Monthly Archives: January 2019

Brighton Philharmonic Orchestra

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Artistic Administrator Ian Brignall introduces the second half of the Brighton Phil’s season of Sunday afternoon concerts at Brighton Dome:

“If the first half of this Brighton Philharmonic Orchestra’s 2018/19 season captivated your musical senses, the next four concerts have got amazing musical surprises and some magnificent music written by some highly gifted composers.

On Sunday 20th January we welcome back as cellist/director the brilliant Thomas Carroll. A former pupil of the Menuhin School, Thomas has forged a career as a highly saught-after solo cellist all over the world. For the last few years Thomas has been conducting to great acclaim, and we welcome him back for a concert of Prokofiev’s Classical Symphony, Schumann’s Cello Concerto and Mendelssohn’s ever-popular Symphony No.3, ‘the Scottish’. Prokofiev wrote the Classical Symphony copying the style of Haydn whilst still studying, and decided to test his own composition ability by writing it away from the piano. Schumann wrote his Cello Concerto towards the end of his life and though he never heard it performed, it is a hugely virtuosic work that makes huge demands on the cellist. Mendelssohn was, even early on in his career, a hugely talented and very popular composer – this symphony, his third, doesn’t disappoint; full of orchestral colour it depicts the Scottish highlands perfectly.

For our second concert of 2019 we welcome back one of our most popular guest conductors, Stephen Bell, on Sunday 10th February. For this concert we head firmly into the realm of the late Romantic composers with Wagner’s atmospheric and hugely moving Prelude and Liebestod from his opera Tristan and Isolde. We welcome the Welsh soprano Camilla Roberts to sing Richard Strauss’s Four Last Songs, four of the most beautiful and heartfelt songs ever written for voice and orchestra. To conclude this concert we change our emotional scene and head to the stunning writing of a very young Russian composer, Reinhold Glière. This first symphony was composed whilst he was still at music college, and shows a young composer with a terrific gift for melody and a mastery of orchestral writing.

Barry Wordsworth, our Conductor Laureate, returns to conduct our last two concerts in March and we have two totally different programmes to whet the listener’s appetite.

On Sunday 3rd March we take the theme of travel, holidays and the summer. The Hebrides Overture needs no introduction; the sound of the sea and wind is masterfully captured by the young Mendelssohn. The slightly calmer waters of Le Lac Enchanté are painted beautifully by the Russian composer Anatoly Lyadov, before a boisterous and tuneful mid-summer party in Sweden for full orchestra by the great Swedish orchestrator Hugo Alfvén. To get to our destinations we find ourselves on the locomotive Pacific 231 by the Swiss composer Arthur Honegger. In our travels we visit the capital of London in a suite by the British composer Eric Coates, then rest quietly by the Banks of Green Willow by George Butterworth. A favourite holiday destination is Italy and our musical travelogue concludes with Tchaikovsky’s fabulous Capriccio Italien on the bustling streets of Rome.

The final concert of our season on Sunday 17th March is gloriously romantic and before one of the most Romantic of all piano concertos (Rachmnaninov’s 3rd) played by the Scottish pianist Steven Osborne, we have a Joyeuse Marche and after the interval Hector Berlioz’s epic struggle with life and love – Symphonie Fantastique.

Four very different but inspiring concerts of brilliant music for a Sunday afternoon.”

Tickets for all concerts are £12.50-£39.50 (50% student/U18 discount/children just £1) from Brighton Dome Ticket Office, (01273) 709709, www.brightondome.org

Discounted parking (just £6) available at NCP Church Street Car Park between 1-6pm.

 

London Schools Symphony Orchestra

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Barbican Hall, 7 January 2019

Inspired programming meant a whole concert full of powerful story telling which really showcased the ability of this massive band (102 named in the programme) of talented school-age young musicians from across London. It must be great fun for these young people to play Strauss and Wagner too – all of it dramatic, tuneful and not exactly short of passion.

The poise and maturity of LSSO players – all of them under 18 and some of them still very much children although most are mid teens – is striking. So is the discipline and training which has come through working with London’s Centre for Young Musicians which operates as a division of Guildhall School of Music.

We opened with Strauss’s Death and Transfiguration. Many a professional quakes at the prospect of the exposed opening entrusted to second violins and violas but these youngsters are (apparently) fearless and it came off with sensitive accuracy. The sound was rich throughout and I think this was the first time I’ve ever seen six harps on stage – a rare luxury but manageable, it seems, in a youth orchestra context.

Then it was on to Strauss’s Three Orchestral Love Songs – effectively a set of concerto movements for voice and orchestra for which the ensemble size was slightly reduced. It was announced at the beginning of the concert that soloist Rachel Nicholls was recovering from laryngitis but she still packed plenty of warmth, strength and feeling. What good experience, too for young players to be accompanying rather than taking centre stage. The rhythmic figure in Befreit Op39 No 4 1898 was especially well played.

Finally, after the interval we were off to Wagner-land for Twilight of the Gods: A Symphonic Journey. Arranged by Wigglesworth, this is, in effect, a musical summary of the last act of Gotterdammerung with Nicholls singing Brunnhilde’s Immolation (beautifully) at the end. Whether or not you’re a Wagner fan this is a splendid piece for young players to stretch themselves in. There is so much solo work and gloriously abundant opportunity for all those brass and percussion players to excel. The Siegfried horn calls were deftly delivered, the funeral march suitably noble and Wiggleworth’s fine control of dynamic contrast heightened the drama.

What these young players achieve is remarkable especially given their age. Many youth orchestras retain their players to 21 or so. Not this one. Leader Leon Human (lovely rendering of solos in the opening Strauss) is an A level student. It’s also a real joy to observe the audience LSSO attracts. Lots of young people come – from the schools that the players attend and from the Centre for Young Musicians. And of course families are there with siblings. If only we could find ways of getting such youthful and enthusiastic audiences for other classical music concerts.

Susan Elkin

New Year’s Eve Viennese Gala

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Brighton Philharmonic Orchestra, The Dome, Brighton, 31 December 2018

The New Year concert is always a pleasure, and a highlight of the whole season, and under Richard Balcombe’s gently deft guidance it was as good as I can recall.

The familiar came up as fresh as ever – extended excerpts from Die Fledermaus and three pieces by Franz Lehar – alongside Strauss’ Explosions Polka and Suppe’s Morning, Noon and Night in Vienna. Another regular innovation was the inclusion of waltz music from Britain, opening with Robert Farnon’s Westminster Waltz and the nostalgic delights of Mantovani’s orchestration of Charmaine.

Soprano Ilona Domnich provided the operatic pieces. Her lower register does not have the impact of the top of the voice, which made for some difficulty of balance in the opening sections of Meine Lippen and Vilja, but the top of the voice is so strongly focused that the coloratura elements are thrilling. Her encore aria, Alexander Alabiev’s The Nightingale, proved to be the most captivating item of her repertoire.

The orchestra demonstrated the strengths of its individual performers with a fine cello solo in the Suppe and moving harp arpeggios in the hushed moments of the Gold und Silber waltz.

The first half concluded with the Emperor Waltz and the whole afternoon – inevitably – with the Blue Danube and Radetsky March to which we clapped with impeccable precision sans direction!

An impressively full house responded with enthusiasm throughout. Let us hope they are encouraged to come back for more.

The next concert brings cellist Thomas Carroll with works by Prokofiev, Schumann and Mendelssohn. www.brightonphil.org.uk