Live events
Paul Riley picks the month’s best concert and opera highlights in the UK
LONDON
Vienna Philharmonic
Royal Albert Hall, 3 September Tel: +44 (0)20 7070 4441
Web: www.bbc.co.uk/proms
The Vienna Philharmonic is no stranger to the BBC Proms, but the first of two appearances will be especially poignant given Bernard Haitink’s imminent retirement. In what will now be the veteran conductor’s last UK performance, Bruckner’s Symphony No. 7 is preceded by Beethoven’s Piano Concerto No. 4 with Murray Perahia.
Knussen Chamber Orchestra
Cadogan Hall, 9 September
Tel: +44 (0)20 7070 4441
Web: www.bbc.co.uk/proms
Music by Oliver Knussen opens and closes the London debut of the ensemble that bears his name. In this lunchtime Prom, his …upon one note – Fantasia after Purcell is answered by Birtwistle’s Fantasia upon all the notes, while conductor Ryan Wigglesworth introduces a new work by Freya Waley-cohen.
Beethoven 250
Wigmore Hall, 14, 15 September Tel: +44 (0)20 7935 2141
Web: www.wigmore-hall.org.uk
An ambitious ten-concert weekend sets Wigmore Hall’s season-long Beethoven festival in motion. O/modernt Soloists are ubiquitous, with programming ranging from Bach to Cage; Benjamin Appl sings the song cycle An die ferne Geliebte; and, to close, Elisabeth Leonskaja plays the last three piano sonatas.
Britten Sinfonia
Milton Court, 20 September Tel: +44 (0)20 7638 8891
Web: www.brittensinfonia.com Tenor Allan Clayton gives the UK premiere of Mark-anthony Turnage’s orchestral song cycle Refugees. He is also the soloist in Britten’s Nocturne, in a programme that earlier includes Tippett’s Divertimento on ‘Sellinger’s Round’. Andrew Gourlay conducts.
Venus Unwrapped
Kings Place, 27 September
Tel: +44 (0)20 7520 1490
Web: www.kingsplace.co.uk
There’s a predominantly
Estonian perspective to Kings Place’s ‘Venus Unwrapped’ season this month as Paul Hillier’s crack vocal ensemble Theatre of Voices swings by with Hillier’s own arrangement of Arvo Pärt’s Fratres. Veljo Tormis’s
The Bishop and the Pagan and works by Galina Grigorjeva and Kaija Saariaho wrap around the premiere of Helena Tulve’s The Narrow Road to the Deep North.
SOUTH
Hatfield House Festival
Hatfield House, Hatfield,
26-29 September
Web: www.hatfieldhouse musicfestival.org.uk
Pianist Katya Apekisheva, clarinettist Julian Bliss and the Navarra Quartet are among the musicians clustered around artistic director and cellist Guy Johnston for a festival with a French theme. Edith Piaf is placed alongside Ravel, and the Fauré Requiem will be twinned with Colin Matthews’s 2010 instrumental elaborations of seven Fauré songs.
IMS Prussia Cove
St Charles the Martyr Church, Falmouth, 29 September
Tel: +44 (0)1736 810181
Web: www.i-m-s.org.uk
Falmouth is just one stop on the autumn tour that rounds off the International Musicians’ Seminar masterminded by cellist Steven Isserlis. Schumann’s late Märchenerzählungen complements Kurtág’s Hommage à Robert Schumann and they’re spliced with Fauré’s Second Piano Quintet in C minor,
Op. 115 and Mozart’s glorious Clarinet Quintet, K581.
EAST Roman River Festival
St Mary’s Church, Dedham, 12 September
Tel: +44 (0)7926 623529
Web: www.romanrivermusic.org.uk Clarinettist Mark Simpson enjoys an artfully varied Roman River Festival residency. In the first of his three concerts, he is joined by the Elias Quartet for quintets by Howells and Brahms, followed the next day by trios by Beethoven and Brahms in the company of pianist Richard Uttley and cellist Leonard Elschenbroich. And his last appearance is a solo affair, in which he plays some of his own music plus Stravinsky, Berio and Steve Reich.
Saffron Hall
Saffron Hall, Saffron Walden, 28 September
Tel: +44 (0)845 548 7650
Web: www.saffronhall.com
Violinist Julia Fischer is the soloist as the London Philharmonic Orchestra embarks on a new partnership with
Saffron Hall. Britten’s pithy
Violin Concerto sits between Oliver Knussen’s Scriabin
Settings and Tchaikovsky’s impassioned symphonic farewell: the Pathétique No. 6. Vladimir Jurowski conducts.
MIDLANDS,
NORTH AND WALES Opera North
Grand Theatre, Leeds, from 14 September
Tel: +44 (0)113 223 3600
Web: www.operanorth.co.uk
Opera North opts for the original English version of The Greek Passion, Martinu˚’s powerfully observed slice of Greek village life based on a novel by Nikos Kazantzakis. Nicky Spence
(see ‘Backstage with…’) is the good-hearted Manolios in a new production by Christopher Alden, conducted by Garry Walker.
Royal Northern Sinfonia
Wylam Brewery, Newcastle, 18 September
Tel: +44 (0)191 443 4661
Web: www.sagegateshead.com ‘Home’ might be Sage Gateshead, but the Royal Northern Sinfonia crosses the River Tyne for a series devoted to Minimalism. First up is an all-american concert with Philip Glass (the Third Symphony) and Steve Reich framing works by Missy Mazzoli and Marc Mellits.
Leicester International Festival
New Walk Museum, Leicester, 19-21 September
Tel: +44 (0)116 225 4920
Web: www.leicesterinternational festival.org.uk
Thea Musgrave was the featured composer at last year’s festival curated by oboist Nicholas Daniel. This time, fresh from Roman River Festival (see East), it’s Mark Simpson’s turn – and he’s bringing his clarinet. Yet with the B flat Piano Trio and String Quintet in C, Schubert has the first and last word.
City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra
Symphony Hall, Birmingham, 26 September
Tel: +44 (0)121 780 3333
Web: www.thsh.co.uk
A musical friendship and shared pacifism underpin the opening of the CBSO season. Britten’s sombre Sinfonia da Requiem prefaces a work whose premiere he helped to bring about: Tippett’s A Child of our Time. Mirga Gra inyte˙ -Tyla conducts a transatlantic solo line-up including mezzo Felicity Palmer.
BBC National Orchestra of Wales
Hoddinott Hall, Cardiff, 27 September
Tel: +44 (0)800 052 1812
Web: www.bbc.co.uk/bbcnow
The UK premiere of Judith
Weir’s Oboe Concerto falls to its dedicatee Celia Craig at the heart of a programme in which Andrew Gourlay conducts another UK premiere, that of his own Suite culled from Wagner’s opera Parsifal.
SCOTLAND
AND N IRELAND
Lammermuir Festival
East Lothian, 13-22 September Tel: +44 (0)131 473 2000
Web: lammermuirfestival.co.uk The best things come in threes at Lammermuir. The superb Dunedin Consort delivers JS Bach’s six Brandenburg Concertos across three concerts; Quatuor Mosaïques charts a course through Beethoven’s three Rasumovsky Quartets; baritone Roderick Williams shoulders the three Schubert song cycles; and the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra premieres the final panel of a Promethean triptych by Stuart Macrae.
Northern Ireland Opera
Grand Opera House, Belfast, 15-21 September
Tel: +44 (0)28 9024 1919
Web: www.niopera.com
A desire for revenge stalks Die Fledermaus, Johann Strauss II’S frothy dissection of duplicity, disguise and desire. Gareth Hancock conducts a new production, sung in English, by Walter Sutcliffe. Ben Mcateer is the philandering Eisenstein, and Alexandra Lubchansky takes on the role of his long-suffering wife, Rosalinde.
BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra
City Halls, Glasgow, 26 September
Tel: +44 (0)141 353 8000
Web: www.glasgowconcerthalls.com Chaya Czernowin’s ‘large-scale miniature’ Once I blinked nothing was the same, first performed four years ago, now receives its UK premiere. It’s placed alongside Mahler’s Symphony No. 5 as chief conductor Thomas Dausgaard launches the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra’s new season.