Live events
Paul Riley picks the month’s best concert and opera highlights in the UK
LONDON
London Philharmonic Orchestra
Royal Festival Hall, 1 February Tel: +44 (0)20 3879 9555
Web: www.southbankcentre.co.uk Conductor Vladimir Jurowski reaches the third instalment – Siegfried – of his four-year traversal of Wagner’s Ring cycle. He’s assembled quite a cast. Torsten Kerl sings the role of the eponymous lead, who braves fire to awaken Elena Pankratova’s Brünnhilde from her magic sleep.
Radio 3 New Generation Artists
Wigmore Hall, 1 February
Tel: +44 (0)20 7935 2141
Web: www.wigmore-hall.org.uk
A raft of current and former Radio 3 New Generation Artists convene for an action-packed day of four concerts celebrating the 20th anniversary of the scheme. The likes of Meta4, the Elias Quartet, pianist Cédric Tiberghien and tenor Allan Clayton perform repertoire from Mozart and Brahms to Kaipainen and Britten.
Beethoven Weekender
The Barbican, 1-2 February
Tel: +44 (0)20 7638 8891
Web: www.barbican.org.uk
Five orchestras and conductors, nine symphonies, one weekend. The Barbican marks Beethoven 250 with a concentrated symphony cycle writ large, alongside a series of talks, installations and exhibitions. The weekend reaches its climax with the mighty Ninth from the Hallé, and the project is repeated at Sage Gateshead a few weeks later.
Igor Levit and Friends
Milton Court, 13 February
Tel: +44 (0)20 7638 8891
Web: www.barbican.org.uk Masterminded by the inquisitive Russian pianist, Messiaen’s two-piano Visions de l’amen prefaces an intriguing transcription for piano trio and percussion of Shostakovich’s Symphony No. 15.
Vox Luminis
Kings Place, 26 February
Tel: +44 (0)20 7520 1490
Web: www.kingsplace.co.uk Woven into Kings Place’s Nature Unwrapped series, the Belgian early music ensemble returns to sing works by Lassus: Lamentationes Jeremiae Prophetae and the stunning five-voice Requiem, Missa pro defunctis.
SOUTH
Västerås Sinfonietta
St George’s Bristol, 16 February Tel: +44 (0)845 4024 001
Web: www.stgeorgesbristol.co.uk The Swedish chamber orchestra remembers home with Andrea Tarrodi’s vivid tone poem Zephyros. Mendelssohn, Ligeti and Dvoˇrák amplify the focus on the natural world before
Lawrence Power and Paul Watkins link bows in Brahms’s orchestral adieu: the expansive Concerto for Violin and Cello. The conductor is Simon Crawford-phillips.
Bath Bachfest
Bath, 20-22 February
Tel: +44 (0)1225 463362
Web: www.bathbachfest.org.uk Across Bachfest’s ninth season, violinist Rachel Podger leads Brecon Baroque in shaking the boughs of the Bach family tree, with interjections from Buxtehude; Florilegium promises a face-off between two great Baroque legends, Couperin and Bach; while van Eyck gatecrashes an otherwise all-bach programme from recorder player Michala Petri and harpsichordist Mahan Esfahani.
EAST Iceland Symphony Orchestra
Theatre Royal, Norwich, 9 February
Tel: +44 (0)1603 630000
Web: theatreroyalnorwich.co.uk The Icelanders play a game of two halves. France bags the first, pairing Ravel’s Piano Concerto for the Left Hand with Bizet’s L’arlésienne Suite No. 2. In the second, the dynamic Icelandic landscape of Anna Thorvaldsdóttir’s Aeriality meets the fairy-tale world of Prokofiev’s Romeo and Juliet. The soloist is Jean-efflam Bavouzet; Yan Pascal Tortelier conducts.
Sacconi Quartet
Apex, Bury St Edmunds, 27 February
Tel: +44 (0)1284 758000
Web: www.theapex.co.uk
Newly returned from a tour of Russia, the Sacconi
Quartet teams up with Jon Boden (former frontman of folk band Bellowhead) to revisit The Juliet Letters,
Elvis Costello’s 1993 concept album created in collaboration with the Brodsky Quartet. First there’s the Romance by Rachmaninov and Jonathan Dove’s turn-of-the-millennium quartet, Out of Time.
MIDLANDS,
NORTH AND WALES Apollo5
Trent University Hall, Nottingham, 4 February
Tel: +44 (0)115 837 1950
Web: www.ntu.ac.uk
Gearing up for its upcoming US tour, the immaculate a cappella fivesome reprises works from its latest disc. The programme ranges across the centuries from Byrd and Monteverdi to Vaughan Williams and James Macmillan.
Ensemble 360
Crucible Theatre Studio, Sheffield, 6 February
Tel: +44 (0)114 249 6000
Web: www.musicintheround.co.uk Launching a new disc of music by Howard Skempton, Ensemble 360 interweaves Beethoven’s only song cycle An die ferne Geliebte and Vaughan Williams’s On Wenlock Edge with Skempton’s The Moon is Flashing and the Piano Concerto – both in their recent chamber incarnations, written specifically for the ensemble. The tenor is James Gilchrist; the pianist, Tim Horton.
Welsh National Opera
Wales Millennium Centre, Cardiff, from 8 February
Tel: +44 90)29 2063 6464
Web: www.wno.org.uk
Director David Pountney and his creative team complete their Verdi trilogy with Les vêpres siciliennes, a powerful tale of revenge anchored in 13th-century Sicily and based on real events. WNO’S conductor laureate Carlo Rizzi presides over a cast which includes
Anush Hovhannisyan in the role of Hélène.
Opera North
Grand Theatre, Leeds, from 15 February
Tel: +44 (0)844 848 2700
Web: www.operanorth.co.uk Alessandro Talevi’s spine-tingling 2010 production of Britten’s operatic take on Henry James’s The Turn of the Screw receives a welcome revival. It’s conducted this time around by Leo Mcfall and features Sarah Tynan as the Governess, haunted by the ghostly presence of Nicholas Watts’s Peter Quint and Eleanor Dennis’s Miss Jessel.
Ensemble 10/10
St George’s Hall, Liverpool, 20 February
Tel: +44 (0)151 709 3789
Web: www.liverpoolphil.com There’s a Pastoral Symphony in conductor Duncan Ward’s Liverpool line-up, but it’s not by Beethoven. Brett Dean’s symphonic salute to nature sits in a programme that explores the cycle of life in the natural world, from the untouched beauty of the Lancashire moors in Ward’s own Greenhurst Way to a study of pregnancy and early motherhood in Samantha Fernando’s Formations.
SCOTLAND & NORTHERN IRELAND Scottish Opera
Theatre Royal, Glasgow,
18-22 February
Tel: +44 (0)844 871 7647
Web: www.scottishopera.org.uk
Eric Greene takes the title role in Scottish Opera’s first encounter with John Adams’s Nixon in China, a piece inspired by the American president’s bridgebuilding visit in 1972. Directed by John Fulljames and conducted by Joana Carneiro, it also features Mark Le Brocq as Mao Tse-tung and Julia Sporsén as the First Lady.
Belfast Chamber Music Festival
Queen’s University, Belfast, 21-23 February
Tel: +44 (0)28 902 46609
Web: www.belfastmusicsociety.org Belfast’s concentrated chamber festival opens with the Dudok Quartet’s own arrangements of Ockeghem and Gesualdo, and closes with a new work by Rhona Clarke. Midway, pianist Gabriela Montero improvises on audience themes, while sonatas by Beethoven and Poulenc bring together cellist Laura van der Heijden and pianist Katya Apekisheva.
Lassus
Portico of Ards, Portaferry, 22 February
Tel: +44 (0)28 4272 8808
Web: www.porticoards.com
This Dublin-based vocal ensemble heads north, interlacing music by its namesake with polyphonic choral works by Banchieri, Bertoni and Allegri. Also on the programme: E¯riks E envalds and Jonathan Dove.