Tag Archives: City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra

Conductor: Michael Seal  Reviewer: Selwyn Knight In an evening in the company of the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra (CBSO), one is pretty much guaranteed superb musicianship from all, with the acoustics of Birmingham’s Symphony Hall ensuring that every element is audible. So what is it that takes a good concert and makes it great? One feature might be the ...

Conductor: Michael Seal  Reviewer: Selwyn Knight While this concert from the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra (CBSO) is advertised as The Music of Harry Potter; in fact, it’s rather more. The atmosphere is set as lots of youngsters attend dressed as wizards, witches or even Harry himself. And our host is Tommy Pearson who remains in character (and cloak) as ...

Conductor: John Wilson Reviewer: Selwyn Knight Although born in Massachusetts, Leonard Bernstein will always be linked with New York: his tenure as music director at the New York Philharmonic and his music inspired by the city: On The Town,Wonderful Town, West Side Story, the score to On The Waterfront all reinforce that link. As soon as one hears his jazzy ...

Conductor: Stephen Bell Reviewer: Selwyn Knight The 1970s: the decade that taste forgot as we are reminded by Conductor Stephen Bell as he stands in front of the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra (CBSO) with many players resplendent in seventies gear. It’s also the decade that brought us Glam Rock, Punk, the first woman Prime Minister, and, of course, some ...

Conductor: Michael Seal Reviewer: Selwyn Knight One can’t help wondering if John Williams realised how big the Star Wars behemoth was to be when approached by George Lucas to score the original 1977 film. We do know that Lucas was clear in his brief that, although the film was to be a space opera, fantastic in scope, he wanted traditional ...

Presenter: John Brunning Conductor: Michael Seal Reviewer: Selwyn Knight Once again, The City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra (CBSO), in its guise as Classic FM’s Orchestra in the Midlands, presents an evening of light classics, this time inspired by ‘smooth classics’ as broadcast by tonight’s presenter, John Brunning in his daily Smooth Classics at Seven programme. So what is a ‘smooth ...

Conductor: Rainer Hersch Reviewer:  Selwyn Knight The City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra (CBSO) likes a bit of a laugh. Yes, they can be serious when playing heavyweight classics with the players in formal dress, but they also love to let their collective hair down for their lighter shows, Friday Night Classics. We’ve seen the musicians in fancy dress as ABBA ...

Conductor: Roderick Dunk Reviewer:  Selwyn Knight Unlike many of his songwriting contemporaries, Cole Porter wrote both music and lyrics for his songs, a fact that added an extra dimension to his writing with words and music complementing one another from the genesis of the song to the finished piece, working together in equal partnership to achieve Porter’s end. And it ...