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