The City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Kazuki Yamada, plays selections from Tchaikovsky's and Ellington's Nutcracker suites.
The City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra are coming to Victoria Hall in Hanley on Friday 11 December, with Kazuki Yamada conducting. It's a festive one, and the programme is called Double Nutcracker.
The title gives it away: the evening is built around two different takes on the same material. You'll hear selections from Tchaikovsky's Nutcracker suites alongside Ellington's Nutcracker Suite, so the two versions sit side by side rather than one following the other. Between them, there's Leonard Bernstein's Prelude, Fugue and Riffs to round things out. It's an orchestral night, not a staged ballet, so there's no dance to watch — just the music.
That's the main thing to keep in mind if you're used to The Nutcracker as a Christmas production. This is a concert, not a performance of the ballet, so the focus is on the orchestra and the way these different composers approached the same source material. The whole thing runs for about two hours and 35 minutes, including an interval, which is a fair length for a Friday night in December.
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Victoria Hall is on Bagnall Street in Hanley, Stoke-on-Trent ST1 3AD. It's Friday 11 December, so it's a good shout for a pre-Christmas night out if you're into orchestral music. The CBSO are a big name, and Yamada is a conductor you'll likely recognise if you follow the scene, so it's a proper night of music rather than a casual drop-in.
