REVIEWS.

Alexander Panfilov Birmingham Town Hall ????? THE three movements from Petrushka which Stravinsky re-imagined, rather than merely transcribed, from his ballet demand a performing combination of Horowitz, Chico Marx and Liberace - the last two for the tricky finger positions and flashy glissandi.

The 25-year-old Russian Alexander Panfilov coped well with its extraordinary demands. His was a muscular performance of tremendous drive and vitality but I felt that something had been lost amidst this welter of excitingly executed notes - the musical depiction of events, the individuals in the crowd, the smell of the Shrovetide Fair and the melancholy little puppet.

In Debussy's Estampes Panfilov showed great discipline in adhering to the composer's direction to play Pagodes "almost without nuance" and the violent thunderstorm in Jardins sou la pluie raged very effectively but La soiree dans Grenade was too literal, failing to capture its dream-like atmosphere where fragments of Spanish themes collide, merge and fade away.

Where dynamism, dexterity and sheer technique were required, as in Scarbo, the third piece in Ravel's Gaspard de la Nuit, Panfilov excelled. It was the subtle expression of colour and texture, the nuanced changes in articulation or rhythmic variation which tended to elude him: the repetitions of Le Gibet, for example, were monotonous rather than mesmerizing.

Schumann's Symphonic Etudes Op 13 is a tremendous piece alternating high romance and madcap humour. In Panfilov's hands the eighth etude's baroque homage was grand and stately and the rumbustious finale was full of zest but some of Schumann's gossamer scherzos stomped rather than gliding gracefully.

Norman Stinchcombe Ava's Wedding Birmingham Conservatoire at the Crescent Theatre ????? AVA'S Wedding, a new opera by Michael Wolters and librettist Alexandra Taylor, was written specifically for Birmingham Conservatoire. Whatever else it might be, that's a significant achievement, as was this whole vividly-realised premiere production.

There are caveats. Ignore the patronising programme essays: the idea of using grand opera conventions to satirise English manners is as old as Gilbert and Sullivan. Taylor's expertly-crafted libretto is one of the least poetic we've heard in a modern opera - and that's high praise. But a few details jarred: did the word "Islamophobia" even exist in 1988, the period evoked by Colin Judges' designs and Jennet and Alan Marshall's costumes? The inner logic of a comic opera has to be watertight.

Because that's what this is: a pacy black comedy of an extended family hurtling towards a series of disasters that they're all simply too polite to avoid. Director Michael Barry handled the interlocking storylines deftly and lucidly. Eleanor Hodkinson played Ava with quiet desperation; the punk Holly (Victoria Adams) and her rival Georgia (Elizabeth Adams) nearly brought the house down with a pair of matched coloratura arias about bridesmaid's dresses, while estranged sisters Patricia (Samantha Oxborough) and Rita (Eloise Waterhouse) each found real pathos in their balancing accounts of a family feud.

But with 21 named parts, a fivepart chorus representing Truth, and at least 10 separate storylines it was hard for individual characters to emerge; and the grand guignol ending left you unsure whether you were really meant to believe in any of them. Likewise, Wolters' gutsy postminimalist score. Based on English composers from Ethel Smyth to Andrew Lloyd Webber, it often seemed to work against the emotion.

Under Fraser Goulding's baton, though, it was never less than entertaining, and at moments - such as an exquisite four-part madrigal - seemed to be straining towards a real operatic tragedy, not just a parody. Frustrations notwithstanding, Ava's Wedding leaves you wanting to watch it all over again: a rare feat for a new opera.

Richard Bratby Mahler's Sixth Symphony CBSO at Symphony Hall ????? MAHLER'S most classical symphony - it even has a first movement exposition repeat, duly observed by conductor Andris Nelsons - is often treated as programme music. Blame Alma Mahler the composer's selfserving widow whose oft-quoted anecdotes have made it into Mahler's Sinfonia Domestica. Refreshingly, from the relentless opening march, brisk, brutal and implacable, to the symphony's final portentous pizzicato, this galvanic performance emphasized the work's greatness as unadulterated absolute music.

Huge musical paragraphs were dovetailed in place and crucial details never ignored: the first movement's cowbells (often a clangourous annoyance) were magically distanced and the hammer blows sounded as Mahler wanted, delivered by a gargantuan croquet mallet, Thor's probably.

Nelsons placed the scherzo second, not perhaps in accordance with Mahler's final thoughts, but with familiarity, plus good musical reasons, in its favour. It was a scintillating piece of eerie nachtmusik pierced by Fafner-like louring low brass, grounded by Graham Sibley's tuba.

The andante's balm, lustrous strings to the fore, was thus all the more welcome and the cataclysmic finale, illuminated by some terrific wind playing, the more shocking.

"The only sixth, despite the Pastoral", claimed Alban Berg and his admiration for it is heard in his own Three Pieces for Orchestra - which concludes with a hammer blow.

Imaginative programming, wonderful playing of a fascinating score in which Nelsons balanced forensic dissection of its complexities with an ear for its many passages of piquant beauty.

The prelude's brass eruption, like the Kraken rising from the murky waves of unpitched percussion, was mightily impressive.

Norman Stinchcombe BCMG CBSO Centre THERE were champagne glasses out at CBSO Centre on Friday night: and rightly. This was the first Birmingham outing for Gerald Barry's new setting of Tennyson's Crossing the Bar - the 75th commission, since 1991, in BCMG's Sound Investment scheme. Other than that, this was a very BCMG kind of celebration: no frills, just a thought-provoking and beautifully-curated programme played straight and to the highest imaginable standard. The programme was built around the songs that John Woolrich has commissioned from over 200 composers since the late 80s. Each was scored for soprano (Gillian Keith and Rebecca von Lipinski took turns), plus solo strings and two clarinets. Conductor Jonathan Berman provided such guidance as was necessary.

The format made for illuminating contrasts. Certain mannerisms recurred - icy harmonics, juddering sul ponticello tremolandi - but more striking was the way the small form intensified each composer's individuality.

The wiry tangle of Milton Babbitt's Quatrains sat between the Barry - a typically deadpan bit of Barry provocation, the text chanted in an aggressive monotone by Lipinski, and then sung over clangourous piano chords - and a delicious nonsense scherzo by the late Jonathan Harvey, playfully and affectionately thrown off by Keith.

Thomas Ades' fidgety, overwritten early Life Story hasn't worn well; Osvaldo Golijov's Sarajevo, on the other hand, sounded just as rich and strange as it must have done in 1993. Lipinkski's warmly responsive singing conjured up the ghost of Mahler in (of all writers) a Flann O'Brien setting by Kurt Schwertsik; Berg haunted Keith's performance of Detlev Glanert's Contemplated by a Portrait of a Divine.

But the fragility and poise of Gillian Keith's voice in three Celan songs by Harrison Birtwistle gave the evening its centre of gravity. Birtwistle's measured phrases and resonant silences connected with the poetry on what felt like a subconscious level. Again: no frills, just loving, perfectly-judged performances of music that has eloquence to spare.

Richard Bratby Handel's Hercules The English Concert at Birmingham Town Hall THERE'S an acute study of obsessive jealousy buried under clergyman Thomas Broughton's turgid text. Hercules is the eponymous hero but the oratorio's central character is his wife Dejanira (Alice Coote) who, mistakenly believing that he now loves captured princess Iole (Elizabeth Watts), inadvertently kills him while trying to regain his love using a magic cloak.

Harry Bicket, directing from the harpsichord, wisely cut a text filled with leaden lines like "The silent rhetoric of weeping beauty pleads with resistless force."

No matter if the music was premier league Handel but it's not: well crafted and skilful certainly, but rarely more. Dejanira's lines "my fears, fly hence, away" recall "Iris hence, away" from Handel's Semele - but the latter is set to immensely more memorable music.

The team of excellent soloists gave it everything they had. Alice Coote strode animatedly about the platform as if by sheer will power she could make this into great music; almost convincing one with an ecstatic "rising transports swell my soul". Elizabeth Watts has added a touch of dramatic steel to her agile soprano - vehement in her denunciation of Dejanira's jealousy and its "endless pain".

Matthew Rose was a firm voiced plangent Hercules with solid bass notes while James Gilchrist, as his son Hyllus, is no youngster his voice had the ardour of youth.

The young counter-tenor Rupert Enticknap (Lichas) is a great prospect, sweet-toned and mellifluous. The English Concert's support was first rate as was their Chorus whose rollicking "Crown with festal pomp" was splendid.

Norman Stinchcombe Hong Kong Philharmonic Orchestra Symphony Hall A SINGLE Chinese character forms the title of Fung Lam's 40th-anniversary showpiece for the Hong Kong Philharmonic Orchestra.

In English, three paragraphs of programme notes merely leave the impression that its English name, Quintessence, doesn't quite cover it. What the piece actually does, via a series of brief, memorable ideas - flashing violin runs, percussion and harp tracery, deep Sibelian brass chords - is provide a mini-concerto for orchestra that leaves absolutely no doubt about the HK Phil's collective virtuosity.

And yet, Lam doesn't really draw on this orchestra's greatest strengths. The opening bars of Dvorak's 9th Symphony laid those out unmistakably: a rich, focussed and gloriously warm-sounding string section, phrasing and moving together, plus as characterful and expressive a woodwind and horn team as you could hope to find anywhere in Bohemia.

Conductor Jaap van Zweden shaped a brisk but intensely lyrical performance - with long, singing lines that gave a really epic sense of sweep, notwithstanding van Zweden's tendency to micromanage phrase endings and tempo changes. The whispered string phrases that underscored Kwan Sheung-fung's plangent cor anglais solo in the Largo were wonderfully expressive and tender.

The sheer beauty of the orchestral sound was also the most enjoyable aspect of Beethoven's Violin Concerto, with Ning Feng as soloist. The spin has promised great things about Feng's playing; more significantly, so has the orchestral grapevine. He has stage presence, and - when he doesn't force it - a powerful, shining tone.

But in this of all concertos, a little more nuance really wouldn't have gone amiss. This was a reading that sported oh-so-stylishly in the shallows.

Richard Bratby

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Title Annotation:	Features
Publication:	The Birmingham Post (England)
Date:	Mar 5, 2015
Words:	1702
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