Tosca is tired but Carmen is on fire; CLASSICAL REVIEWS.

Tosca, Welsh National Opera Birmingham Hippodrome Now creaking after 18 years, Welsh National Opera's production of Tosca, when sung and conducted as disappointingly as we heard on Wednesday, does Puccini no favours.

Instead of relishing musical and dramatic values, our attention wanders instead to the central character, and the realisation of what a tiresome, petty, jealous, morally-confused (she worships the Madonna, but can't wait to spend the night with her lover) woman she is, and wondering why the self-possessed and noble Cavaradossi hadn't kicked her into touch ages ago.

Once those thoughts arise, the drama goes nowhere, and could not be redeemed here - especially after the noisy, lurid conducting of what we know is a magnificent opening, under music director Lothar Koenigs.

Naomi Harvey and Geraint Dodd had excellent stage-presence as Tosca and Cavaradossi, despite occasionally bumpy and raspy singing, and Robert Hayward made a convincing Scarpia, if more psychotic and less chillingingly self-controlled than we normally see in this evil Chief of Police.

But most bizarre is the way these brilliant set-designs, so impressive in the past, this time seemed to make the Hippodrome stage seem cramped and mean - the huge, capacious Hippodrome? Rating: 3/5 Christopher Morley Carmen, Welsh National Opera Birmingham Hippodrome This production of Carmen proves that n less can mean more. It dispenses with the picture-postcard Spanish flummery of arena productions, no prancing horses and flamenco dancers, and focuses on the music - and what music! From the swift opening bars of the overture conductor Frdric Chaslin presents the score as lithe, supple and light on its feet, with crisp and alert playing from the orchestra. Shorn of its recitatives, and given its original spoken dialogue, the dramatic pace is quicker and characters more sharply etched but with sufficient colour provided by the excellent and versatile WNO chorus.

It was a joy to hear a Carmen and Don Jos who have ideal voices for the parts. Irish mezzo-soprano Patricia Bardon is no camp vamp gypsy but a passionate woman with her own idiosyncratic code of honour whose progress from a play-y fully dangerous coquette in the Habanera to tragic heroine was utterly convincing. Gwyn Hughes Jones is a lyric tenor with the required extra vocal heft whose flower aria, passionate yet delicate, was the highlight of the evening. Sarah-Jane Davies' Micala was affecting and her duet with Jose sensitively sung. David Soar's virile Escamillo and Joanne Boag's bright-as-a-button Frasquita gave sterling support.

Rating: 5/5 Norman Stinchcombe Squares, Circles, Labyrinths Q Club, Birmingham To be honest, the Birmingham University Department of Music could easily have mounted this concert, involving huge forces, within the Great Hall back at base - but I'm glad they didn't.

I can't remember having been within the Methodist Central Hall in Corporation Street ever before, and certainly not since its reincarnation as the Q Club, but what a find it is! It is a magnificent venue with a totally natural acoustic; a neglected organ looms loweringly at one end, opposite which the steeply-raked gallery begins its impressive sweep right and left.

And on Thursday the team behind this brave juxtaposition of late-Renaissance and swinging 60s music exploited the resources of this space to the full. Stock-k hausen's Carre for four orchestras and e vocal ensembles swung resonantly around the audience - but outstayed its welcome. Never mind - this was a fascinating re-exploration of a musical culde-sac. As was the brilliant staging of Luciano Berio's Laborintus II, this Dante-derived work assuredly directed by Jonty Harrison, and with Philip Curtis the convincingly Italianate narrator.

But, ironically, it was the Allegri Miser-r ere and Thomas Tallis' 40-part e Spem in Alium which spoke to us across many m centuries and reminded us that they are the works which are really going to stay.

Rating: 5/5 Christopher Morley Yevgeny Sudbin Stratford Civic Hall Although only thirty, Yevgeny Sudbin has already produced highly acclaimed recordings and been mentioned in the same breath as Horowitz and Michelangeli.

Unfortunately on this occasion he deserved a better piano than the pint sized Blthner with which he was presented.

Any trace of frustration with his recalcitrant instrument was totally hidden from the audience, and although his programme was a pianophile's delight the overriding impression was that of a masterly performer for whom musical and structural virtues came first, and the phenomenal technical demands were secondary.

Chopin's Fantasia in F minor a commanded our instant attention, rich and subtle with outstanding finger work, followed by a gently poetic Third Ballade and a Fourth Ballade full of fantasy and e sweep, marred only by some over pedalling at the close, turning the coda into a harmonic jumble.

Liszt's Harmonies du Soir was noctur r -nal and intimate rising to a grandiose but perfectly controlled climax of tremendous power before subsiding. This same control was exhibited to even greater effect in Ravel's Gaspard de la Nuit. Each of its multitude of notes was treated as important, with Ondine beautifully liquid, Le Gibet desolate, and Scarbo spine-tingling in its variety and o coherence.

Sudbin is already an artist who has joined the elite.

Rating: 4/5 John Gough Ex Cathedra Consort Highbury Hall A lovely afternoon and elegant venue was perfect for this spring celebration, and an imaginatively-themed concert by Jef-f frey Skidmore and his handpicked Consort of just ten singers.

It was also a journey of discovery, with the unknown 16th century Claude Le Jeune rubbing shoulders with composers of today - America's Morten Lauridsen and Gerald Busby (both masters of lush choral textures) and our own John Joubert, present to modestly acknowledge his Three Portraits, a work whose harmonic directness and economy of means (so vibrantly sung here) make such a powerful emotional impact.

There was also Britten (the Five Flower Songs tailor-made for the occasion) de s -livered, as was everything, with subtly pointed intimacy and expressively charged attention to detail.

James MacMillan's hauntingly beautiful So Deep, however, should have been left to resonate and linger in the memory, instead of being banished by a Rutter encore - such an unbecoming choice.

Rating: 5/5 David Hart Philharmonia Orchestra Symphony Hall Tuesday's concert should have allowed us to relish the two greatest works in their respective genres, and both by Beethoven: his Violin Concerto and his o Third Symphony, the Eroica, which broke every bounds imaginable and paved the way for everything else that was to follow.

Joshua Bell was soloist in the Concerto, his approach properly Olympian, with no attempt to seek out spurious emotional underlayings, and his playing was both muscular and sweet-toned. But any sense of the music's huge stature seemed to be skated over.

Bell's use of his own cadenzas was in keeping with period-practice of the time, and sympathetically attuned to the main meat of the music, but there are majestic, well-used ones which are equally worth his interest.

Riccardo Muti and the Philharmonia Orchestra collaborated efficiently (wonderful woodwind choiring), before launching into the symphony, crisply, soaringly delivered, but too slick to give a sense of the awesome ground-break-k ingness of this music.

We don't need a scrappy performance to convey such an idea, but surely something which digs deeper beneath the surface to reveal the countless nuggets this score contains.

Rating: 3/5 Christopher Morley

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Ex Cathedra.

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Title Annotation:	Features
Publication:	The Birmingham Post (England)
Date:	Mar 25, 2010
Words:	1210
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