What was your last concert?

[Bryn]

Last night, Sarah Nicholls: "!2 Years", a campaigning work re. climate change (note the change of title for the concert}, a powerful performance for Piano, voice and recorded material. The performance was followed by a brief discussion of the issues raised.

It was that or Alvin Lucier at The Round Chapel, except he was incapacitated, so Thurston Moore stepped in to perform I am Sitting in a Room. I look forward to feedback from a friend who did attend.

[Note, there are three separate links in the above, "Sarah Nicholls, "12 Years" and "Alvin Lucier at The Round Chapel".]

[Padraig]

The Walled City Music Festival 2019 took place Thursday - Sunday, 7 - 10 March. It celebrated its Tenth Anniversary.

http://walledcitymusic.com/festival

I attended concerts on Thursday and Saturday. Highlights for me were Ravel's Violin Sonata no 2 on Thursday; the whole concert on Saturday which included The Great Hunger, a work commissioned by Walled City Music and premiered last year in Memphis USA. It can be heard (to my surprise when I checked just now!) at

https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=the+great+hunger+ian+wilson

The Walled City is Derry. The Director is Cathal Breslin a local man now working in an American university and who has returned each of the last ten years with something increasingly original and challenging.

[Bryn]

Last night, Sarah Nicolls: "!2 Years", a campaigning work re. climate change (note the change of title for the concert}, a powerful performance for Piano, voice and recorded material. The performance was followed by a brief discussion of the issues raised.

It was that or Alvin Lucier at The Round Chapel, except he was incapacitated, so Thurston Moore stepped in to perform I am Sitting in a Room. I look forward to feedback from a friend who did attend.

[Note, there are three separate links in the above, "Sarah Nicolls, "12 Years" and "Alvin Lucier at The Round Chapel".]

The Sarah Nicolls work is to be a topic in Music Matters today, https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m0003c86

[Richard Barrett]

The Sarah Nicholls work

Nicolls in fact.

Yesterday evening I was at a concert by my local band. In the first half was a hideous piece of "world music" parasitism by Osvaldo Golijov in the form of a cello concerto. I don't think I'd heard anything of his before and I very much hope I never do again. It made me so angry I almost decided to go to the bar and drown my sorrows instead of listening to the second half, but I'm glad I didn't - the second half consisted of Scriabin's 3rd Symphony which I hadn't heard for quite a few years, although of course the opening is not easily forgotten once heard, and I found it riveting throughout, maybe it's not all on the same level of inspiration but by the end I was totally convinced, I think it succeeds in living up to its ambitions in a way that his two subsequent orchestral pieces don't.

[Bryn]

Nicolls in fact.

Yes. I meant to go back an edit that but forgot. Will do so now. Did you catch her contribution to today's Music Matters?

[Bryn]

O.A.E.,, Schiff at RFH tonight. Schumann and Brahms. More tomorrow night. Much more impressed with the Brahms performance that the Schumann. This possibly to being so familiar with the tidied up recordings of the latter by JEG, etc.

[LMcD]

Yesterday morning/lunchtime: Mozart Piano Quartet K493 and the Schumann Piano Quartet, played by the Ward Piano Quintet - wonderful music-making as ever and definitely worth a tenner.

The 'Ward' is Nicholas, whose sister Hattie Bennett is the driving force behind Music In Felixstowe, thanks to which we get to enjoy lots of first-class concerts stuck out here on the East Coast (in which respect we're much better served than the much more populous Tractor Boys Ville up the road!)

[edashtav]

BCMS Concert : Beamish (World Premiere), Brahms and Dvorak (Divertimenti Ensemble)

Two string sextets showing great composers breaking from their chrysalides into mastery, and a World Premiere of Divertimenti for quintet: a chain of 5 reflections by Sally Beamish as she returns to England after almost thirty years . This catenary of brief memories could have been subtitled "Farewell to Bonny Scotland". It was commissioned by the performers, Divertimento, for the group's 40th birthday. Incidentally, Sally Beamish played viola in the ensemble's youth.
Did the quintet of snapshots, over in 13 minutes, work? Yes, I felt it was varied yet underpinned by elements that welded the disparate elements into a molecular whole. The first movement was energetic and rhythmic, seemingly written by a secret love child from the union of Elizabeth Maconchy and Bela Bartok. It was virile Scotland: Braveheart. It was succeeded by a duet featuring the violins. If this moment didn't fully convince me that may have been due to the absence if the group's second violin, injured in a bathroom accident in deepest Europe. Her replacement was competent but a little recessive in this movement… however, she found her voice by the finale!

The bleeding kernel of the work which featured the plangent voice of Jonathan Barritt's viola was inspired by Burns poem Ae Fond Kiss:

Ae fond kiss, and then we sever;
Ae fareweel, and then for ever!...

One sensed that Sally was being taken from Scotland, transported even, from a happy plain where she had reared three Scottish chicks. Next up a quirky, unstable waltz featuring the celli. Finally, a reel, an exuberant, unbuttoned piece of real estate in the vein of some of Max's drunken parties. A slight work, maybe, but an affecting one.

What of the two late apprentice pieces? They were played with spirit, polish and great unanimity. For me, Paul Barritt hit the right note in his introduction to the Brahms when he talked of beardless and bearded Brahms. What we heard was a pre-beard work, itself centred on a lost love but empty of that final flourish of testosterone fuelled wiriness.

The concert included a nice innovation. Sally could 't attend her premiere. The BCMS's resident technical guru, Terry Rickets , had turned a video record in Sally's smart phone into a neat three minute podcast that was played to the audience and made a warm and personal preface to her piece. Full marks for improvisation and enterprise go to Bournemouth Chamber Music Society, the concert's promoters.

[HighlandDougie]

Boulanger sisters fest at the Barbican; BBC SO/Jim Gaffigan, BBC Symphony Chorus, host of soloists. Barbican acoustic = death to being able to make out what the chorus was singing. Lili B - like Berlioz, César Franck etc refracted through Florent Schmitt, Charles Koechlin and Debussy but sounding quite individual. A revelatory evening.

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

OON; Huddersfireld 4/4/19 & Leeds 6/4/19

It's not often that I go to the same programme by the same performers twice - but the concert given by the Orchestra of Opera North in Huddersfield Town Hall on Thursday night was so stunning, I couldn't resist getting a ticket for the repeat performance in Leeds last night. The Orchestra was conducted by Dalia Stasevska, and the programme consisted of Lutoslawski's Musique Funebre, Strauss' Four Last Songs (with Ana Maria Labin), and Bruckner's Seventh Symphony.

I hadn't heard the Lutoslawski work Live since the early '80s (when the composer himself was the conductor) - it can come across as a sort of "Lutoslawski's Pachelbel Canon", with the course of events effective but a bit "Grand Old Duke of York"-ishly predictable. This performance reminded me just how powerful the work can be - exactly the right combination of pathos and fury, Stasevska's pacing and attention to detail magnificent, and some truly beautiful playing from this great orchestra - with especial mention for lead 'cellist Jessica Burroughs.

I'm always anxious with the Four Last Songs - there's nothing more beautiful in the whole repertoire, but if the Soprano has an off-day, it can be excrutiating. Absolutely no need to worry - Labin was terrific; a little weak in the lower register (noticeable more in Leeds - I was much closer to the stage in Huddersfield) but thrilling and gorgeous throughout, with impeccable intonation, and beautiful timbre. (A superb moment at her last words, where she created a veiled tone, dissolving her voice into the orchestral texture - a breath-taking touch of artistry.) The other "voices" were terrific, too - David Greed astonishingly good in the Violin solo in Beim Schlafengehen and Robert Ashworth, the principal Horn, impeccable in tone and timbre. Stasevska's pacing was spot-on, too - letting each glorious moment "tell", but never allowing the pace to drag - and the attention to orchestral detail, unobtrusively drawing attention to Strauss' infallible ear for orchestral colour and effect; just perfect.

And a gob-smacking performance of the Bruckner - Stasevska and the orchestra really revelling in the characters Bruckner creates in this work. Really urgent playing - the momentum never lagging, but without any sense that the pace was being impatiently "shoved" - with hall-rattling climaxes, each judged to perfection - a real sense in the gesangperiode of a singable melodic line, a firecracking scherzo, beautiful brass sonorities (of course - those Wagner cycles really paid off here) and a positively perky opening of the Finale; Stasevska really knows when to let the Music be impudent, and, more importantly, how to integrate these moments into the more disturbing and more ecstatic sections. The vast range of Bruckner's achievement was revealed in this stunning performance - and none of that "stoppy-starty" feeling that some performances can create in this Finale: Bruckner's structural mastery between the sections was seamlessly realized here. Dear God! This was a terrific concert.

Swings and Roundabouts with the two venues - I was very close to the stage in Huddersfield (yup - the £5 tickets) which gave closer detail (of great benefit in the Strauss) whereas the sound was more "rounded" in my more expensive seat in Leeds. A couple of woodwind intonation problems in Leeds had been completely ironed out a couple of days later - but the audience was better-behaved in Huddersfield (the number of dropped Programmes, and knocked-over plastic bottles in Leeds was a disgrace!). Both performances defied superlatives - and whichever I had attended first would have made going to the other irresistable. I feel blest (there is no other word) to have had the privilege of witnessing such overwhelming Music-making.

[Stanfordian]

Vaughan Williams 'The Pilgrim’s Progress' - RNCM, Manchester.

[Bryn]

Vaughan Williams 'The Pilgrim’s Progress' - RNCM, Manchester.

The opera, rather than the incidental music for a radio play, I take it.

[Stanfordian]

The opera, rather than the incidental music for a radio play, I take it.

Hello Byrn,

It was the opera or as RVW described it a "morality". The production worked very well with a quite stunningly designed set. I'm still writing my review.

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

The RNCM made a very good recording of one of their Live performances of the work over twenty years ago - if the recent Live performance was as good, it would have been an evening to remember, to be sure.

[Cockney Sparrow]

The RNCM made a very good recording of one of their Live performances of the work over twenty years ago - if the recent Live performance was as good, it would have been an evening to remember, to be sure.

This makes me feel no better at being quite unaware of this run. I would undoubtedly have travelled to see it - I'll just have to treasure my memories of the Hickox/Sadlers Wells performances.