Live choice
Paul Riley picks the month’s best concert and opera highlights in the UK
LONDON
Mozart’s The Marriage of Figaro
Barbican, 4 July
Tel: +44 (0)20 7638 8891
Web: www.barbican.org.uk Straight after their six performances at The Grange Festival, conductor Richard Egarr and the Academy of Ancient Music bring Mozart’s buffa masterpiece to the Barbican. Toby Girling and Simona Mihai are the Count and Countess, with Ellie Laugharne and Roberto Lorenzi their quick-thinking servants.
New Music Biennial
Southbank Centre, 5-7 July
Tel: +44 (0)20 3879 9555
Web: www.newmusicbiennial.co.uk The Biennial invades the Southbank Centre to premiere 20 specially commissioned pieces alongside recent works. Pianist/composer Rolf Hind unites prepared pianos with gamelan; baritone Roderick Williams teams up with Chineke! for his own jazz-influenced Three Songs from Ethiopia Boy; and Dan Jones’s Music for Seven Ice Cream Vans turns being cool into an art form!
Le Concert de l’hostel Dieu
Wigmore Hall, 11 July
Tel: +44 (0)20 7935 2141
Web: www.wigmore-hall.org.uk Countertenor Max Emanuel Cencˇic´ and Le Concert de l’hostel Dieu delve into the world of the Frankish knight Roland, as imagined by the Renaissance poet Ludovico Ariosto. Arias from Handel’s Orlando and Vivaldi’s Orlando Furioso weave through a programme that also includes Vivaldi’s flute concerto
Il gardellino.
Prokofiev’s War and Peace
Royal Opera House 23, 24 July Tel: +44 (0)20 7304 4000
Web: www.roh.org.uk
Directed by David Pountney and conducted by Tomá Hanus, Prokofiev’s operatic version of Tolstoy’s epic novel was the must-see of Welsh National Opera’s autumn season. Now London can discover what all the fuss was about. Jonathan Mcgovern and Lauren Michelle reprise their roles as young lovers Andrei and Natasha.
SOUTH
Britten’s The Turn of the Screw
Garsington Opera,
Wormsley Park 1-19 July
Tel: +44 (0)1865 361636
Web: www.garsingtonopera.org Louisa Muller makes her Garsington debut directing Britten’s taut psychological ghost story based on Henry James’s novel. Another Wormsley debutant is Ed
Lyon as the malevolent Peter Quint. Sophie Bevan plays the conflicted Governess; Richard Farnes, former music director of Opera North, conducts.
Cheltenham Music Festival
Town Hall, Cheltenham, 6 July Tel: +44 (0)1242 850270
Web: www.cheltenhamfestivals.com Written to celebrate her 90th birthday, Thea Musgrave’s new Trumpet Concerto is premiered by the festival’s director Alison Balsom and the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Mirga Gra inyte˙ -Tyla. The all-british programme is bookended by Ruth Gipps’s Symphony No. 2 and a suite from Walton’s Troilus and Cressida.
Dante Quartet Festival
St James’ Church, St Kew, 15 July Tel: +44 (0)7583 050581
Web: www.dantefestival.org
From klezmer to a ‘Spotlight on Shostakovich’, the Dante Quartet’s five-day peripatetic Cornish festival culminates in a performance of Beethoven’s
three Razumovsky Quartets, complete with narrative from actor David Timson.
Three Choirs Festival
Gloucester Cathedral, 27 July
Tel: +44 (0)1452 768928
Web: www.3choirs.org
The big choral beasts featured at this year’s festival include Verdi’s Requiem and Vaughan Williams’s A Sea Symphony. Berlioz’s 150th-anniversary is marked first, though, with La damnation de Faust. With the Philharmonia orchestra in residence for the duration, Adrian Partington conducts the ‘dramatic legend’ inspired by Goethe. Peter
Hoare is Faust, Susan Bickley is Marguerite and Christopher Purves is Méphistophélès.
EAST
Gould Piano Trio
St Mary’s Church, Cratfield, 14 July
Tel: +44 (0)1728 603077
Web: concertsatcratfield.org.uk Clarinettist Robert Plane and the Gould Piano Trio, who gave the premiere of Huw Wood’s Four Fables at last year’s Three Choirs Festival, revisit these alongside a potent work for the same forces: Messiaen’s Quartet for the End of Time. The Gould open with Ravel’s Piano Trio.
Thaxted Festival
Parish Church, Thaxted, 14 July Tel: +44 (0)1371 831421
Web: www.thaxtedfestival.co.uk From its earliest days, Nigel Short’s crack vocal ensemble Tenebrae has championed Russian liturgical music. Five movements from Rachmaninov’s All-night Vigil and three from his Liturgy of St John Chrysostom supply the backbone of an evening including Chesnokov, Glinka and Golovanov. (See Venue of the month, left)
King’s Lynn Festival
Corn Exchange, King’s Lynn, 27 July
Tel: +44 (0)1553 764864
Web: kingslynnfestival.org.uk Having premiered a new work by Christopher Brooke the day before, the Amatis Piano Trio makes its second King’s Lynn Festival appearance in tandem with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra under Jamie Phillips. Beethoven’s Triple Concerto, framed by Mozart’s Magic
Flute Overture and Brahms’s Symphony No. 2, brings the 69th festival to a close. MIDLANDS,
NORTH AND WALES
Manchester International Festival
Bridgewater Hall, 11 July
Tel: +44 (0)333 320 2890
Web: www.mif.co.uk
Manchester’s biennial festival of new work marks the 200th anniversary of the Peterloo Massacre with a work by
Emily Howard; Tao of Glass marks the latest collaboration between Philip Glass and director Phelim Mcdermott; and, prefacing Sir Mark Elder’s account of Shostakovich’s Leningrad Symphony with the Hallé orchestra, the conductor discusses with director Johan Simons their forthcoming project based on Shostakovich and writer Vasily Grossman.
York Early Music Festival
Minster Chapter House, York, 12 July
Tel: + 44(0)1904 658338
Web: www.ncem.co.uk
This year’s festival explores the theme of innovation – opening with Monteverdi’s L’orfeo, and devoting an evening to music associated with Leonardo da Vinci. Lionel Meunier’s vocal consort Vox Luminis sings motets by uncles and cousins of JS Bach’s including the
‘great and expressive’ Johann Christoph. They end with Johann Sebastian’s Jesu, meine Freude.
Buxton International Festival
St John’s Church, Buxton, 16 July Tel: +44 (0)1298 72190
Web: www.buxtonfestival.co.uk Buxton’s eclectic opera programme includes Tchaikovsky and Caldara. There’s also a substantial concert programme whose highlights include an afternoon with The English Concert navigating Telemann’s Water Music and three cantatas for bass (Matthew Brook) and soprano (Rachel Redmond) by JS Bach. Harpsichordist Kristian Bedzuidenhout directs.
Fishguard Music Festival
Neuadd y Dderwen, Rhosygilwen, 26 July
Tel: +44 (0)333 666 3366
Web: fishguardmusicfestival.com Sir Bryn Terfel is one of several singers lending their voices to Fishguard Festival’s 50th edition. Baritone Roderick Williams sings Schubert’s Schwanengesang, interspersed with poems read by Jenny Agutter.
SCOTLAND
AND N IRELAND Happy Days
Enniskillen, 22-30 July
Tel: +44 (0)28 6632 5440
Web: www.artsoverborders.com Baritone Roderick Williams, all set for an impressively busy summer (see Fishguard Music Festival and the New Music Biennial), here performs Schubert’s Winterreise while, mindful of the festival’s ‘late works’ theme, pianist Saskia Giorgini performs Beethoven’s Sonata, Op. 110 and Scriabin’s Sonata No. 10.
Music at Paxton
Paxton House, Berwick-upontweed, 27, 28 July
Tel: + 44 (0)131 473 2000
Web: www.musicatpaxton.co.uk The Maxwell Quartet (see ‘Backstage with…’ above) borrow the Leonora Piano Trio’s cellist Gemma Rosefield for a late-evening performance of the Schubert Quintet. Next day’s offering includes James Macmillan’s haunting Memento.