’ ich wohl’, and pianist Perl has the opportunity to shine in the first song of the cycle.  Overall, this is a commanding set, and Romberger and Perl present a strong argument for these pared down versions of Mahler’s finest songs.

Mahler, G. 2017. Rückert-Lieder, Lieder eines fahrenden Gesellen, Kindertotenlieder. Gerhild Romberger, Alfredo Perl. Hybrid Super Audio Compact Disc. MDG 903 1972-6.


The Doric String Quartet has released their second CD of String Quartets by Franz Schubert (1797-1828).  Following on from the success of the first, they remain in the later reaches of Schubert’s string quartet output, pairing the wonderful ‘Quartettsatz’, D703, a single movement of his projected but unfinished twelfth quartet, with his final String Quartet in G major, D887.  In the Quartettsatz, the Dorics open with glassy determination, giving this miniature masterpiece great clarity and energy.  The final String Quartet in contrast comes it at over fifty minutes, and is a mighty challenge.  Again, the Dorics attack this with high energy, intensity and precision throughout.  There is high drama here, and despite the G major key, Schubert shifts between major and minor right at the start, highlighting the conflicting moods that run throughout the work.  The Dorics give the frequent tremolandi an edge of anxiety, and the slow movement is dark and mournful.  It is only in the Trio of the Scherzo that follows that there is any sense of calm, and the players relish the successive duet writing here.  But the finale dashes all this to one side, and in its relentless race to the finish, the players never lose attention to detail, whilst maintaining impressive intensity and energy to the last.  Catch them in the Brighton Festival, playing Haydn, Brahms & Adams (26 May).

Schubert, F. 2017. String Quartet in G major, String Quartet in C minor 'Quartettsatz'. 

 (Edited versions of these reviews first appeared in GScene, April 2017)
Posted by at 07:27 0 comments
Labels: , , , , , , , , , , ,
Subscribe to: Posts (Atom)