Live choice
Paul Riley picks the month’s best concert and opera highlights in the UK
Hallé Choir & Orchestra
Bridgewater Hall, Manchester, 4, 10, 11 June
Web: halle.co.uk
Music director Mark Elder revisits Elgar’s three great oratorios, starting with The Dream of Gerontius featuring mezzo Alice Coote as the Angel. She returns as Mary Magdalene in The Apostles, and Sarah Connolly assumes the Magdalene mantle for The
Kingdom the following night.
Le Concert Spirituel
St James’s Spanish Place, London, 6 June
Web: wigmore-hall.org.uk
A month after King Charles III’S coronation, Hervé Niquet’s ensemble hops across the Channel to perform three of the anthems Handel wrote for the coronation of Charles’s forebear George II, including Zadok the
Priest along with the jubilant
Dettingen Te Deum.
Bath Festival Orchestra
St George’s, Bristol, 6 June Web: stgeorgesbristol.co.uk
The orchestra’s founder Yehudi Menuhin was concertmaster for a Bath Festival programme conducted by Michael Tippett, which showcased the composer’s radiant Fantasia Concertante on a Theme of Corelli. Recreating that concert – which also included Britten’s Variations on a Theme of Frank Bridge – conductor Peter Manning adds more Britten (the Serenade for Tenor, Horn
and Strings with soloist Thomas Walker and horn player Ben Goldscheider) plus a Suite for Strings by Elizabeth Maconchy.
English Haydn Festival
Bridgnorth, Shropshire, 6-10 June
Web: englishhaydn.com
With St Mary’s Church as its hub, the festival is a mecca for those seeking Haydn. Guests include the Consone Quartet, Florilegium and The Revolutionary Wind Machine. Steven Devine, meanwhile, directs the period instruments of The English Haydn Orchestra in repertoire that extends to Schumann and Mendelssohn.
(See ‘Backstage with…’, right).
Philharmonia
The Anvil, Basingstoke, 7 June Web: philharmonia.co.uk
Bringing together violinist Nicola Benedetti, cellist Sheku Kanneh-mason, and pianist Benjamin Grosvenor, conductor Santtu-matias Rouvali follows Beethoven’s grandly conceived Triple Concerto with Richard Strauss’s irresistibly self-regarding symphonic poem Ein Heldenleben.
Sinfonia Cymru
Riverfront, Newport, 7 June Web: sinfonia.cymru
As it prepares to embark on a Wales-wide ‘Mainly Village Halls Tour’, Sinfonia Cymru has one last lunchtime date as part of its current Newport series. Music by JS Bach, Richard Strauss and James Macmillan is capped by Eduard Steuermann’s artful arrangement of Schoenberg’s transfigured and transfiguring Verklärte Nacht.
Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra
Philharmonic Hall, Liverpool, 8 June
Web: liverpoolphil.com
Tippett’s oratorio A Child of our Time awaits the orchestra at the end of the month, but first Katia and Marielle Labèque swing by to give the UK premiere of Nico Muhly’s double piano concerto In Certain Circles. Conducted by Karel Deseure, it’s framed by John Adams’s The Chairman Dances and Prokofiev’s baleful Symphony No. 3.
Royal Scottish National Chorus & Orchestra
Usher Hall, Edinburgh, 9 June Web: rsno.org.uk
The blood-curdling ‘Dies Irae’ and ‘Tuba mirum’ undoubtedly bequeath an indelible impression, but the hushed passages of Verdi’s Requiem are no less potent. Conspicuously operatic in conception, it concludes the RSNO’S season in the company of soloists Emily Magee, Jennifer Johnston and David Junghoon Kim. Thomas Søndergård conducts.
Multi-story Orchestra
Bold Tendencies, Peckham, London, 9 June
Web: bbtrust.com
Heralding a weekend celebrating the 20th anniversary of the Borletti-buitoni Trust, the Multistory Orchestra premieres a specially commissioned work from Kate Whitley (see ‘Meet the Composer’, p17). With some 50 commissions under its belt, the Trust has also nurtured over 200 artists, some of whom – Quatuor Ébène and guitarist Sean Shibe among them – join pianist Mitsuko Uchida for four concerts at Wigmore Hall.
BBC Cardiff
Singer of the World
Cardiff, 10-18 June
Web: stdavidshallcardiff.co.uk
With the competition and Wales’s National Concert Hall celebrating 40th anniversaries this year, there will be an added buzz as 16 singers from around the world converge on Cardiff to compete. Welsh National Opera anchors the auspicious celebrations with a retrospective Gala.
London Symphony Orchestra
Barbican, London, 14, 15 June Web: barbican.org.uk
The Orchestra of New York’s Metropolitan Opera House casts a Shakespearean spell over the Barbican at the end of the month. But before it, parting is such sweet sorrow when Simon Rattle takes his leave as music director of the LSO with two performances of Messiaen’s Turangalîla Symphony. It is paired with a new work by Betsy Jolas.
City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra
Symphony Hall, Birmingham, 14 June
Web: cbso.co.uk
The season finale falls to the orchestra’s newly installed chief conductor Kazuki Yamada, and it’s an all-british affair launched by the premiere of Dani Howard’s The Butterfly Effect. Tenor Ian Bostridge and principal horn Elspeth Dutch spearhead Britten’s Serenade for Tenor, Horn and Strings, and Elgar’s First Symphony has the majestic last word.
Hard Rain Soloistensemble
Queen’s University, Belfast, 16 June
Web: hardrainensemble.com
With performances in Belfast and Amsterdam, the ensemble curates an anthology of pieces written for its members over the past half-decade. They range from the solo piano of Ann Cleare’s Where Cobalt Waves Live to quintets by Gráinne Mulvey, John Buckley, Rhona Clarke and Piers Hellawell.
Scottish Ensemble
Rossie Byre, Perthshire, 19 June Web: scottishensemble.co.uk
Five instalments spanning Edinburgh to Aberdeen flesh out the Scottish Ensemble’s enticing Concerts for a Summer’s Night series. Included are moonlit Debussy alongside Ravel, Britten and Takemitsu. Chick Corea wraps things up after Britta Byström’s intricate A Walk to Gade.
Welsh National Opera
Wales Millennium Centre, Cardiff, from 22 June and touring Web: wno.org.uk
‘All is for the best of all possible worlds’ as James Bonas stages Bernstein’s effervescent take on Voltaire’s Candide – a sizzling satire that takes no prisoners. Karen Kamensek conducts, with Ed Lyon as the optimistic young adventurer and Vuvu Mpofu as his beloved Cunégonde.
Armonico Consort
St Andrew’s Church, Aldborough, 23 June
Web: aldboroughfestival.co.uk
What with a double bill of Haydn comic operas and a new Singing Competition, the human voice looms large in this year’s Northern Aldborough Festival. The Armonico Consort crowns the vocal component with Monteverdi’s Vespers of 1610. Elsewhere, Sunwook Kim performs Beethoven’s last three piano sonatas.
Ligeti Quartet & Friends
The Maltings, Snape, 23 June Web: brittenpearsarts.org
Premieres are legion across the 74th Aldeburgh Festival, but 20th-century giants are not forgotten, and the Ligeti Quartet masterminds a day-long celebration for the centenary of its namesake. Three concerts conclude with the first performance of a set of Nouvelles Études by 14 specially commissioned composers.
Dunedin Consort
Universal Hall, Findhorn, 23 June
Web: dunedin-consort.org.uk
In collaboration with Mahogany Opera and HERA, the Dunedins navigate the ‘eternal feminine’. Three of Élisabeth Jacquet de la Guerre’s Cantates Bibliques are staged as mini operas with sopranos Carolyn Sampson, Anna Dennis and Alys Roberts. The musical director is Mathilde López.
London Sinfonietta
Kings Place, London, 24 June Web: kingsplace.co.uk
A lecture-performance exploring the ‘dawn of AI’ and a late-night airing of tape pieces including Stockhausen’s Gesang der Jünglinge are wrapped around a concert of electro-acoustic music with Jonathan Harvey’s Ricercare una Melodia, Berio’s Naturale and a new work by Ailís Ní Ríain.
Doric String Quartet
St Nicholas’ Church,
High Bradfield, 24 June
Web: bradfieldfestivalofmusic.co.uk
From gypsy Brahms to the Mendelssohnian midsummer night’s dreaming of trombone quartet Bones Apart, the Bradfield Festival of Music cuts a distinctive dash. To open, the Doric String Quartet positions the 25-year-old Berg’s Op. 3 Quartet between youthful Beethoven and autobiographical Smetana.