Birdsong from the trenches: Casken's Apollinaire's Bird

By Peter Connors, 08 April 2016

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Reviewed at The Bridgewater Hall, Manchester on 7 April 2016

Ravel, Pavane pour une infante défunte

Casken, Apollinaire's Bird for Oboe and Orchestra

Elgar, Une Voix dans le Desert - recitation with orchestra, Op.77

Vaughan Williams, Symphony no. 4 in F minor

Sir Mark Elder, Conductor

Stephane Rancourt, Oboe

The Hallé

Joshua Ellicott, Tenor

Jennifer France, Soprano

Concertos – for violin and for orchestra – from the Hallé

Peter Connors, 22nd March

Viktoria Mullova is a superb soloist in Brahms' Violin Concerto, while an orchestra full of soloists play Bartók’s Concerto for Orchestra with Kahchun Wong presiding.

*****

Nico Muhly’s vision of the end of the world comes to Sheffield

Phil Parker, 15th March

Doom – both personal and cosmic – and its aftermath are the focus of Alpesh Chauhan’s Hallé concert at Sheffield’s City Hall.

****1

Avant-garde echoes meet minimalist soundscapes in Hallé concert

Pwyll ap Sion, 26th February

Jonny Greenwood’s genre-defying music is given a powerful performance by violinist Daniel Pioro and members of The Hallé Orchestra under Hugh Tieppo-Brunt.

****1

Celestial journeys with Kahchun Wong and the Hallé

Rohan Shotton, 19th February

Kahchun Wong returns to The Hallé for Holst and Unsuk Chin, with a postscript from Colin Matthews

***11

The Hallé brings Salonen, Grieg and Sibelius to Sheffield

Phil Parker, 23rd January

Dazzling young German pianist Julius Asal and stand-in conductor Duncan Ward breathe new life into the familiar in repertoire by Grieg and Sibelius.

****1

Jeannette Sorrell and the Hallé find drama in Handel’s Messiah

Leighton Jones, 6th December

Jeanette Sorrell brings a Messiah to Manchester that adds a sense of drama, bridging the gap between oratorio and opera.

****1

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Peter Connors

Peter has been attending concerts and operas enthusiastically since his parents took him to see The Mikado in Liverpool when he was a boy of ten and to a “family concert” given by the RLPO a year or so later. Peter studied Modern Languages at Worcester College, Oxford and Law in Manchester. After spending twenty years as a pensions lawyer in Manchester, he retrained as a teacher of English as a foreign language, which took him to Germany and to Serbia. With the onset of the pandemic he returned to the UK and now works online and frequents concert halls and theatres in the North West of England.

Birdsong from the trenches: powerful performances from the Hallé