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17 September 2021

Kazuki Yamada and the CBSO open 2021 season

with a triumphant mix of light and serious

By Simon Cummings

Thursday’s Symphony Hall concert was a fascinating juxtaposition of lightness and seriousness. As well
as being evident in all of the music, conductor Kazuki Yamada embodied this himself, his intensity when
facing the orchestra contrasting with the bubbly zing of his address to the audience, expressing his
happiness at being appointed the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra’s next Chief Conductor.

Kazuki Yamada and the CBSO
© Hannah Fathers

This juxtaposition was nowhere more outrageously demonstrated than in Poulenc’s Gloria. A veritable
archetype of volte-face religious expression, Yamada opted to allow the sharp shifts in tone – still
sounding so bold and strange 60 years after its first performance – to sit together with no attempt to
smooth over the joins. The result seemed less the product of a febrile mind than one of overflowing,
multi-faceted enthusiasm, akin to the irrepressible jaunt of Leonard Bernstein’s choral music. Poulenc’s