CityLife

Classical highlights: August 13 to 19, 2010

Polina Leschenko

It's the time of year when everything goes quiet in the north west classical music scene, so today and over the following weeks I’ll take a look at the highlights of the 2010-11 season to come. This week the focus is on orchestral programmes, and the Hallé in particular.

The orchestra is again underlining its role as standard-bearer of the British tradition, with programmes – many conducted by Sir Mark Elder, who identifies powerfully with that tradition, too – including old and new.

There’s something rather special about the October 14 concert, for instance, which has Elgar’s violin concerto in it – first performed just 100 years ago.

Fritz Kreisler was the soloist then, and with Sir Mark on the platform will be Nicolaj Znaider, who plays the same violin Kreisler used, the Guarnerius ‘del Jesu’.

That programme also includes Vaughan Williams’ ‘London’ symphony (no. 2), a marvellous sound-picture of the Edwardian metropolis.

There’s more mainstream music from Sir Mark, with Elgar’s first symphony in the Opus One series in February, and his Enigma Variations to end the Thursday series on May 5.

Delius’s Sea Drift (soloist Roderick Williams) is included with the Sea Interludes from Britten’s Peter Grimes in Sir Mark’s concert on March 17 and is a work he says he has ‘been waiting for many years to conduct’.

And the big choral end-of-season concert is built on Britten’s Spring Symphony (Saturday, May 14), which will feature the Hallé Children’s Choir, now a force in its own right, as well as the Hallé Choir.

New British music is represented by the UK premiere of Sally Beamish’s The Song Gatherer (her second cello concerto) on December 2, with Robert Cohen the soloist and Sir Mark conducting, and music from Thomas Adès’ opera, Powder Her Face, is in the February 17 programme (with two very obvious sweeteners: Bruch’s Scottish Fantasy – soloist Valeriy Sokolov – and Tchaikovsky’s ‘Pathétique’ symphony).

Oliver Knussen – British composer, conductor and son of a Hallé double bass player – has a concert on February 3 which includes two excerpts from his own highly successful opera, Higglety Pigglety Pop!

There’s a footnote to the Mahler symphony cycle of earlier this year, in the form of the tone poem, Totenfeier, which is related to the first movement of the ‘Resurrection’ symphony, and some songs from Des Knaben Wunderhorn sung by the wonderful Angelika Kirchschlager.

Sir Mark is also making Prokoviev a focus of the season, with the fifth symphony in his first Thursday concert on September 30 and the ‘Classical’ symphony in the December 2 programme (with attractive Dvořák besides), and the second piano concerto on May 5 (soloist Sunwook Kim).

The Hallé’s principal guest conductor, Markus Stenz, has a clear profile in his concerts this season. On November 11 he’s conducting the Hallé Choir with the orchestra in Cherubini’s Requiem – that will be a new experience for many – alongside Brahms’s second piano concerto (Elisabeth Leonskaja), and on March 31 he brings a Bruckner symphony: the mighty no. 5.

His Opus One programme, shortly before, obey’s Wagner’s injunction to ‘honour your German masters’ – with music from Die Meistersinger itself, Schumann’s ‘Rhenish’ symphony (which evokes the cathedral and countryside of Cologne), and the entertaining double concerto for violin and piano by Mendelssohn, where the soloists will be the Hallé’s leader, Lyn Fletcher, and Polina Leschenko (pictured top).

The Hallé season has a line-up of top-class visiting conductors and guest soloists. Old friends include Thomas Zehetmair, who combines solo violin with conducting (he’s doing both for Beethoven’s violin concerto on Jan 20), and Cristian Mandeal, who conducts Jean-Bernard Pommier in Schumann’s piano concerto on April 14, alongside Liszt’s Les Préludes and Brahms’s third symphony.