Live choice
Paul Riley picks the month’s best concert and opera highlights in the UK
Samuele Telari
St David’s Hall, Cardiff, 2 November
Web: stdavidshallcardiff.co.uk
The young Italian accordionist isn’t one to duck a challenge. A wide-ranging discography ranges over contemporary music as well as his own appropriation of Bach’s Goldberg Variations. On the lunchtime menu is another keyboard Leviathan: Musorgsky’s Pictures at an Exhibition, plus seven of Ligeti’s Musica ricercata.
Scottish Chamber Orchestra
Holy Trinity Church, St Andrews, 3 November
Web: sco.org.uk
Described by Shostakovich as ‘an impassioned protest against death’, his Symphony No. 14 sets poetry by Lorca, Rilke, Küchelbecker and Apollinaire. Alongside Mozart’s Posthorn Symphony, its call to life is repeated in further concerts in Edinburgh and Glasgow. Soprano Elizabeth Atherton and bass Peter Rose are the soloists;
Mark Wigglesworth conducts.
Roderick Williams
Crucible Studio, Sheffield, 4 November
Web: musicintheround.co.uk Pianist Christopher Glynn and fellow baritone Gareth Brynmor John join Music-in-the-round’s singer-in-residence to present a ‘Thomas Hardy Songbook’ with Finzi’s cycle Before and After Summer and Hardy settings by Britten and Ireland.
Music at Tresanton
Methodist Chapel, St Mawes, 5-7 November
Web: musicattresanton.co.uk Fauré is the focus for pianist Noam Greenberg’s Cornish mini-fest. The Caerus Chamber Ensemble and friends join him for a weekend rich in Ravel and Enescu. Truro Cathedral Choir sings Fauré’s Requiem and Cantique de Jean Racine.
Mahan Esfahani
St George’s Bristol, 5 November Web: stgeorgesbristol.co.uk
As part of the eclectic Keyboard Festival at St George’s – including a recital by the newly crowned Leeds Piano Competition winner – Manchester Collective renews its acquaintance with harpsichordist Mahan Esfahani. He plays concertos by Górecki and Horovitz as well as excerpts from Bach’s The Art of Fugue and Laurence Osborn’s recently premiered Coin Op Automata.
Royal Northern Sinfonia
Sage Gateshead, 5 November Web: sagegateshead.com
The Royal Northern Sinfonia has just appointed Dinis Sousa as its new principal conductor, but Manchester-born, Berlinbased Catherine Larsen-maguire is at the helm for a Nordic night. Bookending the Nielsen Clarinet Concerto, with Magnus Holmander as soloist, are Sibelius’s Symphony No. 3 and Grieg’s Holberg Suite.
Ariel Lanyi
Theatr Clwyd, Mold, 7 November Web: theatrclwyd.com
Pianist Noriko Ogawa launched Theatr Clwyd’s classical season with Beethoven’s Appassionata Sonata; now Ariel Lanyi goes for the jugular, rounding off a recital including Mozart and Brahms with the mighty Hammerklavier Sonata. He also plays Albéniz’s evocative Iberia, Book III.
Takács Quartet
John Innes Centre, Norwich, 7 November
Web: norwichchambermusic.org.uk With three world premieres dotted across its current season, as the Takács limber up to a 50th birthday in 2025 there’s no let-up in the Quartet’s curiosity and vigour. Landmark Haydn (Op. 20 No. 5) and late Beethoven (Op. 132 in A minor) flank Janácˇek’s confiding Quartet No. 2, Intimate Letters.
Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra
Lighthouse, Poole, 10 November Web: bsolive.com
Originally commissioned for the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, Colin Matthews’s orchestration of Mahler’s early Piano Quartet movement opens a programme conducted by Mark Wigglesworth featuring Shostakovich’s
Piano Concerto No. 2 (with Steven Osborne) and Sibelius’s Symphony No. 1. Repeated in Portsmouth the following night.
Scottish Opera
Eden Court, Inverness,
10, 11 & 13 November
Web: scottishopera.org.uk
Fresh from Verdi’s Falstaff, Scottish Opera turns to sparkling comedy of a rather different stamp: Gilbert and Sullivan’s
The Gondoliers. Postponed since May 2020, its topsy-turvy tale of thwarted matrimonial ambitions is directed by Stuart Maunder and conducted by Derek Clark.
Gavin Bryars Ensemble
Howard Assembly Room, Leeds, 10 November
Web: operanorth.co.uk
Two classic scores by Bryars herald the Ensemble’s return to
Leeds: The Sinking of the Titanic and the eponymous elaboration woven around a looped recording of a street sleeper singing Jesus’ Blood Never Failed Me Yet. They’re framed by his Lauda:
The Flower of Friendship and the Epilogue from Wonderlawn.
Philharmonia
Royal Festival Hall, London, 11 November
Web: philharmonia.co.uk
The relationship between composers and the natural world underpins the orchestra’s new season, and few could match Beethoven or Mahler in their rapturous responses to nature. Mezzo Sarah Connolly and tenor Andreas Schager are the soloists in Mahler’s Das Lied von der
Erde, conducted by Xian Zhang. But first, Alina Ibragimova tackles Beethoven’s Violin Concerto.
Bath Mozartfest
Bath, 13-20 November
Web: bathmozartfest.org.uk
Live and livestreamed, Bath Mozartfest resumes its annual tribute within the Georgian Assembly Rooms and art deco Forum. Fifteen concerts include an all-mozart evening from La Nuova Musica, violinist Rachel Podger and horn-player Alec Frank Gemmill. The Belcea Quartet, by contrast, pair Mozart with Shostakovich and Brahms. (See Musical Destinations, p58)
Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra
Philharmonic Hall, Liverpool, 14 November
Web: liverpoolphil.com
Venezuelan conductor Domingo Hindoyan takes over from Vasily Petrenko as the RLPO’S new chief conductor and welcomes fellow countryman, composer and trumpeter Pacho Flores. Works by Kodály, Flores and Piazzolla complement Bartók’s glittering Concerto for Orchestra.
City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra
Symphony Hall, Birmingham, 16 November
Web: bmusic.co.uk
Having opened the month with a ‘Covid Requiem’ remembering the tribulations of the past months, conductor Mirga Gra inyte˙-tyla turns to one of the most life-affirming operas in the repertoire: Janácˇek’s The Cunning Little Vixen. Elena Tsallagova takes the title role in a strongly cast concert performance.
Milton Court, London, 18 November
Web: brittensinfonia.com
The long shadow of jazz haunts trumpeter Alison Balsom’s American adventure, which sets the Gil Evans/miles Davis arrangement of Rodrigo’s Concierto de Aranjuez beside a new trumpet-and-piano respray of Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue. Copland’s Quiet City is a perfect fit, while Ives’s The Unanswered Question ponders the eternal. (See ‘Backstage with…’, right)
English National Opera
Coliseum, London,
19 November – 10 December Web: eno.org
Richard Jones directs a Wagner Ring cycle for ENO in association with New York’s Metropolitan Opera. In this installment of the tetralogy, Martyn Brabbins conducts The Valkyrie with Matthew Rose as Wotan and Rachel Nicholls as Brünnhilde.
Angela Hewitt
St John the Evangelist Church, Oxford, 19 November
Web: je-oxford.org
For the final concert in SJE Arts’s International Piano Series 2021, Angela Hewitt eschews her usual Bach for sonatas by Mozart and Chopin’s Op. 55 Nocturnes and Scherzo No. 4. But she also broaches the 20th century with six of the Preludes from the 20-year-old Messiaen’s ‘Op. 1’.
Nash Ensemble
Wigmore Hall, London, 13 November
Web: wigmore-hall.org.uk
In a series celebrating Myra Hess’s wartime National Gallery concerts, the Nash Ensemble recreates a 1942 Stravinsky programme culminating in The Soldier’s Tale. A second half dips into French concerts from 1940 and ’42: between Ravel’s Introduction and Allegro and Piano Trio, soprano Lucy Crowe sings Berlioz.
London Symphony Orchestra
Barbican, London, 25 November Web: barbican.org.uk
Janine Jansen and Martin Fröst, the soloists in the May premiere of Distans, Sally Beamish’s double concerto for violin and clarinet, reconvene for its UK premiere under conductor Gianandrea Noseda – who partners it with a suite from Prokofiev’s Romeo and Juliet.