Manchester Classical Music
Manchester Classical Music is a English-speaking blog specialized in the field of classical music and opera. As such, Manchester Classical Music is a qualified source of soclassiq, like FT.com Music or The Well-Tempered Ear and many others. The oldest article indexed by soclassiq is dated 2017-04-27. Since then, a total of 143 articles have been written and published by Manchester Classical Music.
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With 1 articles published in the last 90 days, Manchester Classical Music is currently a not very active news source. "Not very active" does not mean that Manchester Classical Music is less interesting than another more prolific source. Each blog follows a specific editorial line, publishing according to its own rhythm.
This editorial activity is increasing compared to the previous period.
The last article in Manchester Classical Music, "The Royal Philharmonic Society Awards 2024, at the Royal Northern College of Music", is dated 2024-03-07. By 2023, this source had published 4 articles (1 since the beginning of 2024). Over the past 12 months, Manchester Classical Music has published an average of 0 articles per month.
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2024-03-07 09:16:00
The Royal Philharmonic Society Awards 2024, at the Royal Northern College of Music
         L-R from top: Nicky Spence; Jasdeep Singh Degun; Roman Grigoriv, Olga Diatel and Illia Razumeiko; and Jack Capstaff at the RPS AwardsThe Royal Philharmonic Society held its awards ceremony at the Royal Northern College of Music on Tuesday night (5 March) – the first time they’ve ever done them out of London. And here are my awards for the highlights of the show: l The ceremony began with Conversation in the Forest by Keiko Abe, performed by “The Sound of Manchester” – Delia Stevens and Le Yu (aka Aurora Percussion Duo), with Andrea Vogler, David Hext, Harriet Kwong and Paul Patrick. l Most entertaining acceptance speech of the night was from tenor Nicky Spence (winner, Singer category), pointing out that he’d been up for the award more than once before and “I was beginning to think I was Pippa Middleton” and telling the tale of how his […]
2022-08-09 08:27:00
Reviews of the National Gilbert & Sullivan Opera Company at Buxton
Emily Vine (Mabel) and chorus in the National Gilbert & Sullivan Opera Company'sproduction of The Pirates Of Penzance at Buxton Opera House 2022The Pirates of PenzanceThe Gilbert & Sullivan Festival is back at Buxton – hurrah! A full week of performances at the Opera House there precedes two weeks of continued festival in Harrogate, so there’s the best of both worlds for G&S lovers. The shows diary is very much the same as it used to be in the days when Buxton had the festival to itself: a different title almost every day, with the festival’s own National Gilbert & Sullivan Opera Company leading the way (they’re also doing Iolanthe and Utopia Ltd, a relative rarity), plus the pick of the crop of other specialists in the Savoyard repertoire – this week that’s The Gondoliers (Forbear! Theatre), The Mikado (Peak Opera), HMS Pinafore (Opera della Luna), and Charles Court Opera with […]
2023-10-13 08:26:00
Review of Hallé concert conducted by Anja Bihlmaier with soloist Maxim Rysanov
  Anja Bihlmaier cr Nikolaj LundIt was Beethoven’s Fourth with zip at the Hallé last night, as Anja Bihlmaier showed her credentials as a conductor of the present day, taking the tempo markings very much at face value and, with the orchestra in fine fettle almost from the first bar, creating a performance of neatness and beauty. She had 40 strings for the entire programme, which also began with Beethoven, in the form of the tone-poem-like Leonora no. 3 overture. I’ve heard it done with more operatic atmosphere – there were only the briefest of pauses, for instance, in this performance to follow the off-stage trumpet calls – but I think she wanted it to be as coherent as possible as a musical structure. It certainly had a fiery presto to finish. In between the Beethoven pieces there was Maxim Rysanov with Bartók’s Viola Concerto (as completed by Tibór Sérly) – […]
2023-04-21 08:55:00
Review of Hallé concert with Antje Weithaas conducted by Christian Reif
                                       Christian Reif (cr. Simon Pauly)       The extended platform was in use again at the Bridgewater Hall to accommodate the full forces of the Hallé Orchestra in Stravinsky’s The Rite of Spring (which was the main marketing label for this concert). It was a worthy reading under conductor Christian Reif, who has the ability to inject a near-theatrical magic into everything he touches. There was particular gravity and feeling in the slower dances of the first part of The Rite, a real sense of mystery as the second part began, and excitingly realized tension in the conclusions to both segments. The piece has attained the sanctity of set-text authority as an […]
2023-02-24 11:10:00
Review of Hallé concert with Boris Giltburg and conducted by Alexandre Bloch
Boris Giltburg cr Sasha GusovThe Hallé like to bill each concert with a title these days: what good luck that this one was given that of the music played in its second half, Lutosławski’s Concerto for Orchestra, as the conductor, soloist and piano concerto originally advertised had all changed by the time it happened. So we had the chance to witness Alexandre Bloch’s debut with the orchestra. He’s no stranger to Manchester, though, having been a junior conducting fellow at the Royal Northern College of Music, after the Paris Conservatoire. He won the Donatella Flick Conducting Competition in 2012, and I remember his part in the 2013 Chester Festival, appearing with Manchester Camerata, which was followed by a move to the London Symphony Orchestra as assistant conductor. He too the Hallé through Debussy’s Prélude à L’Après-midi d’un faune first, with the opening magically played by Amy Yule, starting from a […]
2022-10-13 10:42:00
Review of Hallé concert with Tami Pohjola, conducted by Taavi Oramo
Violinist Tami Pohjola and conductor Taavi Oramo pictured with the Hallé (credit Tom Stephens)This week’s repeated Hallé programme (I heard it on Wednesday afternoon) was an intriguing one. Not so much for the headline works – Mendelssohn’s Italian symphony and Sibelius’ Violin Concerto – but for the two overtures by women composers added to those, and the two guest artists. They were both Finnish and young, and going places. The conductor was Taavi Oramo and the soloist Tami Pohjola. She is a wonderful player. She has both a gorgeously lyrical sound and some very big tone, allied with formidable technique. Standing against around 50 strings in the tutti orchestra was no problem, and the first movement cadenza was not just confidently negotiated but heartfelt in style. That makes a difference: the slow movement, too, was soulful in spades, and the finale much more than a mere fireworks display. Oramo ensured that […]
2023-02-17 09:07:00
Review of Hallé concert with Ian Bostridge and conducted by Kahchun Wong
Kahchun Wong (cr. Angie Kremer)Kahchun Wong’s concert with the Hallé was a really interesting one – in the end, not so much for what it had appeared to offer on paper, but for what it gave in practice. The paper interest was a UK premiere: Sofia Gubaidulina’s The Wrath of God, written in 2019, an 18-minute piece for very large orchestra (four Wagner tubas as well as four horns, two bass trombones, two tubas and a lot of percussion). It’s about the day of judgment, and suitably scary. It’s very loud a lot of the time, though there are beautiful and delicately mysterious softer passages too, one for strings and gong, one for strings and solo horn, followed by clarinet, piccolo and glockenspiel, then solo violin. Those I appreciated: but the predominant impression was that this somewhat episodic piece keeps making you think it’s all over, then showing you that […]
2022-10-28 08:48:00
Review of Hallé performance of Verdi's Requiem, conducted by Sir Mark Elder
Sir Mark Elder conducting the HalléVerdi’s Requiem has often been described as an “operatic” setting of a sacred text. There’s no doubting that Sir Mark Elder sees it that way. It makes fairly frequent appearances in concert programmes, but of all the versions I’ve heard I don’t think there’s been any quite as determined to make it into a drama as this. Each of the soloists is known for their prowess in Italian opera, and it seems each had been encouraged to see their role in this performance as a character study of some sort, whether pronouncing judgment, pleading for mercy, or floating to the heights of beatification. When it came to the big choral and orchestral highspots, all was spectacle – the Dies Irae with not one but two big bass drums, and especially the Tuba mirum, with Aida-style stage trumpeters appearing on high, to properly put the fear […]
2022-10-17 08:21:00
Review of BBC Philharmonic 'centennial' concert
Eva Ollikainen conducting the BBC PhilharmonicCalculating the age of an orchestra is a funny business. You might think that continuous existence as a group who played together under the same name, with slow membership changes over time, would be definitive. By that standard the BBC Philharmonic is still quite young. Even allowing for changes of name (via the BBC Northern Symphony Orchestra and the preceding BBC Northern Orchestra), but looking for its existence as a body of players on full-time contracts, you can’t go before 1942, or, allowing for almost universal freelance orchestra membership in earlier times, only back to 1934, when its players were basically those of the Hallé anyway (and also appeared as the Liverpool Philharmonic). Before that there was a BBC Nonette, although attempts had been made in 1930 to establish something bigger. So how do we get the idea that the orchestra’s life stems from the […]
2022-09-22 11:32:00
Review of Hallé concert with Guy Johnston, conducted by Delyana Lazarova
 Delyana Lazarova conducts the Hallé There could have been few orchestral works more appropriate to reflect our thoughts after the death of a sovereign than two we heard played by the Hallé yesterday. Neither was planned with such an event in mind, but Dobrinka Tabakova’s Cello Concerto has a central movement that ends in so still and elegiac an atmosphere as to seem as if written as a meditation on profound loss, and Tchaikovsky’s Sixth Symphony is itself a journey into finality and silence. Delyana Lazarova, the assistant conductor to Sir Mark Elder, conducted this opening concert of the 2022-23 season, beginning it, and others, by playing the National Anthem. It wasn’t the stirring version, begun with a side-drum call to arms, that older audience members remember from the years last century when war was still a keen memory, but Britten's, with a quiet beginning, as befits the prayer it really […]