¡Fiesta Sinfónica!
This autumn, the BBC National Orchestra of Wales is going on tour to South America, where a week-long residency in Patagonia will be the centrepiece of their visit. There’s a Latin American flavour to their programmes back home in Cardiff, too, with a series of three concerts focusing on the music of Argentina, Brazil and Uruguay as well as Chile and Mexico, much of it rarely performed here.
- Hoddinott Hall, Cardiff, 18 September, 9 October, 27 November. Box office: 029-2063 6464
Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk
With the departure of both the music director and the company’s artistic director, it’s very much the start of a new era at English National Opera. The incoming music director Mark Wigglesworth opens the season conducting Dmitri Tcherniakov’s staging of the work with which Shostakovich fell foul of the Soviet authorities in the 1930s. Soprano Patricia Racette is the fated Katerina Ismailova, while John Daszak take the role of her lover Sergei.
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Coliseum, London, 26 September-20 October (020-7845 9300)
Salome
Kirill Karabits has recently extended his contract as principal conductor of the Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra until at least 2018. He’s certainly determined to broaden the orchestra’s horizons and to make is contribution to the UK’s musical life distinctive, and his first programme in the orchestra’s new season given over to a concert performance of Strauss’s lurid one-acter with Lise Lindstrom as the teenage princess and James Rutherford as John the Baptist.
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Lighthouse, Poole, 30 September (0844 406 8666); Symphony Hall, Birmingham, 2 October (0121-345 0600)
Gewandhausorchester Leipzig
Riccardo Chailly has just announced that he is stepping down as the Leipzig orchestra’s music director at the end of this season, so his remaining appearances with the musicians he has taken to the top of the orchestral tree should be treasured.
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Symphony Hall, Birmingham, 19 October (0121-345 0600); Barbican, London, 20-23 October (020 7638 8891)
The Maiden in the Tower
Though there have been plenty of concerts to celebrate the 150th anniversary of the birth of Sibelius in the UK this year, there has not so far been an opportunity to sample his only opera. As part of its Sibelius and Nielsen series, the Scottish Chamber Orchestra is filling that gap; Tuomas Hannikainen is conducting a concert performance of the one-acter, alongside Nielsen’s Violin Concerto with the inspirational Pekka Kuusisto as the soloist.
- Younger Hall, St Andrews, 28 October (01334 475000); Queens Hall, Edinburgh, 29 October (0131-668 2019); City Halls, Glasgow, 30 October (0141-353 8000)
Scheherazade 2
John Adams’s visits to London to conduct the LSO seem to have become annual events, and they generally include a new work. The latest to receive its UK premiere is a follow-up to Rimsky-Korsakov’s famous fantasy suite, in which Adams updates the story of Scheherazade to the present day, “imagining a woman storyteller/hostage whose strength of character and powers of endurance are tested over and over”. The violinist/protagonist is regular Adams collaborator Leila Josefowicz.
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Barbican, London, 29 October (020-7638 8891)
Turandot
Northern Ireland Opera goes from strength to strength. After successes with its bespoke productions of Wagner’s Flying Dutchman and Strauss’s Salome in recent seasons, it is now importing a production of Puccini’s final, unfinished opera by the controversial Catalan director Calixto Bieito that was first seen in Nuremberg last year. As usual with NIO the casts mix international stars and homegrown singers, and the title role of the cruel princess is shared between sopranos Miriam Murphy and Orla Boylan.
- Grand Opera House, Belfast, 30 October to 1 November (028-9024 1919)
Morgen und Abend
It’s a big deal when the Royal Opera presents a brand new specially commissioned work on its main stage. The latest composer to receive that honour is the Austrian Georg Friedrich Haas, whose music is far better known across Europe than it is in the UK. Based on Jon Fosse’s novel of the same name, Morgen und Abend depicts a man’s journey from life to death. The central role taken by the great Austrian actor Klaus Maria Brandauer, and the production also sees the return to Covent Garden of director Graham Vick.
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Royal Opera House, London, 13-28 November (020-7304 4000)
Huddersfield contemporary music festival
Every year Huddersfield fills in some of the gaps in the new-music spectrum that other ensembles and festivals tend to miss out. There’s the usual mix of the mainstream and the unfamiliar this year, with a host of premieres and features on Polish, Swiss and Austrian composers who are little known here. The festival ends with the first UK performance of Harrison Birtwistle’s third string quartet, The Silk House Sequences, played by the indefatigable Arditti Quartet.
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Various venues, Huddersfield, 20-29 November (01484 472900)
The Rime of the Ancient Mariner
Howard Skempton is best known for the exquisite understatement of his music, for pieces that seem to punch well above their emotional weight. So it’s quite a surprise to discover that he has been working on a setting of Coleridge’s epic poem for the baritone Roderick Williams, which the Birmingham Contemporary Music Group will premiere alongside works by Dominic Muldowney, who will also conduct the concert.
- CBSO Centre, Birmingham, 4 December (0121-345 0600); Wigmore Hall, London, 5 December (020-7935 2141)
