Review of Manchester Camerata at Manchester Cathedral

Manchester Camerata finished its season with a world premiere – a concerto for two cellos and orchestra by Colin Riley, titled Warp and Weft. Gábor Takács-Nagy conducted in this and a symphony each by Haydn and Mozart, and Adi Brett led the orchestra and was also soloist with Caroline Pether in Philip Glass’s Echorus, just after the interval.

The new work was described as the world’s first double cello concerto, and in Guy Johnstone and Gabriella Swallow it had top-class soloists to bring it to birth (and, incidentally, make up an all-Chet’s line-up in its creation, as they and Riley are all alumni of the music school).

It’s certainly unlike a standard solo concerto in make-up and impact, despite its apparent three-movement content. Beginning very softly with a single, long-held note for one of the cellos, at first it builds an ever-denser chordal texture and introduces long and languid solo lines for the soloists while a virtuoso percussion role brings most rhythmic and indeed colouristic activity to the sound. The soloists eventually take their cue from the energetic kitchen noises, while the latter eventually seem to collapse from sheer overload, while soloists and strings sustain high, multi-part chords.

The centre movement is marked by stillness throughout, with slow glissandi chords almost reminiscent of the magical similar effects in Britten’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Tension quickly grows to a passionate climax, with help from the ever-active percussion, and equally rapidly subsides into reverie and multi-layered chords once more. In the third movement the cellos sing a mournful song together, while the percussion provide both rhythmic drive and timbral interest, and tremolando strings form a halo of sound. The tempo quickens, then staggers to a halt, before an acceleration, a pause and then frantic flurries and guttural percussion leading to the finish.

So there is little opportunity for showmanship for the named soloists – indeed, they share their role at times with the orchestral cellos, making for a more concertante-style contrast than a soloistic one. The structure is episodic in effect, and though Riley has created several notable ideas it’s difficult to see how they interconnect or hold together. Maybe he was trying to achieve too many different things at one go. Significantly, the biggest cheer from the audience was for percussionist Janet Fulton at the end.

The short work by Philip Glass, played without conductor, made an interesting contrast. Its regular, repetitive unfolding of string textures over a simple chordal sequence (and figurations not unlike Bach’s opening prelude of the ‘48’) were full of atmosphere and thoughtfulness.

The two symphonies received the imaginative and neatly pointed treatment, from the full orchestra, typical of Takács-Nagy’s interpretations. Haydn’s no. 38 (the ‘Echo’) began with charmingly emphatic phrasing and awareness of the many respects in which echo effects permeate its construction (in the first movement as well as the more obvious examples in the second). Its third and fourth movements have marvellously brilliant writing for solo oboe, a challenge to which Rachael Clegg rose like a star.

Mozart’s ‘Linz’ (no. 36, K425) has almost equally prominent roles for both oboe and bassoon in its Minuet and finale, which was an appropriate piece on which to bow out for the Camerata’s long-serving principal bassoon, Laurence Perkins, making his final appearance as a member of the orchestra. Needless to say, it was impeccably played and modestly contributed – from a player who is both expert and self-effacing and will be much missed.

Chamber orchestras' major end-of-season events

The tempo of music in Manchester now relaxes for a while – in many ways the climax of the whole 2016-17 season was Schoenberg’s Gurrelieder, conducted by Sir Mark Elder with combined forces of the Hallé, BBC Philharmonic and three choirs on 4^th June – you’ll find my review on http://www.theartsdesk.com/classical-music/gurrelieder-halle-bbcpo-elder-bridgewater-hall-manchester

But we still have some excitement to come. Thursday sees the world premiere of Colin Riley’s Double Cello Concerto, at Manchester Cathedral, with Manchester Camerata and soloists Guy Johnstone and Gabriella Swallow. It’s billed as the world’s first double cello concerto, and Riley has taken melodic patterns, harmonic progressions and dance form structures from Bach’s unaccompanied solo cello suites to make a concerto with ‘counterpoint high on the agenda’.

It’s in traditional three-movement form, however, Riley says, with ‘a sensuous double aria’ in the middle one. So perhaps a touch of the Bach two-violin concerto, also?

Haydn’s Symphony no. 38, Philip Glass’s Echorus for Two Violins and Strings, and Mozart’s Symphony no. 36 (the ‘Linz’) are also on the agenda, and Gábor Takács-Nagy conducts.

On Saturday the Northern Chamber Orchestra makes its long-awaited debut at The Stoller Hall in Chetham’s School of Music. This is a concert in aid of dementia charities, part of a new departure for the NCO under its manager Tom Elliott. But there’s a lot going for it in musical interest, too, putting as it does Vivaldi’s ‘Four Seasons’ concertos against Philip Glass’s second violin concerto, aka ‘The American Four Seasons’, with Chloë Hanslip as soloist. And poet Mike Garry is providing new verses to link the music to its context.

Tom Elliott says: ‘Mind Music is the name of NCO’s awareness and fund raising campaign for dementia charities. Throughout the coming seasons, the orchestra will be

giving several high-profile concerts, which will raise vital funds for charities including Parkinson’s UK, the Alzheimer’s Society and the PSP Association.

‘NCO will also be embarking on a programme of small concerts and workshops in care homes aimed at taking the power of live classical music to people not always able to get into concert halls and investing in the general cause that aims to help people live well with dementia.

‘As well as offering obvious therapeutic benefits, these workshops will also provide crucial data that it is hoped will form the basis of new research into the ability of live music to actually improve and repair dementia sufferers’ cognitive function. Eighty per cent of the proceeds from ticket sales of this concert will be going to the three charities named above.

‘Everyone at the Northern Chamber Orchestra is thrilled to have such a wonderful new hall so close to their Manchester base, and they are very excited about making this one of their regular concert venues.’

He adds: ‘‘The PSP Association is particularly close to my heart, as I lost my father to this relatively rare form of dementia a few weeks ago. It was the dementia that the great Dudley Moore died of, also.’

The Stoller Hall’s opening in April was a major event in Manchester music, and if I’m not mistaken its razor-sharp acoustic is going to be ideal for expert small forces such as the NCO’s. Let’s hope this is the beginning of a continued NCO presence in Manchester – why should Macclesfield have all the fun?

Review of Guangzhou Symphony Orchestra at Bridgewater Hall

The Guangzhou Symphony Orchestra is big and takes its music seriously. Listen before the concert starts, and they are busy warming up and practising their notes, sometimes whole sections together.

And their best music is a delight to hear. For me, that was in the pieces by their native, contemporary composers, and particularly the Duo, for sheng, cello and orchestra, by Lin Zhao. It featured two soloists who are international stars in their own right – Jian Wang, the cellist (who has appeared with the Hallé as soloist, too), and Lei Jia, the sheng player.

The sheng is a wonderful instrument. It’s like a miniature, mouth-blown organ, but much more than a harmonica, as the reeds are amplified by bamboo resonator pipes, making its tone both richer and more penetrating. In the hands of an expert (as it was) it’s a highly expressive, beautiful solo instrument and can play simple chords, too – which it did in this piece to make occasional accompaniment to the cello. It has its percussive side, also – like a baroque krummhorn (or organ krummhorn stop) it speaks with such attack that its staccato sounds like a harpsichord.

The two make perfect partners, above all, in yearning, keening song, and much of the language of Lin Zhao’s piece is what we would probably call ‘English pastoral’ – modally-influenced harmony and some contrapuntal lines written in a mellow, choral style, often with long ‘pedals’ underlying the melodies. It also has big climaxes which contrast with its meditative moods. The three titled sections are not particularly differentiated, though, and overall it’s a bit too long, with endless repeated patterns in the final section. Jian Wang’s playing was gloriously varied and richly expressive.

(For an encore, the two played another piece by the same composer, a lovely arrangement of a traditional, pentatonic song with strings accompaniment).

The other Chinese-composed music was Xiaogang Ye’s Cantonese Suite, in four movements with pictorial titles.

Written in 2005, this is more akin to lush Hollywood film score music, presenting more modal melodies with ‘added note’ harmonies, fluently orchestrated and showing off the wind soloists of the orchestra to good effect. The tunes are haunting and the simplicity of the idiom beguiling, but the moods seem to change little despite the words of the titles.

The orchestra, under its ‘resident conductor’, Huan Jing, also brought two ‘standard’ (to our ears) works. They must know they’re inviting comparison with some of the world’s best when they bring this kind of music to a hall such as ours, and they didn’t come out of it very well.

It was probably a mistake even to try playing Britten’s Four Sea Interludes from Peter Grimes, as it’s so evocative of a certain English coastal atmosphere, demanding subtlety and skill to be realised as it should be – here it was mechanical, joyless and lacking in expression. There were some technical weaknesses, too – ragged violin ensemble, poor balance, too much big tone, and too little variation in pace or shaping of the phrases.

Stravinsky’s Firebird Suite (1919 version) made a weighty finale, though suffering from some of the same problems. The woodwind shone in solos, but there was a tendency to rush the faster passages and miss giving the music chance to breathe.

Review of Ravi Shankar's Sukanya

Ravi Shankar’s Sukanya is a hybrid theatre piece, combining the soundworld of operatically trained singers, a large orchestra and the technical resources of a big theatre with the language of Indian classical music and Kathak dance.

Based on a story from the Mahābhārata of a princess who disturbs a holy man so deep in meditation that ants move harmlessly over him – but she destroys his sight in the process, marries him and comes to see more in his sightless soul than any rival can create, even by a magical transformation. It’s ultimately a hymn to genuine love.

Shankar didn’t finish the piece, and his long-time collaborator on other western-eastern musical projects, David Murphy, has completed it and orchestrated the score – much of which is played by a (to us) conventional orchestra but with the addition of sitar, shenai, tabla and other Indian percussion.

Visually it’s more lavish than the stills might suggest, as the ‘backcloth’ is a patterned screen on which moving images are projected, and the light and colour they create are an important part of what you see. The orchestra (the London Philharmonic), chorus (BBC Singers) and other musicians are all on stage (with the conductor rather obtrusively, but necessarily, placed front centre), so steps and a platform are really all the set there is, and the actors and dancers move within the limits set, or else on the wide but shallow strip available front of stage.

With costuming, lighting and sound all expertly handled, the impact of Suba Das’s production is still considerable, and in addition there’s the skill and inventiveness embodied in the music. Wisely, the subtle microtonally decorative world of the sitar and shenai are kept audibly insulated from the bigger, heavier sounds of the orchestra – and yet the latter is Indian, too, with its lines built on single scales and long-held drones and its rhythms very cleverly integrated with those of the Indian tradition.

The singers were all effective and some of outstanding quality, including Susanna Hurrell (Sukanya) and Njabulo Madlal (one of the two ‘Aswini Twins’, the slightly sinister clowns of the scenario). The dancers were highly accomplished, especially Rukmini Vijayakumar, and the choreography credit to Aakash Odedra (who also performs) is an indication of pedigree there.

As an attempt at a new kind of music theatre, it has its negative side. The text, by Amit Chaudhuri, occasionally lurches into bathos or crudity. There is no drama, as usually understood, in the slow-moving plot, except the often-repeated mantra, ‘Who can foresee the outcome?’ The music falls into numbers, each anchored in its scale, although there is variety and tension-making inside those frameworks.

One aspect I thought weakened the whole construction was the episode early in the second half when Chyavana, the holy man, tells his bride his story of learning to be a musician when he was young, and explains how Indian and Western music differ. This is accompanied by projection images of Ravi Shankar himself – presumably it’s adapted from his own memoirs and thinking, but it seems an oddly didactic interpolation in a story to which it’s really unrelated.

Maybe it’s there to fill things out a bit. But the show doesn’t drag, and it’s all over inside two hours including an interval, so you couldn’t say it was stretched to Wagnerian proportions. Bravo for that.

Sukanya opening scene

Sukanya: Susanna Hurrell and Alok Kumar (left); Njabulo Madlala and Michel de Souza

Pictures: Bill Cooper

Chinese orchestra comes to town

It’s unusual to find a Chinese classical orchestra visiting the UK, and even more of a surprise to find that one of them is celebrating its 60^th anniversary by coming here. But that’s the case with the Guangzhou Symphony Orchestra. On its current short British tour it plays at the Bridgewater Hall on Monday (15^th May).

The Guangzhou Symphony is said to be the only Chinese orchestra to have toured and performed on five continents, and it’s one of the first Chinese orchestras to establish a full concert season at home. Its real story seems to begin just 20 years ago, since when it has built a strong following for performances at its home, the Xinghai concert hall on the banks of the Pearl River in

Guangzhou.

Its resident conductor is Jing Huan, formerly a conducting assistant for the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra and assistant conductor of the São Paulo State Symphony (she also conducts the GSO’s youth orchestra). The GSO’s Music Director is Long Yu, who directs all three of China’s leading orchestras – the China Philharmonic and Shanghai Symphony as well as the GSO – and is also founder and president of the Beijing Music Festival.

At the Bridgewater Hall, Jing Huan conducts the GSO in music including UK premieres of two works commissioned by the orchestra from leading Chinese composers.

Film composer Zhao Lin’s Duo features as soloists Shanghai-born international cellist Jian Wang and Lei Jia on sheng, the traditional Chinese bamboo woodwind instrument. It was originally composed for Yo-Yo Ma and Wu Tong and premiered in 2011.

Ye Xiaogang's Guangdong Music Suite was inspired by the musical culture of the Pearl River delta, home to the orchestra, and written in 2005.

The programme is completed by Britten’s Four Sea Interludes and Stravinsky’s Firebird Suite, in the 1919 version.

Jing Huan

Review of Ellen Kent's Aida

Following her theatrical mantra of ‘Wherever possible, work with children and animals’, opera producer Ellen Kent brings us Verdi’s Aida with dancing girls, gambolling juveniles and Houdini the horse.

Her production sells itself on spectacle, and sure enough there are ‘cascades of glittering gold’ fluttering down from the flies, and a performance from fire spinner Rachael Lloyd, to dignify the Triumphal March, as well as students from the Northern Ballet School and children from Stagecoach Theatre Arts.

Nicolae Dohotaru conducted the score in his familiar, brisk style, and the chorus of the touring company of east Europeans, as ever, worked extremely hard.

The best things in the performance were the soprano and tenor, Olga Perrier and Giorgio Meladze. She, as we saw in La Bohème, is a great trouper and brought the title role to a point where (for once) it seemed the opera really was all about her and no one else. Her voice quality was sustained well, considering the load she is shouldering in this tour, with only minimal signs of strain towards the end. She animated the opening scene, brought vivid passion to ‘Numi, pietà’, and her singing in the two duet passages of Act Three lifted the atmosphere considerably.

Giorgio Meladze, as Radames, was also a considerable cut above the rest. He possessed well focused intonation, shown from the start in ‘Celeste Aida’ – something that seems to defeat some of the biggest names on some occasions, as they don’t warm up adequately before they go on. Not so he, and the added value of the French soprano and Spanish tenor to the otherwise Ukrainian/Moldovan list of principals was considerable.

Zarui Vardanean, as Amneris, has sung the role for Ellen Kent many times and, though solid and powerful in tone, was not able to summon the venom-spitting fire it can ideally take on; Oleksandr Forkushak, as the King of Egypt, displayed again his rich bass timbre.

Reverting to the matter of animals, I noticed one scene had two parrots in cages to add to the menagerie. And yet their movement abilities seemed strictly limited. Was that some kind of visual joke?

Review of the Hallé under Ryan Wigglesworth

The Hallé blended tradition with innovation in Thursday’s concert, conducted by Ryan Wigglesworth and in the event also dedicated to the memory of Stanislaw Skrowaczewski, a former principal conductor who himself championed both.

The account of Purcell’s Funeral Music for Queen Mary, from 1695, was not ‘authentic’ performance. How could it be, with modern brass instruments (a touch of authentic drumming, though, for the Funeral March), the Hallé Choir in strength to sing the Sentences, and a large concert hall to fill with the resulting sound?

Wigglesworth grasped the bull by the horns and went for big effects and drama in presentation. Ceremonial music usually sounds good in the reverberant Bridgewater Hall, and this was theatrically presented, with brass and drums on high above the platform, level with the choir and at their side, the obsequies echoing around the building.

The singing had smooth, clear lines, secure intonation in the chromatic harmonies of ‘In the midst of life we are in death’, and a thrilling climax that probably exceeded anything Purcell conceived or ever heard. ‘Thou knowest, Lord, the secrets of our hearts’ also brought a dynamic use of the power of the full chorus.

Ryan Wigglesworth conducted the orchestra in a recent piece of his own – Locke’s Theatre, written for the Aldeburgh Festival of 2013. It’s made up of fairly ‘straight’ orchestrations of Matthew Locke’s 1674 music for The Tempest, but each of the three sections is followed by Wigglesworth’s own excursus on or deconstruction of the original. It requires a large orchestra, including triple woodwind (except for the higher double reeds), three trumpets, six percussionists and two harps.

In a way, the same dramatized, expansionary, grandiosing approach we had heard with Purcell’s bare notes was reflected in the writing here, especially in the opening ‘First Music’. The double of the ‘Rustic Music’ added mysteriously static passages with dance rhythm ideas borrowed from the original, and the Locke music itself of the ‘Curtain Music’ (which depicts a storm) was offered as a massive crescendo from viol-like string quartet, through the massed string orchestra, to a final eruption – and then a sequence of alternating calm and fury which left one wondering which really had the final word.

Like Berg’s violin concerto, this piece leaves the listener with just enough anchors in the known universe to take on board the mind-blowing expansion of it that’s being explored.

Finally Ryan Wigglesworth conducted Bruckner’s Symphony no. 9 – the one he left unfinished and which is usually heard as just the three completed movements.

Bruckner is a Hallé staple now (thanks in no small measure to Skrowaczewski’s work), and this account had many splendours in the long run, despite an opening in which wind and brass tones were hardly on the subtle side.

But the strings (led by Daniel Bell) brought their best ‘dolce’ tone to the first movement exposition, and the brass grew in precision and impressiveness as the work went on. Wigglesworth hammered home the disturbingly ferocious jollity of the scherzo along with its fleeting moments of soul’s contentment; and the finale – Adagio or else ‘very slow’ – built to a powerful conclusion, despite one slight miscalculation (as I heard it) of the tempo. The last pages were beautifully warm.