Manchester Evening News article 28 August 2015

IN this third look ahead to the autumn’s classical highlights I want to flag up some of the superb solo recitals and chamber music performances in store for us in Manchester.

There’s little doubt that the big seller of the autumn at the Bridgewater Hall will be Chinese piano virtuoso Lang Lang. His programme on November 29 includes Bach’s Italian Concerto, Tchaikovsky’s The Seasons and Chopin’s Scherzos.

A great pianist of another generation, John Lill, partners clarinettist Emma Johnson for a duo recital on November 10, in Schumann and Brahms (including Brahms’ Rhapsodies and Intermezzi for piano).

At the Royal Northern College of Music the standout solo event is on October 29, when Peter Donohoe plays the complete Scriabin sonatas (in three sessions, at 7pm, 8.15pm and 9.30pm respectively).

Chamber music concerts at the RNCM are led by Manchester Chamber Music Society’s programmes, opening on September 21 with Ralph Kirshbaum, cello, James Campbell, clarinet, and Martin Roscoe, piano, in Beethoven and Brahms.

The Escher String Quartet appear on October 12, and Nicholas Daniel, oboe, and the Britten Quartet on December 7, while on November 9 there’s a gem of a song recital from tenor James Gilchrist with Anna Tilbrook, piano, consisting of Schumann’s Liederkreis op. 39, Vaughan Williams’ Songs Of Travel, and Schumann’s Dichterliebe.

Alice In Wonderland celebrates her 150^th year at the RNCM on November 20, when Matthew Trusler, violin, and Ashley Wass, piano, take part in 12 new pieces written to reflect each of the books’s chapters, by composers including Mark-Anthony Turnage and Howard Blake (of Snowman fame).

And – this is really an uncategorizable event, but an unmissable one – on November 24 the Orlando Consort visit the RNCM, with the 1928 silent film by Carl Dreyer, La Passion De Jeanne D’Arc, accompanied by music of Joan of Arc’s own time. It’s already been seen at the Lake District Summer Music festival and elsewhere.

The following night there’s Quatuor Diotima with Christopher Redgate, oboe, in music by Webern, Schoenberg, Fitch and Brian Ferneyhough, and a discussion featuring composer Ferneyhough himself.

Music at the University of Manchester’s concert hall, the Cosmo Rodewald Hall in Coupland Street, is again adorned by Quatuor Danel, with their own lunchtime series and seminars with Professors Barry Cooper (on Beethoven) and David Fanning (on Shostakovich), a joint concert with Alexander Melnikov, piano, on October 2, and a complete Shostakovich string quartet cycle in early December.