Live events
Paul Riley picks the month’s best concert and opera highlights in the UK
The best opera and concerts across the country
LONDON Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment
Queen Elizabeth Hall, 4 July
Tel: +44 (0)20 3879 9555
Web: www.southbankcentre.co.uk Mixing the choral with the symphonic, Haydn has already preoccupied the OAE this year. Now John Butt passes the baton to András Schiff who pairs the ‘Surprise’ Symphony No. 94 with the late, great Harmoniemesse
– venturing the D major Piano Concerto by way of a scintillating curtain-up.
Americana 18
St John’s Smith Square, 4, 6 July Tel: +44 (0)20 7222 1061
Web: www.sjss.org.uk
Copland’s Fanfare for the Common Man and Joan Tower’s Fanfare for the Uncommon Woman launch a day-long 4 July celebration that culminates two days later in Tenebrae’s eclectic survey of largely American choral music, from Schoenberg’s
Friede auf Erden to Bernstein’s Chichester Psalms.
Guildhall Chamber Music Festival
Guildhall School of Music and Drama, 6-8 July
Tel: +44 (0)20 7638 8891
Web: www.gsmd.ac.uk/events Oboist Nicholas Daniel, horn player Alec Frank-gemmill and the Endellion Quartet are among the performers in the Guildhall School’s new chamber festival, which features the complete Brahms piano trios and ends on a high with Mendelssohn’s Octet.
Mascagni’s Isabeau
Holland Park, 14-28 July
Tel: +44 (0)300 999 1000
Web: www.operahollandpark.com First seen in 1911, Mascagni’s rarely-performed take on the Lady Godiva legend continues Opera Holland Park’s abiding interest in Italian lateromanticism and Verismo. Francesco Cilluffo conducts a new production by Martin Lloydevans which saddles up Anne Sophie Duprels for the title role.
Ensemble Variances
Wigmore Hall, 11 July
Tel: +44 (0)20 7935 2141
Web: www.wigmore-hall.org.uk
The sounds of the deep blue sea will be filling Wigmore Hall as Ensemble Variances performs Thierry Pécou’s Méditation sur la fin de l’espèce for solo cello, instrumental ensemble and processed whale sounds. Back on dry land, works by Debussy, Takemitsu, Mâche and Szymanowski occupy this adventurous group’s attentions.
SOUTH Cheltenham Music Festival
Town Hall, Cheltenham, 4 July Tel: +44 (0)1242 850270
Web: www.cheltenhamfestivals.com There’s an operatic flavour to the Cheltenham Festival this year, what with the premiere of Joseph Phibbs’s chamber opera Juliana and Leonard Bernstein’s Candide. On the first night, soprano Louise Alder sings arias by Mozart and Richard Strauss in a concert that climaxes with Elgar’s mighty First Symphony. The Hallé is conducted Sir Mark Elder.
Garsington Opera
Wormsley Estate, Stokenchurch, 5-16 July
Tel: +44 (0)1865 361636
Web: www.garsingtonopera.org
In a season including new productions of Verdi’s Falstaff and Strauss’s Capriccio, Garsington goes the extra mile with the premiere of a specially commissioned opera from
David Sawer. Based on Roberto Bolaño’s novel The Skating
Rink, it’s a tale of blackmail, treachery… and ice. Garry Walker (see ‘Backstage with…’ right) conducts a strong cast directed by Stewart Laing.
Petworth Festival
St Mary’s Church, Petworth, 20 July
Tel: +44 (0)1798 344576
Web: www.petworthfestival.org.uk Composers and their muses inspire the acclaimed cello and piano duo of Steven Isserlis and Connie Shih in works by the Schumanns Robert and Clara, Fauré, Augusta Holmès and Franck, whose Sonata in A rounds off the evening.
Piotr Anderszewsi
St John the Evangelist Church, Oxford, 28 July
Tel: +44 (0)1865 980980
Web: www.oxfordphil.com
Oxford Piano Festival assembles a decidedly impressive roster of artists, András Schiff, Menahem Pressler and Richard Goode among them. First up is Piotr Anderszewski, who paves the way to Beethoven’s Diabelli Variations with choice Bach including the imposing G minor English Suite.
EAST Armonico Consort
Our Lady & the English Martyr’s Church, Cambridge, 12 July
Tel: +44 (0)1223 357851 www.cambridgesummermusic.co.uk Armonico Consort’s nine-venue ‘Supersize Polyphony 360’ does exactly what it says on the tin. Leavened with palate-cleansing chant by Hildegard of Bingen, Striggio’s Mass in 60 parts and Tallis’s more modest 40part Spem in alium are sung in surround-sound style.
Music in Country Churches
St Peter & St Paul Church, Salle, nr Reepham, 24 & 25 July
Tel: +44 (0)1485 535071 www.musicincountrychurches.com Dvorák’s sunny Serenade for Strings, played by the English Chamber Orchestra, and the kampa Quartet’s Haydn and Beethoven bookend a trio of concerts with, at their heart, Bach’s three partitas for solo violin, played by Benjamin Baker.
MIDLANDS,
NORTH AND WALES Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra
Philharmonic Hall, Liverpool, 5 July
Tel: +44 (0)151 709 3789
Web: www.liverpoolphil.com Conductor Vasily Petrenko’s last concert of the season puts the RLPO centre-stage as Bartók’s Concerto for Orchestra follows an equally glittering prelude: Ravel’s sultry song cycle Shéhérazade. The mezzo soloist is Measha Brueggergosman.
York Early Music Festival
St Michael in the Belfry, York, 7 July
Tel: +44 (0)1904 658338
Web: www.ncem.co.uk/yemf
Music for a 16th-century Hungarian Court and the ramifications of the Council of Constance are just two facets of York Early Music Festival’s ‘Power and Politics’ edition.
The turbulence of the English Civil War brings together vocal sextet Gallicantus and The Rose Consort in Judith Bingham’s Requiem for William Lawes.
Allegri String Quartet
St Myllin’s Church, Llanfyllin, 13-22 July
Tel: +44 (0)7783 548520
Web: www.llanfyllinfestival.org.uk The Allegri Quartet has been anchoring a music festival in Llanfyllin’s acoustically blest 18th-century church for over 40 years. 2018’s chamber smörgåsbord ranges over Purcell and Britten, Brahms and Wolf.
Igor Levit
Symphony Hall, Birmingham, 19 July
Tel: +44 (0)121 780 3333
Web: www.thsh.co.uk
The formidable Russo-german pianist is in barnstorming mood as Brahms’s transcription of the Bach solo violin Chaconne and Busoni’s arrangement of Liszt’s Fantasy and Fugue on Ad nos enfold works by Schumann, Wagner and Busoni himself.
Three Choirs Festival
Hereford Cathedral, 31 July
Tel: +44 (0)1452 768928
Web: www.3choirs.org
The violinist Rachel Podger puts her estimable ensemble Brecon Baroque at the service of a Monteverdi 1610 Vespers uniting the three cathedral choirs of Hereford, Worcester and Gloucester under the baton of Hereford’s Geraint Bowen.
SCOTLAND
AND N IRELAND Scottish Chamber Orchestra
The Bowhouse, St Monan’s, 1 July Tel: +44 (0)131 473 2000
Web: www.eastneukfestival.com Having enjoyed a ‘Big Bach Day’ focusing on the Cello Suites performed by Jean-guihen Queyras and a Tallis Scholars residency mindful of Miserere settings, East Neuk Festival signs off with Haydn’s ‘Farewell’ Symphony No. 45. Excerpts from Rameau’s Les Indes Galantes and Mozart’s Clarinet Concerto (soloist Maximiliano Martin) are directed by Christian Zacharias.
Hebrides Ensemble
Paxton House, Berwick on Tweed, 20 July
Tel: +44 (0)131 473 2000
Web: www.musicatpaxton.co.uk Situated right on the border between Scotland and England, Paxton’s annual festival of chamber music opens with a double concert from pianist Alasdair Beatson and friends. And then, not to be outdone, the Hebrides Ensemble also proposes an imaginative twosome. The first concert visits piano trios by Bridge, Debussy and Nigel Osborne, while the second ups the ante to piano quartets by Mahler and Brahms alongside Judith Weir’s Distance lends Enchantment.