Late-night Pärt(ying) with the Choir of Royal Holloway and Bristol Ensemble at St George's

The culmination of Thomas Ades' Beethoven cycle with the Britten Sinfonia channels Beethoven's atavistic energies. 

A concert built on the work of composers from Britain, Finland and Latvia formed a rewarding programme of choral, vocal and orchestral music with several gems. 

Love and Passion provide a vibrant theme for an enterprising choral concert given by the Choir of Royal Holloway. 

While early English Baroque is not an area of music which generally comes to mind when we think of controversial composers, it seems that the scores of composers we now associate with purity and conventionalism had their own streaks of radicalism in their time, political and otherwise, and a fair few were exiled.

Benedetti’s Beethoven was changed, at late notice, to Lomeiko’s Tchaikovsky. Sadly, the renowned violinist Nicola Benedetti was not able to make the performance, but her replacement was wonderful. Internationally established Russian violinist and professor at the Royal College of Music, Natalia Lomeiko stepped up to play the Tchaikovsky Violin Concerto in D major instead of Beethoven’s concerto.

Beethoven did not take precedence in this concert, but he stole the title. As part of the “Brilliant Beethoven” concert series, the Bristol Ensemble performed the Seventh Symphony of the well-known composer. It was programmed at the end of the evening alongside Debussy, Vivaldi and current composer Alexis Alrich. The theme connecting the different works was rhythm.