Somewhere for the weekend: Dresden Music Festival

Beethoven's Leonore  at the 2017 Dresden Music Festival celebrates the re-opening of the Dresden Kulturpalast
Ivor Bolton, Michael Kupfer-Radecky, Ann Kern, Dresden Festival Orchestra (photo Oliver Killig)

The 2019 Dresden Music Festival takes place from 16 May to 10 June 2019. Under the artistic direction of Jan Vogler the festival's theme is Visions and a particular area of celebration will be the centenary of the Bauhaus. 

The festival opens on 16 May 2019 at the Kulturpalast when Ivor Bolton conducts the Dresden Festival Orchestra in a programme in Weber, Schubert and Schumann including Schubert songs arranged for voice and orchestra with the Dresden-born bass René Pape. Another intriguing highlight is a new Cello Concerto written for Jan Vogler, which will he will be premiering with the WDR Symphony Orchestra under Cristian Măcelaru. Written not by one composer but by three, the concerto will unite the talents of Sven Helbig (Germany), Nico Muhly (USA) and Zhou Long (China). And in a different vein, the festival finale will be provided by legendary guitarist Eric Clapton.

Bauhaus celebrations include the Bavarian Junior Ballet from Munich and the Berlin Academy of the Arts in Gerhard Bohner’s new version of Oskar Schlemmer’s Triadic Ballet at the Dresden Theatre. Originally premiered in Stuttgartin 1922 with music by Paul Hindemith, the geometrically inspired ballet helped to spread the ethos of the Bauhaus. The Russian pianist Nikolai Tokarev will perform Modest Mussorgsky’s Pictures at an Exhibition accompanied by a video installation which reminds the audience of Kandinsky’s production at the Friedrich Theatre in Dessau in 1928 which Mussorgsky’s work inspired.

Further highlights include appearances of the Staatskapelle Berlin with Daniel Barenboim, the Orchestra dell’Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia with Sir Antonio Pappano, the Vienna Philharmonic with Tugan Sokhiev, and the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra with their new chief conductor Mirga Gražinyte-Tyla. Igor Stravinsky’s opera The Rake’s Progress will be performed as part of Equilibrium Artists, a mentoring initiative for young singers created by soprano and conductor Barbara Hannigan.

The 2019 festival, the 42nd, will be presenting 56 events at 22 performance venues, many venues historic in their own right.

Full details from the festival website, and read the coverage of past festivals on this blog.

Late Romantic: I chat to pianist Margaret Fingerhut

Margaret Fingerhut (Photo Andy Tyler)

Pianist Margaret Fingerhut is making a rare London appearance next month when she joins Charles Owen and Katya Apekisheva's London Piano Festival, where Margaret will be participating in the two piano gala. I recently met up with Margaret to find out what we can expect at the gala, and to talk about recent projects and her love for late Romantic piano music.

At the London Piano Festival (this year in its third appearance), Charles and Katya particularly like to invite pianists who are their friends to perform in the two-piano gala. Charles and Margaret have been friends for a number of years and in fact were once neighbours. 

Ethel Bartlett and Rae Robertson

With Charles, Margaret will be performing two pieces by Arnold Bax, these seemed a natural fit as the music of Bax has featured a lot in Margaret's life and Bax wrote some wonderful two piano pieces which have not so far been played at the festival, he wrote many of his two piano pieces for Ethel Bartlett and Rae Robertson (a British piano duo active in the 1930s and 1940s). 

Bax seems to have loved depicting water in his music and Poisoned Fountain for two pianos is incredibly atmospheric, and Margaret describes it as rather spooky and surprisingly advanced for its time (Bax wrote the piece in 1928, when it was premiered by Bartleet and Robinson). As a complement to this, Margaret and Charles will perform Bax's Hardanger which is an homage to Grieg.

With Katya, Margaret will be playing Poulenc, again a contrasting group of pieces. The light-hearted Capriccio, which was written in 1952 and dedicated to Samuel Barber (it is based on Poulenc's 1932 profane cantata Le bal masque) and L'embarquement pour Cythere (from 1951, based on music Poulenc wrote for the film Le Voyage en Amérique by Henri Lavorel), a piece which Margaret describes as very much an earworm, Finally they will play the gorgeous, nostalgic Elegie (dedicated to the memory of Marguerite de Polignac, daughter of the fashion designer Jeanne Lanvina), about which Margaret quotes Poulenc as saying 'music should be played with a cigar and a glass of cognac'!

Margaret has not, in fact, played much two-piano music, though what she has played she has enjoyed. Most of her collaborations have been with other instrumentalists and singers, in chamber music and song. And she feels such collaborations with other pianists are enjoyable because they are different.

Not that it is an easy task; coordinating with another pianist is quite difficult and she has heard performances where the collaboration has not worked at all. For two pianists to play together there is a need for there to be a great unanimity of touch, so that they play as one. When teaching at college, she has found that first-year students, in their chamber music option, sometimes choose two piano works thinking this is an easy option, which it certainly is not.

Charles Owen, Elena Langer, Katya Apekisheva, Lisa Smirnova, Danny Driver, Melvyn Tan and Ilya Itin
at the 2017 London Piano Festival at Kings Place. ©ICA Media

Women of the Windrush Tell Their Stories

Passengers disembarking from the
Empire Windrush at Tilbury Dock, June 1948

As part of the Equator Festival at Kings Place on 22 September 2018, composer Shirley J Thompson is curating an evening commemorating the 70th anniversary of the arrival of the MV Empire Windrush in 1948 at Tilbury Docks. Women of the Windrush Tell Their Stories will feature the stories, narratives and memories of the women who came on the Windrush. Shirley J Thompson will be joined by guest artists and composers including Nadine Benjamin (soprano), Rachel Duckett (soprano), Zena Edwards (Mbira/Spoken Word), Gweneth Rand (soprano), Rebekah Reid (Violin & Electronics), Carroll Thompson (Vocalist) and Allyson Devenish (piano), artists themselves descended from the Windrush generation. This multi-media event will showcase a unique mix of music, including classical, electronic, mbira and reggae together with a spoken word element, thus exemplifying the diverse culture of the Windrush communities. An integral part of the event will be the film Memories in Mind: Women of the Windrush Tell Their Stories, which originally inspired Shirley J. Thompson to stage this event.

Between 1948 and 1973, some 524,000 people from the Commonwealth became residents in the UK and Caribbean people currently comprise 3% of Britain's population.

Shirley J. Thompson is an English composer, conductor and violinist of Jamaican descent, and her music was performed at the official Windrush commemoration service at Westminster Abbey earlier in the year.

Full details from the Kings Place website.

Decades - 1830-1840

Decades: volume 3, songs from the 1830s; John Mark Ainsley, Lorna Anderson, Alexey Gusev, Angelika Kirchschlager, Soraya Mafi, Malcolm Martineau; Vivat Reviewed by Robert Hugill on 21 September 2018 Star rating: 4.0 (★★★★)
Songs from the 1830s, a valuable survey from the Mendelssohns and Loewe, through Meyerbeer and Berlioz to Alyabyev and Dargomyzhsky

With Volume 3 of Vivat's Decades: A century in Song we reach the 1830s, a period after Schubert's death and before Schumann launched into song. A landscape with fewer towering masterpieces perhaps, but one full of fascinating incident. So here we have songs by Fanny Mendelssohn Hensel, Franz Lachner, Felix Mendelssohn, Giacomo Meyerbeer, Alexander Alyabyev, Alexander Varlamov, Hector Berlioz, Alexander Dargomyzhsky and Carl Loewe, performed by John Mark Ainsley, Lorna Anderson, Alexey Gusev, Angelika Kirchschlager and Soraya Mafi with Malcolm Martineau, artistic director of the series, at the piano.

We start with Fanny Mendelssohn Hensel, whose voice we are leaning is different from that of her brother. Soraya Mafi sings three songs, Die Mainacht (Hölty),  Warum sing den die Rosen so blass (Heine, a poet whom Fanny knew personally) and Wanderlied (Goethe). From the first song, we can hear Fanny Mendelssohn Hensel's liking for chromaticism, even in a gentle melody, whilst Warum goes with a flowing lilt and Wanderlied combines a perky piano with characterful voice. All three are sung by Soraya Mafi with a nice simplicity yet attention to detail

Franz Lachner remains best known for adding recitatives to the Italian version of Cherubini's Medea, yet in his youth, he was a friend of Schubert's, and his songs deserve exposure. Here we have three, sung by John Mark Ainsley, all settings of Heine from Lachner's cycle Sängerfahre (Minstrel's Journey) including texts already set by Schubert but where Lachner shows himself to have his own personality. John Mark Ainsley shapes the phrases beautifully in all three, conveying emotion through music. Strophic songs require care, and Ainsely gives us some fine storytelling.

Juditha resurgens: William Vann on reviving Parry's 'Judith'

Judith slaying Holofernes by Artemisia Gentileschi, 1614–18

On 3 April 2019, William Vann (artistic director of the London English Song Festival, and music director of the Royal Hospital Chelsea) will be conducting a performance of Charles Hubert Hastings Parry's first oratorio Judith at the Royal Festival Hall, with soloists Eleanor Dennis, Kathryn Rudge, Toby Spence and Henry Waddington, the Crouch End Festival Chorus and the London Mozart Players. Amazingly, this will be the first full London performance of the piece since 1889 (there was a performance with piano at the Royal College of Music in the 1970s). Given that the revival of Parry's music has been gaining strength for some time, it seems strange that the oratorio has languished so much. I met up with Will recently to find out more about his quest to restore Judith.

He first became aware of the oratorio at a Vaughan Williams Society AGM when there was a talk on the origins of hymn tunes, including Repton ('Dear Lord and Father of all mankind') which was originally an aria from Parry's Judith, and the original aria was performed as part of the talk. Will became intrigued and wondered if anyone was performing it. That is when he found out how much the piece had languished, though not done in London since 1889 there were a lot of performances until the 1920s, then things tail off and the last major performance seems to have been in Wales in 1951.

Mahler distilled: Iain Farrington and Rozana Madylus in "On Angels' Wings"

Gustav Mahler in 1892

On Angels Wings: Mahler, Beethoven, Wagner, Bruckner, Schumann, Klopstock, Strauss, Elgar; Iain Farrington, Rozanna Madylus; 1901 Arts Club Reviewed by Robert Hugill on 5 June 2018 Star rating: 3.5 (★★★½)
A fascinating voyage round Mahler's second symphony in the second of Iain Farrington's Mahler piano recitals

Pianist and composer Iain Farrington is perhaps best known for his distillation of composer's larger scores for smaller instrumental forces, and perhaps his current concert series at 1901 Arts Club represents the ultimate distillation as he is exploring Mahler's ten symphonies and Das Lied von der Erde in a series of piano recitals, playing his own transcriptions of many of the Mahler symphonies.

For his second recital in A Mahler Piano Series at the 1901 Arts Club, on Wednesday 19 September 2018, Iain Farrington was joined by mezzo-soprano Rozanna Madylus for On Angels Wings, focused on Mahler's Second Symphony (written between 1888 and 1894, premiered 1895) with Iain Farrington's transcription of the original version of the Totenfeier movement (written 1888) from the symphony, traditional tunes which Mahler used in the symphony, music which influenced him with the first movement of Beethoven's Sonata in A flat major and Die Erlösung from Wagner's Parsifal (1882), a sequence of songs which related to the symphony, Mahler's Wo die schönenen Trompeten, Des Antonius von Padua Fischpredigt and Urlicht, Schumann's Das ist ein Flöten und Geigen and Klopstock's hymn Die Auferstehung, and a group of songs by Mahler's contemporaries on similar themes to the symphony, Wagner's Der Engel (1857, from the Wesendonck Lieder), Brahms' O Tod wie bitter bist du (1896, from the Four Serious Songs), Richard Strauss' Befreit (1898) and Elgar's The Angel's Farewell (1900, from The Dream of Gerontius).

In an age before computers and synthesisers, the piano transcription was an essential tool in a composer's armoury, composer pianists like Mahler would play their symphonies to selected people and in fact Mahler cut piano rolls of music from his symphonies. Mahler's younger English contemporary RVW would have a play through of his latest symphony in piano form with a trusted pianist before a small group of friends. So the idea of a Mahler symphony on the piano is more suitable than we think.

In the case of Mahler's Symphony No. 2, the size of the piece and the extra forces it uses (including chorus and off-stage brass) rather made it less than possible, hence Iain Farrington's decision to give us a recital around the subject. What was attractive about the programme was that if you knew Mahler's Symphony No. 2 then you found Iain's programme and spoken introductions fascinating and illuminating, shedding new light on the music, whilst if you did not know the symphony then the programme hung together as an entity in its own right, with the sequence of songs in the second half being particularly satisfying.

Iain is playing the Mahler symphonies in his own transcriptions, creating a more pianistic texture than the standard vocal score type transcriptions give us, making the pieces live on the piano.

A pastoral delight: Mozart's Bastien und Bastienne in its original version from The Mozartists

Mozart as a child

Mozart Bastien und Bastienne, Haydn Symphony No. 49; Ellie Laugharne, Alessandro Fisher, Darren Jeffery, The Mozartists, Ian Page; Wigmore Hall Reviewed by Anthony Evans on 18 September 2018 Star rating: 3.5 (★★★½)
Mozart's early singspiel in its original version, alongside music from the same year

Classical Opera and The Mozartists opened their 2018-19 season this Tuesday 18 September 2018 at the Wigmore Hall with a concert that culminated in a performance of Mozart’s pastoral comedy the one-act singspiel Bastien und Bastienne. Following the rediscovery of the 1768 autograph manuscript this was, it’s claimed, the first performance of the original setting since its premiere 250 years ago. Ian Page conducted The Mozartists with Ellie Laugharne and Alessandro Fisher as the titular Bastienne and Bastien and Darren Jeffery was the local quack Colas.

The programme kicked off with some musical context, a performance of Haydn’s Symphony No.49 also dating from 1768. From the opening portentous Adagio, Ian Page was determined to bring out the intensely expressive dynamics. Perhaps the sombre opening is the reason the work attracted the epithet ‘La passione’, but I didn’t buy the idea that overall this is a tragic piece, and certainly not as Robbins Landon would have it, depicting a “winding line of penitents”. The passion and vitality of Ian Page’s reading were exultant, there was an ebullience that belied the minor home key and the turbulent expressiveness that propelled us on to the magnificent Presto.

Compare, contrast and combine: Spitalfields Music's 2018 festival is launched

André de Ridder

Spitalfields Music's 2018 Festival will be the second to be curated by conductor André de Ridder. Running from 1 to 9 December 2018 at venues in and around East London, the festival promises a series of experiences which bring early music and contemporary music together. The programme is full of cultural cross-pollination, events which synthesise old and new or which place old and new together in striking contrast.

The festival opens with Unknown Remembered, which fuses Handel's cantata La Lucrezia with a new commission from Shiva Feshareki inspired by the lyrics of Joy Division's Unknown Pleasures album. These will be combined with a video installation from Haroon Mirza to create an immersive experience in a former warehouse (now nightclub) in Hackney Wick.

If such cultural synthesis does not appeal, then there is the chance to hear Thomas Tallis' Lamentations in a programme from Tom Williams and the Erebus Ensemble which places Tallis alongside contemporary responses from Nico Muhly.  Colm Carey and the Odyssean Ensemble present William Byrd's motets in the historic Chapel Royal of St Peter Ad Vincula at the Tower, a programme which reflects Byrd's support for the struggle of Roman Catholics in Protestant England.

Soprano Mary Bevan joins lutenist Elizabeth Kenny for a recital of Purcell and his contemporaries, and for those brave enough to sample cultural cross pollination, the baroque recital is followed by a set from The Coveryard performing material by The Smiths and Purcell reworked.

The Riot Ensemble with Richard Reed Parry and Aaron Holloway-Nahum is performing a programme of Richard Reed Parry, Nicole Lizee and Christopher Mayo. Festival curator André de Ridder will be conducting the Trinity Laban Symphony Orchestra in a concert which mixes Stravinsky's Firebird with music by Anna Meredith and Shiva Feshareki. The Fidelio Trio brings a programme of contemporary music for piano trio by Linda Catlin, Ann Cleare, Luke Styles and Christopher Fox.

Full information from Spitalfields Music

The other Cinderella: Bampton Classical Opera's revival of Isouard's Cendrillon

Isouard: Cendrillon - Nicholas Merryweather, Susanne Dymott, Benjamin Durrant, Jenny Stafford - Bampton Classical Opera

Nicolo Isouard Cendrillon; Kate Howden, Aoife O'Sullivan, Jenny Stafford, Nicholas Merryweather, Bradley Smith, Benjamin Durrant, Alistair Ollerenshaw, dir: Jeremy Gray, Chroma, cond: Harry Sever Reviewed by Robert Hugill on 18 September 2018 Star rating: 3.5 (★★★½)
A Cinderella opera-comique from a French Maltese composer is an intriguing re-discovery from Bampton

Isouard: Cendrillon - Nicholas Merryweather, Kate Howden
Bampton Classical Opera

Nicolo Isouard (1775-1818) is not a well known name and Bampton Classical Opera's performances of his opera Cendrillon this Summer were probably the work's UK premiere. The company brought the opera to St John's Smith Square on Tuesday 18 September 2018 in a production directed and designed by Jeremy Gray with costumes by Jess Iliff. Kate Howden played Cendrillon with Aoife O'Sullivan and Jenny Stafford as her step-sisters, Clorinde and Tisbe, Alistair Ollerenshaw as her step-father, the Baron, Nicholas Merryweather as Alidor, Bradley Smith as Prince Ramir and Benjamin Durrant as Dandini. Harry Sever conducted Chroma. The work was sung in an English translation by Gilly French and Jeremy Gray.

Isouard was of French-Maltese descent and studied in Malta, Paris, Palermo and Naples, eventually ending up in Paris where he wrote a series of operas, mainly opera comique with spoken dialogue. Cendrillon (1810) was one of his major successes. If the plot of the opera seems rather familiar (no fairy godmother, no step-mother, the step-sisters are not that ugly, the prince has a tutor and swaps places with his squire Dandini) this is because Rossini and his librettist lifted much of the plot for La Cenerentola from Isouard and Charles Guillaume Etienne's opera.

It is a charming, well made piece. Cendrillon, the prince, Clorinde and Tisbe each get solos but the main engine of the music is a series of duets, six in all, plus a trio and a quartet. Isouard's music is melodious and lyrical, with a nice line in melancholy for the title role. His depiction of the sisters is not that sharp, and at times they seem almost sympathetic. He uses two tenors, for the Prince and for Dandini, and whilst the Prince gets his own melancholy romance (about the inability to find a bride who loves him), Dandini is quite a lively character. Alidor remains a bit mysterious, involving himself, disguised as a beggar, in Cendrillon's life and apparently using magic to effect her transformation but that is never explained.

One of the problems with the work is that it simply is not La Cenerentola, and you rather missed the pace, liveliness and character of Rossini's opera. It might have been better if Bampton had chosen one of Isouard's other operas, so we had nothing to compare it to.

More than just Haydn: cultural revival at Schloss Esterházy, Eisenstadt

Haydn's Armida in the Haydnsaal, Schloss Esterházy at Herbst Gold 2018 (Photo Jerzy Bin)

The town of Eisenstadt in Austria is synonymous with two names, that of the princely family of Esterházy, whose eponymous Schloss dominates the old town, and the composer Joseph Haydn who worked for the Princes Esterházy for some forty years. Now owned by a private cultural foundation, Schloss Esterházy is the centre for a remarkable revival of musical activities in the form of an annual Autumn festival and a year round concert series, exploring the music of Haydn, his contemporaries and alongside that of more recent composers.

Despite vicissitudes and the splitting of the family estates between Austria and Hungary, Schloss Esterházy remained in the custody of Prince Paul (1901-1989) who, from 1920, husbanded the family's Austrian domains (the Hungarian ones were taken in land reform in the 1950s). He died without issue and left his estates to his wife Melinda (1920-2014), a Hungarian dancer who created a series of family foundations which now own and manage the estates for cultural benefit [the princely title has passed to a distant cousin, except of course neither Austria nor Hungary now recognise such titles].

The foundations, created in 2001, have some 300 employees involved in the winery, the estates, the extensive holiday accommodation, the Burg Forchstein, Schloss Esterházy, Schloss Lackenbach and the St Margarethen Quarry in which opera is performed.

Thus, as a museum, Schloss Esterházy is relatively young and though the house does not wear its history lightly (the 20th century saw many depredations) there is a liveliness to the way things are displayed. When I went round, on a very engaging English speaking guided tour, I was impressed with the way artefacts from the collection (there are some 1 million objects in the Esterházy collections) had been used to create a display linking to the theme of this year's Herbst Gold Festival, of which more anon, with statuettes of Napoleon and manuscripts of Haydn's masses. There was also an exhibition about Melinda Esterházy whose remarkable life across the 20th century was counterpointed by a desire to see the family legacy preserved in the cultural foundation.

Schloss Esterházy, Eisenstadt (Photo Roland Wimmer)

Nawr yr Arwr / Now the Hero

Detail of one of Frank Brangwyn's British Empire Panels at Brangwyn Hall in Swansea

Nawr yr Arwr / Now the Hero is an immersive theatrical experience at The Brangwyn Hall, Swansea from 25 to 29 September 2018. Created by site-responsive artist Marc Rees, the work is part of the final 14-18 Now season and takes visitors through three intertwining narratives of war: from Celtic history, the First World War and today’s conflicts. Rees uses Frank Brangwyn's little-known British Empire Panels, originally commissioned by the House of Lords to commemorate the First World War, the paintings were rejected by Parliament as ‘too lively’ and they have been displayed in Swansea since 1934.

Counterpointing these is a new requiem originally commissioned by the late, twice Oscar-nominated, composer Jóhann Jóhannsson, realised by composer Owen Morgan Roberts from an original collaboration with Jóhannsson. The requiem features a text by Owen Sheers and the work is sung by Polyphony, conductor Stephen Layton.



Commissioned by 14-18 NOW. Produced by Taliesin Arts Centre/Swansea University in partnership with the City & County of Swansea and Swansea International Festival and with the generous support of Arts Council of Wales, the Welsh Government, the City & County of Swansea, the Colwinston Charitable Trust, Swansea University and Heritage Lottery Fund – Awards for All

Full details from the 14-18 Now website.

Riveting and remarkable: Anna Prohaska & Eric Schneider in An der Front:

Anna Prohaska (Photo © Holger Hage / DG)

An der Front (Behind the lines; Anna Prohaska, Eric Schneider; Herbst Gold at Schloss Esterházy Reviewed by Robert Hugill on 13 September 2018 Star rating: 5.0 (★★★★★)
A collage of songs presenting the ordinary man and woman's view of war creates a vividly engaging evening

Herbst Gold is a music festival which takes place in September (this year 6 to 18 September) in Schloss Esterházy in Eisenstadt in Austria. The schloss is, of course, best known as the work place of the composer Joseph Haydn who worked for the Princes Esterházyfor over 40 years.

Empiresaal at Schloss Esterházy, Eisenstadt (Photo Lennard Lindner)

The theme of this year's festival was Krieg und Frieden (War and Peace) and as part of this theme soprano Anna Prohaska and pianist Eric Schneider brought their programme An der Front (Behind the Lines) to Schloss Esterházy's elegant 18th century Empiresaal on Thursday 13 September 2018. It was a remarkable programme, a collage of songs from the 16th to 21st century which charted the response of the ordinary men and woman to war, as participant, follower or girl left at home. These were songs about ordinary people's thoughts and feelings, rather than national concepts.

The music covered a wide range. In the first half we moved from folksong, Scots song, Michael Cavendish, Haydn & Beethoven, through Schubert, Wolf and Rachmaninov to Ives, Roger Quiller, Hans Eisler and Wolfgang Rihm. But this wasn't about style, and differences were juxtaposed so Joseph Haydn's arrangement of the Scots song Will ye go to Flanders was almost interrupted by the cacophony of Ives' In Flanders Fields. The angular anger of Wolfgang Rihm's Der Untergang impinged on the purity of Schubert's Sir Walter Scott setting Ellens Gesang I.

In the second half, we had longer ballads starting with Liszt's remarkable scene Jeanne d'Arc au Bucher (setting Alexandre Dumas) and working through Schumann, Poulenc and Mahler, ending with a pair of passionate Kurt Weill settings of Walt Whitmann.

Haydn at Eisenstadt: Armida at Herbst Gold festival Schloss Esterházy

Haydn: Armida - Ana Maria Labin - Herbst Gold 2018 (Photo Jerzy Bin)

Haydn Armida; Ana Maria Labin, Francisco Fernandez-Rueda, dir: Alessio Pizzech, Haydn Philharmonie, cond: Enrico Onofrio; Herbst Gold at Schloss Esterházy, Eistenstadt
Reviewed by Robert Hugill on 14 September 2018 Star rating: 4.0
A rare opportunity to hear Haydn's Armida in a semi-staging in the hall where he regularly worked in Eisenstadt

Francisco Fernandez-Rueda, Enrico Onofrio, Anicio Zorzi Giustiniani
Herbst Gold 2018 (Photo Jerzy Bin)

Festivals should generally aim to do something different, something that does not come the way of the ordinary concert or opera-goer. So it is a perfect fit that Herbst Gold, the festival in Eisenstadt, has begun a planned series of concert stagings of opera by Joseph Haydn (possibly Eisenstadt's most famous resident). We still do not see enough of these operas, and Haydn regarded them highly. And until performers, directors and audiences get used to his particular style, it will be difficult to understand them.

As this year's Herbst Gold festival had Krieg und Frieden (War and Peace) as its theme, the opera chosen was Armida based on Torquato Tasso's Gerusalemme liberata about the Crusaders at war in Jerusalem. On Friday 14 September 2018, Enrico Onofrio conducted the Haydn Philharmonie in the Haydnsaal of Schloss Esterházy, with Ana Maria Labin as Armida, Francisco Fernandez-Rueda (replacing the previously announced Julien Pregardien) as Rinaldo, Roberta Mameli as Zelmira, Anicio Zorzi Giustiniani as Ubaldo, Christian Senn as Idreno and Fernando Guimaraes as Clotaro.

The concert staging was by Alessio Pizzech; the cast was in costume with loosely Middle-Eastern style for Armida, Idreno, Zelmira and modern cricket-whites for the crusaders Rinaldo, Clotardo and Ubaldo (though Rinaldo had 'gone native' with his shirt unfastened and hanging out of his trousers). The cast performed on a small podium running in front of the orchestra, recitatives were done from memory with scores used for the more elaborate arias. Armida spent much time poring over her book of magic, in fact, her score - a neat solution.

Haydn: Armida - Christian Senn - Herbst Gold 2018 (Photo Jerzy Bin)

Armida was premiered in the theatre at Esterháza in 1784 and was performed there over 50 times as well as being given in Vienna, Turin and Budapest. Schloss Esterhazy had no theatre, but it is known that Haydn produced operas for the prince in the Haydnsaal, so the festival's concert staging was most apt. To put the piece into context, Armida was premiered two years before Mozart's Le nozze di Figaro premiered at Vienna's Burgtheater whilst Gluck's equally ground-breaking Orfeo ed Euridice premiered at the same theatre in 1762 with the French version appearing in 1774.

The libretto for Armida is somewhat old-fashioned, the first act involves a traditional sequence of exit arias for the main cast members, and throughout the exit aria convention is still strong and there is little opportunity for ensembles in the way that Mozart introduced into his opera serias, Idomeneo (1781) and La Clemenza di Tito (1791). Where Haydn does push the boundaries is in his extended use of accompanied recitative, so that moments like Act Two Scene One have a very French feel, with long sections that are orchestrally accompanied. There are also significant orchestral interludes, with Haydn giving us some terrific music.

The issue of the libretto should not be landed entirely at Haydn's door, he was writing exclusively for Prince Esterhazy and it was the prince's taste which would have been paramount.

840: New Music for Cello and Piano

Cellist and inter-disciplinary artist Anton Lukoszevieze will perform new works for solo cello by Christian Wolff, Darya Zvezdina, James Luff and Michael Winter, as well as Laurence Crane’s gem from 1985, Five Preludes for Cello and Pianom at St James' Church, Prebend Street, Islington, N1 8PF on Friday 21 September at 7:30pm as part of the concert series, 840, curated by the composers Alex Nikiporenko and James Luff, which is dedicated to providing a platform for new experimental and minimal music.

The programme will also feature Anton’s own What we really want to do is serve happiness, Linda Catlin Smith’s beguiling Ricercar and Alex Nikiporenko's 86 Permutations of Melancholia based on a magic square that appears in an engraving by Albrecht Dürer.

Full details from the 840 website.

From Haydn and Elgar to Rap and Grime: Matthew O'Keeffe and Brixton Chamber Orchestra

Matthew O'Keeffe and members of Brixton Chamber Orchestra

When doing an interview for this blog earlier this year, it turned out that the interviewee was a near neighbour as we both live in Brixton, and during the interview, the subject of the Brixton Chamber Orchestra came up. Now, I have to admit that I had not heard of the ensemble, but the upshot was that last week I found myself on Brixton Hill have coffee with Matthew O'Keeffe, a young musician who lives in Brixton, and in fact grew up there, and who has founded the Brixton Chamber Orchestra.

members of Brixton Chamber Orchestra

Matthew did a music degree at King's College, London, studying conducting with Peter Ash, and is planning to do a Masters Degree. He runs a number of different ensembles, the choir Scherzo, Lunch Break Opera and the Brixton Chamber Orchestra. Scherzo is a 10-voiced consort of young professional singers, coming together with the idea of singing full-voiced, making a rich sound. Whilst Lunchbreak Opera is a group which presents chamber opera in the City in bit-size lunchtime portions.

Brixton Chamber Orchestra is based around a group of around a dozen young professionals, all in their early to mid-20s and many are people that Matthew has played with, many went to the Centre for Young Musicians at Morley College. The idea behind the Brixton Chamber Orchestra is, however, more than just another band of young people coming together, Matthew wants the orchestra to be rooted in the local community, taking advantage of the wide variety of venues which Brixton has to offer, both the obvious and the not so obvious. And the group mixes things up with a very varied repertoire. They have recently held auditions, and have found some excellent local amateur players who have joined the group. Ultimately Matthew would like an ensemble of around 16 or so performers.

One of their recent gigs was Rockin' on Electric Avenue when they played in Brixton market. With the idea of making people stop and listen, the music was all arresting from hornpipes, and Dvorak's Slavonic Dances to Harry Belafonte and Sinatra, everything with a strong beat. Matthew is realistic about attracting audiences, understanding that every event needs a hook to get the audience into the room, but his approach is often imaginative. He originally started arranging when we worked with an a cappella vocal quartet, and now the Brixton Chamber Orchestra includes a wide variety of repertoire.

Yerkesh Shakeyev - Waves from Heaven

Yerkesh Shakeyev Waves from Heaven; London Symphony Orchestra / Gavin Sutherland, Royal Philharmonic Orchestra / Richard Balcombe, London Metropolitan Orchestra / Andy Brown
Reviewed by Robert Hugill on 5 June 2018
A move into orchestral music by a Kazakhstani song writer is bound to delight

Listen to this disc blind, I am sure you will be delighted. It is a collection of fourteen pieces (most around five minutes in duration) which I can only describe as light music. Carefully and imaginatively, finely crafted and will a melodic fluency which will charm, easy on the ear yet not negligible. The music varies between rather film-soundtrack moments, to intense melancholic lyricism to passages which put a real smile on your face and would not be out of place on the BBC Radio 2 programme Friday Night is Music Night. With the blending of genres and the crossing of boundaries, good light music is rather rare to find.

In fact, this is a disc of music by the Kazakhstani composer Yerkesh Shakeyev. Born in 1962 he has moved from bard songs and pop hits to neoclassicism. With this album Waves from Heaven Shakeyev seems to have made the move into orchestral music. The pieces are performed by the London Symphony Orchestra under conductor Gavin Sutherland, the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra under conductor Richard Balcombe and the London Metropolitan Orchestra under conductor Andy Brown.

One detail of the production does, however make you wonder quite how much of what we are hearing is Shakeyev. Whilst Shakeyev is a highly experienced song-writer with a long career behind him, all the music on this disc is credited to arrangers, with Dmitry Varelas, Toby Young and John Lenehan sharing the arranging honours, and Lenehan providing the piano solo on the two tracks that he has arranged.

I have to confess to having only the haziest idea where Kazakhstan is, or what the country's music is like. But this is one of those disc which really does manage to cross boundaries, and I enjoyed it immensely. All the more so as much of it seems to have a winning smile, or wistful melancholy behind it.


Yerkesh Shakeyev (born 1962), arr. Dmitry Varelas, TobyYoung, John Lenehan - Waves from Heaven
London Symphony Orchestra / Gavin Sutherland
Royal Philharmonic Orchestra / Richard Balcombe
London Metropolitan Orchestra / Andy Brown
Recorded at Abbey Road Studios, 2016
Available from Amazon.

Music, puppets & poetry: Goldfield Productions' Hansel & Gretel - a nightmare in eight scenes

Hansel & Gretel: a nightmare in eight scenes - Goldfield Productions
(Photo Still Moving Media courtesy Cheltenham Music Festival)

Goldfield Productions' Hansel & Gretel (a nightmare in eight scenes) debuted in July this year at the Cheltenham Music Festival and is currently touring the UK. It is an intriguing show, mixing poetry, chamber music, puppetry and shadow play in a modern interpretation of the traditional Hansel and Gretel story. The artistic director of Goldfield Productions is Kate Romano, and I recently met up with her to find out more about Hansel & Gretel.

Hansel & Gretel: a nightmare in 8 scenes
Clive Hicks-Jenkins's artwork - Goldfield Productions

The show is based on a poem by Simon Armitage which re-imagines the story and music has been provided by Matthew Kaner, an emerging composer who was embedded with BBC Radio 3 last year. The event mixes live table-top puppetry with projected shadowplay, and there is a storyteller in the form of Adey Grummet, the whole directed by Clive Hicks-Jenkins. It is a compact piece, lasting just 60 minutes with five instrumentalists, narrator, five instrumentalists and two puppeteers.

Kate, who as well as being artistic director plays clarinet in the Goldfield Ensemble which accompanies the show, describes the piece as dark and quirky, but suggestive rather than in your face. The setting is a war torn country with hints of things such as the family being refugees. It is not a show for children, it is aimed at 12 and over, but that said Kate comments that they have had kids come to it and they loved it.

The idea for the show arose when Kate came across Clive Hicks-Jenkins' drawings, inspired by Hansel and Gretel, and it helped that Clive already had an association with Simon Armitage. So they started with the idea of Simon writing the poem, Matthew Kaner writing the music and creating a portable, flexible piece.

In search of the Great American Opera, the strange case of Samuel Barber's Vanessa

Rosalind Elias and Eleanor Steber in the original 1958 Met Opera production of Vanessa.
Photo: Courtesy of the Metropolitan Opera Archive

Samuel Barber's Vanessa is a strange piece, yet remarkably strong. I saw it twice this summer at Glyndebourne [see my review of the premiere] and the second time it did not pall, partly thanks to the strong performances and partly through the way director Keith Warner's production mined the works unspoken depths.

Zach Borichevsky (Anatol) and Virginie Verrez
(c) Ken Howard for Santa Fe Opera, 2016

The work was premiered at the Met in New York in 1958. It was Barber's first large-scale opera. Though three years younger than Barber, Benjamin Britten had already written Peter Grimes, Billy Budd, Gloriana, Rape of Lucretia, Albert Herring and Turn of the Screw, whilst Francis Poulenc's Carmelites premiered in 1956. And there is an inevitable tendency to compare Barber's work to that of these composers, rather than taking it on its own terms. Much of the critical reaction to Glyndebourne's production of Vanessa has tended to emphasise that the piece simply wasn't what was expected from a composer writing in the 1950s.

Whereas Benjamin Britten and Francis Poulenc's works use libretti which have strong links with the Western European literary elite, Giancarlo Menotti's libretto for Vanessa can come over as rather novelettish and its strongest links seem to be with Hollywood films of the period (Hitchcock's Rebecca, from 1940, seems a particular link). And like these films, the distinctive style has a tendency to dominate, whilst the complexity which lies underneath is easily obscured.

At Santa Fe Opera in 2016 [see my review] the opera was played straight, as Hollywood noir without many of the undercurrents. It has taken Keith Warner's production at Glyndebourne to give the piece depth, a process which seems to have started with Rodula Gaitanou's 2017 production at Wexford which brought out the Tchekovian influences [see the review on Bachtrack]. Warner's production hinted at the issues of incest, miscegenation and abortion, things which helped explain the torrid atmosphere.

Not that the piece is perfect, far from it. When the first Erika, Rosalind Elias, pointed out to Samuel Barber, rather dauntingly, that her character was the only major one without an aria, he came up with 'Must the Winter come so soon'. This is a stunning number which has been a recital staple ever since,  but it is very much in Barber's Knoxville, Summer 1915 style and works well as a stand-alone piece yet in context it seems apropos of nothing and even holds up the action. Yet at the ends of Act One and Act Two Erika has strong scenes which cry out for expansion. But it is in these scenes that Barber moved furthest away from his chosen medium, American lyricism, and clearly he shied away from going too far.

Duval Timothy's Whale

Live performance of Whale by Duval Timothy, London 2017.

Duval Timothy is a multi-disciplinary artist working and living between London, UK and Freetown, Sierra Leone, and he studied at Central St Martins, Beaux Arts Paris ENSBA and Chelsea College.

The Guardian said of his music 'His solo piano pieces are somewhere on the boundaries between contemporary minimalism and jazz: precise, geometrical constructions featuring heart-rending chord changes and simple melodies.'

Movements around Buxton

Northern Chamber Orchestra at the Stoller Hall, Manchester

Now that he has stepped down as Buxton International Festival's artistic director, conductor Stephen Barlow has become patron of Northern Chamber Orchestra. The orchestra, which is the oldest professional chamber ensemble in the North West, has been in residence at the Buxton Festival since 2011. 

The announcement comes as the orchestra begins its 51st season, with concerts in Manchester, Macclesfield and London. Last year Barlow and the orchestra released an imaginative disc, Mind Music, with music by Richard Strauss, John Adams, and Kevin Malone supporting Parkinsons UK [see my review].

For those with long memories, one of Barlow's predecessors at Buxton, Aidan Lang (who ran the festival from 2000 to 2006) is returning from foreign climes (with stints at New Zealand Opera and Seattle Opera) to become the new General Director of Welsh National Opera in succession to David Poutney.

Music for an Autumn Evening

Daniel Collins will be best known to many people as a counter-tenor who has been singing with The Sixteen for 12 years. From 20 September 2018 he will also be wearing a different hat, as Daniel is the artistic director of Music for an Autumn Evening, a series of concerts at Holy Trinity Church, Stroud Green, N4 4EL. 

The concerts are on Thursdays starting 20 September and the series opens with an eight-voice vocal ensemble conducted by Daniel in Hubert Parry's glorious Songs of Farewell (a big feature of programming this year, the centenary of Parry's death), alongside English and Scottish music from the 20th and 21st centuries.

Further ahead, there is the Comali Consort in a programme which gives us a variety of 17th century portraits of women, including England's Virgin Queen, Dominika Fehér in solo violin music by Biber, Bach, Ysaye and Fehér, and the Bloomsbury Quartet in music by Britten, Beethoven and Schubert. A Winter series is promised too, so do check out the festival's website.

[Those of you with LONG memories will perhaps recognise Daniel Collins name from my 2008 disc, The Testament of Dr Cranmer]

Essential Listening: Rossini's Semiramide revealed in a new complete recording from Opera Rara

Rossini Semiramide; Albina Shagimuratova, Daniela Barcellona, Mirco Palazzi, Barry Banks, Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment, Sir Mark Elder; Opera Rara Reviewed by Robert Hugill on 12 September 2018 Star rating: 5.0 (★★★★★)
Rossini's monumental drama brought thrillingly, and complete, to disc with period style, bravura and elan

At the recent celebrations for the new distribution agreement between Opera Rara and Warner Classics, Sir Mark Elder (artistic director of Opera Rara) talked about his desire to take a title which was very familiar, yet the piece was not, and make people listen to it anew. This became Rossini's Semiramide, a work that existed for most people only as a title (or an overture), and Sir Mark pointed out that Dame Joan Sutherland's recording of the work was made 50 years ago, and lives in a very different sound world. We have already had something of a preview of Opera Rara's new recording of Rossini's Semiramide because Sir Mark and the cast performed the opera at the BBC Proms in 2016 just after doing the recording [see my review].

On this new set from Opera Rara we get the first ever complete recording of Rossini's Semiramide, performed on period instruments with Sir Mark Elder conducting the Opera Rara Chorus and the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment, with Albina Shagimuratova as Semiramide, Daniela Barcellona as Arsace, Mirco Palazzi as Assur, Barry Banks as Idreno, Gianluca Buratto as Oroe, Susana Gaspar as Azema, David Butt Philip as Mitrane and James Platt as L'Ombra di Nino.

Rossini's Semiramide was written in 1823 for performance in Venice, it was his last opera for Italy and his last serious opera in Italian (to follow were comedies in Italian and in French, and serious operas in French). Whilst it builds on the sequence of serious operas which Rossini wrote for Naples, it is also rather backward looking and eschews many of the technical and structural innovations which Rossini used in Naples. Perhaps because he was writing for a different company, perhaps because he deliberately wanted to have a summation, or perhaps because he could no longer rely on his prima donna. Semiramide was written for the soprano Isabella Colbran, who had been the diva in the remarkable sequence of nine operas written in Naples. But by 1823 her voice was in decline, and perhaps it was clear that Rossini could no longer rely on her in the way he had in Armida (where she was the only female member of cast) or Ermione (where her closing scene lasted over 40 minutes).

But there is no denying that Semiramide is super large scale, on this disc Act One lasts over two hours, with Act Two over ninety minutes. Even during the first run, the piece was being cut with the tenor soloist Idreno losing arias (something that would become quite common). In fact, this is not because Rossini crams a lot of musical number in, far from it, instead there is an amplitude to the pieces. There might be a backward-looking element to the opera with an old-fashioned sense of elaboration and display, but the way Rossini uses large-scale structures links to Neapolitan operas like Maometto II. And arias are quite sparing too, so that we get a lot of ensembles and duets, in fact the character of Semiramide is introduced via a quartet and she only gets one aria (labelled a cavatina) and we experience her mainly in relation to others via ensembles and duets.

Quite how different the sound world of this new disc can be is illustrated by the opening of the overture where the hand-stopped horns lift us into a different world, one which is re-inforced by the tang of the woodwind and the difference in sound lack of vibrato and gut strings makes to the strings. It helps that Mark Elder really brings out the varieties in texture of Rossini's orchestration and relishes the new sounds. The orchestra used is massive (74 players in the orchestra, plus a banda of 17), but despite this and the scale of Rossini's writing the music does not feel like a monument. There is a a dynamism and variety to the playing which makes it very engaging.

Music@Malling

St Leonard's Tower, West Malling
photo Thomas Beilby (Wikimedia Commons)

Music@Malling takes place annually in the historic town of West Malling in Kent, and under artistic director Thomas Kemp the eighth festival will be presenting a lively mix of contemporary composers alongside classical, jazz, vocal, world and film music from 16 to 29 September.

Inevitably, World War One and the Armistice are a big feature of this years programme, with Nigel Short and Tenebrae performing Commemorating the Armistice, including Owain Park's Footsteps, and Thomas Kemp and his ensemble Chamber Domaine perform a programme of string music with actor Charles Dance giving readings from Siegfried Sassoon.

Contemporary music is always a big feature of the festival and this year Judith Weir is profiled, with her music in five concerts across the festival, a Meet the Composer event and a study morning on her music. James Pearson, artistic director of Ronnie Scott's, will be performing Inventions Reinvented, his re-working Bach's Two and Three-part inventions, whilst cellist Peter Gregson's Bach Recomposed re-interprets Bach's Cello Suites for cello and electronics. Bach unarranged features in Craig Ogden's Bach Pilgrimmage when he performs Bach's complete Lute Suites in Malling Abbey.

The festival has a successful and popular outreach programme and this year 1,800 children from 20 primary schools compose theme tunes for the theme park rides in The Great Enormo - a 21st Century Young Person’s Guide to the Orchestra, written by Michael Rosen and set to music by husband and wife team, James Morgan and Juliette Pochin.

Full details from the Music at Malling website.

Practical & working composer: Vaughan Williams choral premieres from Royal Hospital, Chelsea

Ralph Vaughan Williams choral premieres; Chapel Choir of the ROyal Hospital, Chelsea, William Vann; Albion Reviewed by Robert Hugill on 5 September 2018 Star rating: 3.5 (★★★½)
An album of hitherto unrecorded, small-scale choral works which show RVW as a practical and useful composer

This enterprising new disc from the Chapel Choir of the Royal Hospital, Chelsea, director William Vann on Albion Records (the recording arm of the Ralph Vaughan Williams Society) draws together over twenty small-scale choral works by RVW which have not been recorded before, and some are in fact unpublished. The music ranges from the very early (1896) to very late (1954) with a mixture of original compositions and arrangements.

Some of the music is unaccompanied, some with piano and some with organ. The disc is arranged in a roughly chronological order with some re-arrangement to group similar works together. We start with the early Vocal Valses from The Songs of the Wrens, delightful short waltzes with piano accompaniment (provided by William Vann) setting poems by Tennyson, which come from a cycle the poet wrote for Sir Arthur Sullivan to set. They seem to use Brahms' Liebeslieder Walztes as a model and whilst they hardly sound like mature RVW, they have great charm.

Sound Sleep was written in 1903 as a test piece for the East Lincolnshire Musical Festival, commissioned by RVW's cousin Margaret Massingberd of Gunby Hall (now a National Trust property). A setting of Christina Rosetti for female voices and piano, it combines a lovely undulating piano with gently flowing voices in close harmony developing from the quietly thoughtful into something more.

The Unknown Traveller at the Treehouse - Fieri Consort launches its second CD

The Fieri Consort

On Sunday 9 September 2018 we went along to the Shoreditch Treehouse for the launch of the Fieri Consort's second disc. The group's first disc, Tears of a Lover [see my review] had been a daring combination of Monteverdi madrigals (the Lamento d'Arianna sequence) with modern madrigals from composer Ben Rowarth. I was pleased that for this new disc, the group had stayed with the same formula without becoming formulaic. On the new disc The Unknown Traveller we hear Ben Rowarth's four-movement sequence Short Walk of a Madman alongside madrigals from Musica Transalpina.

On Sunday we were treated to three of the four movements from Rowarth's piece. Though technically a setting of poems by e.e.cummings, there are other texts too and it is the harmony and texture of the pieces which comes over, rather than the words. Rowarth is interested in the journey through the work, as the eight voices move from multiple tonalities to a sense of communual being. The result is complex and challenging, and rather thrilling. I can't wait to hear the full work.

We also heard madrigals by Ferrabosco, Palestrina and Byrd, all from Musica Transalpina which was a highly influential collection of madrigals published in 1588 in England by publisher Nicholas Yonge. The madrigals were all published in English versions, with the translator using word for word English versions so English musicians could easily appreciate the way Italian composers married text to music. The fascinating thing is that this translator is unknown, and this gave rise to the disc's name The Unknown Traveller.

Hearing this music in English, rather than Italian, made a striking difference to our perceptions of the pieces, and made you realise quite how important the text and language is to the Italian (and English) madrigal form.

The Unknown Traveller is available from 17 September 2018 from the Fieri Consort's website, and will receive wider distribution from October 2018.

The Fieri Consort is Lucy Cox, Hannah Ely, Helen Charlston, Nancy Cole, Tome Kelly, Josh Cooter, Ben McKee, David Maguire.