Brighton Festival: Classical Music

Andrew Connal’s round up of highlights from the 2015 classical programme

Greedily browsing this year’s Festival Programme, I am once again struck by the astonishing variety and quality of the choice. For me the Festival will open with a bouquet of delights as Stephen Hough (Sun 3 May 3pm, Glyndebourne), one of our greatest concert pianist, plays masterworks by Debussy and Chopin in the perfect acoustics of the Glyndebourne opera house. It should be a magical event.

This exceptionally high standard of performance, scholarship and entertainment will be maintained when Isabelle Faust (Mon 4 May, Part 1: 5.30pm – 7pm, Part 2: 8.30pm – 9.45pm, All Saints Church) plays the complete Sonatas and Partitas of JS Bach, in two sessions. I don’t think you can ever have too much Bach! Just like at the opera, there will be a long interval.

Lovers of the Baroque, like me, will also enjoy another inspired Brighton Festival commission, Being Both (Thu 14 May 8pm, Brighton Dome Concert Hall), which examines the Baroque phenomenon of the castrato roles now sung by women. Directed by Susannah Waters, mezzo-soprano Alice Coote sings Handel with Harry Bicket conducting the English Concert.

In the UK Premiere of The Lads in Their Hundreds (Tuesday 5 May 8pm, Theatre Royal Brighton), (from Housman’s “A Shropshire Lad”), veteran French actor Tchéky Karyo recites 15 French war poems and the young ensemble of tenor Edmund Hastings, violinist Michael Foyle and Edward Liddall on piano present music by composers who experienced the trenches: Ivor Gurney, who was fatally traumatised, George Butterworth, who died on the Somme, and Vaughan Williams, whose ‘The Lark Ascending’ became an elegy for those who went to war.

In recent years outstanding accompanist James Baillieu has organised some excellent recitals. This year they have an exciting gypsy flavour, starting with soprano Louise Alder (Wed 6 May 1pm, Brighton Dome Studio Theatre) in songs by Schumann, Szymanowski, Liszt, Panufnik and Brahms.

Next, Baillieu partners baritone Benjamin Appl (Fri 15 May 7pm, All Saints Church) again. Last year their lunchtime concert was a Festival triumph so now they need a bigger venue. We’ll hear more gypsy songs and also some poignant works by composers who died in Nazi camps. Note the early start.
The reason for that early start is because the New London Chamber Choir (Fri 15 May 9pm, All Saints Church) takes over with Animals, an intriguing mix of early and very modern a capella polyphony that brings “a zoo-ful of animals riotously to life”!
James Baillieu completes his gypsy programmes in an alluring concert with tenor Robert Murray and mezzo-soprano Anna Huntley (Thursday 21 May 8pm, St George’s Church), including the melancholic romance of Janáček’s The Diary of One Who Disappeared.

The Lunchtime Concerts (all at 1pm, Brighton Dome Studio Theatre) offer plenty more Eastern-European music: Alexander Karpeyev plays Medtner and Stravinsky (Fri 8 May); Stephen Upshaw & Veronika Trisko (viola & piano) play Bartók’s Romanian Folk Dances (Monday 11 May); Cavaleri Quartet play Tchaikovsky (Tue 19 May).
Barbara Hannigan and Britten Sinfonia offer us a lovely assortment of Mozart, Haydn and Stravinsky, ending with Stravinsky’s delightful Pulcinella Suite. (Tue 12 May 7.30pm, Brighton Dome Concert Hall)
Look out for a most important extra in the schedule. Pitch Perfect presents the best local young musical talent, our stars of tomorrow, at several ‘perfect pitches’ around the Royal Pavilion Estate. Sat 2 May, 12 – 4pm

The climax of this year’s classical music programme is the brilliant combination of our own Brighton Festival Chorus with Manchester’s Hallé Orchestra, under the baton of their esteemed principal conductor Sir Mark Elder, who is coincidentally President of the BFC. This concert too has an Eastern-European flavour, with Shostakovich’s exhilarating Concerto for Piano, Trumpet and Strings featuring piano-prodigy Benjamin Grosvenor and the Hallé’s principal trumpet, Gareth Small. This sensational work always leaves me feeling hyped-up and breathless. The concert starts with music from Janáček’s opera The Cunning Little Vixen, so rich with folk tunes and musical colour, and the grand finale is his sonorous Glagolitic Mass which BFC first recorded in 1973! We can expect the very best of interpretations of this majestic masterpiece of Czech choral music. I’m looking forward to another wonderful Festival again this year.
Saturday 23 May 7.30pm, Brighton Dome Concert Hall