The final concert in BPO’s 2021/22 season opened, appropriately enough, with a simple, short statement of solidarity with the people of Ukraine. Myroslav Skoryk’s Melody, currently being played by orchestras across Europe and Scandinavia, is a lyrically pretty piece, evocative at present given its connotations and context.

Elgar’s Introduction and Allegro which came next had a very well balanced sound. The last time I heard it live was at a Prom last summer in the Royal Albert Hall with the string quartet placed rather distantly on a higher tier behind the string orchestra. This time Sian Edwards and BPO made it work much more coherently by seating the four soloists at the front of their respective sections. It was an incisive and resolute account. Even the cello pizzicato, which often gets lost in the texture, sang through vibrantly.

A bit of chair shifting, arrival of wind, brass and timpanist on stage and we were then on to the colourful contrasts of Mozart’s last symphony (no 41, K551, Jupiter), its varying moods nicely pointed up. All the heavy chords and alternating busy passages in the opening Allegro, for example, were delivered with precision, panache and some very eloquent general pauses. Edwards then leaned on every elegant detail in the Andante cantabile (well done, Woodwind), gave us a warmly rich Allegretto and a Molto allegro which really danced all the way to its resolution.

The unusual lay out of this concert – symphony before the interval and concerto after – is an indication that Brahms’s first piano concerto is, like the second one written 20 years later, effectively a symphony. Joanna MacGregor, BPO’s very active, prominent and charismatic music director (she’d introduced the concert at the beginning and written some of the programme notes) is clearly very attuned to this orchestra. As we sailed into all the concerto’s glorious, angry D minor and the first mountainous movement she played the long solo opening statement, then picked up by the flute and later by horn, with such freshness that it caught and held your attention no matter how many times you’ve heard it before. MacGregor’s take on the work is measured as well as thunderously passionate as, ever businesslike she sits bespectacled with her just-in-case music resting flat on the open piano.

There was a lot of tenderess in the second movement as interwoven piano strings and wind soloists integrated with commendable control. Slow movements – and this one was played very slowly in this performance – are a minefield but Edwards held it together splendidly. Finally came the Rondo and resounding conclusion which included some arresting work on keyboard, particularly in the fervent mini cadenza.

All in all this was a delightful concert characterised by grace and passion. There was even a moment of comedy when Edwards and MacGreggor arrived on stage for the concerto to find no score on the podium so Edwards had to scuttle off and hunt for it – and in a lifetime of concert going that was a first for me.

Susan Elkin

There’s much to enjoy in ENO’s new production of Cosi fan tutte with Phelim McDemott in the director’s seat and Karem Hasan in charge in the pit.

The singing is faultless with especially strong performances from Benson Wilson as a fruity Guglielmo and Nardus Williams as a wistful but powerful Fiordilgi especially in her “Far Away a Man is Sighing” with horns doing lovely work beneath her. The famous Act 1 trio (Williams, Hanna Hipp as Dorabella and Neal Davies as Alfonso) is sung with show stopping passion.

As we were reminded by tenor Toby Spence before the show, Williams – like Wilson and Soraya Mafi as a fine Despina although she fails for sustain her accent – is an ENO Harewood artist. This is an excellent scheme which provides opportunities for trained young singers and ENO needs as much help as possible with funding it, which is what Spence was there to tell us.

I like Jeremy Sams’s translation which is often Gilbertishly witty: “I’ll sing you a sonnet. If you’ve got any sense, you’ll reflect upon it” sings Neal Davies chirpily for example. As always, though, I notice that English inflexions don’t always sit happily with the rise and fall of the music although I appreciate and respect ENO’s policy of staging all shows in English.

This take on Cosi sets it in a 1950s seaside motel – imagine the set for Bedroom Farce, revolving to suggest inside and outside and you’re almost there. Some scenes take place on what we used to call “the prom”. Tom Pye’s sets are grandiloquently impressive with carousel horses, swan pedaloes and illuminated encircling heart shaped arch ways. It’s all colourfully romantic.

Nearby is a circus complete with sword swallowers, fire eaters, acrobats and the rest. They are in effect a non singing ensemble (they do a lot of scene shifting) in addition to the chorus which, because this is Mozart, appears very little.

So what do the circus performers add to the opera? Not much. In fact they’re a distraction. If you put a spectacular tumbling and circus skills display centre stage during a key duet then no one in the audience is going to listen to the music. It’s an insult to the singers and seems to imply that the director doesn’t trust Mozart to deliver the goods without irrelevant visual trivia.

Even the overture is highjacked. We see the circus performers – including three people of unusual stature – emerging from a trunk racing about lining up placards to tell us what the opera is about. That means that the audience laughs and applauds over the music which is almost unnoticed. The line between being as accessible as possible and dumbing down is a fine one although I was delighted to see a number of children in the audience for the matinee I attended.

This performance is the first I’ve seen which began – appropriately – with the Ukrainian national anthem for which the entire audience stood. Sadly, I don’t suppose it will be the last.

Susan Elkin

Does someone at the Cambridge Philharmonic have a crystal ball? Life-long Vaughan Williams fan though I am, I would probably not have picked his 1936 cantata Dona Nobis Pacem for revival in his 125th anniversary year. Written to commemorate the centenary of the Huddersfield Choral Society, the piece would normally seem very much a work of its time, a warning against the horrors of war written at a period when dictators were re-arming and bent on aggression. In March 2022, however, as conductor Harry Sever reminded us before this performance, it seems horribly contemporary once again. The second movement sets Walt Whitman describing the sounds of war: “Beat! beat! drums … burst like a ruthless force … Into the school where the scholar is studying; Leave not the bridegroom quiet … Nor the peaceful farmer any peace, ploughing his field …”, words which have an awful counterpart on our screens today.

Alongside the horseman War rides Pestilence, and the continuing pandemic had its effect on the evening’s line-up. The VW piece was written for chorus and orchestra, and I understand that the Philharmonic originally planned to perform it as such. The continued necessity for social distancing, however, put paid to this, and the chorus, widely spaced on the platform and the side galleries in West Road, was accompanied by piano only. Whilst I can’t argue with the reasons behind this, I couldn’t find any mention of the change of plan in the concert publicity, and it doesn’t seem unreasonable to expect that in a concert billed as “The Cambridge Philharmonic Orchestra and Chorus” that orchestra and chorus will sing together. Valiantly though Fran Hills played the accompaniment on West Road’s concert grand, she couldn’t substitute for the large orchestra which VW wrote for, and the climactic moments lost a lot of impact. On the positive side, there was a gain in clarity from the chorus, very well trained by chorus-master Tom Primrose, and both the text and the often taxing vocal lines came across with precision and assurance – a particularly impressive achievement when the chorus was so widely spaced.

The cantata was preceded by five of Vaughan Williams’ Blake Songs for voice and oboe, one of his last works, written for a documentary film and first performed after his death in 1958. These are generally sung by a tenor voice, but VW specifies soprano as an alternative for some of them, and here they were sung with warmth and clarity by Alison Rose, beautifully matched by Rachael Dunlop on oboe in the first three. They left me thinking that the songs work better sung by the higher voice, with vocal and instrumental lines blending seamlessly at the same pitch. I was less convinced by the final two which were accompanied by violin. The ever-practical Vaughan Williams allowed violin or clarinet accompaniment “in case of necessity–but neither of these expedients is advisable” and despite assured playing from Paula Muldoon I am inclined to agree.

It was good to see the full orchestra in position for Sibelius’s second symphony after the interval. The Cambridge Philharmonic is blessed with a particularly large string section, and they announced their presence in the well-known opening with a little more weight than we often hear. The first movement, in which disparate melodic fragments are gradually assembled “like the pieces of a mosaic” as the composer said, presents challenges for all but the most confident players in its frequent changes of pulse and texture. These were all managed smoothly here, though the “profound logic” of Sibelius’s design was not always apparent. Listeners tend to remember the grand climaxes in this piece, but on this occasion the quieter moments made the biggest impression: the opening of the second movement with its pizzicato cellos and basses with a nicely-judged contribution from the timpani, the famous oboe tune in the trio with its repeated notes (Ms Dunlop again, with wonderfully blended support from the four horns) and the long build-ups in the final movement. These can easily come to the boil too quickly, but Harry Sever kept the lid on firmly, ensuring that the final moments were as stirring as ever when they eventually arrived. Only the articulation of the concluding chords, with a forte-piano crescendo on the last one, seemed a little too mannered.

The symphony was warmly received by a full house, with deserved “curtain calls” for brass, timps, woodwind and solo cello. A note in the programme thanked Jennifer Day for sponsoring the concert in memory of her husband James Day, whose book on Vaughan Williams in the Master Musicians series should be in every fan’s library. I hope she was pleased with the result.

William Hale

What better entertainment than an upbeat, bijoux production of, arguably, the most upbeat and tuneful operetta ever written, on a wet, windy cold Sunday afternoon in the stunning Opera House at Tunbridge Wells? And, as ever, I’m struck by the enlightened (in this instance) approach of JD Wetherspoon, which, once a year allows its pub to revert to its original function for two performances, with a meal package if you wish.

John Ramster’s eight hander adaptation runs with the wackiness of the piece. Hands, and other things, poke through holes on the side cloths of Bridget Kimak’s set and her costumes range from Pierrot to Alice in Wonderland with a splendid, massive, shiny yellow suit and chrysanthemum-topped headdress for a scary-looking skull-masked Mikado (Matthew Quirk).

The advantage of working on G&S with a small cast – and I’ve seen it with other companies such as Illyria Theatre and Charles Court Opera – is that you can hear every note and every word because it’s all so exposed. Music director Bradley Wood, sidestage on keyboard, has wisely run mostly at fairly moderate tempos so that the clarity is crystalline – after an oddly nervous opening number at the performance I saw.

Christopher Faulkner, as a gor-blimey, insouciant Ko-Ko, for example, delivers the all-topical little list, which he wrote himself, with impeccable timing and hilarious precision. The Mikado’s song is, unfortunately, a bit muffled by the mask but I really liked the way Gareth Edmunds, a fine tenor, and Wood managed all the tempo and mood changes in A Wandering Minstrel I. And the madrigal, Brightly Dawns Our Wedding Day is, as sung here, a lovely example of a quartet really nailing it. I could almost feel Sir Arthur applauding.

Ashley Mercer as Pooh-Bah is magnificent. Tall, slender and sneering he literally wears a multiplicity of hats all piled one on top of another. He oozes stage presence and his bass voice is resonant and authoritive.

The larger-than-life Susan Moore is terrific as Katisha too. She has an old fashioned contralto voice like good claret and acts beautifully as the frumpy but oddly vulnerable and pretty vindictive woman nobody wants. She is also very funny, pulling faces and flirting with the audience.

Every director wants – needs, even – to put his or her own stamp on a piece as well known and much loved as this. If G&S is to work, it has to sparkle. It was, let it not be forgotten, lack of freshness which eventually alienated the Arts Council and killed the D’Oyly Carte company. The trouble is, though, that there is a fine line between imaginative artistic innovation and gratuitous gimmickry. And sometimes Ramster crosses that line. What on earth does it add to the piece to do Here’s a Howdy Do in Texan accents as if we were at a rodeo? Why change the word Japan to Pajan? Why have Mathew Quirk, doubling as Pish Tush speak in a distorted accent which is a cross between West Midlands and cod-Jewish?

For various reasons I saw this touring show late in its run. It includes a lot of stage business with long bendy arms with which characters touch each other, kiss and so on. This is clearly how it was rehearsed last year when on-stage social distancing was a requirement. It would then have seemed quite witty. Now it feels a bit quaint. When this production is next revived, I’m sure this aspect of it will be dropped.

Susan Elkin

An unusual five work programme, this concert began and ended with Mendelssohn via two contrasting Ravel favourites and a dip into Fauré – all of it very familiar territory.

Barry Wordsworth is a poised figure on the podium. As Conductor Laureate and Music Director and Principal Conductor here for 26 years, he knows the Brighton Philharmonic very well. With little fuss he drew out all the melodic calm and storm in Mendelssohn’s The Hebrides with some nicely pointed brass interjections and well balanced string work.

Then in completely different mood came Fauré’s Pavanne, lovingly played. The rippling pizzicato was allowed to resonate beneath the melody without rushing. The solo wind passages, especially the horn were sweet and evocative.

Of course for Ravel’s Piano Concerto in G, the showiest work in this concert, you need four percussionists all now in place ready for that arresting opening whip crack. Soloist Junyan Chen with her shiny dress and scarlet striped hair looked as glitzy as she and Wordsworth made the music sound. It’s a piece which changes mood frequently and I liked the accurate but sensitive way the cross rhythms, alternating with rich lyricism was delivered. Chen has a knack of watching Wordswoth almost continuously which made for an exhilaratingly coherent performance especially in the incisive framing movements. In contrast her long solo passages in the middle adagio assai movement were gently impassioned.

It’s hard to believe that the five component movements of Ravel’s Mother Goose Suite were originally written as piano pieces to be played by the Godebski children with whose family he was close friends. What talented children they must have been! Brighton Philharmonic’s rendering of the orchestral version of these colourful fairy tales in music showcased especially pleasing work from flute, xylophone harp, celeste and contrabassoon. It also made me realise – thanks BPO – how unusual it is to hear the entire suite, used as we are to exterpolated movements on, for example, radio.

And so finally to the glorious ebullience of Mendelssohn’s Fourth Symphony. I played in a performance of this work just a few weeks ago and know how essential if is to get the rapid string work crisp. Wordsworth did it with aplomb – as he did the eloquent rests and pauses. He also gave us plenty of minor key tip-toeing mystery in the andante and lilting warmth in the third movement nothwithstanding the occasional ragged entry. The saltarello presto finale whipped along excitingly, as it must, with some pleasing decisive playing from the strings and attractive wind sound especially from flute and bassoon.

Susan Elkin

“It is at such moments as these that one feels how necessary it is to travel with a full band.” So says the Duke of Plaza-Toro in Gilbert and Sullivan’s The Gondoliers, but how rarely one hears “a full band” in a performance of any of the Savoy Operas nowadays. All too often even the most optimistic listener would struggle to describe the band as half-empty. It is pleasant to record therefore that Cambridge University Gilbert and Sullivan Society’s production of The Gondoliers at West Road Concert Hall last night had a band which if not quite full (the piece calls for a surprisingly large orchestra) was more than equal to the challenges of one of Sullivan’s most ebullient scores. The overture, so often an endurance test in non-professional productions, was dispatched with vim and grace, with a particularly winning oboe solo in the middle section. For the first time I actually wanted it to go on for longer, and then was delighted to find that it did – conductor Richard Decker having opted to extend it with a burst of the Cachucha at the end to give a more rousing conclusion than Sullivan’s original.

Another musical decision I found more questionable – finding a number of brass fanfares in the score Decker had put the brass in the balconies to left and right of the stage. The intention was to evoke the atmosphere of a coronation (the massed trumpeters in the galleries of Westminster Abbey) and for those passages it was effective enough. The drawback was that the fanfares represent under two minutes of music, and for the rest of the evening there was a distinct loss in terms of balance and ensemble. At the climax of the second act the brass got lost entirely, and there were several bars of cacophony before order was restored. This was a particular shame when the musical standard of the rest of the evening was so high.
The Gondoliers was the pair’s last success, and though it was for long one of the most popular of the series there are signs that Gilbert in particular was beginning to run out of ideas. Nothing much happens in the second act, the secondary characters are not terribly interesting and the dénouement, involving swapped babies, is perilously close to that of HMS Pinafore. It will always have a place in my heart though as it was the first of the operas which I performed in (Oxford Playhouse, 1988, in the role of Twelfth Gondolier, since you ask), thus inaugurating my long career of bit parts in amateur musical theatre. As such I well recognise the challenges of putting on a show of this kind when everyone involved has day jobs to do, essays to write or lectures to attend. The wayward follow spot, the principal unaccountably absent from the wings when his entrance is due, the chorus member on the wrong side of the stage for the curtain call – all these are very familiar. In a dull production you wince at such things, in a good one they just add to the fun.
Though to some extent an ensemble piece with music and dialogue shared out among an unusually large number of principal roles, any production of The Gondoliers stands or falls by its central quartet of the two gondoliers and the girls whom they marry. In this production the title roles were taken by Seb Blount as Marco and Owen Elsley as Giuseppe, with Tiffany Charnley as Gianetta and Louisa Stuart-Smith as Tessa. That they all sang superbly is almost a given – Cambridge abounds in good singers – but they also played together beautifully, and the dialogue scenes, which can drag if not carefully paced, bounced along with the perfect amount of wit and sparkle. Of the other principals, Peter Coleman as Don Alhambra stood out for clarity of diction in his two solos, but there were no weak links anywhere in the cast (and given the number of solo parts in this show these can be horribly exposed).
West Road isn’t an ideal venue for operetta but Rose Painter’s production made good use of its wide stage, with a simple but effective set aided by creative lighting. The Gondoliers is a particularly rewarding show for the chorus – in an ideal world we would have wanted more men, but those that there were sang valiantly, aided by a few women en travesti. The dancing could probably have done with more rehearsal time, but everyone was game and the stage was always full of interest and movement. There were of course new sight gags and topical references (a reference to Boris Johnson’s “work event” went over particularly well) but the director had a good sense of when such things are welcome and when they are not. I have seen productions where the clowning never stops, but the Savoy operas have a delicate balance of the silly and the serious, and such numbers as “There was a time”, “When a merry maiden marries”, “Kind sir, you cannot have the heart” and “Take a pair of sparkling eyes”, all beautifully sung, were wisely left to speak for themselves.

William Hale

There was an upbeat atmosphere of new year/new optimism for this well attended first concert of 2022 spiced with a strong sense of the worst being behind us. And the overture to Mozart’s last opera, The Magic Flute (1791) was an aptly chosen opener. The orchestra made it sound bright, chirpy and celebratory especially in the fugato quaver passages which were delightfully crisp.

And so to Beethoven – and, arguably, the loveliest violin concerto ever written, premiered only 15 years after The Magic Flute. Benjamin Baker is an unshowy soloist who breathes the music like a singer – often with an impish half smile. He and Brian Wright made sure we heard every detail of the orchestral parts as well as the solo line and I loved the way they moved, as a team into the spirited rondo.

Two things, however really distinguished this performance. First, Baker chose to play the Christian Tetslaff candenzas, adapted from the ones Beethoven wrote for the piano version of the concerto and using a timpani accompaniment in the first one. I’m familiar with recordings of this but had never heard it live. Keith Price on timps, Brian Wright on the podium and Baker out front gave us a very arresting – if quirky rendering. No wonder the audience applauded – unusually at an MSO concert – at the end of the first movement. Second, Baker’s encore, a movement from Bach’s A Minor sonata presented double stopping, so breathtakingly skilled that it sounded like two instruments.

It was, intentionally or not, a chronological concert which shifted forward a further 137 years after the interval with Ralph Vaughan Williams’s fifth symphony: a work which has four movements all of them slow, and full of key changes and different time signatures so it was real contrast to the classicism of the first half.

Wright dug out plenty of lyrical passion as he delivered that characteristically RVW “wafty” quality – always with fluidity and sometimes with an evocatively clenched left fist. There was fine work from Simon Phillips as principal horn sailing over the textrure especially in the first movement. The muted strings patterning with the wind in the second movement created the required “misterioso” and, not withstanding one or two earlier ragged entries, I liked the way Wright controlled the magical dying away ending in three movements.

Susan Elkin