Kahchun Wong returned to the symphony with which he made his first big impression conducting the Hallé – and made a big impression with it again.
It’s quite ironic that the Royal Northern College of Music should have invited, as director of this, Britten’s avowedly pacifist opera, Orpha Phelan – whose version of his Billy Budd for Opera North nearly 10 years ago contained one of the most thrilling battle scenes ever staged.
In Italy, they did it differently. Their pulp fiction tales of suburban transgression appeared between yellow covers on new stands and spawned the influential Giallo movies of the Sixties and Seventies, gory exercises in an offbeat, highly stylised film language – cult movies indeed.
A cello concerto received its UK premiere in Manchester last night – almost 100 years after it was written. It’s by Maria Herz, a German-Jewish composer who had to leave her native land in the 1930s and whose work has remained almost unknown until quite recently.
Raphaela Gromes has championed this concerto, giving its German premiere last year, and she brought it to Britain with the Hallé and Alpesh Chauhan (main picture).
The date, projected behind the stage before a word is spoken, is a clue - 14th April 1912. “Why so specific?” was my first thought. My second was, “Ah, yes”.
As something of an immigrant to the capital myself in the long hot summer of 1984, I gobbled up Absolute Beginners, Colin MacInnes’s novel of an outsider embracing the temptations and dangers of London.
This Celine Dion jukebox musical has been a big hit in New York, but crossing The Atlantic can be perilous for any production, so, docked now at the Criterion Theatre, does it sink or float?
Anna Clyne’s This Moment had its UK premiere at Saturday’s BBC Philharmonic concert. She’s the orchestra’s composer in association, and this seven-minute piece was first played by the Philadelphia Orchestra last year.
Pavel Kolesnikov returned to the Hallé last night with a bobby-dazzler of a concerto. He’s a laid-back dude in appearance, with no tie, flapping jacket and cool appearance – quite a contrast with the full evening dress worn by the orchestra members – but the music says it all for him.
