Live events
Paul Riley picks the month’s best concert and opera highlights in the UK
LONDON Total Immersion: Ligeti
Barbican, 2 March Tel: +44 (0)20 7638 8891 Web: www.barbican.org.uk A screening of the 1976 documentary All Clouds are Clocks heralds the BBC Symphony Orchestra’s immersive day given over to Ligeti. A lecture and chamber music recital are followed by the BBC Singers in a concert of choral works – Lux Aeterna and the Nonsense Madrigals among them – before conductor Sakari Oramo showcases the violin and piano concertos.
Ensemble Modern and Orchestra
The Roundhouse, 6 March Tel: +44 (0)330 6789 222 Web: www.roundhouse.org.uk Following an evening at Wigmore Hall culminating in George Benjamin’s opera Into the Little Hill, the composer-conductor and Germany’s leading contemporary music group decamp to the Roundhouse. An invigorating line-up there moves through Berlioz, Messiaen, Ustvolskaya and Ligeti to Benjamin’s 2002 orchestral piece Palimpsests.
Philharmonia
St Paul’s Cathedral, 8 March Tel: + 44 (0)20 7921 3907 Web: www.philharmonia.co.uk Berlioz attended his Grande Messe des morts at St Paul’s in 1851 when the children in the chorus numbered some 6,500. Conductor John Nelson isn’t quite so ambitious, but unites the Philharmonia Chorus and London Philharmonic Choir as well as tenor Michael Spyres in a performance that marks to the day the 150th anniversary of the composer’s death.
Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment
Royal Festival Hall, 18, 19 March Tel: +44 (0)20 3879 9555 Web: www.southbankcentre.co.uk The period instruments of the OAE step out of their 18thcentury comfort zone for two concerts in which Sir András Schiff tackles Brahms and Schumann. Brahms’s Piano Concerto No. 1 is offset by Schumann’s exuberant Konzertstück for Four Horns and his Symphony No. 4, while the Second Concerto is prefaced by the Rhenish Symphony No. 3.
Verdi’s La forza del destino
Royal Opera House, 21 March – 22 April Tel: +44 (0)20 7304 4000Web: www.roh.org.uk With Anna Netrebko and Jonas Kaufmann heading up one of two casts, Christof Loy’s new production of Verdi’s expansive tragedy is likely to be one of the year’s hottest operatic tickets – especially with ardent Verdian Sir Antonio Pappano conducting. The second cast includes Christopher Maltman in his role debut as the avenging Don Carlo.
Collegium SOUTH
Turner Sims, Southampton, 5 March Tel: +44 (0)23 8059 5151 Web: www.turnersims.co.uk Returning to Turner Sims, this time at the head of his new ensemble Collegium, viola player Lawrence Power has a song in his heart. Several, in fact, as transcriptions of Lieder by Schubert and Brahms are stitched into a musical timeline stretching from Biber’s La Battalia to Piazzolla’s Four Seasons of Buenos Aires.
Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra and Chorus
Lighthouse, Poole, 20 March Tel: +44 (0)1202 280000 Web: www.bsolive.com Vaughan Williams’s Fantasia on a Theme by Thomas Tallis supplies a sonorous upbeat to Tippett’s spirituals-enriched oratorio
A Child of Our Time. Conducted by David Hill, the Bournemouth Symphony forces are joined by mezzo-soprano Christine Rice and bass Simon Shibambu.
EAST
Britten Sinfonia
St Andrew’s Hall, Norwich, 22 March Tel: +44 (0)1603 630000 Web: www.brittensinfonia.com Peter Maxwell Davies’s Farewell to Stromness and the first live performance of James Macmillan’s Hirta – reworking a folksong from St Kilda – set the scene for the premiere of the new work by the winner of the ensemble’s OPUS18 composition competition. Folk-singer Hannah Rarity is joined by piano quintet.
Academy of Ancient Music
West Road Concert Hall, Cambridge, 27 March Tel: +44 (0)1223 357851 Web: www.aam.co.uk Cellist Nicolas Altstaedt multitasks as soloist and director in CPE Bach’s A major Concerto and Haydn’s dapper Concerto No. 1. Indeed, there’s Haydn aplenty what with the Andante Cantabile from Symphony No. 13 plus Symphony No. 14 in its entirety. Up first is Boccherini.
MIDLANDS,
NORTH AND WALES BBC Philharmonic
Bridgewater Hall, Manchester, 9 March Tel: + 44 (0)161 907 9000 Web: www.bridgewater-hall.co.uk Composer Oliver Knussen should have conducted this concert featuring the premiere of Martin Suckling’s The Departing Landscape. But following Knussen’s death last June, Ryan Wigglesworth obliges and pays tribute with the late composer’s Flourish with Fireworks. Nielsen’s Inextinguishable Symphony No. 4 replaces the advertised Borodin, and soprano Claire Booth and violinist Clio Gould are the soloists in Henze’s Ariosi.
English Touring Opera
Storyhouse, Chester, 15, 16 March Tel: +44 (0)1244 409113 Web: englishtouringopera.org.uk Rossini’s Elizabeth I, Mozart’s Idomeneo and Verdi’s Macbeth comprise English Touring Opera’s Spring offering, which opens in London and ventures northwards as far as Perth. Chester bags Mozart’s youthful masterpiece in a new production by James Conway as well as Verdi’s take on the Scottish play directed by James Dacre.
London Winds
Royal Welsh College of Music & Drama, Cardiff, 15 March Tel: +44 (0)29 2039 1391 Web: www.rwcmd.ac.uk Pianist Catherine Milledge infiltrates the ranks of London Winds for Poulenc’s delectable Sextet, which flaunts its Gallic savoir-faire in the face of Hindemith’s piano-less Kleine Kammermusik.
Puccini’s Gianni Schicchi
Theatre Royal, Newcastle, 16 March Tel: +44 (0)8448 112121 Web: www.operanorth.co.uk Trust Opera North to provide an eye-catching pairing for Puccini’s worldly-wise comedy, Gianni Schicchi. Christopher Alden’s 2015 production is revived alongside Stravinsky’s The Rite of Spring. The latter marks the company’s first collaboration with Phoenix Dance Company and, conducted by Garry Walker, Leeds, Salford Quays and Nottingham share this intriguing double bill.
Ex Cathedra
St Mary’s Church, Warwick, 26 March Tel: +44 (0)1926 334418 Web: www.excathedra.co.uk Old World polyphony and New World vivacity fuse in a programme titled ‘Fire Burning in Snow’. Ex Cathedra and conductor Jeffrey Skidmore’s irresistible traversal of South American Baroque orbits the music of the late 17th-/early 18th-century Juan de Araujo who was maestro di capella of Lima Cathedral in Peru.
SCOTLAND
AND N IRELAND International Chamber Music Festival
Queen’s University, Belfast, 1-3 March Tel: +44 (0)28 9024 6609 Web: www.belfastmusicsociety.org A new work by Deirdre Gribbin and Beethoven’s sonata swansong spliced with late Brahms from pianist Leon Mccawley frame recitals by the London Haydn Quartet and violinist Isabelle van Keulen.
Janá ek’s Kat’a Kabanová
Theatre Royal Glasgow, 12-16 March Tel: +44 (0)844 871 7647 Web: www.scottishopera.org.uk As Richard Jones’s Royal Opera House production comes to a close, Scottish Opera picks up the Kát’a Kabanová baton, unveiling a new production by Stephen Lawless. Laura Wilde takes the title role (see ‘Backstage with…’, above), with mezzo-soprano Patricia Bardon as the interfering Kabanicha. Stuart Stratford conducts.
Jeremy Denk
Concert Hall, Perth, 24 March Tel: +44 (0)1738 621031 Web: www.horsecross.co.uk ‘Variation’ is the unspoken theme of this typically thoughtful programme from Jeremy Denk. The American pianist takes us through the 19th century with variation sets by Beethoven, Bizet and Mendelssohn, juxtaposed with John Adams’s I Still Play, which pays homage to Bach’s Goldberg Variations. Denk closes his recital with Schumann’s mighty Fantasy in C.