Live Events
The best concerts and opera across the kingdom
1 MANCHESTER CAMERATA Manchester Cathedral, 2 May Tel: +44 (0)161 907 9000 Web: www.manchestercamerata.co.uk
The Manchester Camerata is always alert to variety in its programmes. Towards the end of the month the orchestra is at the Royal Albert Hall celebrating the city’s legendary Haçienda Club in an evening curated by the club’s former DJS. First though, slimmed down to chamber proportions for Haydn’s
The Seven Last Words, it’s joined by the young Jordanian-palestinian pianist Iyad Sughayer in Messiaen’s Quartet for the End of Time.
2 DANTE QUARTET Lympstone Parish Church, Devon, 5-7 May & 2-4 June Tel: +44 (0)1395 272243 Web: www.beethoven-lympstone.co.uk
While the Takács Quartet is currently embarked on a complete Beethoven cycle at Wigmore Hall, in deepest Devon the Dante Quartet divides the quartets between six concerts featuring actor David Timson’s dramatised interpolations. Leader Krysia Osostowicz is also recording the complete violin sonatas at Wells’s Cedars Hall, where she plays the Kreutzer No. 9, Op. 47 on 29 May.
3 TOTAL IMMERSION: EDGARD VARÈSE Barbican, London, 6 May Tel: +44 (0)20 7638 8891 Web: www.barbican.org.uk
The composer Varèse claimed to prefer music ‘that explodes in space’ – the explosion will be deafening as the last of the current batch of BBC Total Immersion Days promises every note he wrote. A retrospective, including talks and film, concludes with Étude pour Espace, Déserts, and Amériques, performed by the BBC Symphony Orchestra under Sakari Oramo.
4 SCOTTISH CHAMBER ORCHESTRA Queen’s Hall, Edinburgh, 4 May Tel: +44 (0)131 668 2019 Web: www.sco.org.uk
Among composer Lyell Cresswell’s seven concertos to date are ones for accordion, orchestra and string quartet, and violin with soprano. Nothing for clarinet though – until now. In between Stravinsky’s Pulcinella Suite and Schubert’s Tragic Symphony No. 4, Maximiliano Martín premieres Llanto (‘Lament’). Clemens Schuldt conducts.
5 TIM GILL & ROLF HIND Kings Place, London, 6 May Tel: +44 (0)20 7520 1490 Web: www.kingsplace.co.uk
‘Cello Unwrapped’ extends a hand to chamber music and song this month, but starts by asking the London Sinfonietta’s cellist Tim Gill and composer-pianist Rolf Hind how the 20th and 21st centuries regard the instrument. The answer is supplied by Birtwistle, Adès, Messiaen and Xenakis – after Webern’s Three Little Pieces, Op. 11 supply the point of departure.
6 THE ENGLISH CONCERT St Teresa’s School, Ef ngham, 7 May Tel: +44 (0)1483 444333 Web: www.iimf.co.uk
Nestling in the Surrey hills, the Investec International Music Festival features the Sitkovetsky Trio and pianists Wu Qian and Juho Pohjonen before signing off with a gala in which soprano Rosemary Joshua, mezzo Sarah Connolly and the English Concert under Harry Bicket tackle Handel, including arias and duets from Ariodante, Agrippina and Theodora.