Live Events
BBC Music Magazine’s choice of the UK’S best June concerts and operas, plus a guide to Britten’s Albert Herring
Our 20 best concerts and operas in June
1 LONDON SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA Barbican, London, 23 & 28 May, 1 June Tel: +44 (0)20 7638 8891 Web: www.barbican.org.uk
In the last two concerts of his London Symphony Orchestra residency, Bernard Haitink is very much on home territory with Bruckner’s Symphony No. 9. The conductor pairs it with Bruckner’s Te Deum (on 28 May), followed by Beethoven’s Third Piano Concerto (on 1 June) with Mitsuko Uchida as soloist. The series opens with another Haitink speciality: Mahler’s valedictory
Ninth Symphony.
2 HANDEL’S SEMELE Wormsley Estate, Stokenchurch, 1 June – 4 July Tel: +44 (0)1865 361636 Web: www.garsingtonopera.org
Garsington Opera expands to five productions this summer, including a new community opera and Debussy’s symbolist masterpiece Pelléas et Mélisande. First up is Handel’s mythological extravaganza Semele. It’s directed by Annilese Miskimmon, conducted by Arcangelo’s Jonathan Cohen, and features soprano Heidi Stober as the coquettish Semele. Mezzo-soprano Christine Rice sings Juno.
3 ROYAL SCOTTISH NATIONAL ORCHESTRA Usher Hall, Edinburgh, 2 June Tel: +44 (0)131 228 1155 Web: www.rsno.org.uk
The Royal Scottish National Orchestra’s 125th anniversary season is brought to a resounding close with a work its composer described as ‘A Summer’s Midday Dream’. Mahler’s pantheistic Third Symphony is conducted by Peter Oundjian and repeated in Glasgow the following night.
4 THE HALLÉ Bridgewater Hall, Manchester, 4 June Tel: +44 (0)161 907 9000 Web: www.bridgewater-hall.co.uk
Sir Mark Elder signs off the Hallé’s ‘Northern Legends’ season with Romanticism’s most opulent Indian summer: Schoenberg’s epic Gurrelieder (see interview, p26). Drawing on Danish medieval folklore, it brings together Elder’s own orchestra plus the
BBC Philharmonic, the Hallé Choir (with reinforcements from Edinburgh and London) and an outstanding cast including mezzo Alice Coote as the Wood Dove.
5 STRAUSS’S DER ROSENKAVALIER Millennium Centre, Cardiff, 4, 10 & 17 June Tel: +44 (0)29 2063 6464 Web: www.wno.org.uk
Welsh National Opera (WNO) is celebrating the music of Vienna with Johann Strauss’s Die Fledermaus partnering Richard Strauss’s comedy of love, longing and loss, Der Rosenkavalier. Welsh National Opera’s newly installed music director Tomá≥ Hanus conducts both. And Rosenkavalier notches up two firsts: Olivia Fuch’s Company debut as director, and soprano Rebecca Evans’s role debut as The Marschallin.
6 SOCIETY OF STRANGE & ANCIENT INSTRUMENTS St Andrew’s Church, Grinton, 6 June Tel: +44 (0)1748 880019 Web: www.swaledale-festival.org.uk
Deploying such exotica as the tromba marina, viola bastarda, gothic bray harp and… laptop, the splendidly named Society of Strange & Ancient Instruments heads for the 17th century to scrutinise Francis Bacon’s investigations into the nature of sound. The musical selection includes Lawes, Gibbons and Hume.
7 BIRMINGHAM CONTEMPORARY MUSIC GROUP CBSO Centre, Birmingham, 10 June Tel: +44 (0)121 780 3333 Web: www.bcmg.org.uk
Oliver Knussen replaces an indisposed Ryan Wigglesworth as conductor of Birmingham Contemporary Music Group’s season swansong devoted to British music – an astute choice, since Knussen’s Songs with Voices and his Rilke settings (sung by soprano Claire Booth) frame a world premiere by Colin Matthews. To end, there’s a contemporary classic: Birtwistle’s Secret Theatre.
8 ROYAL LIVERPOOL PHILHARMONIC ORCHESTRA Metropolitan Cathedral, Liverpool, 10 June Tel: +44 (0)151 709 3789 Web: www.liverpoolphil.com
The RLPO forsakes its Philharmonic home to help celebrate 50 years since the opening of the city’s Metropolitan Cathedral. Sir James Macmillan conducts Poulenc’s Gloria along with his own setting (with soloists soprano Mary Bevan and tenor Ian Bostridge). There are canzonas, too, by Gabrieli.
9 JANÁCEK’Sˇ JENUFA West Horsley Place, Surrey from 11 June Tel: +44 (0)1962 737373 Web: www.grangeparkopera.co.uk
With a new Theatre in the Woods – modelled on La Scala Milan – Grange Park Opera opens a new chapter following its transfer to Surrey. June boasts Puccini’s Tosca (with tenor Joseph Calleja) and Wagner’s Die Walküre as well as an evening with bass-baritone Bryn Terfel; but a special highlight is Janáωek’s searing tragedy in a production by Katie Mitchell starring soprano Natalya Romaniw as Jen∞fa.
10 QUATUOR MOSAÏQUES St Leonard’s Church, Bridgnorth, 11 June Tel: +44 (0)7547 289704 Web: www.englishhaydn.com
Bridgnorth has been hosting a Haydn festival for nearly a quarter of a century – in collaboration with the great Haydn scholar HC Robbins Landon until his death in 2009. This year’s theme examines ‘Haydn across the Years’, and includes the pre-eminent period instrument string quartet Quatuor Mosaïques in the devotional Seven Last Words of our Saviour on the Cross.
JUNE 2017 11 CARDIFF SINGER OF THE WORLD 2017 Cardiff, 11-18 June Tel: +44 (0)29 2087 8444 Web: www.stdavidshallcardiff.co.uk
There are 20 hopefuls, but only one will be named Cardiff Singer of the World as the biennial competition returns complete with fringe events, lunchtime recitals and masterclasses from soprano Dame Kiri Te Kanawa, bass-baritone Thomas Quasthoff (see interview, p48) and mezzo Grace Bumbry among others. Orchestral honours are shared between the BBC National Orchestra of Wales and the Orchestra of Welsh National Opera.
12 DEAN’S HAMLET Glyndebourne, 11 June – 6 July Tel: +44 (0)1273 815000 Web: www.glyndebourne.com
Glyndebourne paid its Shakespearean dues last year with Berlioz and Britten, but reserved the right to a postscript which it delivers with the world premiere of Brett Dean’s Hamlet –a drama whose ‘themes of life and death, love and betrayal have opera written all over them,’ says the composer. Vladimir Jurowski conducts Neil Armfield’s production with tenor Allan Clayton as the Prince and soprano Barbara Hannigan (left) as Ophelia.
13 IGOR LEVIT Wigmore Hall, London, 13 June Tel: +44 (0)20 7935 2141 Web: www.wigmore-hall.org.uk
Pianist Igor Levit made a distinguished CD debut with Beethoven’s last five piano sonatas, and since last September he’s been undertaking his first live expedition through the sonata cycle at Wigmore Hall. So far he’s roved freely through the opus numbers, but for journey’s end he tackles the last three in sequence, a mighty trilogy in all but name.
14 NORWEGIAN RADIO ORCHESTRA Pickaquoy Centre, Kirkwall, 18 & 20 June Tel: +44 (0)1856 871445 Web: www.stmagnusfestival.com
A strong Norwegian presence underpins St Magnus Festival’s contribution to ‘Magnus 900’. It’s spearheaded by a first visit to Orkney from the Norwegian Radio Orchestra under Miguel Harth-bedoya. In the first of two concerts Mozart’s Requiem meets folk tunes from Hardingtonar; the second includes the UK premiere of Víctor Agudelo’s La Madre de Agua ahead of Sibelius’s Symphony No. 5.
15 VOX LUMINIS Snape Maltings, Aldeburgh, 18, 20 & 22 June Tel: +44 (0)1728 687110 Web: www.snapemaltings.co.uk
Aldeburgh Festival is celebrating Snape Maltings’s half-century (see feature, p40)
with works first heard there as well as operatic Britten twice over. But in a threepart residency divided between the Concert Hall and Blythburgh Church, Belgian vocal ensemble Vox Luminis marks the Lutheran Reformation with Bach and Schütz, and pairs Purcell with, yes, Britten.
16 VERDI’S OTELLO Royal Opera House, from 21 June
Tel: +44 (0)20 7304 4000 Web: www.roh.org.uk After revivals of Il trovatore, La traviata and Don Carlo this season, the Royal Opera House returns to Verdi for a new production of Otello (its first in 30 years). Staged by Keith Warner and conducted by Antonio Pappano, it features tenor Jonas Kaufmann in his role debut as the tormented Moorish General and soprano Maria Agresta as Desdemona.
17 COURTIERS OF GRACE All Saints Church, Boughton Aluph, 23 June
Tel: +44 (0)1227 769075 Web: www.stourmusic.org.uk Early vocal music dominates Stour Music’s 2017 edition where old friends such as The Tallis Scholars and I Fagiolini rub shoulders with festival debutants Amici Voices. Another firsttimer is Courtiers of Grace, whose mingling of words and music tells the story of Henry VIII’S relationship with Anne Boleyn in their letters and love songs – some by Henry himself.
18 CITY OF BIRMINGHAM SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA Symphony Hall, Birmingham, 24 June
Tel: +44 (0)121 780 3333 Web: www.thsh.co.uk Mirga Graˇzinyte˙ -Tyla (above) rounds off her first season at the helm of the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra with the orchestra’s now traditional June foray into opera in concert. The young Mozart’s exuberantly scored Idomeneo is this year’s choice with a cast built around tenor Ben Johnson as the ill-fated Cretan King. Mezzosoprano Rachel Kelly is Idamante, and soprano Sophie Bevan, Ilia.
19 THE SIXTEEN St James’s Church, Sussex Gardens, London, 25 June
Tel: +44 (0)20 7936 3420 Web: www.voicesoflondonfestival.com The Sixteen must have performed Purcell’s The Fairy Queen countless times, but never before like this. Staged for the Voices of London Festival, two singers and a guitarist join forces with actors and a cast of puppets from theatre group Box Tale Soup for a family-friendly hour-long show that wraps Purcell’s music around Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream.
20 BRITTEN’S ALBERT HERRING
The Grange, Alresford, 25 June – 9 July Tel: +44 (0)1962 791020 Web: www.thegrangefestival.co.uk Grange Park Opera may have moved to its new Surrey home (see Choice 9), but countertenor Michael Chance is curating an ambitious replacement festival in the original Grange that includes Monteverdi’s Il ritorno d’ulisse in patria and Bizet’s Carmen in tandem with Britten’s bibulous comedy Albert Herring (see Quick guide to…, left). John Copley’s production – conducted by Britten specialist Steuart Bedford – crowns tenor Richard Pinkstone’s Albert as the reluctant May King.