In my music collection there is a handsomely bound vocal score of Elijah, presented to my grandfather as a chorister’s prize in 1912. It’s a relic of a time when Mendelssohn’s oratorio stood second only to Handel’s Messiah in public esteem, to the extent that it was sometimes given a definite article: “the” Elijah, as Messiah is still sometimes “the” Messiah. Those days are long gone, as a slightly less-than-capacity audience at Saturday’s Prom performance attested, but Maxim Emelyanychev’s performance suggested that there might be life in the old prophet yet.

At the first performance in 1846, Mendelssohn directed 396 performers in Birmingham Town Hall, including a chorus of 271. On Saturday there were about a third of that, with a chorus of 80. So there was some loss of weight and volume, but a distinct gain in clarity and vigour, with a particularly impressive contribution from the Scottish Chamber Orchestra Chorus, whose clear tone and faultless diction brought the dramatic moments vividly to life. Another benefit was the use of period instruments by brass and strings, with crooked horns, natural trumpets and even an ophicleide. On modern instruments Mendelssohn’s scoring can sound thick and heavy; here it was bright and sinewy, with the harsh tones of the horns adding extra aggression to Elijah’s aria “Is not his word like a fire” in part I.

Mendelssohn calls for no less than eight soloists, of which the BBC could apparently run to five. I was ready to grumble about the allocation of some of the quartet work to the chorus, but the front row sang “For he shall give his angels” and “Cast thy burden” so beautifully that my complaint died on my notepad, and I take my hat off to the single soprano who led off the chorus of seraphim in part II. It seemed a shame, though, that a real boy couldn’t have been found to announce the coming of rain. Of the soloists, Helen Charlston stood out as an authoritative Angel, adding edge and aggression to her tone for a formidable Queen in part II. Carolyn Sampson was a more ethereal angel (there are quite a lot of angels in this piece) and a warm and deeply-felt widow. Rowan Pierce completed the female line-up, blending flawlessly in the duet and trio, and ascending to the organ-loft to hail the miraculous raincloud. Andrew Staples filled the vast space of the Hall effortlessly with his burnished tenor as Obadiah and Ahab.

Which leaves us with the title role. Long revered by singers, Roderick Williams probably attained national treasure status with his appearance at the coronation. His Elijah was, as ever, sensitively phrased, faultlessly enunciated and alive to the character’s many changes of mood. But his voice is really more Wigmore Hall than Royal Albert, and this Elijah failed to dominate as even in a revisionist performance he surely should. At times I couldn’t help thinking of a firm but fair headmaster rather than Mendelssohn’s volatile prophet. There is something not quite right when Elijah is outsung by Ahab.

Conducting without a baton or indeed a podium, the unfailingly energetic Maxim Emelyanychev drew precise and dynamic playing from the band, bringing out orchestral details which often get lost in a Victorian wash of sound. If he could not entirely conceal Mendelssohn’s occasional lapses in inspiration, his approach made a strong case that Elijah’s former place near the head of the choral league table was not entirely undeserved.

William Hale
Photo: BBC/ Chris Christodoulou

To commission and produce a new opera is a brave thing for an unsubsidised company to do, especially in the current arts climate, so warmest congratulations to Opera Holland Park for this achievement. It’s not just the concept which is laudable either. A sung-through full length opera, Itch is sumptuously imaginative, witty and thoughtful. Director, Stephen Barlow and his cast of eight really have worked wonders.

Itchingham Lofte aka as Itch (Adam Temple-Smith) is a geeky teenager who collects samples of elements. He’d really like some uranium for his birthday: cue for audience laughter. With the help of his long-suffering younger sister Jack (Natasha Agarwal) he finds a rock on a beach which seems to be radioactive. He has discovered a new element – and one which has huge commercial, destructive potential so others want to take possession of it for ignoble reasons. Eventually, of course, good triumphs over evil.

Dove’s score is astonishingly expressive and delivered beautifully by a twelve piece orchestra conduced by Jessica Cottis. For example, when Itch and his mother (Rebecca Bottone) are arguing about his explosive experiments it is underpinned by dramatic, amusing trombone leaps. Dove makes terrific atmospheric use of harp too and half the orchestra space is occupied by the percussion section and its impressive pair of players. One of the things I really like about Opera Holland Park is that you can see every single orchestra member.

Temple-Smith finds terrific sensitivity in Itch, using his colourful voice to denote a wide range of emotions and Agarwal blends with him well. There’s a strong sense of sibling bonding/rivalry which they reinforce in their duet work. James Laing (counter tenor) brings other-worldliness to Cake, the beach hippy, who directs them to rocks which have been turned up by an earthquake.

Eric Greene is outstanding as Nicholas Lofte, the children’s father. His powerful bass voice (wonderful sound at the bottom of his register) exudes warmth and passion. Also stunning is Rebecca Bottone in her second role: Roshanna, head of Greencorps who will stop at nothing to obtain Itch’s rocks. Her evil is conveyed by very high, widely spaced notes sung with dramatic attack – imagine The Queen of the Night on amphetamines. Bottone, her intonation almost perfect, manages to make it grimly funny as well as musically impressive.

What most of us will remember most vividly about this show, however, is Frankie Bradshaw’s set. It gives us a beach at the front of the orchestra and a striking cuboid arrangement of boxes at the back through which actors climb. Yes, it’s the periodic table and yes, as one character remarks, it does look a bit like a castle with turrets. Superimposed on this is Jake Wiltshire’s video design – each element lighting up as Itch mentions it. At other times we get landscapes, the bottom of a mine and other scenarios. The boxes meanwhile also become a school science lab and a mining tourist shop. And there’s a delightful moment when Switzerland is mentioned repeatedly and each time the word is mentioned yet another Swiss flag lights up. There is a lot of humour in this opera.

Ultimately, though, it’s a moving piece about redemption and forgiveness as Nicholas, who is away a lot for work and often not there when his children need him, finds and rescues Itch from serious danger. Greene’s lovely voice at this point is emotionally as well as musically resonant.

This was Itch’s world premiere. I hope it now gets taken up elsewhere not least because, along with its many other strengths, it unobtrusively taught me a lot about the periodic table and all learning is a bonus.

Susan Elkin

Who knew that there was a BBC Proms Japan? There has been reason to question the BBC’s commitment to classical music of late, but our national broadcaster seems as keen as ever to build on the Proms brand, even if “the world’s greatest classical music festival” seems to have a little less actual classical music every year. The first piece in Tuesday’s concert by the BBC Symphony Orchestra was receiving its European premiere after a first performance by the same forces under the Proms banner in Japan last autumn. Noriko Koide’s Swaddling Silk and Gossamer Rain takes its inspiration from silkworms, and built its textures from almost imperceptibly whispered beginnings like a cocoon built up from invisible threads. Unconventional instrumental techniques sought to break down the barriers between music and the sounds of the natural world, until the piece once again withdrew to silence. Or would have done, had the audience managed to restrain its bronchial tendencies – this was perhaps not the venue or the occasion for such a delicate composition.

Much more at home in the Albert Hall was Beethoven’s third piano concerto, performed by Canadian pianist Jan Lisiecki, who looked like a giant when he arrived on stage with Hong Kong-born conductor Elim Chan. He played like a giant too, making his first entry with almost Lisztian bravura and effortlessly filling the vast space of the hall. But there was precision as well as assertion, and in the second movement he accompanied the woodwind solos with warmth and restraint. The Sturm und Drang returned for the last movement, aided by emphatic (perhaps rather over-emphatic) timpani, and persisted with only minimal lightening of the mood until the final chords. The encore, Chopin’s Nocturne, op. 9 no 2 in E flat, provided a welcome moment of repose, though even here there was a Beethovenian eruption near the end.

Elgar’s Enigma Variations is another Proms stalwart, and one always wonders what a new conductor will bring to it after so many performances. The opening theme exhibited a very English restraint compared to Beethoven, and for the first half it was the quiet moments that seemed most effective, with a particularly winning viola solo in no. 6. I forget how many p’s Elgar puts in the string parts at the opening of Nimrod – here there were at least five, and the wind players were hard put to it to match the whispering strings at their first entry. After that, things settled, and the high point of the performance was probably G.R.S., in which Dan the bulldog seemed to be breasting a stormy sea rather than the tranquil waters of the Wye at Hereford. In the Romanza the clarinet quotation from Mendelssohn’s Calm Sea and Prosperous Voyage seemed to be coming from an immense distance, as if from a ship disappearing over the horizon. All was swagger and celebration for the conclusion, with the Albert Hall organ lending its considerable weight to the sound, and the audience responded with almost equal volume.

William Hale

Photo: BBC/Sisi Burn

The high spot of this concert was a glorious, witty performance of Beethoven’s first symphony. Once we’d got over the slight raggedness at the opening Pekka Kuusisto packed in the brio and I really admired the detail of those beautiful fugal moments in the andante which were played with exquisite, and quite unusual, dynamic contrast. Then we got excitement and palpable pleasure from players grinning at each other in the minuet and a top speed bravura performance of the finale. It was in short, full of light, air and joie de vivre, although I didn’t feel the audience participation moment before the finale added much.

After the interval came the much hyped up “enhanced” version of Vivaldi’s Four Seasons with Kuusisto on violin (you can’t fault him for beaming energy and sense of fun) and Ale Carr on cittern. It’s certainly a novel idea to intersperse Vivaldi with folk music but it’s not how I would wish to hear this piece regularly. We got ever longer passages of folk music – the two men duetting, facing each other and almost dancing so that at times it felt as if we were at a completely different sort of concert. Despite, or perhaps because of, the evident musical chemistry between them, it became increasing self-indulgent as we proceeded slowly to the end of an hour long performance. The orchestra meanwhile played spiritedly even though they were, effectively, marginalised. I suspect that – complex as it is in this form with more than twenty movements – it was under-rehearsed too. At one point Kuusisto had to leave the stage (not long enough for a broken string so I was mystified) and he began one movement at the wrong time and had to joke with the audience that it would be edited out for the broadcast. Nonetheless it was fascinating to see and hear the cittern given such prominence and Carr is a stupendous and charismatic player.

After all that one had almost forgotten the concert’s opening work: Birds of Paradise by Andrea Tarrodi which is a pity because it is an attractive piece, inspired by David Attenborough’s Planet Earth. It’s music imitating life with the orchestra building to a rich texture and then offering tropical forest sounds such as glissandi from the strings and chattering sounds from the percussion – all quite eerie. It must be quite challenging to play but Deutsche Kammerphilharmonie is a fine orchestra and delivered it with panache and a fabulous morendo pianissimo effect at the end.

Susan Elkin

Now that concerts all have to have a title, like novels, this one was called “Forgotten French Masterpieces” which is an interesting idea for a theme especially as it included 19th century composer Louise Ferenc and we really ought to be hearing more – much more – of her.

The title didn’t, however, really apply to the opening work: Faure’s Masques et Bergamasques which is actually pretty familiar. Good to hear it played with such commitment by this well established community orchestra, though. Once the orchestra had settled we got an elegantly courtly Menuet and some excellent flute work in the Romanze from Charlie Faux-Bowyer although some of the string work beneath her was fuzzy. There are some very strong, confident players in this orchestra, led by the ever charismatic Flo Peycelon.

The five orchestral songs by Henri Duparc which occupied the “concerto slot” were completely new to me and I have to say I found them a bit colourless. Soprano Penelope Martin-Smith did her best with them although she didn’t evince much emotion. Moreover, although she lives in France where, according to the programme, she studies French language and culture there was no clarity in her delivery of the French text. Strange too, to use a music stand and have it set so low that you have to keep looking downward. It all felt a bit understated and more like a rehearsal than a performance.

The highlight of the concert was Louise Ferenc’s third symphony which came after the interval. The adagio – lots of colourful lyricism and warmth – was splendid as was the busy, nimbly delivered Scherzo. And the final Allegro gave us lots of melodies intertwined and incisively played. I know this symphony only from recordings and it was a real treat to hear it live and played with such panache.

It was a while since I’d been in the Colyer-Fergusson Hall which is part of the Gulbenkian Arts Centre at the University of Kent. It really does have a pleasing acoustic and the layout – audience on raked seating with the orchestra on the flat space at the bottom – works effectively because it means you can see every single player and that’s rare in a concert hall.

Susan Elkin