Live events
The best opera and concerts across the country
LONDON Vox Luminis
Wigmore Hall, 8 November
Tel: +44 (0)20 7935 2141
Web: www.wigmore-hall.org.uk Lionel Meunier’s Belgian vocal ensemble inaugurates a season-long residency with a time-honoured calling card: Schütz’s Musikalische Exequien. The Requiem is presented alongside funeral music by four of JS Bach’s forebears plus works by Selle and Scheidt (see right, ‘Backstage with…’).
London Philharmonic Orchestra
Royal Festival Hall, 10 November Tel: +44 (0)20 3879 9555
Web: www.southbankcentre.co.uk After The Rake’s Progress (3 Nov) that’s part of their ongoing Stravinsky odyssey, conductor Vladimir Jurowski and the LPO turn to the Requiem Canticles. The programme incorporates the premiere of Magnus Lindberg’s Triumph to Exist, setting wartime words by Finnish poet Edith Södergran, and is partnered by Debussy and rare Janácˇek.
BBC Symphony Orchestra
Barbican, 10 November
Tel: +44 (0)20 7638 8891
Web: www.barbican.org.uk
The first BBC ‘Total Immersion’ of the season is devoted to a remembrance of World War I in film, talks and chamber music. It culminates in Mark-anthony Turnage’s opera The Silver Tassie, in which Ashley Riches is the war-scarred Harry in a concert performance conducted by Ryan Wigglesworth.
Wimbledon Music Festival
St John’s Church, Spencer Hill, 19 November
Tel: +44 (0)333 666 3366
Web: wimbledonmusicfestival.co.uk Bookended by Haydn-meets Gesualdo-meets-indian-classicalmusic and the Philharmonia’s Beethoven Eroica Symphony, Wimbledon Festival flourishes in its tenth year. Chamber concerts feature the Takács and Dante quartets, and pianist Imogen Cooper joins London Winds for vivacious quintets by Mozart and Beethoven.
Highgate International Chamber Music Festival
St Anne’s and St Michael’s Churches, 20-25 November
Tel :+44 (0)7779 100646
Web: chambermusicfestival.co.uk Violinist Alina Ibragimova leads performances of Schubert’s Octet and the Schumann Piano Quintet; Julian Bliss tackles Bernstein’s Clarinet Sonata; and actor Simon Callow reads poems by Betjeman between music by Debussy and Elgar. Highgate hums along nicely!
SOUTH
Music at Tresanton
Methodist Chapel, St Mawes,
2-4 November
Tel:+44 (0)1872 262466
Web: www.musicattresanton.co.uk St Mawes’s handsome 18thcentury chapel is home to Haydn this autumn. From solo sonatas to the scintillating D major Piano Concerto HOBXVIII:11, Music at Tresanton 2018, curated by pianist Noam Greenberg, is on a one-composer mission.
The Doric Quartet dips into the Op. 33 set and plays the Seven Last Words.
Brighton Early Music Festival
St Martin’s Church, Brighton, 4 November
Tel: +44 (0)1273 709709
Web: www.bremf.org.uk
Brighton Early Music Festival is teasing out historic European ties and, doffing its cap to the Hanseatic League, invites Canto Fiorito from Lithuania and Musica Antiqua Salzburg to undertake a musical journey through the Hansa states.
Bath Mozartfest
The Forum, Bath, 10 November Tel: +44 (0)1225 463362
Web: www.bathmozartfest.org.uk What with the Belcea, Takács, and Jerusalem quartets in
attendance, Bath Mozartfest is awash with fine chamber music. Haydn’s Creation brings down the final curtain on 17 November, but not before Sir Mark Elder and the Hallé have accompanied pianist Francesco Piemontesi in Beethoven’s Emperor Concerto, and dusted down excerpts from Wagner’s operas Die Meistersinger and Lohengrin.
EAST
Britten Sinfonia
St Andrew’s Hall, Norwich, 8 November Tel: +44 (0)1603 630000
Web: www.brittensinfonia.com There are two premieres from composer Nico Muhly this month. At London’s Kings Place, the Aurora Orchestra gives the first performance of a reworking of Old Bones. And Britten Sinfonia takes to the road with a tour unveiling the new orchestral version of The Last Letter beside other works contemplating World War I – Ravel’s Le Tombeau de Couperin and Gurney’s The Western Playland among them. Thomas Gould directs. The Maltings, Snape,
12, 13 November
Tel: 44 (0)1728 687110
Web: www.snapemaltings.co.uk Handel’s Armenian extravaganza Radamisto headlines a Devonto-durham autumn season for English Touring Opera. The company also embarks on a triple bill that wraps madrigals by Gesualdo and Carissimi’s Biblical drama Jonas around Purcell’s Dido and Aeneas, directed by
Seb Harcombe.
MIDLANDS
NORTH AND WALES Britten’s War Requiem
St David’s Hall, Cardiff, 11 November
Tel: +44 (0)29 2087 8444
Web: www.bbc.co.uk/now
Under conductor Ryan Wigglesworth, the BBC National Orchestra and Chorus of Wales mark the centenary of the Armistice with Britten’s choral meditation on ‘war and the pity of war’. Keep an eye out, too, though, for an intriguing prequel on 27 October when the world premiere of Stanford’s mass Via Victrix crowns a deftly plotted programme ‘For the Fallen’ conducted by Adrian Partington.
Stile Antico
St Mary’s Church, Warwick, 13 November
Tel: +44 (0)1926 334418
Web: www.leamingtonmusic.org Music was always a conduit to Elizabeth I’s heart, and the ‘Queen of Muses’ programme takes the vocal consort on a journey through some of the works with which courtiers, diplomats and suitors hoped to bend the royal ear. Step forward Dowland, Byrd, Tallis, Taverner, Ferrabosco and excerpts from Morley’s The Triumphs of Oriana.
Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival
Huddersfield, 16-25 November Tel: +44 (0)1484 430528
Web: www.hcmf.co.uk Swiss-american visual artist/ composer Christian Marclay is in residence at Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival and cuts a dash at the end of the first weekend with the world premiere of Investigations – a piece for 20 pianos. Ensemble babel from Switzerland and The Thurston Moore Ensemble also spotlight UK premieres of works by Marclay. Manchester Cathedral, 21 November
Tel: +44 (0)161 907 9000
Web: www.manchestercamerata. co.uk
The Last Night of the Proms safely behind her, saxophonist Jess Gillam teams up with Manchester Camerata for an evening exploring folk music in works such as Bartók’s Romanian Dances and the Cumbrian folk tunes-inspired RANT!, written this year for Gillam by John Harle.
SCOTLAND
AND N IRELAND
Ulster Orchestra
Ulster Hall, Belfast, 2 November Tel: 44 (0)28 9024 6609
Web: www. belfastinternationalartsfestival.com Belfast International Arts Festival signs off with Northern Ireland’s flagship orchestra and a nod to the Bernstein centenary. Violinist Baiba Skride is the soloist in Bernstein’s Serenade (after Plato’s Symposium), and flanking it are Charles Ives’s
The Unanswered Question and Dvoˇrák’s New World Symphony. Jac van Steen conducts.
Viola, Viola
The Lemon Tree, Aberdeen, 3 November
Tel: +44 (0)1224 641122
Web: www.sound-scotland.co.uk Women composers and the viola are twin themes engaging Aberdeenshire’s ‘soundfestival’ (24 October – 4 November), and they collide in the premiere of a new piece for six violas by Sally Beamish. She participates in the performance which also features George Benjamin’s Viola,
Viola alongside Garth Knox’s Ockeghem Fantasy and music by Marin Marais.
Scottish Ensemble
Tramway, Glasgow,
9,10 November
Tel: + 44 (0)141 565 8000
Web: www.scottishensemble.co.uk Stockholm-based Andersson Dance and the Scottish Ensemble reunite following their previous collaboration on JS Bach’s Goldberg Variations. Prelude – skydiving from a dream revisits Bach, burrowing into excerpts from the Art of Fugue together with preludes by Lutos¯awski. Beethoven’s gloriously defiant Grosse Fuge takes pride of place.