★★★★☆Yelp! Gerald Barry’s Viola Concerto saunters through a slapstick landscape of stubbed toes, runaway trains and collapsing houses, with wobble sheet, cymbal and bass drum as exclamation points. Long the butt of humour among orchestral musicians, the viola is denied its lyrical voice. “Wah-wah-wah,” laugh the trombones as our hero blinks, still sawing away at those intervals, up and down and round again. The big melody, when it finally arrives, is charming in its naive twists and turns…

Source: The Times May 23, 2019 16:07 UTC