This was an interestingly paired concert: It’s hard to think of two more contrasting pieces than Jennifer Walshe’s The Site of An Investigation and Brahms’s German Requiem.

Walshe is an Irish composer born in 1974 and her twelve section, 33 minute piece is a mixed-genre hybrid which sits somewhere between a concerto and a play with music. For this London premiere Walshe herself was the soloist – starting dramatically, with hand held mic standing behind the brass, moving to the middle of the percussion and finally coming down stage next to the conductor to the traditional soloist spot.

She speaks to the music and sings: sometimes with silvery lyricism and sometimes with strident forcefulness. She ruminates – with passion, wistfulness and occasionally humour – on the state of the world. So we are led to think about what we’re here for, ocean pollution, the pointless arrogance of the space race and the absurdity of AI-induced “eternal” (sort of) life, among many other things.

The orchestral colour in her composition is striking. The large orchestra gives us, for instance, some lovely discordant trombone glissandi, percussive harp, glorious woodwind detail and a couple of passages in which the whole brass section are required to shout “Break over them like the sea…” at angry fortissimo. There’s never a dull moment for the percussion section either. As well as playing a wide range of relatively conventional instruments they are required to pop bubble wrap, swirl coloured streamers and built a pyramid from plastic storage boxes which they then knock down. I struggle, it has to be said, to see the point of placing a four foot high model of a giraffe on a plinth and then noisily wrapping it in crinkly paper.

And so, after the interval, to the glorious familiarity of Brahms and his very personal take on the concept of a requiem – lots of Lutheran Bible, no Latin and no Christ.

The National Youth Choir of Great Britain makes a strong, energetic sound carefully managed by Ilan Volkov from the podium. It’s good to see so many fine tenors and basses with plenty of diversity and, of course, because this is a youth choir they are well able to stand throughout the work, thus precluding the need for tiresome bobbing up and down.

Bass baritone Shenyang brings terrific warmth to Herr, lehre doch mich and I really liked the pointing up of the fugue at the end of the movement. And soprano Elena Tsallagova sings with great sensitivity in Ihr habt nun Trauigkeit especially in rapport with flute.

But, for me, the best bit of this enjoyable performance was the choral singing. Wie lieblich sind deine Wohnungen is very well known as a standalone but this time, sung with explemplary tenderess, it sounded as fresh as if one had never heard it before. Similarly there was admirable drive in Denn wir haben and real minor key menace in Denn alles Fleisch especially in the fortissimo recapitulation.

Susan Elkin

The UK premiere of Mark Adamo’s 1998 two act opera was an interesting event. It sits well with Opera Holland Park’s policy of mixing the very well known work with the much less familiar within a single season and features some talented singers at various stages of their careers. It was also good to see the composer there, clearly moved by this account of his work.

We’re in the world of Louisa M Alcott’s famous 1868 novel with glances at its sequels as the four March sisters reflect from maturity on the events of their childhood. As with Carmen and Eugene Onegin the set by takis brings some of the action into the space between the audience and the orchestra which conveys a strong sense of immediate intimacy. For this show the main stage is dominated by a series of huge, distressed picture frames which make the small room scenes convincing and contained.

Adamo’s score – of its time, obviously – is short on sustained melody but strong on orchestral colour. During Brooke’s (Harry Thatcher) impassioned courtship of Amy (Elizabeth Karani) for example, with Jo (Charlotte Badham) trying to stop them, we get timp glissandi, snare drum tattoos and glockenspiel. And I like Adamo’s use of tubular bells. Both percussionists (Glynn Matthews and Jeremy Cornes) work very hard in this opera and the results are often arresting. Meanwhile there’s some good work in other sections in a piece which often sets up unusual combinations of instruments all well managed by Sian Edwards on the podium. The sympathetic playing here is testament to the long partnership between Opera Holland Park and City of London Sinfonia.

On stage Kitty Whately finds plenty of vocal warmth in Meg using her wide vocal range and depth to bring the most matronly of the sisters to life. Charlotte Badham delights, using body language and lots of notes to connote Jo’s confusion, intelligence, love for her sisters, anguish and – eventually – the hope of a happy ending for herself. Benson Wilson is terrific too as Friedrich Bhaer. His richly resonant bass voice would have captivated me too, had I been Jo.

There are a few problems with this show, though. There is a quartet of women who sit on stage, busy at various pursuits, almost continuously, occasionally singing. They are oddly dressed – one is a knight, another a Bohemian artist-type and the other two in 1920s-style slinky cocktail frocks. I spent much of the 2 hours and 50 minutes (including interval) of this show trying to puzzle out who exactly these women are and why they’re there.

And, good as the orchestra is, it occasionally overpowers the singers. There were times, for example, when I couldn’t hear Charlotte Badham. And there is a problem with accents – I suppose the cast has been directed to sound American. In fact it is not sustained and the odd word you hear pronounced other than in RP it sounds like Cornwall. Moreover the diction is often fuzzy. One really shouldn’t need surtitles for an opera sung in one’s own language but in this case you certainly do, so I was glad they were there.

There is, however, plenty to admire in Little Women and I hope Mr Adamo was pleased with it despite the flaws.

Susan Elkinn

Verdi’s Requiem and the Royal Albert Hall are a marriage made in heaven. The grand vision of the music is a perfect match for the beloved, huge Victorian domed space. And I like to think Verdi would have approved of this fine account of it – the hall buzzing with excitement and five BBC cameras sliding unobtrusively about for the opening night of the first full Proms season since 2019.

Sakari Oramo is very good indeed at managing the detail even when he’s controlling an orchestra of over eighty players, eight off stage trumpets for Dies Irae and a massed choir of over 130 some of whom are a very long way from him – in addition, of course, to supporting four fine soloists with visible care and attention. It must be like driving a whole convoy of tanks.

I have known this work since my teens and have sung in several performances of it but have never played in the orchestra or studied the orchestral score. I was therefore surprised and delighted at this unforgettable performance to hear details I had never noticed before. For example there was some beautiful flute work with the soloists in the Offertory and a nicely pointed bassoon continuo passage with the soloists in quartet in Dies Irae. And I loved the piccolo delicately picking its way around the melody in the fugal Sanctus and again in Lux eterna. Yes, Oramo who mouths every word with the chorus and delivered every note with phenomenal precision, is on top of every shred of detail and made sure that the audience was too – even at the opening which I’ve rarely heard quite so hushed and exciting. Nothing was ever muddy even for a second.

Masabane Cecilia Rangwanasha (soprano) really came into her own in Agnus Dei and in the silkiness of Lacrymosa with Jennifer Johnston (Mezzo) who brought richness and drama. And Rangwanasha’s Libera Me evoked all the tremulous, unresolved anguish that it should. Of course Mors Stupebit is a wonderful edge-of-the-seat moment for a bass-baritone and Kihwan Sim ensured everyone listened with attention and wonder. There was a strong performance too from David Junghoon Kim, a last minute replacement for Freddie De Tomaso who was ill, especially in Ingemisco tamquam reus.

Other high spots in 84 minutes of some of the finest music-making I’ve heard in quite a while included the extra trumpets in Dies Irae. I think they were in the gallery and the whole, vast Albert Hall resounded immersively with musical fear of judgement day. Then there was the way the tenors cut through with Hostias over tremolo second violins and violas – in this work which packs so much glorious operatic contrast. Finally, we got the biggest bass drum I’ve ever seen: at least six feet in diameter and two feet deep. It wasn’t used for the famous syncopated Dies Irae passage but came into its own for some very ominous, thunderous rumbling before the final statement and again at the very end.

Susan Elkin

Fairhaven Singers’ annual “Music for a Summer Evening” concert has long been a staple of the Cambridge musical menu, and not just because you get a bowl of strawberries and a glass of sparkling wine included in the price of your ticket. It would be easy to trot out the same repertoire at this kind of concert every year, but this is a choir which explores parts of the repertoire that other choirs do not reach. This year we had an almost unknown cantata by Schubert, choral arrangements of songs by Elgar and Vaughan Williams and several recent settings of classic English poetry, including the first performance of a new work by Alan Bullard.

The first half had an aquatic theme, very welcome that evening in the sweltering atmosphere of Queen’s College chapel. A madrigal by Monteverdi and a chorus from Mozart’s Idomeneo showed off the choir’s warmth of tone and even blend. The big work was a late work by Schubert, his Mirjams Siegesgesang. This five-movement cantata for soprano solo, chorus and piano sets a versified account of the flight of the Israelites through the Red Sea, starting in triumphal march mode, moving into a breathless narrative of the pursuit of Pharaoh’s host (with rather Erl-King-like piano writing) and finishing with a celebratory fugue. It was certainly fun to hear once, though not perhaps a piece from Schubert’s top drawer. I did hanker for a bit more drama from the choir, and in particular a more heroic tone in the taxing soprano solo part (shared among members of the choir). Despite possessing only the usual number of hands, Ralph Woodward managed the difficult feat of both directing the choir and playing the tricky piano accompaniment.

Samuel Barber’s lovely To Be Sung on the Water is a staple of the “Singing on the River” concerts held on the Cam at nearby King’s College, but the Fairhavens had no need to fear the comparison. Delicately and gracefully performed by the choir, it was the high point of the first half, and probably of the whole concert.

After the interval we moved away from the water for a sequence of works setting classic English poetry, a theme inspired (a year late as so many of these commemorations are at the moment) by the two-hundredth anniversary of the death of John Keats. The opening chorus of George Dyson’s once-popular Chaucerian cantata The Canterbury Pilgrims worked well as a partsong, sensitively performed by the choir. It might have been a risky proposition for a hot night as the alternate passages for a capella voices and accompaniment would have exposed any saggy tuning, but the challenge was almost perfectly surmounted here. Michael Berkeley’s Farewell, a memorial work for Linda McCartney, set valedictory lines from Shakespeare, Milton and Elizabeth Speller; its lush chromatic harmonies were perfectly suited to the choir. A more extended work was Parry’s La belle dame sans merci, an elaborate setting of the Keats poem from late in the composer’s career which sounded almost like a secular version of one of his Songs of Farewell. This again is a style in which choir and conductor are very much at home, though it seemed to me that the wildness and strangeness of Keats’ vision was somewhat lacking.

I was unmoved by Mårten Jansson’s sentimental take on Thomas Hardy’s The Choirmaster’s Burial, which rather incongruously combines the narrative of an English village funeral in the nineteenth century with phrases from the Roman Catholic burial service. Alan Bullard’s Beauty, Joy, a setting of the opening of Keats’ Endymion came much closer to the spirit of its text, loading every rift with harmonic ore in a richly-scored diatonic idiom. This was a new commission by the choir and singers and piece were again well-matched, though there were a few understandable signs of tiredness by this point in a hot evening. Everybody woke up for the encore – an a cappella arrangement of So In Love from Cole Porter’s Kiss Me, Kate which was sung with real warmth and feeling, and left me feeling that “Be more Cole Porter” should be an injunction to every choir.

William Hale

Folkestone Symphony’s postponed (the 60 year landmark was last year) Diamond Concert was worth waiting for and it was good to see a large audience in the grandiosity of Leas Cliff Hall to enjoy it.

The highlight of the evening was the Tchaikovsky violin concerto played by the charismatic, smiling Joo Yeon Sir. Her very first entry – as sumptuous and sensuous as I’ve ever heard it – was a love duet with the orchestra and she delivered the rest of the movement, including the fabulous harmonic-laden cadenza, with passion and precision which also shone through in the Canzonetta. There were some special moments during the mini duets with flute and then with bassoon when she turned to face the other players and we all felt the power of musical collaboration at its best. Her finale was shot through with so much rubato (and what fun she had with it) that Rupert Bond had to keep the orchestra alertly on its toes to follow her. All players came up trumps and the overall effect was to make a very well known work seem totally fresh. It was a bravura performance.

Folkestone Symphony is a community orchestra which states in its programme that it welcomes new members – at grade 6 standard for strings and grade 7 for woodwind and brass. So you don’t go expecting Berlin Phil quality. However there are some outstanding players in the ensemble and the string sound (an impressive nine first violins, eight seconds, six violas, eight cellos and four double basses) is a great strength. In the Enigma Variations which closed the concert I loved the way the contrasts and mood changes across the fourteen variations beamed out from the warmth of Variation 1 (it depicts the composer’s wife) through to the self-mocking pomposity of the final variation which presents the composer himself. Other noteworthy moments were Variation 7 with delightful timp work, variation 4 played with a vibrantly full sound and variation 8 which really emphasised the quintessentially English lyricism. And as for the famous Nimrod (variation 9) Bond took it at a tempo which moved dynamically so it didn’t feel, as it sometimes does, like an old fashioned gramophone in need of winding up.

And then we got an encore and were spirited away from Folkestone and the English Channel glinting through the windows to Vienna for the Radetsky March, played with aplomb and near-obligatory audience on the beat (sort of) clap along.

The concert had opened – nothing remotely obscure or modernist about this programme – with Brahms Academic Festival Overture which took the orchestra a few pages to settle into. Again, the strings excelled even in the fiendish scale passages on the final page but the overall cohesion slipped once or twice.

What a treat to attend a concert prefaced – presumably in honour of the Jubilee – with a fanfare and then the National Anthem. It isn’t easy to kick off cold with a fanfare but it came off reasonably well and I liked the arrangement of God Save the Queen.

Susan Elkin