The Sunday Times - UK (2022-04-24)

ON RECORD

CLASSICAL

Picnic blankets at the

ready — the classical

music festival season

is returning at last.

Dan Cairns rounds

up what’s in store this

year and gives his

pick of the packed

programmes

S

ummer approaches, and with

it, at last, the sense that our

beleaguered arts sector may

finally be emerging, blink-

ing, into the sunlight after

two dark years of Covid. So

there are reasons for cautious opti-

mism, and reasons, too, for celebra-

tion. Up and down the country the

creative community is regrouping,

determined to get back to something

like normal service.

There is no more talismanic and

reassuring a tradition in the arts calen-

dar than the classical festival season.

And this country’s leading lights are on

fighting form, drawing up programmes

that thrum with inventiveness, daring

and imagination, alongside the comfort

of familiarity: new productions, world

premieres, old favourites and the occa-

sional curveball. What will certainly

be different this year is that the depend-

able accompaniments to a sun-dappled

night at the opera — the popping of

champagne corks and the trilling of

contented laughter — will be joined by

another: audible sighs of relief.

GLYNDEBOURNE

The pandemic really did for

Glyndebourne’s 2020 programme,

with one knock-on effect being that

there are no fewer than four new

productions this year. Festival

first-timers are works by Ethel Smyth

(The Wreckers) and a double bill of

Poulenc’s Les mamelles de Tirésias and

La voix humaine, with stagings of

Alcina and La bohème the other

premieres, and revivals of Michael

Grandage’s Franco-era Le nozze di

Figaro from 2012 and Mariame

Clément’s elegant 2011 Don Pasquale

completing a covetable bill.

Don’t miss The Wreckers, May 21-

Jun 24. Festival runs May 21-Aug 28;

tickets from £15 to £270.

glyndebourne.com

The great outdoors

Picnickers at

Glyndbourne soak

up the atmosphere

POP & ROCK

As high as their peak

Spiritualized

Everything Was Beautiful

HHHH

Bella Union

A companion

piece to 2018’s

And Nothing

Hurt,

Everything

Was Beautiful is drawn from

the same sessions. Jason

Pierce’s rich seam of

late-career creativity is a

cause for joy. Listen to the

way he throws everything at

the stomping, blues-driven

Best Thing You Never Had:

the moment when the

trombone barges

noisily into the mix

is eye-wateringly

exhilarating. By

contrast, the classic

rock-soul of Let It Bleed

What a joy

it is to bask

in Stephen

Hough’s

musicianship.

This magical disc pairs

the late G major sonata

and the A major from

1819, with the tantalising

“fragment” of the

abandoned D 769a sonata,

an intriguing interstitial

Schubert

Piano Sonatas Nos 644,

769a, 894 HHHH

Stephen Hough (piano)

Hyperion

Taj Mahal & Ry Cooder

Get on Board HHH

Nonesuch

The veteran

musicians pay

tribute to the

songs of

Sonny Terry

and Brownie McGhee, whose

folk/Piedmont blues output

both describe as a lightbulb

moment in their musical

awakening. Get on Board is

a lovely, ambling shuffle of

a record, delivered with

deep affection and zero

embellishment. DC

Hatchie

Giving the World Away

HHH

Secretly Canadian

Harriette

Pilbeam

spreads her

wings here, on

an album that

embraces more expansive

soundscapes but is still

identifiably the work of an

artist whose debut combined

dream-pop and shoegaze.

This Enchanted and

Quicksand typify the

Australian’s deft pivot

into sheened and

shimmering pop.

DC

morsel. The G major

andante, with its strange

echoes of the allegro from

Beethoven’s 18th piano

sonata, is pure Houghian

delight: precision, phrasing,

suspension, a delicacy of

touch coexisting with an

unfettered robustness.

The carefree innocence of

the A major’s opening

movement is meat and

drink to the pianist, and

his playing of it

demonstrates — again —

why he is a supreme

interpreter of Schubert:

the nuance, shading and

sonority seem both acutely

focused and entirely innate.

DC

ALBUM

OF THE

WEEK

turns down the dial, every

texture, every pause, setting

the song up for its glorious

climax. Things take a turn for

the weird on the closing

triptych. The Mainline Song,

which opens with the sound of

freight trains, is a giant choral/

psych-rock juggernaut of a

song; the declamatory The

A Song (Laid in Your Arms)

combines sitar, choir, strings,

woodwind and what might

almost be bagpipes to

thrillingly combustible effect.

There is a grandeur to these

songs that is every bit as epic

and compelling as

Spiritualized’s 1997

masterpiece,

Ladies and

Gentlemen We Are

Floating in Space. The

adventure continues.

Dan Cairns

ALAMY

Garsington Romaniw

CLASSICAL

| FESTIVALS

20 24 April 2022