Classical highlights: Halle, Vassily Sinaisky, Michaelangelo String Quartet
HALLE maestro Sir Mark Elder is back in action this week and next, conducting the Opus One programme on February 10, 11 and 14 at the Bridgewater Hall.
It’s in support of the memorial fund for Mike and Dorothy Hall, orchestra members who were tragically killed while on a walking holiday in the Pyrenees in 2008, and the music is all-American – well, sort of.
There is Samuel Barber’s famous Adagio, the suite from Copland’s ballet Billy The Kid, and Stravinsky’s Petrushka in its 1947 version (by which time the Russian-born composer was well Americanised himself).
Sir Mark is also going for jazz, giving (with the orchestra) the original Paul Whiteman Band arrangement of Gershwin’s Rhapsody In Blue.
Piano soloist is Manchester’s own Jonathan Scott, who – as I’ve pointed out before – is possibly holder of the UK record for playing this piece, having given it at least 120 times already (over 80 for Northern Ballet Theatre, and over 20 for English National Ballet).
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VASSILY Sinaisky is another well-loved figure back in town, on the podium tonight at the Bridgewater Hall.
The BBC Philharmonic’s principal guest conductor has endeared himself particularly by his sympathetic and idiomatic approach to English music – Elgar in particular – and this time he’s tackling the symphony in G minor by Edward Moeran, as well as Elgar’s overture, In The South.
The Moeran symphony, written in the 1930s, is a piece he first conducted last summer with the orchestra at the BBC Proms. It has been described as ‘very British’, with a mix of folk nostalgia and personal sorrow – and the jitters and shellshock of the war.
Soloist in Mendelssohn’s violin concerto is Tianwa Yang, a young Chinese performer making her debut with the BBC Philharmonic.
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THE Michelangelo String Quartet (pictured below) is one of those special groups, made up of musicians who are major soloists – and teachers – in their own right.
They come together regularly to work as a quartet, and their visit to Britain this week includes just three dates: one at the Wigmore Hall in London, then two at the Royal Northern College of Music in Manchester.
There’s a masterclass on Monday, and a concert on Tuesday (Mozart, Shopstakovich and Beethoven). The quartet’s members are violinists Mihaela Martin and Stephan Picard, violist Nobuko Imai and cellist Frans Helmerson.
Tonight’s piano recital at the Royal Northern College of Music is by Kateryna Titova, who was the winner of the first James Mottram Piano Competition, held at the RNCM just over a year ago.
The Ukrainian has a string of other competition wins and scholarships behind her and is now one of four participants in the inaugural RNCM International Artist Diploma course.
She is playing a wide-ranging programme including some Rachmaninov, whose music she has already recorded for Sony.
Published: Fri, 05 February, 2010
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