Paul Riley picks the month’s best concert and opera highlights in the UK
Alim Beisembayev plays Debussy and Ravel in Norwich
Monteverdi Choir
Royal Albert Hall, London, 3 September
Web: bbc.co.uk/proms
Writ large across five imposing acts, Berlioz’s operatic masterpiece Les Troyens is as epic as its literary source: Virgil’s Aeneid. John Eliot Gardiner conducts a concert performance uniting his Monteverdi Choir and Orchestre Révolutionnaire et Romantique plus a formidable cast including Paula Murrihy as the ill-fated Dido and Michael Spyres as Aeneas.
Heath Quartet and Steven Osborne
Concert Hall, Perth, 3 September
Web: bbc.co.uk/proms
The BBC Proms’ final chamber music ‘away-day’ culminates in Shostakovich’s wartime Piano Quintet, which brings together the Heath Quartet and pianist Steven Osborne. In the first half, they pursue separate paths, with Haydn’s early String Quartet Op. 9 No. 2 prefacing Tippett’s Piano Sonata No. 2.
Welsh National Opera
Wales Millennium Centre, Cardiff, from 9 September
Web: wno.org.uk
Following Scottish Opera’s UK premiere staging of Ainadamar last year, Osvaldo Golijov’s operatic homage to Federico García Lorca ventures south to its co-producer, Welsh National Opera. Directed by Deborah Colker, the work’s bold fusion of flamenco, Spanish song and operatic aria is conducted by Matthew Kofi Waldren. Hanna Hipp is the doomed dramatist-poet, while Jaquelina Livieri plays his muse, Margarita Xirgu.
Northern Ireland Opera
Grand Opera House, Belfast, 9-16 September
Web: niopera.com
When Oliver Mears directed Tosca for Northern Ireland Opera back in 2011, the three acts of Puccini’s ‘shabby shocker’ were each entrusted to a different venue. On this occasion, Cameron Menzies’s new production confines itself to the recently refurbished Belfast Grand Opera House. Eduardo Strausser conducts with Svetlana Kasyan in the title role.
Kaleidoscope Chamber Collective
Dirleton Kirk, Dirleton, 14 September
Web: lammermuirfestival.co.uk
Residencies abound at this year’s Lammermuir Festival, with those by Quatuor Agate and harpsichordist Mahan Esfahani among them. Performing repertoire including Reynaldo Hahn and Samuel Coleridge-Taylor, the Kaleidoscope Chamber Collective bags three appearances – the last of these, at Dirleton Kirk, features a new work by Nicola LeFanu in between Poulenc, Stamitz and Korngold.
City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra
Symphony Hall, Birmingham, 14 September
Web: cbso.co.uk
The CBSO Chorus celebrates its half-century and is royally represented this season with major choral works by Berlioz, Fauré, Jonathan Dove and John Luther Adams. To set the ball rolling, Kazuki Yamada c
