Live events
Paul Riley picks the month’s best concert and opera highlights in the UK
LONDON
London Philharmonic Orchestra
Southbank Centre, 13 November Tel: +44 (0)20 3879 9555
Web: www.southbankcentre.co.uk It’s all about love, actually. Vladimir Jurowski conducts the Prelude to Wagner’s Tristan und Isolde at the start of a concert that signs off with Mahler’s Symphony No. 5 (its Adagietto a love letter to Mahler’s soonto-be wife Alma). In between, a selection of Strauss songs includes the composer’s own wedding gift, Morgen. The soprano is Diana Damrau.
O/modernt
St John’s Church, Wimbledon, 16 November
Tel: +44 (0)333 666 3366
Web: wimbledonmusicfestival.co.uk Violinist Hugo Ticciati’s ensemble (see ‘Backstage with…’ right) contributes three programmes to this year’s Wimbledon Festival, all based on the theme of Labyrinths.
The second of them teases out an illuminating path from Bach’s Art of Fugue to Strauss’s Metamorphosen via music by Byrd and Beethoven, Brahms and Monteverdi.
Los Angeles Philharmonic
The Barbican, 18-20 November Tel: +44 (0)20 7638 8891
Web: www.barbican.org.uk Gustavo Dudamel conducts his West Coast orchestra in three eclectically conceived concerts, on a journey encompassing Bruckner, John Adams’s new piano concerto Must the Devil have All the Good Tunes? and Stravinsky’s The Rite of Spring. Yuja Wang is the soloist, and the following night fellow pianist Herbie Hancock brings a little jazz to the party.
Britten’s Death in Venice
Royal Opera House, from 21 November
Tel: +44 (0)20 7304 4000
Web: www.roh.org.uk
Based on the novella by Thomas Mann, Britten’s poignant operatic swansong receives a new production by David Mcvicar as part of the Royal Opera House’s ongoing Britten cycle. Mark Padmore plays the tormented writer Aschenbach; Gerald Finley, the Traveller; and the Voice of Apollo is sung by Tim Mead. Mark Elder conducts.
Fidelio Trio
Kings Place, 25 November
Tel: +44 (0)20 7520 1490
Web: www.kingsplace.co.uk Ravel’s iridescent Piano Trio of 1914 is the interloper in the Fidelio’s tantalising line-up of trios by Judith Weir, Rebecca Clarke and Charlotte Bray – the latter a reworking of Bray’s flute and guitar piece Here Everything Shines.
SOUTH
Bristol Keyboard Festival
St George’s Bristol, 1-8 November Tel: 0845 402 4001
Web: www.stgeorgesbristol.co.uk Heralded by an exuberant ‘Mixtape’ preview on 26 October, the freewheeling festival at St George’s returns for a second edition. Pianist Tom Poster and the Aurora Orchestra set the ball rolling with Mozart and Gershwin; Richard Uttley and Kate Whiteley ‘livesync’ Satie with René Clair’s 1924 film featuring cameo
appearances by Man Ray and Duchamp.
London Sinfonietta
Turner Sims, Southampton, 5 November
Tel: +44 (0)23 8059 5151
Web: www.turnersims.co.uk
Film, talks and installations gild a Sinfonietta ‘Turning Points’ evening devoted to the dawn of Minimalism, with music by Steve Reich and Philip Glass.
Mozartfest
Bath, 8-16 November
Tel: +44 (0)1225 463362
Web: www.bathmozartfest.org.uk Baritone Roderick Williams undertakes ‘a voyage around Hardy’, and the Belcea
Quartet commits exclusively to Beethoven; but Mozart is never far away, as Bath’s annual Mozartian fixture encourages violin sonatas from Alina Ibragimova and Cédric Tiberghien and operatic delights uniting soprano Lucy Crowe and La Nuova Musica.
EAST
The Sixteen
Ely Cathedral, 9 November
Tel: +44 (0)1353 660349
Web: www.thesixteen.com
Having premiered James Macmillan’s new choral symphony Le grand inconnu back in August, Harry Christophers and his choir revisit the composer’s harrowing 2015 setting of the Stabat Mater – pairing it with the Miserere he wrote for them six years earlier.
Andrè Schuen
John Innes Centre, Norwich, 21 November
Tel: +44 (0)1603 626414
Web: norwichchambermusic.co.uk Fresh from singing the title role in Hamburg Opera’s new production of Mozart’s Don Giovanni, the Tyrolean baritone unwinds in the company of Schubert and Mahler in a recital exploring settings of Friedrich Rückert. The pianist is Daniel Heide.
MIDLANDS,
NORTH AND WALES Prague Symphony Orchestra
St David’s Hall, Cardiff, 8 November
Tel: +44 (0)29 2087 8444
Web: www.stdavidshallcardiff.co.uk Current chief conductor
Pietari Inkinen is at the helm for Mahler’s great paean to pantheism: his Third Symphony. Czech mezzo Ester Pavlu steps up to deliver Nietzsche’s solemn warning: O Mensch! Gib acht. (‘O man! Take heed.’)
Mozart’s Così fan tutte
Town Hall, Birmingham, 8 November
Tel: +44 (0)121 780 3333
Web: www.thsh.co.uk
Under founding director Ian
Page, the Classical Opera Company completes Mozart’s Da Ponte trilogy with the remaining bittersweet tale of love, manipulation and deception. An international cast musters Swiss-romanian soprano
Ana Maria Labin and German baritone Benjamin Appl.
Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival
Huddersfield, 15-24 November Tel: +44 (0)1484 430528
Web: www.hcmf.co.uk
German string quartet SONAR and soprano Juliet Fraser premiere a new work by Naomi Pinnock to launch Huddersfield 2019, which features the Riot Ensemble in interactive pieces by Ann Cleare, and a special commission from composer-inresidence Hanna Hartman.
Bartók’s Bluebeard’s Castle
Town Hall, Leeds, 30 November Tel: +44 (0)113 223 3600
Web: www.operanorth.co.uk
Aside from its main-stage offerings there’s an ‘opera in concert’ bonus this autumn: Sian Edwards conducts the Orchestra of Opera North in two performances (the other is in Huddersfield) of Bartók’s grisly psychodrama. Christopher Purves takes the title role with Karen Cargill as the fatally inquisitive Judith.
SCOTLAND
AND N IRELAND Soundfestival
Aberdeen and surroundings, 31 October - 3 November
Tel: +44 (0)1330 826526
Web: www.sound-scotland.co.uk The concluding long weekend of Scotland’s dynamic contemporary music showcase gives premieres of works by Judith Weir, Graham Fitkin,
Linda Buckley and Tansy Davies, among others. Featured artists include oboist Nicholas Daniel, Dutch reed quintet Calefax, and Sound’s associate ensemble Red Note. Sound artist Suk-jun Kim is also in attendance.
BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra
City Halls, Glasgow, 21 November Tel: +44 (0)141 353 8000
Web: www.glasgowconcerthalls.com Variations by Brahms and
Dvoˇrák frame Pictured Within, a set celebrating conductor Martyn Brabbins’s 60th birthday. Harrison Birtwistle, Sally Beamish and Brett Dean swell a 14-strong team of composers, while Stuart Jackson and Alberto Menéndez Escribano join Brabbins for Britten’s Serenade for tenor, horn and strings.
Ulster Orchestra
Ulster Hall, Belfast, 29 November Tel: +44 (0)28 9033 4455
Web: www.ulsterorchestra.org.uk American conductor Tito Muñoz looks to middle Europe in a programme that sandwiches Bartók’s evergreen Piano Concerto No. 3 between Kodály’s Dances of Marosszék, inspired by the colourful, rhythmic folk songs of the Marosszék region of Hungary, and Dvoˇrák’s sunny Eighth Symphony. The soloist is French pianist Jeanefflam Bavouzet.