Live choice
Paul Riley picks the month’s best concert and opera highlights in the UK
LONDON
Jack the Ripper:
The Women of Whitechapel The London Coliseum
30 March –12 April
Tel: +44 (0)20 7845 9300
Web: www.eno.org
English National Opera unveils the successor to Iain Bell’s 2016 opera In Parenthesis. It probes the terror haunting Whitechapel in 1888, from the women’s perspective. Directed by Daniel Kramer and conducted by Martyn Brabbins, the cast includes soprano Josephine Barstow and baritone Alan Opie. (See Backstage with…).
Bach’s St John Passion
Royal Festival Hall, 2 April
Tel: +44 (0)20 3879 9555
Web: www.southbankcentre.co.uk Conductor Simon Rattle renews his partnership with director Peter Sellars in a staging of Bach’s St John Passion that, alongside the Choir and Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment, assembles a compelling team around mezzo Magdalena Ko ená, baritone Christian Gerhaher, and, as the Evangelist, Mark Padmore.
Total Immersion:
Lili and Nadia Boulanger
Barbican, 6 April
Tel: +44 (0)20 7638 8891
Web: www.barbican.org.uk
Perhaps better known as the pedagogue par excellence, Nadia Boulanger the composer takes centre stage with her sister in an ‘Immersion’ that follows the time-honoured format of concerts, film and a talk. The day is rounded off by the BBC Symphony Orchestra under James Gaffigan, who conducts all of Lili’s major works as well as Nadia’s Fantaisie variée.
Nash Ensemble
Wigmore Hall, 12 April
Tel: +44 (0)20 7935 2141
Web: www.wigmore-hall.org.uk Birtwistle and the Nash Ensemble go back a long way, and 2019’s edition of ‘Nash Inventions’ is largely devoted to the British composer’s music. It includes the premiere of a work for viola and cello, one of three showcased Nash commissions. The others – Carter’s Mosaic and the UK premiere of Knussen’s Metamorphosis for solo bassoon – complete an enticing snapshot.
Japan Philharmonic Orchestra
Cadogan Hall, 12 April
Tel: + 44 (0)20 7730 4500
Web: www.cadoganhall.com Bookended by Finnish composers Rautavaara and Sibelius, the Japan Philharmonic Orchestra’s Cadogan Hall debut also promises something from home – Takemitsu’s Requiem for String Orchestra. Plus, the programme includes the Elgar Cello Concerto with soloist Sheku Kanneh-mason. Pietari Inkinen conducts.
SOUTH The Cardinall’s Musick
Merton College Chapel, Oxford, 12 April
Tel: +44 (0)1865 305305
Web: www.merton.ox.ac.uk
Bach’s St Matthew Passion supplies the climax of 2019’s ‘Passiontide at Merton’ festival which also invites Andrew Carwood’s crack vocal ensemble for a programme including the ten-part Lotti Crucifixus and Allegri’s Miserere. The college’s own choir swells the ranks for Tallis’s 40-part masterpiece Spem in alium.
The Marian Consort
St George’s Bristol, 14 April
Tel: +44 (0)845 4024 001
Web: www.stgeorgesbristol.co.uk With the Marian Consort furnishing the musical firepower, and actor Gerald Kyd the narrative thrust, Clare Norburn’s ‘concert drama’ Breaking the Rules lifts the lid on Carlo Gesualdo, Italian Renaissance music’s serial rule-breaker – both in his life and in his art.
EAST The Hallé
Saffron Hall, Saffron Walden, 7 April
Tel: +44 (0)845 548 7650
Web: www.saffronhall.com
Viktoria Mullova’s account of the Sibelius Violin Concerto is wrapped in choice French repertoire – two of Debussy’s Images and the Prélude à l’aprèsmidi d’un faune, Ravel’s La valse, and, in a nod to Berlioz year, his overture Les francs-juges. The conductor is Sir Mark Elder.
Heath Quartet and friends
John Innes Centre, Norwich,
13, 14 April
Tel: +44 (0)1603 630000
Web: norwichchambermusic.co.uk Across a weekend of three concerts, the Heath Quartet and their compadres traverse quartets by Britten, Beethoven and Widmann and quintets by Mozart and Brahms. They up-scale further for the Sextet from Strauss’s Capriccio and Schoenberg’s Verklärte Nacht.
MIDLANDS,
NORTH AND WALES Ludlow Song Weekend
Ludlow, 5-7 April
Tel: +44 (0)1584 878141
Web: ludlowenglishsongweekend.com Panel discussions, film, a masterclass with soprano Susan Bickley and a showcase for emerging talent all enlarge the scope of pianist Iain Burnside’s Shropshire salute to the art of English song. Composer Eleanor Alberga puts young composers through their paces, while guitarist Sean Shibe performs Britten, Tippett and Dowland.
Handel’s Semele
Sage, Gateshead, 7 April
Tel: +44 (0)191 443 4661
Web: www.sagegateshead.com Between performances at Paris’s Théâtre des Champs Elysées and New York’s Carnegie Hall, conductor Harry Bicket and The English Concert share their latest Handelian project with London’s Barbican and Sage Gateshead. Brenda Rae takes the title role with Elizabeth Deshong as Juno and Benjamin Hulett as Jupiter in an oratorio-opera bursting with beefy choruses.
National Youth Orchestra of Great Britain
Philharmonic Hall, Liverpool, 13 April
Tel: +44 (0)151 709 3789
Web: www.liverpoolphil.com
Take a dash of Broadway, add a sprinkling of Mexican pizzazz and an imposing symphonic hankering after the American dream. Conductor Carlos Miguel Prieto embarks on a crossborder celebration that prefaces Copland’s Symphony No. 3 with music by Revueltas and Chávez. The soloist in Gershwin’s F major Piano Concerto is Xiayin Wang (see Building a Library, p120).
BBC National Orchestra of Wales
Hoddinott Hall, Cardiff, 18 April Tel: +44 (0)800 052 1812
Web: www.bbc.co.uk/bbcnow Jonathon Heyward conducts the first half of an Easter-themed programme that touches on Rimsky-korsakov, Vaughan Williams and Percy Grainger. He then passes the baton to Jonathan Cohen for JS Bach’s Easter Oratorio, his supersizing of an Easter-day cantata first heard in Leipzig in 1725.
City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra
Symphony Hall, Birmingham, 25 April
Tel: +44 (0)121 780 3333
Web: www.cbso.co.uk
In this adroit programme, conductor Ivan Volkov paves the way to Mahler’s Symphony No. 9 with works written amid the concentration camp horrors of Terezín and Auschwitz: Gideon Klein’s 1944 Partita for Strings and Viktor Ullmann’s Hebrew and Yiddish Folk Songs.
SCOTLAND
AND N IRELAND BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra
City Halls, Glasgow, 4 April
Tel: +44 (0)141 353 8000
Web: www.glasgowconcerthalls.com Conductor emeritus Donald Runnicles revisits his old Glaswegian haunt to conduct Mahler’s hymn to life and loss: Das Lied von der Erde. It’s paired with Toru Takemitsu’s A flock descends into the pentagonal garden and the Requiem for Strings.
Dunedin Consort
Music Hall, Aberdeen, 18 April Tel: +(0)1224 638020
Web: www.dunedin-consort.org.uk Within the Bach family it was known simply as ‘the great Passion’, and it’s with JS’S
St Matthew Passion that Trevor Pinnock makes his debut conducting the Dunedins in a one-to-a-part performance with Hugo Hymas as the Evangelist.
Sestina
Clonard Monastery, Belfast, 26 April
Tel: +44 (0)28 9024 6609
Web: www.sestinamusic.com Sacred meets secular in the early music ensemble’s excursion to the Court of the Sun King. Plaude laetare gallia, Lully’s sumptuous motet for the baptism of Louis XIV’S grandson is paired with an excerpt from Marais’s opera Alcyone.