Live choice
Paul Riley picks the month’s best concert and opera highlights in the UK
Glyndebourne Festival Orchestra
Glyndebourne, Lewes,
13-28 August
Web: www.glyndebourne.com Ahead of a performance at the BBC Proms (31 August), Robin Ticciati conducts Wagner’s Tristan und Isolde. In this semistaged production, Simon O’neill and Miina-liisa Värelä are the ill-fated lovers, with Karen Cargill as Brangäne.
Hebrides
The Maltings, Snape, 24 August Web: www.snapemaltings.co.uk Britten’s Sinfonietta Op. 1 and Suite for Harp precede the premiere of Joseph Phibbs’s chamber reduction of the orchestral song cycle Our Hunting Fathers, with soprano soloist Elizabeth Llewellyn. On 20 August Llewellyn joins pianist Simon
Lepper for songs by Brahms, Puccini and Coleridge-taylor.
Marmen Quartet
St Mary’s Church, Haverford West, 24 August
Web: fishguardmusicfestival.com Winners of the 2019 Banff International String Quartet Competition, the Marmens frame works by Salvatore Sciarrino and New Zealand composer Salina Fisher between two Viennese quartet masterpieces: Mozart’s K428 in E flat and the third of Beethoven’s Op. 59 set named in honour of Count Razumovsky.
Royal Scottish National Orchestra
Edinburgh Academy Junior School, 25-29 August
Web: www.eif.co.uk
Staged performances of opera in concert featuring this orchestra and conductor Andrew Davis are becoming something of an Edinburgh International Festival fixture. This year they present Strauss’s collision of burlesque and tragedy: Ariadne auf Naxos. Soprano Dorothea Röschmann heads the cast directed by Louisa Muller.
Nova Music Opera
St Andrew’s Church,
Presteigne, 26 August
Web: www.presteignefestival.com Luke Styles’s new chamber opera, Awakening Shadow, weaves scenes drawing on Biblical texts, Byron and Shelley around Britten’s five Canticles. George Vass conducts the Welsh premiere following its first outing at the Cheltenham Festival.
Fatma Said
Old College Quad,
Edinburgh, 27 August
Web: www.eif.co.uk
Egyptian soprano Fatma Said, the winner of this year’s BBC Music Magazine Newcomer and Vocal awards, sets Mozart alongside Ravel’s sultry Shéhérazade before heading for Spain and the songs of
Lorca and his friend de Falla. Accompanying her on the journey is pianist Malcolm Martineau.
English National Opera
Crystal Palace Bowl,
London, 27, 29 August
Web: www.southfacingfestival.com After last year’s ‘Drive and Live La bohème’, English National Opera is al fresco with Puccini once more as part of the
South Facing Festival. Natalya Romaniw sings the title role in Tosca opposite David Junghoon Kim’s Cavaradossi and Roland Wood’s Scarpia, conducted by Richard Farnes.
Festival of the Voice
Glenarm, Co. Antrim,
27-29 August
Web: www.niopera.com
The latest instalment of the festival with singing competition attached musters recitals by soprano Louise Alder, baritone Ben Mcateer and mezzo
Kathryn Rudge, all accompanied by pianist Simon Lepper. At Carnlough’s Londonderry Arms, meanwhile, ‘A Pint with Puccini’ awaits. Cheers!
Mahler Chamber Orchestra
Royal Albert Hall,
London, 30 August
Web: www.bbc.co.uk/proms
George Benjamin’s special relationship with the Mahler Chamber Orchestra is renewed as he conducts the premiere of his Concerto for Orchestra. It’s paired in this BBC Prom with new Purcell arrangements and Knussen’s The Way to Castle Yonder. Consolidating an evening of musical friendships, Pierrelaurent Aimard is the soloist in Ravel’s jazz-tinged Piano Concerto in G.
Ema Nikolovska
Cadogan Hall,
London, 6 September
Web: www.bbc.co.uk/proms
Born 200 years ago, singer, composer, muse of Turgenev, and salon hostess to the likes of Liszt, Chopin and Dickens, Pauline Viardot was a force of nature. In this lunchtime Prom, BBC New Generation Artist Ema Nikolovska (see ‘Backstage with…’, right) and pianist Malcolm Martineau contextualise her songs in the company of Brahms, Tchaikovsky and others.
Paul Lewis
St James’ Church, Chipping Campden, 6,8,9 September
Web: campdenmusicfestival.co.uk Pianist Paul Lewis makes three appearances at Chipping Campden Festival’s 20thanniversary celebrations. On opening night, Mozart and Scriabin preface Musorgsky’s Pictures at an Exhibition; two days later he’s joined by tenor Mark Padmore for Robert Schumann; and, with by the Festival Orchestra under Thomas