Article published in Manchester Evening News 24 April 2015

THERE’S a lull in Manchester’s classical music next week, which gives me a chance to look back on some notable performances seen so far this year. 

Two have been of opera: recently the Royal Northern College of Music’s production of Britten’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream, which was a magical staging with magical music conducted by Andrew Greenwood, and very fine singing by both the casts.  

Before that Opera North presented a new Marriage Of Figaro at The Lowry, which amply fulfilled their mission of making opera accessible while keeping to very high musical and production standards. Quirijn de Lang, as Count Almaviva, came over sympathetically as the old-style aristocrat boss frustrated by his servants (and, of course, the women, whose plotting crosses class barriers completely).  

He is a superb singer, and I noticed he used a conversational style of recitative sometimes looser than the notation, where the other principals were all stricter: I liked his style. 

Richard Burkhard’s performance as Figaro was well acted and finely sung, too, and director Jo Davies encouraged all the leads to find real personality, not caricature, in their acting. 

Among orchestral concerts, the St Petersburg Symphony Orchestra had real impact at the Bridgewater Hall in February, though a rough-and-ready opening with Sibelius’ Karelia Suite gave little hint that under 80-year-old maestro Alexander Dmitriev they would end with Rachmaninov’s second symphony in a heartfelt, assured, fluent, idiomatic and appealing performance – to roars of approval. 

Beethoven’s Triple Concerto, in between, had three top-class soloists: violinist Alexander Sitkovetsky, cellist Natalie Clein and pianist Freddy Kempf, who took the music by the scruff of the neck and injected life into it even when the Russians seemed hesitant to do so. 

The other outstanding orchestral event was the RNCM Symphony Orchestra under Jac van Steen, with soloists Sarah Connolly and Jane Irwin, in Mahler’s ‘Resurrection’ symphony last month – the official opening of the refurbished RNCM concert hall. From the electric opening, with gloriously responsive and romantically lyrical string playing, it was clear it would be a special evening. The brass were disciplined and warm in chorus, the woodwind piquant and pastoral.  

The second movement was played with delicacy, the third’s surreal dance had a delightfully springy rhythm, and the paradise-storming finale, with previously off-stage brass and the RNCM Chorus high in the centre gallery, brought its crowning glories to Mahler’s vision of new life for the dead.