Paul Riley picks the month’s best concert and opera highlights in the UK
Opera North
Grand Theatre, Leeds, 1 June Web: operanorth.co.uk
Opera North’s erstwhile music director Richard Farnes consolidated his Wagnerian credentials with a concert performance Ring Cycle, forged over several years and finally assembled in 2016. Now his attention turns to Wagner’s operatic swansong: Parsifal. Toby Spence takes the title role, with Katarina Karnéus as Kundry.
Dunedin Consort
Platform, Glasgow, 1 June
Web: dunedin-consort.org.uk
‘O tell me the truth about love’ pleaded WH Auden, and in his A Lover’s Discourse the philosopher Roland Barthes attempted to do just that. Excerpts from the book are spliced with madrigals by Monteverdi, Gesualdo and Marenzio, together with a new work by Pippa Murphy.
Ulster Orchestra
Ulster Hall, Belfast, 3 June
Web: ulsterorchestra.org.uk Conductor Daniele Rustioni despatches a ‘Postcard from the USA’ to end the season. Michael Collins is the soloist in Copland’s Clarinet Concerto, and from the razzmatazz of Bernstein’s West Side Story to the Deep South of Gershwin’s Porgy and Bess, there are stories to feed Banner, Jessie Montgomery’s reflection on the US national anthem.
Oslo Philharmonic
Barbican, London, 3 June
Web: barbican.org.uk
Lise Davidsen ends her Barbican ‘Artist Spotlight’ role in style.
The Norwegian soprano teams up with the Oslo Philharmonic under its Finnish chief conductor Klaus Mäkelä for Berg’s Seven Early Songs, adroitly paired with the mighty Adagio from Mahler’s unfinished Symphony No. 10. Sibelius’s Symphony No. 5 has the last word.
Stile Antico
St George’s, Bristol, 4 June
Web: stgeorgesbristol.co.uk
In a month-long festival devoted to the human voice, ranging from Barbara Strozzi in the
17th century to a new work by Edmund Finnis, Stile Antico probes the predicament of Catholic composers during the Reformation. Music by exiles such as Dowland and Dering partners ‘remainers’ including Byrd’s Quomodo cantabimus.
English Haydn Festival
Bridgnorth, Shropshire, 7-11 June Web: englishhaydn.com
‘Haydn’s Musical Innovations’ is the theme for a festival that opens and closes with Platinumjubilee performances of John Bull’s God Save the Queen.
Under Steven Devine, the period instruments of The English Haydn Orchestra range over symphonies by Haydn, and Devine himself joins the Consone Quartet for the chamber reduction of Mozart’s Piano Concerto No. 11.
Music Theatre Wales
Sherman Theatre, Cardiff, 8 June Web: musictheatre.wales
Direct from the Aldeburgh Festival opening night, Tom Coult’s opera Violet sets a libretto by Alice Birch about time, townsfolk and escape.
Jude Christian directs the world premiere tour, with Anna Dennis as Violet. The London Sinfonietta is conducted by Andrew Gourlay.
Philharmonia Orchestra & Chorus
Royal Festival Hall, London, 8 June
Web: southbankcentre.co.uk
Both the Philharmonia and
City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra end their season with Mahler’s epic ‘Resurrection’ Symphony. The Philharmonia’s, with soprano Mari Eriksmoen, marks the climax of Santtumatias Rouvali’s first season as principal conductor.
Grange Park Opera
West Horsley Place, Surrey, 9 June – 7 July
Web: grangeparkopera.co.uk Half a century separates the premiere of Janácˇek’s spaceand-time-traveling opera The Excursions of Mr Broucˇek from its first performance in the UK. And UK performances remain relatively rare. Janácˇek afficionado David Pountney’s new production stars Peter Hoare as the eponymous landlord dissatisfied with life. George Jackson conducts.
Musica Secreta
Kings Place, London, 10 June Web: kingsplace.co.uk
The Virgin Mary is the focus of a programme that includes motets attributed to Lucrezia Borgia’s daughter Leonora. Works by Dunstaple, Antoine Brumel and Maistre Jhan are woven through anonymous Marian tributes and a new setting of Esther Morgan by Joanna Marsh.
City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra
Symphony Hall, Birmingham, 15, 16 June
Web: cbso.co.uk
Mirga Gražinyte˙ -Tyla was to have bowed out as the orchestra’s music director with Mahler’s Symphony No. 2 and a collaboration with violinist Patricia Kopatchinskaja. Ludovic
Morlot takes over the dates with Kopatchinskaja, who performs Shostakovich’s Violin Concerto No. 1 between Britten’s
Gloriana Suite and the Four Sea Interludes from Peter Grimes.
Fieri Consort & The City Musick
Jack Lyons Concert Hall, York, 15 June
Web: yorkconcerts.co.uk
Singers, dancers and an array of instruments including bandura, cittern, bagpipes and hurdy-gurdy present a ‘Tudor Night’ touching on the Court, theatre, masque and music for chambers great and small. There’s music by Byrd and Gibbons, Morley and Wilbye, Holborne and Ferrabosco.
Manchester Collective
Lakeside Arts, Nottingham, 16 June
Web: manchestercollective.co.uk Britten’s Les Illuminations rounds off the Collective’s year but, characteristically, there’s something new: the premiere of a song cycle by Edmund Finnis. Add in Barbara Strozzi’s aria Che si può fare and soprano Ruby Hughes’s only respite is Olli Mustonen’s Nonet No. 2.
Hard Rain Ensemble
Sonic Arts Research Centre, Belfast, 17 June
Web: hardrainensemble.com Queen’s University Belfast’s resident ensemble teams up with Maiden Voyage Dance for a cross-genre exploration of Schoenberg’s Chamber Symphony No. 1 in Webern’s quintet arrangement. Plus, music by Piers Hellawell, Jane O’leary and Anita Mawhinney.
The Rameau Project
All Saints’ Church,
Boughton Aluph, 18 June
Web: stourmusic.org.uk
Rory Carver and Jack Lawrencejones are the heavenly twins as The Opera Company and scholarconductor Jonathan Williams’s The Rameau Project collaborate on the UK premiere of a new edition of the French composer’s 1737 hit Castor et Pollux. A onehour chamber version leaves room for a little late-night Bach from The Swingle Singers.
London Symphony Orchestra
St Paul’s Cathedral, London, 23 June
Web: lso.co.uk
The LSO is on the move! A St Paul’s Cathedral Gala begins with Sir Simon Rattle and the musicians in Paternoster Square before a procession that remembers the original al fresco intentions of Berlioz’s gargantuan Grande symphonie funèbre et triomphale, to be performed alongside Messiaen’s glittering Et exspecto resurrectionem mortuorum.
Celebrating Oliver Knussen
Snape Maltings, 24 June
Web: brittenpearsarts.org
Across a single day, five concerts remember the late composer-conductor. A clutch of premieres includes works by Helen Grime, Kaija Saariaho and Ryan Wigglesworth, who also conducts the concluding concert by the BBC Symphony Orchestra in which Knussen’s Cleveland Pictures receives its first performance.
Up Close and Musical
Fidelio Orchestra Café, London, 24 & 25 June
Web: upcloseandmusical.com Violist Shiry Rashkovsky’s intimate festival returns to Clerkenwell’s café-cum-recitalspace. Pianist Clare Hammond includes a Sonatina by Doreen Carwithen, and Trio Klein proposes an ’80’s Night with a difference – John Adams and Alfred Schnittke go head-tohead with Duran Duran and Meredith Monk.
Welsh National Opera
Millennium Centre, Cardiff, 29 June – 2 July
Web: wno.org.uk
Will Todd’s new opera Migrations explores what it is to be uprooted in six parallel storylines ranging from the voyage of The Mayflower to the migratory experience of birds. Directed by David Pountney, under conductor Matthew Kofi Waldren a gospel choir, Bollywood dancers and a children’s choir swell the ranks. (See ‘Backstage with…’, right.)
Elias String Quartet
Kilrenny Church, Fife, 29 June Web: eastneukfestival.com
In the first of two appearances, the Elias Quartet acknowledge their hosts, wrapping two Scottish works around the fifth of Haydn’s Op. 33 string quartets: James Macmillan’s Memento, suffused with Gaelic lament and psalm-singing, plus Reed Stanzas, Sally Beamish’s love-letter to the fiddle tradition and the pibroch.