Manchester
Robert Beale
The opening and closing concerts of a season tend to be statements of intent – to pursue a path of exploration or (latterly) to celebrate a destination attained. John Storgårds’ final programme of the BBC Philharmonic’s series at the Bridgewater Hall was definitely the latter of those.In the opening concert he gave us The Planets, a Beethoven piano concerto and a new work by Grace-Evangeline Mason. For the final one, he chose Mahler’s Third Symphony: the longest, most affirmative, most philosophically indebted to Nietzsche and in some ways most challenging of the whole cycle. For listeners, Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
Pete Shelley’s departure from Buzzcocks felt abrupt. When he left the Manchester band which had been integral to British punk since 1976, the other members thought it was still a going concern. Shelley had reached a different conclusion.Buzzcocks played what turned out the be their final show on 23 January 1981. At this point, making a new album, their fourth, was on the table. Neither the band or the audience in Hamburg knew it was the last time the band would be seen on stage. A little over a month later, on 4 March, Shelley put his name to a letter dissolving the band. “Homosapien,” his Read more ...
Robert Beale
Manchester Camerata spent eight years performing and recording a complete edition of Mozart’s piano concertos with Jean-Efflam Bavouzet as soloist, together with conductor Gábor Takács-Nagy, and inevitably there was the question: what next?Their next step has been the four horn concertos, and their soloist is the enthusiastic and polished Martin Owen. As with the piano concertos, these are not period performances – everyone plays on modern instruments – but they are historically informed, and the dynamics and sound qualities of a chamber orchestra are often an ear-opener to the nature of the Read more ...
Robert Beale
Huw Watkins’ Concerto for Orchestra, the fourth new work of his to be commissioned and premiered by the Hallé and Sir Mark Elder, is another beautifully crafted and highly appealing construction.It’s also intriguing in its game-playing with genre, in almost a mirror image of the way his First Symphony was back in 2017. That, a two-movement piece, was undoubtedly symphonic by the time it reached its somewhat surprising ending, but managed to give the impression of being a concerto for orchestra at many points along the way.This, in three movements and running for around 35 minutes in total, is Read more ...
Mahler's Ninth, BBC Philharmonic, Gamzou, Bridgewater Hall, Manchester review - vision and intensity
Robert Beale
There was a change of conductor from the one advertised for this BBC Philharmonic performance at the Bridgewater Hall – but the one who we heard from was an interpreter of extraordinary vision and intensity. Yoel Gamzou is also a composer in his own right, and a Mahler specialist, it would seem: he’s made his own completion of the Tenth Symphony, so he’s no doubt as aware of the language and creative imagination of that other composer-conductor as anyone.Here it was the Ninth he brought to life, the only item on the programme in the event, as Britten’s Sinfonia da Requiem was simply Read more ...
Robert Beale
Kahchun Wong returned to the symphony with which he made his first big impression conducting the Hallé – and made a big impression with it again.The evening in February 2023 when he conducted Shostakovich’s Fifth Symphony was his first concert with them, and it has to be said he was a relative unknown to many of the audience listening then and probably to most UK classical music fans. I was there, and recorded my impressions to the effect that there was never a dull moment when he was in charge, and that the main characteristics of his interpretation were an assured and idiomatic approach to Read more ...
Robert Beale
It’s quite ironic that the Royal Northern College of Music should have invited, as director of this, Britten’s avowedly pacifist opera, Orpha Phelan – whose version of his Billy Budd for Opera North nearly 10 years ago contained one of the most thrilling battle scenes ever staged.And, in her presentation of Owen Wingrave, war is not merely talked about, but seen. That’s very much to the good, as Myfanwy Piper’s libretto makes the adaptation of Henry James’ story very talkative: until very near the end, you might say all the action is in the dialogue.Much can be made of the fact that the opera Read more ...
Robert Beale
The BBC Philharmonic took its Saturday night audience on a journey into French sonic luxuriance – in reverse order of historical formation, beginning with Duruflé, continuing with Chausson and ending with Saint-Saëns. It was conducted by Geoffrey Paterson and featured Dame Sarah Connolly as mezzo-soprano soloist, neither of them the artists originally announced, but 100 per cent good value as their substitutes. Finishing with the Third Symphony of Saint-Saëns – the “organ symphony”, which has a drawing power of its own for those who love to hear the noise that music can make – was the Read more ...
Robert Beale
Manchester Collective, now very much a part of the establishment world of new music, are still enlarging their territory. For this set, performed in Leeds and Manchester and repeated in Liverpool, Nottingham and the Southbank Centre, they are revisiting some ground but have a world premiere, commissioned by themselves, to offer too.On one level, with co-artistic director Rakhi Singh as lead violin, it’s a programme exploring the range of the classical string quartet (with or without percussion and/or electronics, and in one item down to a trio), but on another it’s a journey into almost Read more ...
Robert Beale
Anja Bihlmaier returned to the BBC Philharmonic – for the first time in the Bridgewater Hall as principal guest conductor – with a programme to mark International Women’s Day, and consisting entirely of music by women composers, past and present.Surviving symphonies written by 19th century women are not exactly thick on the ground, but Emilie Mayer’s No. 5 (one of eight) is evidence of what determination and originality could achieve even in a social context where expectations were of conformity and subservience. More of it below. The whole programme was of unfamiliar music: not a single Read more ...
Robert Beale
A cello concerto received its UK premiere in Manchester last night – almost 100 years after it was written. It’s by Maria Herz, a German-Jewish composer who had to leave her native land in the 1930s and whose work has remained almost unknown until quite recently.Raphaela Gromes has championed this concerto, giving its German premiere last year, and she brought it to Britain with the Hallé and Alpesh Chauhan (main picture).It’s a one-movement work in three sections, with modest orchestral forces required, and harmonic analysts might say it’s of its time – displaying a mastery of chromatic Read more ...
joe.muggs
Doves really are quite prog rock aren’t they? It’s never really leapt out at me before, probably because I’d always thought of them as brooding indie first and foremost.There are elements of things like spaghetti western soundtracks, Scott Walker vadevillianism, krautrock rhythms and electronica woven in, sure, but those things were all in service of songs that definitely seemed to come from an unpretentious “alternative” tradition, dosed with northern kitchen sink grit, light years away from the flash of big Seventies acts. Perhaps it’s because their initial flush of success in Read more ...