Live choice
Paul Riley picks the month’s best concert and opera highlights in the UK
Hallé Orchestra
Sage Gateshead, 1 April
Web: halle.co.uk
Paganini might have been initially underwhelmed by it, but Berlioz’s viola-showcasing Harold in Italy is a violist’s dream. Timothy Ridout undertakes the Byronic limelight in a concert conducted by Lionel Bringuier that, having dipped into Smetana’s riverscape Vltava, returns to Italy for Tchaikovsky’s Francesca da Rimini.
The Sixteen
Winchester Cathedral, 2 April Web: thesixteen.com
The ensemble’s annual ‘Choral Pilgrimage’ reaches Winchester. Conducted by Harry Christophers, Parry’s Songs of Farewell and Howells’s Take him, Earth, for Cherishing frame a sequence of medieval carols and settings of Campion which in turn frame a new work by Cecilia Mcdowall.
English National Opera
Coliseum, London, 4-14 April Web: eno.org
ENO’S new artistic director Annilese Miskimmon introduces herself with a production of
Poul Ruders’s take on Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale. Joana Carneiro conducts a cast including Kate Lindsey as Offred.
Tenebrae
Bridgewater Hall, Manchester, 5 April
Web: bridgewater-hall.co.uk Tenebrae delves into a rich seam of Marian music, ranging from Gregorian Chant to
Tavener, Górecki and Giles Swayne. Director Nigel Short contrasts settings of the Ave Maria by Parsons, Bruckner and Stravinsky, and includes a Stabat Mater by the 17th-century nun Sister Sulpitia Cesis.
Joyce Didonato
Barbican, London, 5, 6 April Web: barbican.org.uk
Spread across four years and five continents, the American mezzo’s latest project grapples with issues around the natural world. Accompanied by Il Pomo d’oro, she vocalises the trumpet part of Ives’s The Unanswered Question and gives the UK premiere of Rachel Portman’s The First Morning of the World.
Sonorities Festival
Queen’s University, Belfast, 6-10 April
Web: sonorities.net
The Belfast biennial marks 40 years of championing the new with some hundred artists, including composer and toy piano enthusiast Xenia Pestova Bennett, piano and percussion duo Czajka & Puchacz with musician/programmer Gianluca Elia, and South Korean cellist Okkyung Lee.
Royal Philharmonic Orchestra
Royal Albert Hall, London, 7 April
Web: rpo.co.uk
‘This is the best of me,’ wrote Elgar on the score of The Dream of Gerontius (see p62). Conductor Vasily Petrenko assembles a fine cast of soloists as part of his British Choral Masterworks series. Mezzo Christine Rice, tenor Ed Lyon and baritone Roderick Williams join the Philharmonia Chorus for a performance prefaced by Wagner’s Prelude to Parsifal.
Scottish Chamber Orchestra
Queen’s Hall, Edinburgh, 7 April Web: sco.org.uk
The saltire flies proudly, with Edinburgh-based percussionist Colin Currie the soloist in the Percussion Concerto by Aberdeenshire-raised Helen Grime. But conductor Clemens Schuldt also has desert islands to explore in opera overtures by Haydn and Eberl, ahead of Beethoven’s Symphony No. 4.
Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra
Philharmonic Hall, Liverpool, 7 April
Web: liverpoolphil.com
The great Adagio first movement of Mahler’s uncompleted Symphony No. 10 sets the scene for a near-contemporary expressionist masterpiece: Bartók’s opera Bluebeard’s Castle. Károly Szemerédy is the eponymous Duke, with Jennifer Johnston as the hapless Judith. Domingo Hindoyan conducts.
Ludlow English Song Weekend
Ludlow, 8-10 April
Web: ludlowenglishsongweekend.com ‘Normal service has been resumed’ proclaims director Iain Burnside as the Song Weekend offers live performances between St Laurence’s Church and the Assembly Rooms. From late-night lute songs to an Anglo-german odyssey featuring baritone Benjamin Appl, Shropshire has plenty to sing about. (See ‘Backstage with…’ right.)
BBC National Orchestra & Chorus of Wales
St David’s Hall, Cardiff, 9 April Web: stdavidshallcardiff.co.uk Conductor Harry Bicket leads a performance of JS Bach’s most elaborately conceived setting of the Passion narrative: the St Matthew. It fields two
choruses, each with its own orchestra, plus a ripieno children’s choir. Gwilym Bowen is the Evangelist and David Shipley sings the role of Christus.
Accademia Bizantina
Milton Court, London, 9 April Web: barbican.org.uk
From Baroque to pop, American countertenor John Holiday takes everything in his stride. Here, however, it’s Vivaldi all the way as he teams up with Ottavio Dantone’s ensemble for a portrait of the Red Priest that spans sacred and secular. Multiviolin concertos from L’estro armonico and the seasonal foursome Op. 8 are programmed alongside Nisi Dominus, RV608 and the Stabat Mater, RV621.
Ulster Orchestra
Ulster Hall, Belfast, 15 April
Web: ulsterorchestra.org.uk Brahms is at the heart of conductor Christoph Altstaedt’s Good Friday meditation. The composer’s choral works Begräbnisgesang, Nänie and Schicksalslied plus the Alto Rhapsody are performed alongside the music of two of his friends: Schumann (Nachtlied), and Dvoˇrák (the Biblical Songs).
Easter Weekend
Snape Maltings, 15, 16 April Web: brittenpearsarts.org
The traditional mini-festival celebrates the half-century of the Britten Pears Young Artists Programme with soloists from the scheme featured in the closing concert. The Heath Quartet performs Purcell, Schulhoff and Janácˇek, while The Gesualdo Six spikes Renaissance polyphony with Judith Bingham and a new work by Joanna Ward.
Royal Opera House
Covent Garden, London,
19 April –14 May
Web: roh.org.uk
Jakub Hru a takes the baton for this first revival of the 2019 David Alden staging of Wagner’s Lohengrin, set in a timeless dystopia. Jennifer Davis returns to the role of Elsa opposite the Swan Knight sung by American tenor Brandon Jovanovich.
BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra
City Halls, Glasgow, 21 April
Web: glasgowconcerthalls.com
With the exception of Dvoˇrák’s Brahms-inspired Symphony No. 7, conductor Marin Alsop ploughs a resolutely contemporary furrow, prefacing Christopher Rouse’s Flute Concerto (soloist Adam Walker) with James Macmillan’s 1990 BBC Proms triumph: The Confession of Isobel Gowdie.
Sacconi Quartet
Colyer-fergusson Hall, Canterbury, 24 April
Web: sacconi.com
Robin Holloway composed his Clarinet Concerto for the 1400th anniversary of St Augustine’s arrival in Canterbury, and now the cathedral city hosts the world premiere of his Clarinet Quintet. Clarinettist Mark Simpson isn’t the only addition to the Sacconi Quartet – flautist Thomas Hancox and harpist Rachel Wick also pitch in for Ravel’s Introduction and Allegro.
London Sinfonietta
Queen Elizabeth Hall, London, 27 April
Web: southbankcentre.co.uk
The London Sinfonietta presents no fewer than 24 new works this season, and this ‘Leaning East’ programme trains its gaze on Poland with two of them. Jessica Cottis conducts the world premiere of Wojciech B¯az˙ejczyk’s reworked Concerto for Electric Guitar and Pawe¯ Mykietyn’s Prank. First up is a contemporary classic: Penderecki’s 1992 Sinfonietta for Strings.
Royal Scottish National Orchestra
Usher Hall, Edinburgh, 29 April Web: rsno.org.uk
Conductor Thomas Søndergård has a mountain to climb. Two, in fact: Alfvén’s The Mountain King Suite adroitly paves the way to Richard Strauss’s epic Alpine Symphony. Before them, the terrain is Scottish with a newly revised version of Jay Capperauld’s Fèin-aithne.
London Philharmonic Orchestra
Royal Festival Hall, London, 30 April
Web: southbankcentre.co.uk
‘OK!’, the LPO and Edward Gardner’s tribute to the late Oliver Knussen, couldn’t be more deftly plotted. Suites from Britten’s The Prince of the Pagodas and Ravel’s Daphnis et Chloé follow Knussen’s own Flourish with Fireworks,
Horn Concerto (soloist Ben Goldscheider) and the Whitman Settings (sung by Sophie Bevan).