Friday 15 April 2016

Manchester Evening News article 15 April 2016 (full version)


ECHOES Of A Mountain Song, the Bridgewater Hall’s celebration of northern landscapes in music, poetry and song, reaches its climax on April 23 and 24.

The 23rd also happens to be Shakespeare’s birthday, so – slightly incongruously – the BBC Philharmonic’s concert that night is both a celebration of Shakespeare and part of the festival weekend.

But they say Shakespeare once lived in Lancashire, so that’s all right. And before the beatification of the Bard there is a programme for today’s northern poets, from 11am in the Barbirolli Room and from 1pm in the stalls foyer, with participants reading their favourite (or their own) poems – the second event is free.

At 3pm the Barbirolli Room hosts a recital by pianist Clare Hammond, soprano Jane Wilkinson, violinist Suzanne Casey, cellist Kenneth Woods and narrator Peter Davison, based on the life and work of Emily Brontë.

Sunday sees the festival finale, in an orgy of folk music and folk arts, with a country fayre, clog-dancing, fiddling, a sing-in – and the world premiere of Get Weaving!, a specially commissioned community opera by Alison Prince and Andrew Keeling, with a cast drawn from Chetham’s School of Music, the Bridgewater Hall Singers, Maghull Wind Orchestra and the Church of England School of the Resurrection. That’s from 6pm to 7pm.

It commemorates the Mass Trespass of Kinder Scout, on 24 April, 1932, when activists walked the forbidden moors of Derbyshire – the beginning of the battle for the Right to Roam.

Back to the BBC’s Shakespeare concert. Andrew Gourlay, former assistant conductor of the Hallé, is on the podium, and before Prokoviev’s Romeo And Juliet ballet music there are five world premieres by young Manchester composers, each piece reflecting a Shakespeare sonnet.

The same pieces are being used as incidental music to five new radio plays, as BBC Phil general manager Simon Webb explains:

“We divided all the sonnets into five groups, relating to different times of day or night. Then each playwright was given a time and could choose a sonnet – working with the composer to make a radio play with incidental music.

“They’re all about life in Manchester, and each orchestral piece can stand alone as a kind of musical landscape in itself.

“We chose five very interesting emerging composers from the University of Manchester and the Royal Northern College of Music. The ‘Manchester School’ has never really gone away, and it’s particularly vibrant at the moment.”

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