Live choice
Paul Riley picks the month’s best concert and opera highlights in the UK
Royal Northern Sinfonia
Newcastle, 2 May
Web: sagegateshead.com
Pianist Alasdair Beatson teams up with members of the orchestra for a Viennese chamber music trail taking in three city churches and ten works. Architecture from medieval to newly restored Georgian resounds to an eclectic selection ranging from early Haydn to Schoenberg’s arrangement of Strauss’s Emperor Waltz. Works, too, by Chevalier de Saint-georges and Johanna Doderer.
Birmingham Contemporary Music Group
Symphony Hall, Birmingham, 4 May
Web: bcmg.org.uk
At the end of May, a daylong Xenakis 100th-birthday celebration beckons. Kicking off the month, however, composers closely identified with Birmingham Contemporary Music Group are fêted: Knussen, Carter and Harrison Birtwistle. Also included are Charlotte Bray’s
Trial of light and Birtwistle’s arrangements of Machaut.
English Concert
St Martin’s-in-the-fields, London, 5 May
Web: stmartin-in-the-fields.org Under Harry Bicket Handel opera and the English Concert have become a bit of an item. Over summer, they’re in residence at Garsington Opera with Amadigi; and by way of a warm-up they tackle Serse in a concert performance that features Emily D’angelo at the head of a cast including Lucy Crowe, Mary Bevan and Neil Davies.
BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra
City Halls, Glasgow, 5 May
Web: glasgowconcerthalls.com Chief conductor designate Ryan Wigglesworth takes up the
BBC SSO reins in September and bides his time here with a spot of multi-tasking. Directing Mozart’s A major Piano Concerto K414 from the keyboard, he juxtaposes it with Sibelius’s Symphony No. 4 and premieres a new work by Jörg Widmann.
Oxford Philharmonic
Sheldonian Theatre, Oxford,
5, 19 May
Web: oxfordphil.com
An operatic month lies ahead for Marios Papadopoulos’s orchestra. First up is bassbaritone Bryn Terfel who, in a programme that also includes Richard Strauss’s Oboe Concerto, dips into Wagner’s Die Meistersinger and Die Walküre. On the 19th, soprano Angela Gheorghiu sings Verdi, with excerpts from the Italian’s Don Carlo and Otello.
Scottish Chamber Orchestra & Chorus
Queen’s Hall, Edinburgh, 5 May Web: sco.org.uk
‘A Very British Adventure’ is the title of conductor Andrew Manze’s programme, bookended by Grace Williams’s Sea Sketches and Vaughan Williams’s Flos Campi. Manze’s arrangement of Dowland neatly complements Britten’s viola-spotlighting Lachrymae, and the concert also introduces Anna Clyne’s new choral work, The Years. Timothy Ridout is the viola soloist.
Doric String Quartet
Wigmore Hall, London, 7,14 May Web: wigmore-hall.org.uk
Hot on the heels of the Emerson Quartet’s Shostakovich cycle on the Southbank, the Dorics are in a similarly completist mood. Across two concerts, they perform the six genre-expanding quartets Bartók composed over a period of some 30 years.
The Strauss Project
Barbican and Royal Festival Hall, London, 9-13 May
Web: barbican.org.uk
A river runs through conductor Andris Nelsons’s Strauss Project, which opens with his Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra at the Barbican. Two concerts corral assorted tone poems plus pianist Yuja Wang in the Burleske, before Nelsons’s ‘other’ orchestra, the Boston Symphony, takes to the Festival Hall stage for a further two instalments including the Alpine Symphony and soprano Lise Davidsen in the Four Last Songs.
English Touring Opera
Gala Theatre, Durham, 10 May Web: englishtouringopera.org.uk Rimsky-korsakov’s final opera is a bold choice with which to introduce new music director Gerry Cornelius. Based on Pushkin, The Golden Cockerel takes a satirical swipe at the shortcomings of the Romanovs and is directed by James Conway. Grant Doyle is the wrong-footed Emperor.
Llŷr Williams
Royal Welsh College of Music and Drama, Cardiff, 12 May
Web: rwcmd.ac.uk
The RWCMD’S artist-inassociation reaches the penultimate chapter of his twoyear traversal of Chopin’s piano music. En route to the mighty B minor Sonata, Llyˆr Williams plays the last of the four Ballades as well as the Scherzo No. 4.
Royal Opera
Linbury Theatre, London, 12-22 May
Web: roh.org.uk
Celebrating two decades of the Jette Parker Young Artists
programme, director Anthony Almeida and conductor Michael Papadopoulos join forces for an enterprising double bill. The centenary of Stravinsky’s Mavra is marked alongside Pierrot lunaire, Schoenberg’s groundbreaking melodrama from ten years earlier.
Ulster Orchestra
Ulster Hall, Belfast, 13 May Web: ulsterorchestra.org.uk
Chief conductor Daniele Rustioni’s ‘Postcard from Italy’ proposes a snapshot of the ‘generazione dell’ottanta’, a clutch of Italian composers born around 1880. Respighi’s Fountains of Rome spearheads less familiar fare by Malipiero and Pizzetti, while organist Martin Riccabona is the soloist for Casella’s Concerto Romano.
Colourscape Collective
St Mary’s Church, Wendover, 17 May
Web: chilternarts.com
Chiltern Arts’ moveable feast welcomes guitarist Sean Shibe to Berkhamsted and the City of London Sinfonia to Marlow. In keeping with the otherworldly theme, the Colourscape Collective offers an unexpected slant on Britten’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream, reimagined for chamber quintet and no singers!
Academy of Ancient Music
West Road Concert Hall, Cambridge, 18 May
Web: aam.co.uk
Turkey is the next stop on the Academy’s ‘New Worlds’ itinerary – at any rate, as seen through the prism of the French Court. Works by Delalande and Campra compound the Turkish delight of Lully’s La cérémonie des Turcs and music from Rameau’s Les Indes galantes.
Chineke!
St George’s, Bristol, 20 May Web: stgeorgesbristol.co.uk
Cuba meets Nigeria and Scotland, as Odaline de la Martinez conducts Jill Jarman’s new concerto for double bass and percussion. Dvoˇrák’s Serenade for Strings sets a scene comprising James B Wilson’s Free-man and Sowande’s African Suite. (See ‘Backstage with…’, right)
I Fagiolini
Saffron Hall, Saffron Walden, 21 May
Web: saffronhall.com ‘Rewilding The Waste Land’ takes TS Eliot’s poem as the starting point for a meditation anchored by Eliot’s text and Victoria’s Tenebrae Responsories. World premieres of works by Joanna Marsh and Shruthi Rajasekar rub shoulders with Byrd and Vaughan Williams.
Orchestra of Welsh National Opera
St David’s Hall, Cardiff, 22 May Web: stdavidshallcardiff.co.uk Tomáš Hanus and his orchestra performed Smetana’s Šárka from Má Vlast earlier in the season, and return to the epic cycle with From Bohemia’s Woods and Fields. Steven Osborne is the soloist in the Piano Concerto No. 2 that Shostakovich wrote for his son Maxim, before Beethoven’s ‘Eroica’ Symphony signals heroic defiance.
Royal Scottish National Orchestra
Music Hall, Aberdeen, 26 May Web: rsno.org.uk
Performed by Nicola Benedetti (who gave last year’s premiere), Mark Simpson’s pandemic-tinged Violin Concerto is bookended by Berlioz’s Symphonie fantastique and La nuit et l’amour, a work by the French composer’s contemporary, Augusta Holmès. Fabien Gabel conducts.
Ensemble Molière
Toll Gavel United Church, Beverley, 28 May
Web: ensemblemoliere.com
Radio 3’s first ever New Generation Baroque Ensemble shadows the daily routine of the Sun King Louis XIV. The Ouverture from Charpentier’s Les arts florissants serves as an alarm call, with Lully’s Phaëton saluting sunrise. Couperin accompanies the day’s work before Delalande’s Symphonie pour les soupers du Roy sounds the dinner gong. Marais’s Trios pour le coucher du Roy tucks us in for the night.
Hallé Orchestra
Bridgewater Hall, Manchester, 28 May
Web: bridgewater-hall.co.uk
Opera in concert has become something of an end-of-season Hallé tradition, and Mark Elder’s choice this year is one of his favourites: Puccini’s Madama Butterfly. The young Japanese soprano Eri Nakamura (see p22) takes the title role, with Thomas Atkins as Pinkerton.