Category: BBC Philharmonic

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BBC Philharmonic Orchestra – Tchaikovsky’s Violin Concerto

Saturday 25 April 2026

The Bridgewater Hall, Manchester

★★★★★

The orchestra continues its superb run of form with Julia Wolfe’s vision of the aftermath of 9/11, Bomsori’s virtuosic violin-playing in Tchaikovsky, and Berlioz’s opium-induced visions

Violinist Bomsori with members of the BBC Philharmonic Orchestra © Chris Payne

Like Manchester’s two Premier League football teams, its two symphony orchestras, the Hallé and the BBC Philharmonic Orchestra, are reaching their peak towards the end of the season. Recently, the Hallé Orchestra and Choirs gave a superb performance of Vaughan Williams’ Sea Symphony. On Saturday evening, it was the turn of the BBC Philharmonic.

The concert began with Big Beautiful Dark and Scary by the orchestra’s Composer in Residence, Julia Wolfe. Nearly 25 years ago, on September 11 2001, she was two blocks away from the Twin Towers when the two planes hit them. She wrote the piece in response to the attack.

‘The piece captures the feverish post-apocalyptic feeling of living in the aftermath of 9/11 with an ominous, full-throttle wall of sound.’

From CD sleeve notes, Cantaloupe Records

Bang on a Can All-Stars premiered the chamber version of the work in April 2022. Wolfe wrote, ‘This is how life feels right now.’ On Saturday, the Philharmonic played the orchestral version, which premiered in May 2013. The piece began with shivering strings, surrounded by swirling woodwinds, playing a rising, ominous chromatic scale that felt like the Shepard tone used by Hans Zimmer in his score to Dunkirk (2017). A huge bass drum rumble and a disturbing syncopated piano added to the terror. A brief hiatus led to a contemplative section, still fizzing with fear and gently frenzied. A single repeated brass note was suspended above a dark bass melody that sank into the depths. There was a short release as a new woodwind melody challenged the chromatic melody. Clarinets and brass joined the battle against the main melody. The battle continued until the end of the piece, creating a spellbinding cacophony superbly crafted by the orchestra. Brass and violins reached a final truce, and this remarkably visceral piece ended with a gong that faded into nothingness.

MUSIC AND 9/11
Various composers responded to the 9/11 attacks. The German composer Karlheinz Stockhausen described 9/11 as ‘the greatest work of art imaginable’, which caused immediate condemnation and disgust around the world, although he later claimed he had been misunderstood: ‘I am as dismayed as everyone else about the attacks in America.’
More respectful responses came from John Adams, who wrote On the Transmigration of Souls (2002) with pre-recorded voices listing the names of some of the victims, and Steve Reich, who wrote WTC 9/11 (2009-10), which included recordings of air traffic controllers. The latter piece wasn’t without controversy; the original cover of the first recording featured an image of a plane flying towards one of the Twin Towers, which drew a lot of criticism before the album was released. Reich asked his record label, Nonesuch, to withdraw the image: ‘I want people to listen to my music without something distracting them.’

Steven Wilson – Collapse The Light Into Earth (The Future Bites Sessions) 6 November 2020

Other artists repurposed their work in response to the attacks. The American avant-garde composer William Basinski completed his ambient work The Disintegration Loops on the morning of the attacks and dedicated it to the victims: ‘When I woke up in the morning, the towers had been struck, and the whole world changed.’ Steven Wilson was working on a song in his studio when he heard about the attacks. He immediately abandoned that song and instead wrote ‘Collapse the Light Into Earth’ (from In Absentia, 2002): ‘It’s like William Basinski’s Disintegration Loops. It’s got nothing to do with 9/11, but there’s a quality in that music which somehow connects with that time and that event.’

The first half ended with Tchaikovsky’s Violin Concerto featuring the South Korean violinist Bomsori. Her debut with the BBC Philharmonic was at the Proms three years ago, playing Bruch’s Violin Concerto No. 1 under the baton of Saturday’s conductor, Anja Bihlmaier. She played with a lovely, bright, youthful tone, with less vibrato than some, creating a purity of tone. Throughout, she played this virtuosic piece with great ease and facility. The cadenza was stunning, with double-stopping, plucking and glissandi, all beautifully shaped. The intonation on her high notes was perfect. The audience sat quietly in rapt admiration of her astonishing virtuosity. Bihlmaier smiled as the orchestra rejoined, and after her pyrotechnics played a serene melody. Bomsori moved expressively as she played a spectacular duet with the orchestra.

The second movement began with a thoughtful chorale by the woodwinds and horns. Bomsori played a lyrical, delicately sorrowful melody with great emotion. The orchestra guided her gently into a new world with a livelier tune. There was a sense of Russian melancholy in her gentle dance with woodwind soloists, with gorgeously quiet playing. The opening chorale returned. Without a break, the orchestra roused itself into the final movement. Another mini-cadenza, a passionate Russian dance with mud on its boots, led to an incredibly fast dance. Stephen Johnson, in his programme note, described the Finale in these evocative phrases,

‘full of the flavour of Russian folk-dance music – a heady aromatic cocktail of vodka fumes, fried onions and creaking, high-kicking leather boots.‘

The orchestra and violin rose to the challenge of creating these flavours, before a melancholy passage brought a moment of contemplation. Bomsori challenged the orchestra to match her virtuosity, which they did. Another heavy peasant dance led to a thoughtful section for violin and chamber ensemble. Violin and orchestra dashed to an exuberant end, drawing huge and well-deserved cheers and applause.

Violinist Bomsori with conductor Anja Bihlmaier and the BBC Philharmonic Orchestra © Chris Payne

Bomsori’s encore was Schön Rosmarin (Lovely Rosemary) from Alt-Wiener Tanzweisen (Old Viennese Dances) by Fritz Kreisler, arranged by the Italian violinist Gabriele Campagna, a playful and virtuosic showpiece, delivered with great panache, and warmly received by the audience.

Conductor Anja Bihlmaier and the BBC Philharmonic Orchestra © Chris Payne

The second half was devoted to Berlioz’s Symphonie fantastique. He wrote the piece when he was 27, completely infatuated with the Irish actress Harriet Smithson, who he saw performing in Shakespeare’s Hamlet in Paris,

‘The supreme drama of my life … In the role of Ophelia, I saw Harriet Smithson, who five years later became my wife. The impression made on my heart and mind by her extraordinary talent, nay her dramatic genius, was equalled only by the havoc wrought in me by the poet she so nobly interpreted.’

The symphony, titled ‘Episode in the Life of an Artist: Fantastic Symphony in Five Parts’, describes the young ardent lover. Berlioz wrote a very detailed programme note, beginning with his dreams of his beloved seen from afar, then a countryside interlude when he begins to doubt her, followed by an opium-induced nightmare where he dreams that he has killed her, is led to the scaffold where he is executed, and a ‘ghastly crowd of ghosts, sorcerers, monsters of every kind’ gather for his funeral. The French composer Saint-Saëns later wrote that the programme for the work had gone out of fashion, but ‘the musical work is still as youthful and astounding as on its first day.’ Berlioz revised the programme note, describing the entire work as being opium-induced.

The composer’s youthful passion for his beloved is depicted in the ‘idée fixe‘, a rising ardent motif, reminiscent of the youthful puppy Idéfix (gloriously translated as Dogmatix) in the Asterix comics. The motif unifies the symphony, but becomes increasingly hidden and fragmented as the protagonist becomes more anguished.

Idéfix the Dog from the Asterix comic book series (René Goscinny and Albert Uderzo/Hachette Livre) vs Berlioz’s idée fixe motif

Although Berlioz distanced himself from his earlier programme note, he kept the titles to each movement, and they still provide a useful guide.

On Saturday, the opening movement, ‘Rêveries – Passions’ (Dreams – Passions), began with morose violins playing in perfect ensemble before a magical, anguished climax, describing the ‘Rêveries’ of the title. Lush strings and brass played joyfully, before falling back again. A dancing theme expressed supreme joy. The idée fixe motif appeared as a huge Romantic melody above marching lower strings. An ambiguous passage suggested the protagonist had lost hope; the music struggled, like trying to climb a mountain and sliding back again. Eventually, there was a glittering statement of the idée fixe, before a stunning climax which turned out to be a false ending, before sorrowful horns settled into a peaceful ending. Whatever your view is about the programmatic nature of the score, the orchestra superbly illustrated a series of restless moods, like those of a young lover.

The second movement, ‘Un bal’ (A ball), began with shimmering strings and lovely flourishes from the two harps, introducing an elegant waltz, joyfully played with the sense of inevitability that characterises many great performances. The waltz continued with an excitable section as the dancers swirled elegantly in a frenzy of joy, as a solo clarinet provided a fragmented statement of the idée fixe.

The ‘Scène aux champs’ (Scene in the fields) was an interlude in the countryside, opening with a cor anglais solo answered by an offstage oboe, representing two hunting horns conversing across a valley. There were strong echoes of Beethoven’s Symphony No. 6 ‘Pastoral‘, as the orchestra played with formidable precision, describing the lover’s loneliness. The idée fixe appeared briefly in a passage for flute and oboe, before the cor anglais reappeared. This time, there was no reassuring answer from the oboe; no fewer than four timps represented an oncoming storm, like the storm in Beethoven’s symphony, but also reflecting the protagonist’s emotional state.

By the fourth movement, ‘Marche au supplice’ (March to the scaffold) – if not sooner – the opium had kicked in. Sinister horns and ominous timps introduced a march on lower strings, with brutally sarcastic bassoons, creating a terrifying sound, elegantly conducted by Bihlmaier. This movement was a supreme example of an orchestra at the top of its game, all working incredibly hard, as the conductor danced on her podium. A brief snatch of the idée fixe on clarinet led to a coup de théâtre when two drummers marched solemnly down the steps of the choir seats, playing military drums, introducing the final movement, ‘Songe d’une nuit du sabbat’ (Dream of a night of the sabbath). The idée fixe was now transformed into a terrifying jig, the combined demonical forces dancing in the face of death. Funeral bells sounded offstage, introducing the horrifying Dies Irae funeral theme, played so memorably in the opening scene of Stanley Kubrick’s 1980 psychological horror film The Shining. A deeply sarcastic mini-fugue led to a spooky, ghostly passage, then the diabolical dance combined with the Dies Irae to bring this tremendous performance to an end.

Conductor Anja Bihlmaier and the BBC Philharmonic Orchestra © Chris Payne

Repertoire

Julia Wolfe Big Beautiful Dark and Scary
Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky Violin Concerto
Fritz Kreisler Schön Rosmarin (encore)
Hector Berlioz Symphonie fantastique

Performers

BBC Philharmonic Orchestra
Anja Bihlmaier conductor
Bomsori Kim violin

Sources

Bang on a Can All‑Stars: Big Beautiful Dark and Scary (Cantaloupe Music)
Terry Castle, Stockhausen, Karlheinz (New York Magazine 27 August 2011)
Steve Reich, Steve Reich Comments on the “WTC 9/11” Album Cover (Nonesuch Records Journal, 11 August 2011)
John Doran Time Becomes A Loop: William Basinski Interviewed (The Quietus 15 November 2012)
Nick Holmes, Porcupine Tree on track (SonicBond 2021, revised and expanded 2025)

The concert was recorded for broadcast on Radio 3 in Concert on Tuesday 5 May at 7.30 pm. It will be available for 30 days after broadcast via BBC Sounds

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BBC Philharmonic Orchestra – New World Symphony – Live review

Saturday 18 April 2026

The Bridgewater Hall, Manchester

★★★★★

Jazz and classical music unite in a stunning celebration of the 250th anniversary of American Independence

Members of the BBC Philharmonic. Image © Chris Payne

Saturday evening’s concert by the BBC Philharmonic Orchestra, conducted by Joshua Weilerstein at the Bridgewater Hall in Manchester, was a celebration of America in the 250th anniversary year of Independence. It featured two composers who moved to New York, and a third who received part of his musical education from American radio. Duke Ellington was born in Washington, DC, and moved to New York, where he celebrated the city in Harlem. Dvořák spent three years there as director of the National Conservatory, and the New York Philharmonic Orchestra commissioned him to write his New World Symphony. Nikolai Kapustin was born in Horlivka, Ukraine, then part of the Soviet Union. He began to absorb American musical culture – particularly jazz – as a piano student in Moscow, listening to Voice of America, the US equivalent of the BBC World Service. His Piano Concerto No. 4 is surprisingly jazzy and sounds as if it could have been written in New York.

Harlem recorded live at Tivoli Concert Hall, Copenhagen, in 1964, with Duke Ellington’s spoken-word introduction

The concert began with Duke Ellington’s Harlem, the Duke’s evocation of the area in the Northern section of Manhattan. He often prefaced live performances (such as the one recorded in Copenhagen in 1964) with a spoken-word introduction, setting the scene. His introduction varied from one performance to the next, but broadly, the scenario is a Sunday morning with smartly dressed people going to church. We travel up 7th Avenue through the culturally diverse Spanish and West Indian communities. Everyone is in a friendly mood. As Ellington wrote, ‘

‘You may hear a parade go by, or a funeral, or you may recognise the passage of those who are making Civil Rights demands.’

Saxophones from the BBC Philharmonic. Image © Chris Payne

Ellington wrote the distinctive opening of the piece for the trumpeter Cootie Williams, using a plunger mute to create a dirty, slightly sleazy sound, a two-note theme to express the word ‘Harlem.’ Trumpeter Cameron Chin-See opened the concert on Saturday, and there was an immediate call-and-response with the orchestra. We soon heard from the saxophones, who played superbly with a combination of swing and precision: Carl Raven and Anthony Brown (alto), Andy Hunter and Ben Jackson (tenor) and Jim Fieldhouse (baritone). The piece was episodic as we passed through the different parts of Harlem; this was joyful, foot-tapping music, with rich textures and glowing brass. A syncopated section led to a dancing brass theme, then a serpentine theme on saxes. An early highlight was the jazzy clarinet solo from John Bradbury, with plucked lower strings and a warm four-note falling theme on brass. After a huge climax, there were more superb solos from Elliot Gresty on bass clarinet and Richard Brown on trombone. This led to a section for a small jazz ensemble, followed by a lovely big-band flourish from the full orchestra. The opening ‘Harlem’ trumpet theme returned, and the orchestra took up the melody with an incredibly fast section, perfectly executed. Duke Ellington matched his piece to his band’s performers, writing out solos to match their particular performance practices. So it was appropriate that the virtuosic drummer Obi Jenne (from whom we would hear more later) ended the piece with a stunning drum solo, accompanied by Latin American percussion and vigorous timpani from Paul Turner. How often do you hear a drum solo in a classical concert? This was very different from the last drum solo I heard, from Asaf Sirkis with Soft Machine at Band on the Wall a couple of weeks ago.

Drummer Obi Jenne (centre). Image © Chris Payne

While the stage was rearranged to accommodate the piano and move the drum kit, the orchestra’s director Adam Szabo and conductor Joshua Weilerstein discussed the music. Weilerstein said that Ellington came to symphonic music through jazz, and Nikolai Kapustin came to jazz through symphonic music. He described the next piece, Kapustin’s Piano Concerto No. 4, as ‘very wacky.’ He wasn’t wrong. In his review for Gramophone, Jeremy Nicholas described it as ‘a riot’:

‘A carefully notated extended improvisation by the great Peter Nero … and Oscar Peterson (an important influence on Kapustin), fully orchestrated by Ravel and Henry Mancini with further input from Art Tatum, Count Basie and Bill Evans.’

Szabo pointed out that the drum kit is often part of the percussion section, but in this performance, it was moved to the front so that drummer Obi Jenne and piano soloist Frank Dupree could face each other. Weilerstein joked that the drummer was really the boss in the piano concerto, although Jenne wouldn’t admit this. After so many brass instruments featured in the Ellington piece, it was a surprise to see only strings, three woodwind players and timpani on stage; the concerto often felt like a duet between piano and drums with orchestral embellishment. This blog also covers progressive rock, so there was another (joyful) surprise for your reviewer to hear the opening section of the concerto, a mixture of jazz, rock and blues that was very reminiscent of the great Keith Emerson of prog rock titans Emerson, Lake and Palmer. John Peel called them a ‘waste of talent and electricity’, to which Emerson replied, ‘At least he accepted that we had talent!’

Frank Dupree certainly demonstrated his talent on Saturday. His playing was astonishing. Sometimes he was a virtuoso jazz player, his fingers flying across the keyboard; sometimes he played as if he were the soloist in a twentieth-century romantic piano concerto, with a lovely touch; sometimes he could have been in a jazz bar, playing stride piano or blues. It was difficult to predict where this eccentric but exhilarating music would go next. In his long, written-out, solo cadenza, Dupree shone as the orchestral players watched, mesmerised. It was fascinating to watch Jenne, sometimes brushing the drums lightly like a jazz drummer, sometimes playing more heavily like a rock drummer, the kick drum sounding out clearly from his position at the front of the stage. After the piano cadenza, the orchestra rejoined, and they scampered to a stunning end. Dupree and Jenne acknowledged each other with huge smiles.

Drummer Obi Jenne and pianist Frank Dupree. Image © Chris Payne

Dupree asked us if we wanted more; well, of course we did! Jenne joined him again for his encore, Kapustin’s Concert Etude No. 1. This was a great showpiece for both players, but, to coin a phrase, less ‘wacky’ than the previous piece…. until… we saw Dupree creeping round the back of the piano to the drum kit… He joined Jenne in a drum solo that turned into a duet on drums, thunderous but witty as the two of them explored the kit together. This was the first time I had ever seen a joint drum solo; the audience loved it!

Weilerstein introduced Dvořák’s Symphony No. 9 ‘From the New World’, which filled the whole second half, as a piece that never gets old, music that’s ‘so inviting and simple… with something for everyone.’ He had conducted it at least 15-20 times, and it always felt different. There’s no doubt that his time in America had an effect on Dvořák’s music; writing about the works he wrote there, including this symphony and the Cello Concerto, he said,

‘I should never have composed these works “just so” if I hadn’t seen America.’

There’s a school of thought that says that he was directly influenced by American music, particularly African American spirituals and work songs. He wrote that this music was

‘distinguished by unusual and subtle harmonies, the like of which I have found in no other songs but those of old Scotland and Ireland’. 

The counter-argument is that Dvořák doesn’t directly quote any African American melodies, and that the melodies he wrote himself could just as easily have been inspired by European folk music.

Whatever the source of Dvořák’s inspiration, the BBC Philharmonic gave an inspired account of the symphony on Saturday. Weilerstein brought out a real sense of the work’s overarching shape, but also lots of detail; this well-known work felt fresh in his hands. The orchestra was in sparkling form. In the first movement, the flutes (Alex Jakeman and Victoria Daniel) were outstanding. In response to the conductor’s grand gestures, the final climax of the movement was faster than it’s sometimes played, but the orchestra handled the tempo with supreme aplomb, reaching a stunning climax.

Boy on the Bike – Hovis advert’s 2019 restoration | BFI

The second movement does have an American influence – the composer said it was inspired by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s poem The Song of Hiawatha, although there’s some disagreement about which part of the poem it refers to. To British audiences of a certain age, the movement will forever be associated with The Bike Ride or Boy on Bike, better known as simply The Hovis Advert, directed by Ridley Scott (director of Alien, Blade Runner, Thelma and Louise and Gladiator). The advert used a brass arrangement played by Ashington Colliery Band, but on Saturday, the familiar melody was superbly played by Rachel Clegg on cor anglais, set against gorgeous, Wagnerian brass chords. The woodwinds provided a characterful response; they were excellent throughout the symphony, particularly when depicting birdsong. There was a spellbinding passage when the strings played incredibly quietly with perfect ensemble; the audience sat rapt.

Conductor Joshua Weilerstein and the BBC Philharmonic. Image © Chris Payne

Dvořák said that the third movement was also inspired by The Song of Hiawatha, and this time, he was more specific: he wrote that it represented the dance of Pau-Puk-Keewis at his wedding feast. The orchestra played the opening section, which recalls Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony, with phenomenal speed and precision. The horns shone as they played a chromatic theme, and the woodwind danced throughout the movement. The orchestra played with Baroque precision and limpid textures as Weilerstein danced on his podium, with a perfectly co-ordinated final chord. In the final movement, the brass section was in full flow, playing their early fanfare with military precision. After a joyful folk dance from the strings, the woodwind birdsong returned with a lovely clarinet solo. The orchestra played the ‘Three Blind Mice’ melody with playful simplicity. After a series of climaxes, interspersed with quieter sections as Weilerstein controlled the dynamics beautifully, the orchestra’s final statement was anguished yet thrilling. Weilerstein let his left hand fall slowly to give us time to consider what we had just heard, before there was rapturous applause in response to an emotional performance that was both exhausting to listen to – it was so good – and ultimately, cathartic.

Repertoire

Duke Ellington Harlem
Nikolai Kapustin Piano Concerto No. 4
Nikolai Kapustin Concert Etude No. 1 (encore)
Antonín Dvořák Symphony No. 9 ‘From the New World’

Performers

BBC Philharmonic Orchestra
Joshua Weilerstein conductor
Frank Dupree piano

Sources

Duke Ellington, Music is My Mistress (Doubleday, 1973)
Jeremy Nicholas, KAPUSTIN Piano Concerto No 4. Concerto for Violin & Piano. Chamber Symphony (Frank Dupree) (Gramophone)

The concert will be broadcast on BBC Radio 3 at 7.30 pm on Wednesday 22 April 2026 at 7.30 on In Concert and will be available for 30 days after broadcast

This post was updated at 11.29 on 21 April 2026 to correct the name of the trumpeter in the Duke Ellington piece

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BBC Philharmonic Orchestra – Four Last Songs – Live Review

Saturday 14 March 2026

The Bridgewater Hall, Manchester

****

Stunning singing from soprano Sarah Wegener in Wagner and Strauss, and the UK premiere of a potential classic by Edmund Finnis

Soprano Sarah Wegener with conductor Nicholas Carter and the BBC Philharmonic. Image © Chris Payne

Saturday’s concert by the BBC Philharmonic under the baton of Nicholas Carter was billed as ‘Rhapsodies on love, death, and lust.’ Richard Wagner wrote the Prelude and Liebestod (Love-death) for his opera Tristan and Isolde while he was living in a cottage on the estate of Otto and Mathilde Wesendonck, who was 18 years his junior. Despite being married to his first wife, Minna, Wagner had a passionate relationship with Mathilde, who became his muse for the opera. Arnold Bax wrote his tone poem Tintagel after being inspired by his muse, the young British pianist Harriet Cohen, who was 12 years his junior. In 1917, the couple had spent six weeks at Tintagel, a village in Cornwall, where they had a passionate affair, even though he was still living with his wife, Elsita Luisa Sobrino. The couple later separated. In contrast, Richard Strauss’s muse was his wife Pauline de Ahna, to whom he was married for over fifty years until his death in 1949. He was inspired to write his Four Last Songs by his long relationship with her.

The concert began with Wagner’s Prelude and Liebestod from Tristan and Isolde. The German-British soprano Sarah Wegener sang the Liebestod. There was a gentle lead in to the Tristan Chord, which marked a gradual move away from the conventional tonality in Western classical music. Conductor Nicholas Carter took the opening slowly, lingering almost reverentially over the music with a sense of mystery. His conducting was very calm, bringing out a lovely legato in the orchestra. The music gradually speeded up, then fell away again. It kept searching for a climax, gathering momentum; when it finally found the climax, with a vivid horn theme and dramatic timpani, it was ecstatic.

Wegener slowly, almost reverentially, processed onto the platform, calmly engaging the audience with confident eye contact. After a spellbindingly quiet theme on the lower strings, Wegener began, holding her hands out her hands as if in prayer. She sang with a rich, creamy soprano, with a lovely bloom at the top and a deeper, mezzo tone lower down. Her voice soared over the orchestra with a gorgeous legato. Her voice was ecstatic but beautifully controlled, sailing over the huge orchestral chords at the end; a superb performance.

The first half ended with the UK premiere of The Landscape Wakes by Edmund Finnis, which celebrates a completely different kind of love, a love of the natural world. Unlike Bax’s Tintagel, it doesn’t refer to a particular landscape. As the composer writes in his Note,

“The ‘landscape’ of the title is no specific place. It is every landscape. And the waking – the dawning, the renewal – is perpetual.“

The piece is immediately attractive and has the makings of an instant classic. At times, it’s reminiscent of Vaughan Williams’s pastoral music, with the occasional added edge of Britten, but Finnis has his own unique voice.

It began with fluttering, woodwind melodies twisting back on themselves, hopeful and sunny. An optimistic, faster section was a little folky, perhaps evoking the English countryside. The music rolled in endless motion: Finnis says, ‘while composing, I held in mind the mental image of the world spinning on its axis.’ Syncopated rising and falling themes led to a moment of darkness, with the textures becoming denser, until the music roused itself with a brass theme.

A contemplative violin theme gradually rose up, reaching a sunnier climax, then fell away again. This was the first time that the momentum dropped back, with a thoughtful section for lower strings. The music appeared again as if out of the mist, gradually coming into focus, gently discordant. There was a lovely series of key changes as a richly romantic theme appeared. The sense of momentum was restored, rising to an ecstatic high note in the violins. Clarity of texture was restored, and the orchestra was now quietly teeming with life. The swirling opening theme returned, and the Earth began to turn again. A stately brass chorale led to a slightly anguished string theme. The piece built to a climax, with a plainsong melody, scampering strings and a noble brass theme. There was golden sunlight at the end. The composer came on to acknowledge his applause. Hopefully, we will hear this radiant work again soon.

The ruins of Tintagel Castle in Cornwall. Source Wikimedia Commons
The view from Tintagel Castle in Cornwall. Source Wikimedia Commons

In his programme note for Tintagel, Bax wrote,

“This work is only in the broadest sense programme music. The composer’s intention is simply to offer a tonal impression of the castle-crowned cliff of (now sadly degenerate) Tintagel, and more especially of the long distances of the Atlantic as seen from the cliffs of Cornwall on a sunny but not windless summer day.” 

The piece began with fluttering woodwind, casting back, in the context of this concert, to the opening of the Finnis, but also forward to the birds in the final song in Strauss’s Four Last Songs with which the concert ended. A majestic brass theme depicted the ruined castle. After a climax as the music built with a sense of inevitability, a long string melody described the view from the castle, the vast rolling ocean. Gently romantic violins, held back, opened up a new vista, with a folky theme on cello. Chromatic music led to a section which harked back to the Wagner in the first half, referencing Tristan’s ‘sickness’ music from the opera. This could have described the sea, or the human passions of Bax and his muse, Harriet Cohen, his ‘darling’ to whom he dedicated the score, ‘with love from Arnold.’ There was a huge climax as the waves crashed on the beach, with echoes of Debussy’s tone poems. The opening castle theme returned in a blaze of brass, with echoes of Holst’s The Planets in a two-note theme, superbly played. The glittering ending featured some excellent horn-playing, with the visceral thrill of a full orchestra.

Sarah Wegener, conductor Nicholas Carter and the BBC Philharmonic. Image © Chris Payne

Soprano Sarah Wegener returned to the stage for Richard Strauss’s Four Last Songs, now wearing a sky-blue frock. Strauss wrote this suite of songs very late in life, but it was only after his death that his publisher, Ernst Roth at Boosey & Hawkes, provided the title and the order in which they are now performed. The same thing happened with Schubert’s collection Schwanengesang (Swansong), named after the composer’s death by his publisher, Tobias Haslinger.

Wegener showed her versatility in her approach to Strauss’s songs. In ‘Frühling’ (Spring), she was gently passionate, with lovely legato and beautiful control. She sang llike a leider singer rather than a Wagnerian soprano; she is more than capable of both styles. She sang ‘September’ with a warm tone and a wider, more operatic vibrato, embracing the words, with excellent control of dynamics. There was an evocative horn solo with subtle vibrato, reminding us that Strauss’s father was a horn player. In ‘Beim Schlafengehen’ (Going to Sleep), Wegener held back; her singing was relaxed and captivating, and she sang the final section with passionate energy. She began ‘Im Abendrot’ (At Sunset) singing in an intensely moving sotto voce. Her final utterance (and Strauss’s, too): ‘Ist dies etwa der Tod? (Is this, perhaps, Death?) sent a shiver down the spine; a gentle acceptance of the finality of death. The piece ended with a long orchestral postlude, quoting from Strauss’s Tod und Verklärung (Death and Transfiguration), reminding us perhaps that Wagner himself called his Liebestod from Tristan and Isolde ‘Verklärung’ (Transfiguration). At the end, Wegener dropped her hands and smiled beatifically as if she had reached a moment of transfiguration herself.

Steven Callow receives flowers from conductor Nicholas Carter. Image © Chris Payne

Coda

Richard Strauss’s father was the principal horn player at the Bavarian State Opera for over 40 years. At the end of the concert, there was a celebration of the career of cellist Steven Callow, who has served the Philharmonic for nearly 40 years since 1988. Nicholas Carter gave him a bunch of flowers, and Wegener came over to give him a hug. We wish him well in the future.

Performers

BBC Philharmonic Orchestra
Nicholas Carter conductor
Sarah Wegener soprano

Richard Wagner Prelude and Liebestod from Tristan und Isolde
Edmund Finnis The Landscape Wakes (UK premiere)
Arnold Bax Tintagel
Richard Strauss Four Last Songs

The concert was recorded for broadcast in Radio 3 In Concert on Monday 13 April at 7.30pm, and will be available via BBC Sounds for 30 days after that.

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The Hallé Orchestra with Jonny Greenwood – Live Review

Thursday 24 February 2026

Bridgewater Hall, Manchester

*****

‘A mature work from a highly accomplished composer’ – Jonny Greenwood’s new violin concerto performed by Daniel Pioro and The Hallé

Jonny Greenwood. Photo credit Sharyn Bellemakers/The Hallé

Radiohead guitarist Jonny Greenwood has been a classical composer for the last twenty years. His film scores, including There Will be Blood (2007), Phantom Thread (2017,) The Power of the Dog (2021), and One Battle After Another (2026) have received multiple award nominations. On Thursday evening, the Hallé, under the baton of Hugh Tieppo-Brunt performed two of his works, including his new Violin Concerto. He also played bass guitar and tanpura, a four-stringed Indian instrument with a long neck. 

Greenwood is a huge fan of twentieth-century classical composers, including Olivier Messiaen, Krzysztof Penderecki, and Steve Reich, whose work we heard in the second half of the concert. The concert opened with a piece by the Polish composer Witold Lutosławski, his Musique Funèbre (Funeral Music) for string orchestra, written in the 1950s in memory of the Hungarian composer Béla Bartók, who died in 1945. There are strong echoes of Bartók’s music in Lutosławski’s piece, but it also marks the beginning of a new modernist language in his work, including the use of twelve-tone technique: the piece begins with a twelve-note row. 

Musique Funèbre began with a mournful, lugubrious tone row on solo cello, joined by a second cello and viola, with an eerie sense of mystery. The rest of the cello section made the texture denser, and the violins joined like trees sprouting in a dense forest. The music became obsessed with the tritone, giving it a sense of anxious instability. An elegant orchestral dance, beautifully controlled by Hugh Tieppo-Brunt, was filled with sadness, with Bartókian offbeat rhythms, the lower strings offset against the upper strings in fierce dialogue. The music reached an anguished climax with a repeated twelve-tone chord. A rich and imposing unison melody arrived, like a threnody. The tritone returned, with a chamber music section that reminded us of Bartók’s skill as a composer of some of the finest string quartets of the 20th century. The piece ended with another tribute to Bartók, a canon that symmetrically mirrored the opening section, a device the Hungarian composer used in his string quartets and his Music for Strings, Percussion and Celesta (1936). It felt as if the cellos were creeping dolefully back to where they came from, and we ended where we started with a solo cello. The magic of both Bartók and Lutosławski is that powerful emotions are drawn out of tight musical structures, which the Hallé strings did superbly here. 

Jonny Greenwood and tanpura. Photo credit Sharyn Bellemakers/The Hallé

Jonny Greenwood’s Water is inspired by lines from the poem of the same name by the English poet Philip Larkin, who died in 1985. Larkin’s poem celebrates water not as a liquid essential to life on our planet, but as something on which a secular religion could be constructed. Greenwood’s piece has a ritualistic element in its use of the tanpura drone on which the work sits. The piece also views water from many angles, as in the glass of water in Larkin’s poem. 

And I should raise in the east
A glass of water
Where any-angled light
Would congregate endlessly.

Philip Larkin, 'Water' from 'The Whitsun Weddings'(Faber,1964)

The piece began with limpid, watery textures on the upper strings, piano and organ. A revolving, minimalist theme was underpinned by the richly exotic sound of the tanpuras, played on Thursday by Greenwood, Sharona Katan and Mehrbaan Singh. The music felt like light glinting on water, then it rose like water constantly rising. Changes of key came in watery waves. The music endlessly cycled back on itself, creating a glittering sound world within a narrow compass of light and optimism. A low organ pedal note added another kind of drone. The music flowed like water, endlessly moving until the tanpura drones were revealed in a solo passage. Harmonics from the upper strings joined the drones, like sunlight dancing on water. There were two particularly magical moments: a duet between piano and strings, unfolding like gorgeous lilies floating on water; and swelling organ chords that led to a section where the drones dropped out, and all the strings pulsated. There was a brief expression of ecstatic joy, then the main theme unwound itself gradually. Sparkling organ chords that could have been written by Messiaen led to a final, frenetic violin solo. 

‘Like lilies floating on water.’ Image: White Water Lilies. Source: nathanieljoyce/Wikimedia

The second half of the concert began with Pulse by the American composer Steve Reich, which Greenwood performed with the orchestra in the Manchester Classical festival last summer. It’s an attractive, melodic piece for winds, strings, piano and electric bass. According to the score, it never rises above mezzo-forte, and it’s a calm, contemplative work. In his note on the piece, Reich wrote that it was a reaction to his Quartet of 2013 which ‘changed keys more frequently than in any previous work’ of his, 

In Pulse I felt the need to stay put harmonically and spin out smoother wind and string melodic lines in canon over a constant pulse in the electric bass and or piano.

Pairing the piece with Greenwood’s Water brought out the airy lightness of Pulse, which moved on continually like long sections of Greenwood’s piece. Greenwood played a gentle bass part that was rhythmic and propulsive. The bass felt like the drone in Water, an almost constant presence. When the bass dropped out, we felt it by its absence; a subtle effect. Tieppo-Brunt conducted calmly, keeping a simple beat going. The pleasure of this music was partly listening out for subtle changes, such as the key changes, which were rare but delicious when they came. There was a moment of hope when the bass line began rising, before falling back again. The piece ended with a light-infused section when the bass re-joined with the opening theme. Greenwood left the stage first, with a shy, gentle wave to the audience. 

Daniel Pioro. Photo credit Sharyn Bellemakers/The Hallé

The concert ended with Jonny Greenwood’s Violin Concerto, an almost complete rewriting of Horror Vacui, which premiered at the Proms in 2019. In his note on the piece, Greenwood wrote that he was inspired, tonally, by the electronic works of the Japanese composer Isao Tomita, who is perhaps best known for his arrangements of classical works on his pioneering 1974 album Snowflakes Are Dancing. Greenwood was also inspired by Penderecki’s ‘orchestrations of the electronics and sounds’ of the 1960s, and his conviction that ‘the same sounds could be conveyed more interestingly with strings.’ The piece is scored for solo violin and ’56 solo strings’, which were arranged on Thursday in a semi-circular formation. 

The piece began with swirling strings; we were immediately lost in a dense, terrifying forest. Violin soloist Daniel Pioro played a theme that could have come from a classical interpretation of a gypsy dance. The strings provided what sounded like an artificial studio reverb, on one of the many occasions in this work when Greenwood used the orchestra to recreate digital and analogue sound processing, to stunning effect. The concerto also used whole-tone intervals and microtones to brilliant effect. An evocative sinking theme often recurred. Another theme. with a Tomita-like analogue synth tone, passed around the orchestra. Pioro played a romantic lead line, gently virtuosic. The orchestra then asserted itself with strings that could have come from a film noir soundtrack by Bernard Herrmann. Pioro played an almost cadenza-like section, but with orchestral accompaniment. The orchestra roused itself again, as pulsating notes drifted down microtonally, chopped up as if treated by gated reverb. At one point, glancing up from the notes I was writing, I looked for the effects unit that was creating all these effects, then remembered it wasn’t there… 

Music that starts and ends with the push of a space-bar appeals less and less to me: where’s the peril? In this work, the conductor is key. I think of it as a piece of music for solo violin, string orchestra and conductor – as three equals.

Jonny Greenwood on his Violin Concerto (2026)

This was a mature work from a highly accomplished composer. It created its own unique sound world, often the mark of a great work. In a remarkable passage, the strings wound themselves up again like an infernal machine, and Pioro valiantly tried to assert himself against a wall of noise. The violin gradually asserted itself, sometimes joined by harmonies from the massed strings. Had the violin won? Pioro played a mournful melody that could have come from the Lutosławski piece we heard earlier; another threnody? In reply, the whole orchestra seethed, wheeling up and down like the bellows of a giant steam engine. Pioro, whose performance was superb throughout, played an eerie, slippery line, which the orchestra echoed sarcastically with fractured echoes. A romantic violin solo found the orchestra almost in agreement with the soloist, surrounding him with a halo of consonance. An ecstatic Baroque section felt like Vivaldi thrown out of shape, heard in fever dream. The concerto ended with a single held solo note, with consonant harmonics like the end of a conventional violin concerto… until it drifted off into the ether, unstable to the end. 

Jonny Greenwood, Daniel Pioro, Hugh Tieppo-Brunt and members of The Hallé. Photo credit Sharyn Bellemakers/The Hallé

Repertoire

Witold Lutosławski Musique funèbre
Jonny Greenwood Water
Steve Reich Pulse
Jonny Greenwood Violin Concerto

Performers

The Hallé Orchestra
Hugh Tieppo-Brunt conductor
Daniel Pioro violin
Jonny Greenwood bass guitar and tanpura
Sharona Katan and Mehrbaan Singh tanpura

Sources

Programme notes by Steve Reich and Jonny Greenwood

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BBC Philharmonic Orchestra – Romeo and Juliet – Live Review

Saturday 21 February 2026

Bridgewater Hall, Manchester

*****

Love is a fragile thing: superb performances of Albarn Berg, Sergey Prokofiev and Cassandra Miller by Lawrence Power and the BBC Philharmonic Orchestra

Composer Cassandra Miller, Viola Player Lawrence Power and Members of the BBC Philharmonic Orchestra. Credit: Chris Payne

On The Cure’s comeback album Songs of a Lost World (2024), Robert Smith sang, ‘This love is a fragile thing.’ This line could have been the title of Saturday’s concert by the BBC Philharmonic Orchestra under the baton of French conductor Ludovic Morlot. The concert featured: Alban Berg’s character Lulu from his opera of the same name, whose relationship with her lovers is ephemeral; the fragility of love, and of human existence, addressed in Cassandra Miller’s I cannot love without trembling; and Sergey Prokofiev’s setting of Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet depicting the tragic fate of the ‘star-crossed lovers.’

There was a secondary theme in Saturday’s concert: composers persecuted by the regimes in which they lived, and their attempts to subvert those regimes. Alban Berg had become a successful composer in Germany after the premiere of his opera Wozzeck in Berlin in 1925. But with the rise of the Nazis in the 1930s, it became clear that his next opera, Lulu, was unlikely to be performed in Austria or Germany. The Nazis banned his works in 1935, declaring them to be ‘Entartete Musik’ (Degenerate Music). Berg wrote his Lulu Suite to promote the opera away from the Nazi regime.

At around the same time, Prokofiev returned to the Soviet Union after a period of exile. He was in discussions with the State Academic Theatre (later The Kirov) to develop Romeo and Juliet as a ballet, but the project soon fell foul of the authorities. The Theatre cancelled the project, and the Bolshoi agreed to take it on. The Bolshoi’s director was then arrested and executed, and the production was delayed indefinitely. In 1936, Prokofiev extracted two suites from the ballet to generate interest in the complete work.

The concert on Saturday began with the Rondo, the first movement of Berg’s Lulu Suite. Berg extracted a love scene from Act II of the opera, between Lulu and Alwa, the son of Dr Ludwig Schön, one of Lulu’s various husbands. The opening of the movement was delicate and fragile, with solo flute and strings. Conductor Ludovic Morlot calmly brought out the long-limbed, endless melody and the fragility of the melodic lines. But there was an underlying sense of decadence, the solo alto saxophone (Carl Raven) an instrument of louche debauchery rather than frenetic jazz. There was a moment of stasis, then a rich romantic flow, with denser orchestral textures and added piano. The texture thinned out, with excellent solos from Raven, Clive Williamson (piano), Peter Dixon (cello) and Steven Burnard (viola). The music was constantly reaching for something (love?). In this performance, it felt angular yet romantic, dissonant yet tonal, decadent but beautiful, unsettling yet calm.

Cassandra Miller’s viola concerto, I cannot love without trembling is already an enormous success. Since its premiere three years ago, it has been performed a further 14 times, with two more performances scheduled for May 2026. The concerto takes its title from a quotation from the French philosopher, Simone Weil (1909-1943), in a letter she wrote to another French philosopher, Gustave Thibon,

“Human existence is so fragile a thing and exposed to such dangers that I cannot love without trembling”

Quotation from Weil’s Gravity and Grace, published posthumously by Gustave Thibon

The concerto has four movements or verses with a closing cadenza, each part taking its name from a Weil quotation, and it runs without a break. Weil’s Gravity and Grace describes what separates us and what brings us together, based on the Platonic concept of μεταξύ (‘metaxu’ or ‘metaxy’ meaning ‘between’). Miller heard recordings of the violinist Alexis Zoumbas who left the northern mountains of Greece in the early nineteenth century to go to New York. According to the Mississippi records website,

“Zoumbas had the rare gift of expressing emotion clearly and urgently through his instrument, and his violin feels like an extension of his heart, soul, and the deep musical history of his faraway home in Epirus”

Alexis Zoumbas • Epirotiko Moiroloi from American Museum of Paramusicology

Zoumbas’ improvisations evoke a feeling of Ξενατία (Xenatia), Greek for a ‘catastrophic longing for home’, based on Mοιρολόϊ (moiroloi), Greek mourning songs. Miller internalised Zoumbas’ moiroloi recording by singing along over and over again, creating a sacred ritual based on deep meditation. Miller describes this as ‘automatic singing’, which seems akin to automatic writing.

The result is a spellbinding piece of music in which the audience shares the composer’s dreams and rituals and joins her in the intense sense of mourning and lamentation it conveys. Even the soloist is invited to share this meditative state – at one point the score instructs the violist to play ‘with eyes closed.’ The orchestra is invited to join the collective dreaming, often playing sotto voce, surrounding the soloist with shimmering, muted soundscapes. As Miller says,

“Within Zoumbas’ plaintive song, I sought a metaphysical space in which to dream – a space of separation-connection-absence-presence – in the hope to lament and to dream together in this hall tonight.“

On Saturday, the piece began with murmuring percussion and very high harmonics from Lawrence Power’s viola. He played a rising melody which fractured before establishing itself. We immediately entered a remarkable and unique sound world, as Power played music that trembled, inward-looking, contemplative and keening. The sound was lonely, nostalgic, a voice crying out in the wilderness, lamenting in the depths of sorrow. The cellos joined him from the depths, echoing his sorrow.

A single flute note rang out like a call in the darkest night. The viola joined an octave above, with shimmering accompaniment. The viola sounded like a voice wailing and lamenting, and the orchestra shared the viola’s grief. In the third movement, the viola part was more strenuous, with glowing brass and fluttering woodwind. Trumpets suddenly appeared, playing a robust, anguished theme. The viola was riven with emotion, then dropped out completely. There was a stunning section where the viola obsessively plucked a single note and played a melancholy melody, the bass drum rumbling ominously below. The strings crept in with an evocative sweep, and the harp picked up the viola’s repeated note, which then passed to tubular bells, like a beating heart.

As Power moved towards his final cadenza, a florid piccolo (Jennifer Hutchinson) made a lively announcement. Bowed percussion and bells, with gently-strummed strings, took us to a world beyond the stars. The viola finally took flight with superb virtuosity, playing very fast, and lower down the fingerboard. Power raised his bow above his head as the orchestra gradually died away. A stunning ending to a stunning piece.

For the second time this week, the composer came on to take her applause at the Bridgewater Hall (the first time being when Unsuk Chin came on to acknowledge applause for Le Chant des Enfants des Étoiles performed by the Hallé orchestra and choirs).

Viola Player Lawrence Power, Conductor Ludovic Morlot and Members of the BBC Philharmonic Orchestra. Credit: Chris Payne

The second half of the concert was devoted to Prokofiev’s Romeo and Juliet, performed on Saturday, not in any of the composer’s orchestral suites, but in a sequence of extracts that broadly told the whole story of the ballet, in four sections.

The music began with a romantic sweep, played with gorgeous ensemble, the lilting strings unaware of the tragedy to come. The orchestra, particularly the bassoons, played the lively, characterful dance of the servants with great joy.

The Young Juliet perfectly captured Juliet’s changing moods, with whimsical, scurrying violins, perfectly controlled, and more expansive playing to represent her contemplative moods. The Dance of the Knights (now known as the theme tune for The Apprentice and also used to introduce Sunderland AFC at the Stadium of Light) raised a smile and a scattering of applause at the end. The players revelled in the descriptive orchestration. The romantic, yearning theme of Juliet on the balcony was magical, with a moment of piety from the organ solo. Ardent strings announced Romeo’s entrance, and the whole orchestra reached for the stars as the lovers danced together.

Fizzing, frenzied themes introduced the fight scenes in the marketplace, distorting the Knights’ theme. A brass chorale sounded a note of threat. The orchestra played with incredible precision as they reached a huge, disturbing climax. Surging, muted horns announced Mercutio’s death, who retained his sense of irony to the end, like a character from Shostakovich’s music. There was an incredibly descriptive moment in the cellos as he fought for his breath, combining precision and emotion. The fierce pitched battle between Romeo and Mercutio was played at heart-racing speed, with savagely loud timpani marking Mercutio’s death.

Stunning pizzicato strings and vengeful brass announced the Capulets intent to avenge Mercutio’s death, with a breathtakingly discordant final chord. An anguished string lament, right at the top of the violins’ range, like some of the viola solos in the Miller piece, as Juliet’s funeral took place. This was genuinely moving, even though we knew she was still alive. Romeo entered, and we shared his regret as the poison took hold and the music sank into darkness. Juliet awoke with a brass chorale as she saw her young lover lying dead. She briefly recalled her joy in sorrow. In a gentle, moving climax, with stunning woodwind harmonies, she stabbed herself. As with any superb performance of a Shakespearean tragedy, we were left emotionally wrung out, with a purging feeling of catharsis.

Conductor Ludovic Morlot and Members of the BBC Philharmonic Orchestra. Credit Chris Payne

Repertoire

Alban Berg Lulu Suite – Rondo
Cassandra Miller I cannot love without trembling (Viola Concerto)
Sergey Prokofiev Romeo and Juliet – The market place – introduction and morning dance (Nos. 1 & 4); At the Capulets’ house – Juliet’s bedroom , the ballroom and the balcony (Nos. 10, 13, 19-21); The market place – Tybalt kills Mercutio and Romeo kills Tybalt (Nos. 32-36); Juliet’s bedroom, the tomb – her funeral and death (Nos. 37, 51 -52)

Performers

Lawrence Power viola
BBC Philharmonic Orchestra
Ludovic Morlot conductor

The concert was recorded for broadcast on BBC Radio 3’s Classical Live on Wednesday 25 March. It will be available for 30 days after broadcast via BBC Sounds.

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BBC Philharmonic Orchestra – Rachmaninoff’s Symphonic Dances – Live Review

Saturday 7 February 2026

The Bridgewater Hall, Manchester

****

French-tinged minimalism, sparkling Ravel and Rachmaninoff’s final orchestral statement

Elisabeth Brauß and members of the BBC Philharmonic Orchestra. Image © Chris Payne

Saturday evening’s concert by the BBC Philharmonic was their first under the baton of Adam Hickox. He’s the son of Richard Hickox, who died nearly 20 years ago at the untimely age of 60. The younger Hickox is now making a name for himself. In 2023, he was appointed Principal Conductor of The Glyndebourne Sinfonia. He’s the new Chief Conductor of the Trondheim Symphony Orchestra in Norway. Later this month, he conducts that orchestra in a programme of Beethoven, Lutosławski and Unsuk Chin, with pianist Paul Lewis, in a concert billed as ‘From Hickox’s treasure chest.’

Camille Pépin © Capucine de Chocqueuse. Source: camillepepin.com

On Saturday, we began with Les Eaux célestes (The Celestial Waters) by Camille Pépin, who was born in France in 1990. Pépin describes her style as ‘at the crossroads of French impression and American contemporary music’, and this is an apt description of the piece. There are echoes of Steve Reich and John Adams in his earlier, more minimalist guise, in its pulsating rhythms and unexpected key changes. In the final section, there’s a conscious nod to Debussy’s Nuages (Clouds) from his Nocturnes.

Pépin’s piece retells an ancient Chinese legend in four movements. Princess Orihime weaves clothes for the gods from the clouds. She falls passionately for Hikoboshi, who tends his cows in the heavens. They forget their duties, and Hikoboshi’s father, the sky god, separates them by placing ‘celestial waters’ in the form of the Milky Way between them. He relents slightly, allowing the lovers to meet once a year. A flock of birds forms a bridge across the Milky Way, allowing the lovers’ joyful reconciliation.

On Saturday, the first two movements, Tisser les nuages (Weaving the clouds) and La Séparation (The Separation) ran without a break. The piece began with spectral sounds, like the fluttering of birds’ wings. Waves of string sound and perpetuum mobile rhythms suggested the weaving of the clouds, with jazzy percussion. Shimmering strings, with the gentle rumble of timpani, suggested the lovers’ mournful separation. A climax with a brass theme and busy percussion depicted the depth of the lovers’ heartbreak.

The third and fourth movements, Les Larmes perlées (The Pearly Tears) and Le Pont des ailes (The Bridge of Wings), ran together, the tempo now slowed to depict Princess Orihime’s tears. Celesta and harp played the tear drops while string harmonics described the tearful clouds. The birds’ wings were delicately drawn as in an impressionist painting, by out-of-phase vibraphone, marimba and celesta. A sudden change led to the resolutely rhythmic climax, and the lovers were finally reunited. This is attractive, evocative music, a satisfying blend of influences, well played here by the BBC Philharmonic.

Elizabeth Brauß, Adam Hickox and the BBC Philharmonic. Image © Chris Payne

There was more French music from Maurice Ravel, his Piano Concerto in G. This is another piece that wears its influences on its sleeve. In 1928, the composer toured the United States and Canada for four months, meeting George Gershwin. He was inspired by the jazz he heard in America, telling an interviewer,

‘Jazz is a very rich and vital source of inspiration for a modern composer, and I am astonished that so few Americans are influenced by it.’

Both his piano concertos are jazz-influenced and were completed between 1929 and 1931. The following year, the composer toured Europe with the Piano Concerto in G, Ravel conducting and Marguerite Long playing the piano. He had originally been billed to appear as the soloist in his own concerto, but a concert advertised in Manchester didn’t appear to go ahead (see below.)

The concert that didn’t happen?

An advert for Ravel’s concert in on 27 February 1932, part of Brand Lane’s series at the Free Trade Hall in Manchester. It appears the concert didn’t go ahead, due to Ravel’s increasing illness and his technical inability to play the piano part of the Concerto in G. The first performance in Britain was recorded as taking place in London on 25 February that year, with Ravel conducting and Marguerite Long playing the piano. Source: author’s collection.

The German pianist Elisabeth Brauß (Brauss) appeared in a sparkling top that matched the concerto’s sparkle. It began with the crack of a whip, like a circus ringmaster announcing the delights that were to come. Gershwin’s influence was clear from the start – his Rhapsody in Blue was written half a decade before the concerto. Brauß’s playing was superb throughout the first movement, beautifully even, gently evocative, stunningly rhythmic and virtuosic, perfectly controlled. She shone in her brief cadenza, and her playing was richly warm when accompanied by the orchestra. The movement ended with a fierce passage rising from the depths of the piano and a robust downward orchestral flourish.

The second movement began in complete contrast, with a gentle piano solo. This was the highlight of the concerto. The opening section has been compared to the simplicity of the works of another French composer, Erik Satie, who died in 1925. Brauß played it supremely evenly, with great compassion and a touch of rubato. This created an anthemic, almost religious feel. The audience listened spellbound. A gentle waltz ensued, with a heartbreaking top note in the melody. When the orchestra crept back in, the mood was perfectly retained. Brauß played the blues notes with perfect composure and conviction. At the end of the movement, the hall was absolutely quiet.

The final movement began with a bang, the orchestral soloists having fun with the Stravinsky-like jollity of their lines. We were back in the world of Gershwin again, almost sarcastically so. Brauß was again in complete control, her playing inventive and jolly. At one point, she set off at great speed, as if playing music for the most frenetic of Warner Bros. cartoons, incredibly virtuosic. The movement ended very suddenly, and there was enthusiastic applause as Brauß smilingly took her bows.

Unusually, we were treated to an orchestral encore, music from Jonny Greenwood’s score for Paul Thomas Anderson’s 2017 film Phantom Thread. Some parts of the score sound like a piano concerto, so this lushly romantic music this was an appropriate choice for an encore. To the amusement of the audience, the piece ended with an unscored phone ringing at the back of the hall.

The Booker prize-winning author has just announced that his latest novel, Departure(s), will be his last: ‘I’ve played all my tunes.’ Whether Rachmaninoff felt the same about his Symphonic Dances, his final completed work, is unclear, as he made no formal announcement to that effect. But the music itself suggests that he was looking back and summarising his career. He summoned up all his considerable power as orchestrator and a tunesmith to write the piece. And he quoted from his earlier works, including his First Symphony and his Vespers. Scattered throughout the work are quotations of the 13th-century plainchant tune Dies Irae (The Day of Wrath) from the Requiem Mass, which he used in several of his works.

Whatever the status of the work, as David Kettle said in his programme note for the concert, the Symphonic Dances is

‘a symphony in all but name – or perhaps, with its showcasing of individual instrumental colours, more of a concerto for orchestra.’

Conductor Adam Hickox. Image © Chris Payne

The piece began with a lively three-note dance theme scattered across the orchestra, and the visceral thrill of the whole orchestra playing pizzicato. Adam Hickox conducted with calm precision and firm control. An orchestral piano was used as a percussion instrument in the style of Stravinsky. Carl Raven played a Russian melody on warm alto sax – an unusual instrument for the composer – surrounded by beautiful orchestral colours. There was superb ensemble from the woodwind, then a sweeping romantic, nostalgic theme for piano and strings that reminded us of the Jonny Greenwood encore. The movement ended with a lovely flute solo from Alex Jakeman.

The brass excelled themselves in the second movement, beginning with anxious, muted chords, leading to a diabolical, swirling waltz. Leader Zoë Beyers superbly played her violin solo with rustic vigour and a touch of sorrow. Hickox had excellent command of rubato, calmly shaping the vast orchestra with an expressive left hand. The music felt uneasy, constantly trying to move into a new key until it finally did. The anxious brass returned, and there was a passage reminiscent of Ravel’s La Valse (1920), although less apocalyptic, evoking a ghostly waltz in a haunted ballroom. There was a moment of ghostly triumph, before an eloquent ending.

In the final movement, the Dies Irae theme began to creep out, becoming more insistent as the movement progressed. Tubular bells struck twelve – the movement was originally called ‘midnight.’ Another diabolical dance began, and there was an incredible climax before the orchestra fell away again, revealing a duet between upper and lower strings. At times, there was a valedictory feel: did Rachmaninoff know that this was his last work after all? Near the end of the movement, the composer wrote ‘Alleluia’ in the score, referring to the Resurrection of Christ in his Vespers and at the end of the score he wrote ‘I thank thee, Lord.’ Did he feel reconciled to death, represented by the ‘Dies Irae’ theme?

After the final gong rang out, there was a silence in the hall, then enthusiastic applause. At one point, Hickox tried to get the orchestra to stand, but they remained seated to acknowledge him instead. Hopefully, this will be the start of a long and fruitful relationship between Hickox and the orchestra.

The BBC Philharmonic and Adam Hickox. Image © Chris Payne

Repertoire

Camille Pépin Les Eaux célestes
Maurice Ravel Piano Concerto in G
Jonny Greenwood House of Woodcock from Phantom Thread (encore)
Sergey Rachmaninoff Symphonic Dances

Performers

Adam Hickox conductor
Elisabeth Brauß piano
BBC Philharmonic Orchestra

The concert was recorded for future broadcast on BBC Radio 3’s Classical Live. It will be available for 30 days after broadcast via BBC Sounds.

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Saturday 24 January 2026

Bridgewater Hall, Manchester

*****

An unforgettable exploration of Bartók’s psychodrama

Jennifer Johnston as Judith, Christopher Purves as Duke Bluebeard and conductor Anja Bihlmaier. Image © Chris Payne

It’s unusual for one concert in an orchestra’s season to follow on from the next, unless they are part of a programmed series, such as a festival devoted to the works of one composer. But Saturday night’s concert by the BBC Philharmonic Orchestra, under conductor Anja Bihlmaier, picked up where last week’s concert left off. That concert ended with John Adams’ City Noir, a depiction of Los Angeles at night. Saturday’s concert began with another description of night, Lili Boulanger’s D’un Soir Triste (On a Sad Evening).

The two works share not just a nocturnal theme but, at times, a cinematic landscape, music that could have come from a film noir. This is made explicit by Adams, but Boulanger died in 1918, before film music, apart from music for silent films, even existed, so the link can only be made in retrospect. The concert ended with another cinematic work with darkness at its heart: Béla Bartók’s one-act opera Bluebeard’s Castle.

Boulanger died at the tender age of 24, and the only surviving manuscript for D’un Soir Triste in the composer’s hand is the original version for violin, cello and piano. The orchestral manuscript is in the hand of Lili’s older sister Nadia, who survived Lili by over 60 years.

The piece began with stark, questioning strings, then a sudden moment of calm with a characterful clarinet solo from John Bradbury, of whom we were to hear much more later. The music was dark and sorrowful, with dense textures, casting us back to John Adams’ shadowy streets and culminating in a dramatic climax that could have come from a film noir. An urgently rhythmic theme on the timpani felt like the hammer-blow of fate from Mahler’s Sixth Symphony. There was a moment of magic with a limpid celesta part and an intense cello solo, with romantic harmonies that melted into an ethereal violin theme, before the fateful theme returned with rasping brass. A hymn-like section led to a lovely harmonic development, and another orchestral climax, the sound bright but somehow underpinned by darkness as the piece reached an uneasy end.

 ‘If I were to name the composer whose works are the most perfect embodiment of the Hungarian spirit, I would answer, Kodály.’

Béla Bartók on his friend and colleague Zoltán Kodály

The second piece, Dances of Galánta by Zoltán Kodály, introduced the concert’s other main theme: Hungarian music. Born only a year apart in the early 1880s, Kodály and his friend Béla Bartók were two of the most important 20th-century Hungarian composers. They both collected folk songs for use in their own music. Kodály spent part of his childhood in Galánta, which was then part of Hungary (now in Slovakia). He grew up listening to dances played by ‘a famous Gypsy band which has since disappeared…their music was the first “orchestral sonority” which came to the ear of a child.’

The Dances celebrate a particular kind of dance, the verbunkos (Werbung, German,  recruiting). Hussars would come on recruiting missions and impress the locals with their dancing, alternating slow and fast dances, to persuade them that being in the army was fun. The music was provided by the Gypsy bands that Kodály referred to in the note that he made in the score. He orchestrated Gypsy dances published in Vienna around 1800, in addition writing a slow introduction, a clarinet cadenza, an andante maestoso and linking material.

Conductor Anja Bihlmaier and members of the BBC Philharmonic © Chris Payne

The piece began with cellos playing in perfect ensemble under Bihlmaier’s precise baton, with swirling upper strings. A solo horn sounded like a military horn, perhaps welcoming us into the Hungarian army. A gorgeous romantic statement of the opening theme led to a clarinet cadenza, played by John Bradbury with his usual flair and panache, with elegant orchestral accompaniment. Waves of joy passed through the orchestra as they played the intricate dances, Bihlmaier now dancing on the podium. The woodwinds excelled themselves, sometimes playing with a subtle lilt, at other times with sparkling jollity. A slower dance was reminiscent of the scenes at the fair in Stravinsky’s ballet Petrushka. There was a sudden pause, a brief moment of stasis, then more superb woodwind solos. The orchestra then scampered to a thrillingly visceral climax, bringing the piece to an end. It was such an exciting performance that we might have been persuaded to join the Hungarian hussars…

The second half featured more music with a Hungarian theme, with a text by Herbert Béla Bauer, who wrote under the pseudonym Béla Balázs. He was born a couple of years after Kodály and Bartók. In 1910, Balázs published a version of Bluebeard’s Castle, pragmatically dedicating it to both composers. Kodály wasn’t interested in adapting the drama, but Bartók happily took the bait and finished his one-act opera in 1911. He entered it in two competitions, but it was rejected each time.

The Bluebeard story dates back centuries. It’s thought that the model for the character may have been the 15th-century French lord, Gilles de Rais. In 1697 the French writer Charles Perrault published a collection of folk tale adaptations, Histoires ou Contes du Temps Passé (Stories or Tales of Times Past), including La Barbe Bleu (Bluebeard). The Belgian playwright Maurice Maeterlinck wrote another version, his 1901 play Ariane et Barbe-bleue (Ariana and Bluebeard). The French composer Paul Dukas turned it into an opera in 1907.

Béla Balázs drew on the work of both Perrault and Maeterlinck in creating his 1910 version. He stressed that his version wasn’t a myth, a fantasy or a horror story, but a psychological drama,

‘My ballad is the is the ‘ballad of inner life.’ Bluebeard’s castle is not a real castle of stone. The castle is his soul. It is lonely, dark and secretive; the castle of closed doors.’

He later added a spoken-word Prologue to Bartók’s opera, which hints that the drama is internal,

‘The curtain of our eyelids is raised
Where is the stage: outside or within?’

On Saturday evening, the Philharmonic Orchestra didn’t perform the Prologue, but they brought out the opera’s psychological nature by placing the two protagonists, Christopher Purves as Bluebeard and Jennifer Johnston as his (fourth) wife, Judith, on either side of the conductor, facing the audience, rather than semi-staging the opera. The text, sung in an English translation by Péter Bartók and Peter Hennings (see below), was projected above the stage, so that we could concentrate on the words. And there was evocative use of lighting to represent the different doors – or aspects of Bluebeard’s personality – which Judith was so keen to open and inspect. The use of lights on each orchestral music stand, coupled with BBC Radio 3’s microphones, created the impression of a recording studio, which suggested that the inner life of the music and text was more important than external gestures.

Purves came on wearing a kilt, presumably in honour of Burns Night the following day. Johnston wore a splendid, glittery black top. Purves sang with immaculate diction and a deep, rich, agile voice. Johnston sang with great expression, illustrating the words with her hands and her voice, which was in turn mellow, animated, forceful and Wagnerian, negotiating Bartók’s angular vocal lines with ease. The orchestra played superbly throughout.

Jennifer Johnston © R T Dunphy
Christopher Purves © Chris Gloag


Péter Bartók and Peter Hennings
I was lucky enough to meet Peter Hennings at the concert, who had worked with Béla Bartók’s son Péter (pictured left) on the English translation of the opera, finessing it to fit the metre. Hennings had flown over from Florida specially for the concert. He told me that the original English translation had been based on the German version of the text, whereas Péter Bartók’s version had used the original Hungarian version. Hennings worked with Péter Bartók for 20 years on editions of his father’s music, which went back to the original manuscripts.

In Balázs’ libretto, translated here into poetic and idiomatic English, Judith has left her family ‘weeping’, to marry Bluebeard, despite rumours about what may have happened to his previous wives. Her relationship with Bluebeard is complex. She constantly asks Bluebeard to allow her to see what is behind each of the seven doors of his castle – or to reveal deeper aspects of his personality – despite his warnings that she won’t like what is revealed. Their relationship is close, perhaps unnaturally so, as if they have become co-dependents.

© Chris Payne
© Chris Payne

The first of seven doors revealed Bluebeard’s torture chamber, with superb orchestration, as the stage was bathed in red light. There was deep irony in Judith’s words, ‘Hideous is your chamber, dearest Bluebeard.’ He constantly asked her if she was frightened, and she replied that she wasn’t; perhaps fascination with his psychological state was what she really felt.

The second door revealed Bluebeard’s armoury, the stage bathed in orange to suggest weapons, illustrated by military brass. The third door was illustrated with yellow light, revealing his treasure, but with a disturbing undertone from a violin duet and, later, shrieking woodwind and ominous brass to depict the blood on the treasure. Lilac-coloured lighting illustrated Bluebeard’s garden behind the fourth door, a mellow horn solo and filigree flutes describing the flowers and blossoms, which were tainted with blood. Bluebeard again begged his bride to love him, but not to ask him any questions.

Organist Ben Collyer. Image © Chris Payne

There was an incredible climax, as the orchestra was joined by organ and offstage brass, when door five was opened to reveal Bluebeard’s vast kingdom. A dazzling white light flooded the stage and the hall, so bright that Judith had to cover her eyes. There was a moment of supreme beauty as Johnston twice sang the single quiet phrase, ‘vast and mighty is your kingdom’, contrasting with Purves’ more impassioned singing. The uncertain orchestral themes illustrated the bloody shadows of the clouds.

Judith recovered from her shock and demanded to see behind the sixth door. Johnston’s voice was incredibly powerful, over the full orchestra. A lake was revealed; was Judith as innocent as she appeared when she asked where the water was from? A sweeping, shimmering orchestral theme accompanied the revelation that the lake was made up of tears; were they from Bluebeard’s previous wives?

The Duke’s previous three wives were revealed behind the seventh door, the orchestra in darkness as Judith was bathed in red (blood?) and Bluebeard in white. Johnston was incredibly moving as she bowed her head self-effacingly when comparing herself to Bluebeard’s previous wives, then cried ‘no more’ as she gripped her top in terror.

Bluebeard declared that his fourth wife was the wife of midnight, as he had found her at that time. Henceforth, all would be darkness. In a stunning coup de théâtre, all the orchestral lights went off, one by one, leaving the stage completely dark. It was a relief after the psychological tension we had experienced when the stage was bathed in warm light, as the performers received their huge and well-deserved applause. It was a privilege to be present at such a special event.

The concert was recorded for broadcast on BBC Radio 3 on Thursday 5 March. It will be available for 30 days after broadcast via BBC Sounds.

Performers

Anja Bihlmaier conductor
Jennifer Johnston mezzo-soprano, Judith
Christopher Purves bass-baritone, Duke Bluebeard

Repertoire

Lili Boulanger D’un Soir Triste
Zoltán Kodály Dances of Galánta
Béla Bartók Bluebeard’s Castle

Sources

Mike Ashman, ‘The Castle is his Soul’ (Sleeve note to Chandos recording, 2006)

Read on…

Anja Bihlmaier at Manchester Classical 2025…

Manchester Classical 2025 Day One – Live Review

City Noir by John Adams…

BBC Philharmonic – John Adams, Beethoven and Ives – Live Review

Bartók’s Divertimento….

BBC Philharmonic Orchestra – Serenade for Strings – Live Review
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BBC Philharmonic – John Adams, Beethoven and Ives – Live Review

Saturday 17 January 2026

Bridgewater Hall, Manchester

****

A serene Beethoven piano and two unresolved American orchestral classics from Ives and Adams

Alim Beisembayev (at the piano), John Storgårds and the BBC Philharmonic. Image credit Chris Payne.

Saturday evening’s concert by the BBC Philharmonic Orchestra, under their Chief Conductor, John Storgårds, featured two pieces by American composers Charles Ives and John Adams, written a century apart in the early 20th and 21st centuries. They book-ended a piece by Beethoven written in the early part of the 19th century, with the gap between the three works almost exactly 100 years (1805-6; 1908; 2009), providing neat symmetry.

The concert began with The Unanswered Question (1908) by Charles Ives, which he described as a ‘cosmic landscape.’ The piece consists of three layers, beautifully controlled by Storgårds: the opening strings, spellbindingly quiet, representing ‘the Druids Who Know See and Hear Nothing’; a solo trumpet (played here by Tom Fountain) that poses the ‘Perennial Question of Existence’; and a flute quartet that attempts to provide ‘The Invisible Answer.’ The piece ends with the ‘Undisturbed Solitude’ of the Druids, as the Question remains unanswered.

The Unanswered Question by Charles Ives, adapted by Japanese synth pioneer Isao Tomita, from his 1977 album Kosmos

Storgårds barely moved as the bows of the strings seemed suspended in slow motion. The solo trumpeter, Tom Fountain, was almost hidden near the Bridgewater Hall’s organ. The plaintive sound of the trumpet was answered by increasingly discordant flutes, playing a distorted version of the trumpet theme. On a signal from Storgårds, one of the flute quartet conducted her colleagues; one of the remarkable aspects of this piece is that the three groups play in independent tempi. This might have been a spellbinding performance, but unfortunately, our concentration was disrupted by a fourth (unwanted) layer, noisy coughing from the audience.

Alim Beisembayev. Source: alimbeisembayev.co.uk

Like the Ives piece, Beethoven’s Piano Concerto No. 4 in G Major (1805-6) also poses a question. It begins with a gentle question from the piano, which the orchestra answers quietly, repeating the piano’s opening theme. But as in the Ives, the answer isn’t quite what we expect: the piano opens in the home key of G major, and the orchestra’s response is in the unrelated key of B major. Nevertheless, the relationship between soloist and orchestra is harmonious. There’s no pitched battle here, as there often is between orchestra and soloist in a concerto. The work is frequently characterised by Mozartian calm rather than Beethovenian muscularity and ferocity. It has a valedictory quality, as if marking the fact that this was the last piano concerto the composer could perform in concert due to his increasing deafness.

The soloist on Saturday was Alim Beisembayev, born in Kazakhstan, who won First Prize at The Leeds International Piano Competition in 2021. He joined the BBC New Generation Artists in 2023, and this was his first concert with them as a graduate of the scheme.

Early in the first movement, a placid, running theme on the upper strings was paired with precisely plucked lower strings, which were very clear in the Bridgewater Hall’s superb acoustic. Glorious, sunny orchestral flowering was similar to the calmer Beethoven’s Pastoral Symphony written a couple of years later. There was a brief moment of doubt in the lower strings, but this soon resolved as the orchestra repeated the opening theme. Beisembayev replied with filigree decoration, beautifully even, playing with a lovely touch. He entered a mellow dialogue with the orchestra as they passed through a chromatic palette of keys. In the cadenza, he was mesmerising to watch, playing with more passion and emotion than earlier, then with gorgeous, limpid simplicity.

The second movement of the concerto is unusual in that it is more robust than many. Beisembayev began with a perfectly measured performance of the nostalgic opening theme, but there followed a fretful passage, still beautifully controlled. A forlorn, almost apologetic orchestral theme suggested Beethoven’s sorrow at being forced to abandon performing live. In the final movement, which began without a break, the orchestra and soloist entered into a more relaxed, joyful dialogue. Beisembayev held up the orchestra in a moment of stasis while he performed piano pyrotechnics. They joyfully chased each other through the keys. Beisembayev hurried towards a cadenza-like section, then suddenly stopped and restarted – there was light at the end of the metaphorical tunnel. We had reached the sunlit uplands; the ending was ecstatic.


Scarlatti’s Sonata in G Major, Kk. 13, L. 486, from Beisembayev’s 2021 album The Leeds International Piano Competition 2021 – Gold Medal Winner (Parlophone)

Beisembayev’s encore was Scarlatti’s Sonata in G Major, Kk. 13. He played this complex music with great speed and accuracy, bringing out the individual melodic lines superbly, drawing warm applause from the audience

John Adams’ City Noir was named by the late Andrew Clements of The Guardian in 2019 as one of the best classical music works of the 21st Century. Adams was inspired to write the piece by reading the multi-volume Americans and the California Dream by the American historian Kevin Starr. In particular, he was inspired by the volume Embattled Dreams: California in War and Peace, 1940-1950, which describes the case of the gruesome murder of Elizabeth Short, who became known after her death as Black Dahlia. The story goes that she moved to Los Angeles to become an actress, and she may have been called Black Dahlia after the 1946 film noir The Blue Dahlia. Adams was inspired by the ‘sensational journalism’ of 1940s and 50s California, and the ‘dark, eerie chiaroscuro of the Hollywood films’ of that era to write music for an imaginary film noir. He was also inspired to write ‘jazz-inflected symphonic music’, drawing on models such as Darius Milhaud’s La Création du monde written in 1922 – 23 and Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue written a year later.

John Storgårds and the BBC Philharmonic. Image credit Chris Payne.

The first movement, ‘The City and its Double’, threw us immediately into the cinematic landscape with full orchestra, uncompromisingly dark, with serpentine themes snaking back on themselves. The work’s jazz credentials were immediately obvious, with drummer Ben Gray providing insistent rhythms. The alto sax soloist Carl Raven was superb throughout the whole piece. The movement depicts a boulevard at night, deserted but with an ominous atmosphere, punctuated by moments of terror. The movement had a late-night feel, with a shimmer suggesting the silver screen. There was bright, cinematic music, troubling and virtuosic, creating a glorious cacophony of joy. Adams is a master of orchestral colours and layers, and Storgårds brought out all the detail of this dense score from the vast orchestra.

From out of the chaos arose the alto sax melody of the second movement, ‘The Song is for You’, fluidly played by Carl Raven. In the middle of the intricate orchestral texture, it was a visceral shock to hear a single held note in the violins, before the texture thickened again. There were further solos: Richard Brown played the trombone idiomatically in the style of the ‘talking solo’ performed by Duke Ellington’s band members Lawrence Brown and Britt Woodman, as the orchestra growled beneath; Carl Raven returned with a short riff, entering into frenzied dialogue with the orchestra, contrasting with the tranquil discussions of orchestra and soloist in the Beethoven piano concerto; Steven Burnard brought a lovely warm tone to a brief viola solo.

John Storgårds and the BBC Philharmonic. Image credit Chris Payne.

The third movement began with sultry woodwind, perfectly depicting a ‘Boulevard Night’, ; in the words of the composer, ‘peopled with strange characters.’ We could feel the heat described in harmonic changes. Trumpeter Tom Fountain, the soloist in the Ives, returned with an increasingly virtuosic solo. Furiously rhythmic chords used the whole orchestra as a percussion instrument, recalling Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring, as far away from the elegant control of the Beethoven piece as possible. Raven returned with a sensuous solo, described by Adams as ‘brash and uncouth, perfectly characterised. Febrile jazz drumming from Ben Gray, duetting with percussionist Tim Williams, created joyful syncopations which were amazing to watch, bringing the stunning performance of a difficult piece to an end.

Programme

Charles Ives The Unanswered Question
Ludwig van Beethoven Piano Concerto No. 4
John Adams City Noir

Performers

BBC Philharmonic Orchestra
Alim Beisembayev piano
John Storgårds conductor

Source

Programme Note on City Noir by John Adams at earbox.com

The concert was recorded for broadcast on BBC Radio 3 on 27 January. It will be available for 30 days after broadcast via BBC Sounds.

More by the BBC Philharmonic…

BBC Philharmonic Orchestra – Serenade for Strings – Live Review
BBC Philharmonic Orchestra – Mahler’s ‘Titan’ – Symphony No. 1 – Live Review

More music by John Adams in Manchester…

The Hallé – John Adams Conducts the Chairman Dances – Live Review

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2025 – The Year in Classical Music in Manchester (and London, Leipzig and Southwell) – Live Review

Manchester was the place to be for superb performances in 2025

The Year in Classical Music

Sometimes going abroad reminds you how good things are at home. In the spring of 2025, I went to the Shostakovich Festival in Leipzig, featuring world-class performers such as the Gewandhausorchester and the Boston Symphony Orchestra. So it was lovely to return home to Manchester to find performers who are just as good.

This post doesn’t pretend to be a ‘best of’ list. There are plenty of those elsewhere. It’s a look back over some of my personal highlights of the year. I have chosen only one concert or opera from each of the performing groups I reviewed in 2025, to celebrate the music of Manchester… and a few other places too.

Manchester Classical

The biennial Manchester Classical Festival is rapidly becoming a fixture in Manchester.

A highlight on Day One was the concert by Riot Ensemble, who have now chosen Manchester as their home base. As they say on their website,

“Why Manchester? Because the classical music scene here is simply electric: welcoming, ambitious, and fiercely creative.“

Manchester Classical 2025 Day One – Live Review
Manchester Classical 2025 Day Two – Live Review

BBC Philharmonic Orchestra

Under their Chief Conductor, John Storgårds, the BBC Philharmonic has had another excellent year, but I have chosen one of many highlights, the strings of the orchestra in a stunning concert directed from the violin by Leader Zoë Beyers.

BBC Philharmonic Orchestra – Serenade for Strings – Live Review

Manchester Collective

Manchester Collective continued to surprise and delight us with their varied and unusual programmes, always performed with passion and deep humanity. The new piece Wintering by Samantha Fernando gave its name to a concert with The Marian Consort at Stoller Hall in November.

Manchester Collective x The Marian Consort: Wintering – Live Review

The Hallé Orchestra

Kahchun Wong is quickly becoming established as a fine conductor of the Hallé. At their performance of Tchaikovsky’s violin concerto in November, following a successful tour of China, he made a bold statement of intent,

“After China, we have a new mission: to represent Manchester and this region as cultural ambassadors, with your support”

Opera North

Opera North continue to delight us with their productions at the Lowry. Their production of Wagner’s The Flying Dutchman was another triumph, reviewed here in Leeds.

Wagner The Flying Dutchman – Opera North – Live Review

English National Opera

In October, we welcomed English National Opera to the Lowry in Britten’s Albert Herring, their first fully-staged production here. We look forward to many more productions in the future.

Britten – Albert Herring – English National Opera – Live Review

Kantos Chamber Choir

Kantos Chamber Choir provides immersive experiences through its thoughtful programming and staging. One of the highlights of the year was their spellbinding, emotional journey through the Pendle Witch Trials of 1612.

Kantos Chamber Choir – The Witch Trials – Live Review

The Apex Singers

The year ended with a joyful celebration of Christmas in the delightful company of The Apex Singer, a mix of favourites and pieces from their new album Kvällen.

The Apex Singers – Christmas with the Apex Singers – Live Review

Southwell Music Festival

Elsewhere, the Southwell Festival in Nottinghamshire, now in its eleventh year, included another personal highlight, a concert by the Portuguese singer-songwriter Inês Loubet.

Southwell Festival 2025 Day Three – Festival Jazz – Live Review

Bach in Leipzig

Leipzig is one of the most musical cities in the world, home of the Gewandhausorchester and with links to Felix Mendelssohn, Richard Wagner, Robert and Clara Schumann. JS Bach is buried in Thomas Kirche, where he was director of music, so it was profoundly moving to hear his music performed there.

A Visit to Thomas Kirche (St Thomas’s Church) in Leipzig, Home of the Music of JS Bach – Music Across the Generations and Across the Centuries

Mahler’s Symphony of a Thousand in St Paul’s Cathedral

When I sang in the Hallé Choir, I was privileged to perform at the opening concert at Bridgewater Hall in 1996. Before we went on stage, conductor Kent Nagano told us that this was a one-off experience – we would probably never get the chance to sing at the opening of a major international concert hall again. So I can imagine how much it meant for members of London’s Bach Choir to sing in the choir’s 150th anniversary concert at St Paul’s Cathedral in October, a concert that will live long in the memory, for performers and audience alike.

The Bach Choir and the Philharmonia Orchestra – Mahler Symphony No. 8 – Live Review

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BBC Philharmonic Orchestra – Serenade for Strings – Live Review

Friday 5 December 2025

RNCM, Manchester

*****

The strings of the BBC Philharmonic shine in music by Bartók and Tchaikovsky

The Strings of the BBC Philharmonic directed by Zoë Beyers. Image © Chris Payne/BBC

Last Friday’s concert at the RNCM in Manchester was directed from the violin by the Leader of the BBC Philharmonic, Zoë Beyers, and featured the orchestra’s string section. The first half of the concert was devoted to Béla Bartók’s Divertimento for strings, written in 1939 on the eve of WWII. Beyers pointed out that the piece was influenced by ‘the sentiments of war’. In his programme note, Tim Rutherford-Johnson quoted Bartók’s letter to his elder son Béla Bartók Jr., ‘the newspapers are full of military articles [and] military preparedness.’ A year later, Bartók left his troubled home country of Hungary to settle in New York, where he died an American citizen in 1945.

Beyers pointed out another possible influence on the work, Bartók’s poor early health (see below). She said the composer wrote music from a very young age; he didn’t speak until he was four. He was treated with arsenic for a troubling rash which he developed following the smallpox vaccine. His mother, a pianist, communicated with him by playing dance tunes to him on the piano, which made him smile. So the music he wrote in the Divertimento (traditionally a form of attractive, light, entertaining music, as in Mozart’s Divertimenti) was coloured by his outbursts of ‘anger and frustration… about his very tortured childhood’ as much as by ‘unrest in Europe.’ It was up to us to decide what influenced the composer.

Bartók’s Early Health

According to the composer’s elder son, the young Bartók had the smallpox vaccination at the age of three months, after which he developed a skin condition called exanthema:
‘The permanent itchiness, the people shocked with the sight of the spots, and the many medical treatments without any result made him a reticent child... the disease came to an end when he was five years old because of a new treatment, the use of arsenics.‘

Source: Béla Bartók’s Diseases (1981)

Image: Bartók at 18 (Wikimedia Commons)

Bartók’s Divertimento draws not only on Mozart’s model but also on an earlier one, the Baroque concerto grosso. This musical form uses a small group of solo strings and contrasts them with a larger string orchestra. On Friday, the soloists sat in a semi-circle in the middle of the orchestra. All the soloists played superbly, and it was fascinating to hear the contrast in intensity between the smaller and larger groups. The acoustics of the RNCM Concert Hall were ideal for this concert, warm, intimate and precise.

The Divertimento began with a robust, folky melody that suddenly twisted, was joyfully restated, then gave way to a gentle, dancing melody that fell over itself. A typically Bartókian repeated high note was followed by pensive chords, then a rhapsodic, twisty folk dance. A mini-fugue featured a lovely solo cello. There was a hint of darkness as the music reached an anguished climax, the strings playing with a beautiful sense of controlled passion. Fragments of melody were passed across the strings, and the movement ended with a return of the joyful dance.

The second movement was much darker, with haunting, eerie night music. A long, slow, anxious melody on violins suggested the eve of war. This was a spine-chilling moment, as the strings played as one. A sudden climax fell away just as quickly as it appeared. A rhythmic two-note figure had an urgent, compelling sense of unease. With a visceral shock, the music dropped into a different key. With mounting terror, the violins crept gradually upwards, then the music fell away into the depths. There was a brief vision of a new, meditative vista from the solo strings, before a moment of concentrated terror, with oscillating, shimmering strings that grew to an anguished climax. The music relaxed into a concordant chord, interrupted by screaming violins, before a brief, pensive ending.

After the tension of the second movement, the third and final one was a welcome release. It began with a fierce peasant dance, then a theme that teemed across the orchestra. They played vigorous unison sections with fierce rhythms as strings snapped aggressively against fingerboards with intense joy. A highlight was a virtuosic, folky solo from Zoë Beyers. There was a moment of sardonic humour when a short pizzicato section inexplicably burst in. The movement then rushed towards a joyful end. Beyers beamed, and there were smiles from other players. They had clearly been enjoying themselves.

The Strings of the BBC Philharmonic directed by Zoë Beyers. Image © Chris Payne/BBC

The concert restarted after the interval with the orchestra already on stage, waiting for the audience as we dashed to our seats. Beyers decided that the second-half piece, Tchaikovsky’s Serenade for Strings, needed no introduction. Sitting on a slightly raised platform so the other players could see her, she was a benign and enthusiastic director from the violin, the first among equals.

In his programme note, Edward Bhesania wrote that, despite his personal crises, Tchaikovsky wrote the Serenade without any commission or programmatic theme: ‘just a sheer delight in music for its own sake.’ He wrote, ‘I composed [it] from real conviction.. it’s a heartfelt piece and so, I dare to think, is not lacking in real qualities.’

Tchaikovsky was too modest about the piece’s qualities. Even the simple upward scale that began the first movement was imbued with rich melody. The orchestra’s playing was warm-hearted in the romantic melodies and precise in the running semi-quavers that started to dominate the movement. There was a moment of joy as a theme scattered like a golden fountain, then ran like a limpid stream with sweeping gestures around it. Pizzicato notes in the lower strings were played in perfect time. The performers brought out the complexity of the orchestral writing as the lines interweaved. There was an incredible sense of flow and momentum, as they played like soloists, but completely together.

The second movement was a short, elegant waltz played with vigour and poise. The melody had a little catch in it, like a Schubert song or a Mozart aria. The orchestra’s playing was gorgeous in this charming, delicate vignette.

The elegiac third movement took us into a magical new world. The slow climbing scale of the first movement became tender and nostalgic. Tchaikovsky demonstrated his mastery of melody with a delicate dance that pulled at the heartstrings. The tune then passed into the minor, showing his mastery of harmonic development as well. The violas played the long melody, with lovely, delicate ornamentation. The lower strings shone in a contemplative section, and there was a spellbinding moment of quiet on the upper strings. Played with stunning control, there was a gentle re-statement of the opening theme, valedictory now.

In the fourth movement, the music grew out of nothing, a simple folk song after the complexity of the earlier movements, with a lovely counter-melody. Another jolly folk tune burst in, played joyfully, followed by a lilting theme on the lower strings that passed to the upper strings. It was fascinating to watch all the bows moving in unison in the music’s grand gestures. The orchestra played with dynamic energy throughout, and the internal pulse remained firm even as the music became more complex. The movement ended with a triumphant scamper. Beyers saluted the orchestra and tried to persuade them to stand, but they refused, preferring to applaud her!

This was the first of a new collaboration between the orchestra and the RNCM. If future concerts are as good as this one we will be in for a treat.

The Strings of the BBC Philharmonic. Image © Chris Payne/BBC

Programme

Béla Bartók Divertimento
Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky Serenade for Strings

Performers

Strings of the BBC Philharmonic Orchestra
Zoë Beyers director

Sources

Programme notes by Tim Rutherford-Johnson and Edward Bhesania
Bartók, Béla, Béla Bartók’s Diseases (Studia Musicologica Academiae Scientiarum Hungaricae, vol. 23, no. 1/4, 1981, pp. 427–41. JSTOR)

This concert is part of the new series: BBC Philharmonic Orchestra at the RNCM

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