Cellist, composer & singer Ayanna Witter Johnson
Thursday, December 4, 2025
City Halls, Glasgow
Ayanna Witter-Johnson’s Bacchanale (sic; BBC & Gürzenich-Orchester Köln co-commission: world premiere) proved exuberant, colourful and celebratory, in this exacting first performance, attractively including Caribbean elements, if perhaps too repetitious even over twelve minutes. Stephen Hough recorded Grieg’s Piano Concerto in June 2011 with the Bergen Philharmonic and Andrew Litton for Hyperion (plus Liszt’s two), and it remains one of his favourite concert works. Unlike Eric Morecambe, Hough plays all the notes in the right order – impetuously, dramatically (cadenza), sensitively – and with the ultimate coda perfectly lilting to a grand peroration. I wonder the make of piano Hough was using. Recently, with the Taiwan Philharmonic and Leonard Slatkin, Hough had a Fazioli for Beethoven’s ‘Emperor’ that the conductor described as a “behemoth”. As broadcast, the piano for Grieg had similar powerful properties, refinement too, as the slow movement, and the Opus 9/2 Chopin Nocturne encore, demonstrated. Around the same age as the BBCSSO, Tippett’s A Child of Our Time was given a compelling account, conducted as well as anyone can by Ryan Wigglesworth – eliciting committed playing, superb choral singing, and well-matched if distinctive soloists, John Findon finding interesting Gerontius-like connections in the tenor writing, while Pumeza Matshikiza beguiled when preparing for the appearance of the first Spiritual (of five), a genius inclusion. In short, this was a moving, urgently emotional, performance, of and about its time, and for Our Time.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/live/bbc_radio_three
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“The BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra celebrates its 90th anniversary with a world premiere, arguably the most recognisable piano concerto of all time and a monumental piece which originates from the time the orchestra was founded.”
“‘The world turns on its dark side. It is winter…’ Music speaks to us most directly when it engages with its times – and 90 years ago, few young composers understood that better than Michael Tippett. Composed during the Second World War but provoked by decades of intolerance, A Child of Our Time feels as urgent now as it did then…”
Pumeza Matshikiza, soprano
Beth Taylor, alto
John Findon, tenor
Ashley Riches, bass
National Youth Choir of Scotland