Live events
Paul Riley picks the month’s best concert and opera highlights in the UK
LONDON
London Symphony Orchestra
The Barbican, 19 March
Tel: +44 (0)20 7638 8891
Web: www.barbican.org.uk Composed during World War I, Bartók’s ‘pantomime-ballet’ The Wooden Prince has tended to live in the shadow of its younger sibling The Miraculous Mandarin. Under conductor François-xavier Roth, however, it takes centre stage alongside Bartók’s Dance Suite and, performed by Isabelle Faust, Berg’s Violin Concerto.
San Francisco Symphony
Royal Festival Hall, 21, 22 March Tel: +44 (0)20 3879 9555
Web: www.southbankcentre.co.uk Michael Tilson Thomas spearheads his West Coast band in Mahler’s fateful Symphony
No. 6 and the UK premiere of John Adams’s I Still Dance.
The Mahler is a stand-alone in the first of two Southbank concerts. The following night, Adams lights the blue touch-paper on Stravinsky’s
The Firebird and Daniil Trifonov navigates Rachmaninov’s
Piano Concerto No. 4.
Nash Ensemble
Wigmore Hall, 24 March
Tel: +44 (0)20 7935 2141
Web: www.wigmore-hall.org.uk 2020’s edition of ‘Nash Inventions’ anticipates the
60th birthday of Mark-anthony Turnage. Works by the composer include the world premiere of Owl Songs (performed by soprano Claire Booth), while Stravinsky and Ravel rub shoulders with Knussen and George Benjamin.
Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment
Queen Elizabeth Hall, 25 March Tel: +44 (0)20 3879 9555
Web: www.southbankcentre.co.uk Slimmed down to chamber forces, the period instrument ensemble illustrates the music referenced in Thomas Mann’s novel Doctor Faustus, with an artfully plotted progression from Wagner and Pfitzner to Schoenberg, Webern and Mahler.
Danish National Vocal Ensemble
Cadogan Hall, 26 March Tel: +44 (0)20 7730 4500 Web: www.cadoganhall.com
Nielsen, Pedersøn and Sørensen are among the great Danes at the centre of this varied programme tracing five centuries of Danish music interspersed with motets by Bach. Marcus Creed conducts.
SOUTH
Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra
Lighthouse, Poole, 18 March
Tel: +44 (0)1202 280000
Web: www.bsolive.com
After their compelling 2015 semi-staging of Salome, conductor Kirill Karabits and his orchestra return to Richard Strauss and his equally visceral adaptation of Hofmannsthal’s Elektra. Catherine Foster takes the title role with Susan Bullock as Klytämnestra.
The Sixteen
Rochester Cathedral, 19 March Tel: +44 (0)333 010 2850
Web: www.thesixteen.com
Director Harry Christophers’s ‘Choral Pilgrimage’ has been an annual affair for two decades now, this year marking the occasion with a line-up setting
its sights on Rome and a handful of composers who flourished there. Tenebrae Responsories by Victoria together with his eight-part Salve Regina frame works by Josquin, Anerio and Allegri.
Carducci Quartet
Guildhall, Bath, 27-29 March Tel: +44 (0)125 463362
Web: www.bathfestivals.org.uk Bath Festival’s contribution to Beethoven 2020 includes a complete string quartet cycle divided between the Carducci and Heath quartets. The Carduccis get the first bite of the cherry with the first eight quartets across three ‘prequel’ concerts, before handing over to the Heaths in May. They span works early, middle and late, including the Razumovsky Quartet No. 3 and Op. 132 in A minor.
EAST
English Touring Opera
The Maltings,
Snape, 12-14 March
Tel: +44 (0)1728 687110
Web: www.snapemaltings.co.uk Following autumn’s Abduction from the Seraglio, English
Touring Opera consolidates its Mozart credentials with a new production of Così fan tutte, with director Lauren Attridge updating the action to 1930s Alexandria. Conducted by Holly Mathieson, the period instruments of the
Old Street Band are in the pit. They also underpin a revival of Handel’s Giulio Cesare.
Britten Sinfonia and Voices
Saffron Hall, 28 March
Tel: +44 (0)845 548 7650
Web: www.saffronhall.com Inspired by a form of Japanese dance-drama known as
Noh theatre and the first of Britten’s ‘parables for church performance’, Curlew River reunites tenor Ian Bostridge with the role of the Madwoman. Ashley Riches is the Ferryman; Neil Davies, the Traveller.
MIDLANDS,
NORTH AND WALES
Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra
Philharmonic Hall,
Liverpool, 21 March
Tel: +44 (0)151 709 3789
Web: www.liverpoolphil.com Having first conducted a Mahler cycle in Philharmonic Hall a decade ago, Vasily Petrenko now repeats the journey, presenting the symphonies chronologically and introducing them from the stage. In the nature-embracing No. 3 he’s joined by mezzo Jennifer Johnston for the fourth movement’s sombre Nietzschean song.
Orlando Quartet
St Mary’s Church,
Warwick, 24 March
Tel: +44 (0)1926 334418
Web: www.leamingtonmusic.org The Orlandos head to 14th-century France for a portrait of the presiding genius of the age: poet and composer Guillaume de Machaut. Included are songs from the Livre dou
Voir Dit, a lengthy, supposedly autobiographical narrative poem charting his love affair with the significantly younger Péronne d’armentières.
BBC National Orchestra of Wales
Hoddinott Hall,
Cardiff, 27 March
Tel: +44 (0)800 052 1812
Web: www.bbc.co.uk/bbcnow
The Royal College of Music is the tie that binds conductor Jamie Phillips’s London-inspired programme (See ‘Backstage with…’ right). It opens with Britten’s precocious Prelude and Fugue for strings, and champions the Grace Williams Violin Concerto en route to her teacher Vaughan Williams’s A London Symphony. The soloist is Madeleine Mitchell.
SCOTLAND AND NORTHERN IRELAND
Ulster Orchestra
Diamond Hall,
Coleraine, 12 March
Tel: +44 (0)28 7012 3123
Web: www.ulsterorchestra.org.uk Sibelius’s mythical Lemminkäinen Suite goes head-to-head with the haunting birdsong of Rautavaara’s Cantus Arcticus in a pairing of ‘northern lights’ conducted by Anu Tali. She’s joined by former BBC New Generation Artist Lise Berthaud for the Walton Viola Concerto.
BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra
City Halls, Glasgow, 19 March Tel: +44 (0)141 353 8000
Web: www.glasgowconcerthalls.com Only BBC SSO principal guest conductor Ilan Volkov would think of partnering Brahms’s German Requiem with Nono’s 1967 fusion of orchestra and electronics: Per Bastiana Tai-yang Cheng, based on a Chinese folk song and written to mark the birth of his daughter. It launches a concert that takes us from birth to death, illuminated by soprano Nika Goriˇc, baritone Benjamin Appl and the Edinburgh Festival Chorus.
The Dunedin Consort
St Andrew’s Cathedral, Inverness, 26 March
Tel: +44 (0)1463 234234
Web: www.scottishensemble.co.uk
Some quarter of a century since it accompanied the premiere of James Macmillan’s Seven
Last Words from the Cross, the Scottish Ensemble returns to the masterpiece, this time with the Dunedin Consort. Macmillan’s setting of the dying words of Jesus Christ was originally commissioned for live TV broadcast over seven consecutive Easter week nights. The Dunedin’s five-concert tour also includes Passiontide works by Gesualdo and Erkki-sven Tuür, led by conductor John Butt.