Live choice
Paul Riley picks the month’s best concert and opera highlights in the UK
Orchestra of English National Opera
Printworks, London, 3 September
Web: bbc.co.uk/proms
Forsaking the Royal Albert
Hall for the industrial chic of Printworks, the Proms makes operatic bedfellows of Handel and Philip Glass in a multi-media project devised by countertenor Anthony Roth Costanzo. A specially commissioned work by Glass is woven into a tapestry combining choreography, sound design and live painting. Karen Kamensek conducts.
Consone Quartet
St George’s Bristol, 6 September Web: stgeorgesbristol.co.uk
The life of philosopher Immanuel Kant and the mathematical ‘Seven Bridges’ puzzle provide the inspiration for Gavin Bryars’s new sextet, The Bridges of Königsberg. Joined by violist Renée Hemsing and cellist Guy Fishman, the Consone Quartet partners it with Haydn and Brahms’s genial G major Sextet.
Philadelphia Orchestra
Royal Albert Hall, London,
8, 9 September
Web: bbc.co.uk/proms
After a Proms absence of over a decade, the American orchestra returns under music director Yannick Nézet-séguin for two appearances. Barber’s tender Knoxville: Summer of 1915 and Valerie Coleman’s This Is Not a Small Voice showcase soprano Angel Blue in the first; the second features violinist Lisa Batiashvili and Florence Price’s Symphony No. 1.
Northern Ireland Opera
Grand Opera House, Belfast, 10-17 September
Web: niopera.com
Cameron Menzies’s new production of Verdi’s La traviata restores opera to the recently restored Grand Opera House. Rebecca Lang conducts the Ulster Orchestra with Australian soprano Siobhan Stagg as the ill-fated Violetta. The Germonts, father and son, are sung by Yuriy Yurchuk and Noah Stewart.
Sansara
Our Lady of Loretto and St Michael Church, Musselburgh, 15 September Web: lammermuirfestival.co.uk
The Sansara vocal collective is combined with electronics for an eclectic Lammermuir Festival concert bookended by Jonathan Harvey’s Mortuos plango, vivos voco and Stabat Mater. The following evening, the festival despatches the singers to Nunraw’s Cistercian Monastery of Sancta Maria for works by Byrd and his contemporaries.
London Symphony Orchestra
Barbican, London, 15 September Web: barbican.org.uk
What with Berlioz’s Le Corsaire and Bartók’s The Miraculous Mandarin Suite, conductor Simon Rattle’s programme doesn’t want for technicolour panache
– a panache compounded by Ravel’s La Valse. Softening the dazzle in between are Sibelius’s Symphony No. 7 and, featuring trombonist Peter Moore, Takemitsu’s Fantasma/cantos II.
The Telling
The Coro, Ulverston, 15 September
Web: thetelling.co.uk
Straddling early music and theatre, The Telling is a crossgenre powerhouse like no other. ‘Unsung Heroine’ delves into 12th-century Provence to explore the milieu of Beatriz Comtessa de Dia, ‘the medieval Amy Winehouse’, through the music and poetry of the Troubadours, vibrant dances and Beatriz’s own celebrated chanson, A Chantar.
Vox Luminis
Wigmore Hall, London, 15 September
Web: wigmore-hall.org.uk
Vox Luminis’s Wigmore residency includes ‘Ein Deutches Barockrequiem’ – revisiting a landmark work in the ensemble’s early career: Schütz’s Musikalische Exequien, written for the obsequies of Henry II, Count of Reuss-gera. Works by Schein, Schwemmer, Förtsch and Martin Luther enhance the solace.
Welsh National Opera
Wales Millennium Centre, Cardiff, from 16 September Web: wno.org.uk
Love, longevity and litigation fuel Janáček’s The Makropulos Affair. Presented in tandem with Puccini’s La bohème, it opens WNO’S Autumn tour and, in a cast including tenor Nicky Spence, features Emma Bell as the improbably long-lived Emilia Marty. Tomáš Hanus conducts.
Hallé Orchestra
Bridgewater Hall, Manchester, 21, 22, 25 September
Web: halle.co.uk
The music of artist-in-residence Dobrinka Tabakova is threaded throughout the orchestra’s forthcoming season, starting with the 2008 Concerto for
Cello and Strings performed by Guy Johnston. Conducted by assistant conductor Delyana Lazarova, it is framed by Ravel’s La Valse and Tchaikovsky’s ‘Pathétique’ Symphony No. 6.
BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra
City Halls, Glasgow, 22 September
Web: glasgowconcerthalls.com France is at the heart of Ryan Wigglesworth’s debut as the
BBC Scottish’s chief conductor. Messiaen and Ravel go head-tohead with the former’s O Sacrum Convivium and Poèmes pour Mi preceding Ravel’s Daphnis et Chloé. But Wigglesworth launches his tenure with the premiere of a new work by Jonathan Woolgar.
Stile Antico
University Church, Oxford, 23 September
Web: stileantico.co.uk
The green-fingered vocal ensemble is nurturing ‘A Garden of Delights’ mulched by settings drawing on the biblical Song of Songs. From Renaissance to early Baroque, Stile Antico’s programme ranges over Clemens non Papa and Josquin to Monteverdi, before cornering into something decidedly more recent: Huw Watkins’s The Phoenix and the Turtle.
Shipston Song Festival
Famington Farm, Shipston-onstour, 23-25 September
Web: shipstonsong.co.uk
The brainchild of pianist Ian Tindale, the first edition of this newbie festival in Warwickshire is dominated by German and English repertoire. Tenor James Gilchrist bestrides Vaughan Williams’s On Wenlock Edge, song cycles by Richard Rodney Bennett and Eleanor Alberga partner Schumann’s Dichterliebe, and the pianist-composer Josephine Lang is saluted in words and music.
London Philharmonic Orchestra
Southbank Centre, London, 24 September
Web: southbankcentre.co.uk
The LPO kicks off its 90th season in commanding style, fielding Schoenberg’s epic Gurrelieder. And with the London Philharmonic Choir augmented by members of the London Symphony Chorus, conductor Edward Gardner doesn’t shortchange the work’s large-scale demands. Lise Lindstrom sings Tove, with Karen Cargill as the Wood-dove and David Butt Philip as Waldemar.
Stephen Hough
John Innes Centre, Norwich, 25 September
Web: norwichchambermusic.org.uk Fresh from performing Brahms’s Piano Concerto No. 2 with the Ulster Orchestra, the newly knighted pianist crowns Mompou, Scriabin, Debussy and his own Partita with Italian-indebted Liszt: the Three Petrarch Sonnets and Après un lecture du Dante.
City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra
Symphony Hall, Birmingham, 28 September
Web: cbso.co.uk
Mirga Gražinyte˙ -Tyla navigates the transition from CBSO music director to principal guest conductor with the evocative seascapes of Britten’s Sea Interludes from Peter Grimes and Debussy’s La mer. In between, the first public performance of Weinberg’s Jewish Rhapsody follows Thomas Adès’s symphonic distillation of his opera The Exterminating Angel.
Scottish Chamber Orchestra
Concert Hall, Perth, 28 September
Web: sco.org.uk
By way of season opener, conductor Maxim Emelyanychev has something new up his sleeve: the world premiere of James Macmillan’s Violin Concerto No. 2, performed by Nicola Benedetti. Enfolding it are John Adams’s The Chairman Dances and Tchaikovsky’s ‘Pathétique’ Symphony No. 6.
La Fonte Musica
St Mary’s Church, Tetbury, 29 September
Web: tetburymusicfestival.org
As part of the Cotswold town’s compact music festival, lutenist Michele Pasotti’s mixed consort of five voices and instruments, including fiddles, trombones and gothic organ, follow in the footsteps of Dufay, tracing the influence of Italy on his motets and chansons.
Hatfield House Chamber Music Festival
Hatfield House, Hertfordshire 29 September – 2 October
Web: hatfieldhousemusicfestival. org.uk
On the opening night of cellist Guy Johnston’s Hertfordshire chamberfest, guests including clarinettist Julian Bliss and pianist Kathryn Stott assemble in the Jacobean stately home’s Marble Hall for a recital that wraps Poulenc, Nordic folk tunes and JP Jofre around the premiere of a flute quartet by Robin Holloway. (See ‘Backstage with…’, right)
Tallis Scholars
Cadogan Hall, London, 29 September
Web: cadoganhall.com
Celebrated settings of the Lamentations by Robert White and his older contemporary Thomas Tallis serve as the twin pillars for works by Byrd and Robert Fayrfax. Director Peter Phillips also includes the world premiere of a new work by Nico Muhly that ponders exile, ancient and modern.