Verdi: La Forza del Destino - Étienne Dupuis - Royal Opera 2023 (Photo: Camilla Greenwell)
Canadian baritone Étienne Dupuis is currently appearing as Don Carlo in the Royal Opera's production of Verdi's La Forza del Destino, directed by Christof Loy, with Sondra Radvanosky and Brian Jagde conducted by Sir Mark Elder (in repertory until 9 October) and I was lucky enough to be able to catch up with Étienne after the first night. This season, Verdi is something of a theme, Étienne is also singing Germont in La Traviata in Vienna and makes his role-debut in the title role of Verdi's Rigoletto at the Teatro Real in Madrid. Last year, he had huge success as Rodrigue in the Metropolitan Opera's first production of Verdi's Don Carlos in the original French. Étienne appeared in the Ravel double bill of L’Heure Espagnole and L’Enfant et les Sortilèges at the Glyndebourne Festival in 2015. We caught him in 2019, in the title role of Mozart's Don Giovanni in Ivo van Hove's new production for the Paris Opera at the Palais Garnier with Nicole Car as Donna Elvira [see my review].
Étienne's Covent Garden performances as Don Carlo in La Forza del Destino were his role-debut and he stood in at comparatively short notice. It was a role he had studied, having been supposed to sing it during the pandemic but it meant that he had to memorise Acts Two and Three in around a month. However you look at it, a huge effort, and for Étienne, memory is to a certain extent kinetic, and he thinks it is easier to remember if you have more to learn than just the music.
Kings Place has announced the next instalment of its Unwrapped series. 2024 is to be devoted to Scotland Unwrapped, a celebration of music and spoken-word from Scotland encompassing traditional and regional arts as well as the vibrant contemporary scene, with a wide range of musical genres from contemporary composers, folk musicians and Scottish classical ensembles.
Things kick of on 13 January 2024 when sitarist and composer Jasdeep Singh Degun joins the Scottish Ensemble to present work from his Anomaly album as well as the London premiere of a new work [see my recent interview with Jasdeep]. Other premieres during the year include Anna Meredith, LVRA, Donald Grant, Aileen Sweeney, Ninfea Crutwell Reade and Helen Grime. The Colin Currie Quartet present the world premiere of a Kings Place commission, Anna Meredith’s Dodgem Studies arranged for percussion quartet, as well as the world premiere of a new work from Ben Nobuto and the London premiere of Aileen Sweeney’s new work for percussion quartet [7 Dec].
Jasdeep Singh Degun (Photo: Robert Leslie)
Scottish classical music includes the earliest-known liturgical music from the 16th century Dunkeld Partbooks from the Marian Consort [18 Oct], the polyphony of 17th century composer Robert Carver from the Sixteen [26 Jan], triumphant anthems of the 1603 union between Scotland and England from ORA Singers [15 Mar], whilst Ensemble Hesperi conjure up a musical evening in Enlightenment Edinburgh, when James Oswald’s music brushed shoulders with Handel and Geminiani [20 Oct].
The Maxwell Quartet will be exploring Scottish folk-music including a a thousand year old Celtic lament [22 Feb], whilst tenor Nicky Spence surveys the astonishing inspiration of Robert Burns on songwriters from Amy Beach to Shostakovich, Schumann, Britten and Coleridge-Taylor in a recital with fellow Scot Eleanor Dennis, featuring a premiere by Helen Grime [24 Apr].
The BBC Singers honour Dame Judith Weir in her 70th birthday year [9 Feb] and the Dunedin Consort and Hebrides Ensemble join forces for James Macmillan’s Since it was the day of Preparation – a Kings Place commission from 2012 - presented in partnership with Macmillan's Cumnock Tryst festival [25 Oct].
The Aurora Orchestra will be presenting a range of concerts through the season from Mendelssohn and Maxwell Davies [3 Feb], to folk-ballads [27 Apr] and Gaelic songs with traditional and contemporary works including premier by Donald Grant [28 Sep].
As well as the Cumnock Tryst, there are festival spotlights from St Magnus Festival, Orkney Folk Festival and HebCelt Festival, whilst songwriter, folk singer and storyteller Karine Polwart is Artist in Residence and guest curators include poet Jackie Kay and folk musician Aidan O’Rourke. There is a strong Scottish folk element to the year's programme and not surprisingly highlights include a Burns Night supper & ceilidh.
The Piatti Quartet - Miguel Sobrinho, Jessie Ann Richardson, Emily Holland, Michael Trainor
The Piatti Quartet (Michael Trainor, Emily Holland, Miguel Sobrinho, Jessie Ann Richardson) starts as Resident Quartet at Kings Place in October with a season of concerts exploring Dvořák's late string quartets alongside more contemporary repertoire. Here Michael Trainor, the quartet's first violin, introduces the new season.
"The sun is just coming over the horizon and there’s a tangible excitement in the air. All of a sudden a figure on horseback throwing up plumes of dust comes into view, riding with speed and flair.."
That's a segment of how we like to introduce Dvořák's 'American' Quartet from the stage just before our performance. It's a fantastic work which conjures up images and narratives like these all the time, the music completely encapsulating something distinctly American. Indeed so much so that it has remained one of the most popular chamber works to this day and has lost none of its sheen nearly 130 years later.
And so we will begin our journey as the new Resident Quartet on 25 October at Kings Place this season. We're taking over the baton from the Brodsky Quartet who have been resident there for 10 years and we'll certainly look to carry on their sense of adventure they bring to programming.
In these Rush Hour Lates concerts at Kings Place we will present Dvořák's late string quartets and end with the brilliant Piano Quintet No.2 in A major with pianist Emmanuel Despax. With the quartets, No.12 'The American' and No.13 in G major we know very well- in fact No.13 we performed at the final of the Wigmore Hall International String Quartet Competition back in 2015- however the A flat major, No.14. will be a real discovery for us. Whenever we discover a 'lesser' known work like this by a famous composer, it truly reminds us of the extraordinary riches and depth of string quartet repertoire.
What excites us about this residency? The chance to build a really strong rapport with the audience that comes along. We'll be out chatting and meeting with the audience post-concert. It's always something we've loved doing, but since those strange empty Covid broadcasts from vacant halls, they've taken on an even stronger significance. The chance to deep dive into Dvořák's quartets is another plus. Dvořák is endlessly fascinating with texture, techniques he really perfected with these works. Like any great composer for quartet, it adds up to something much greater than the sum of its parts. From an audience perspective you can either choose to let those catchy, searing and passionate melodies wash over you or zone in on all that detail, either way Dvořák's spirit will bring you on a wonderful journey.
Finally the opportunity to get to intimately know one of London's best concert halls is a big attraction, Hall One at Kings Place. It has a brilliant acoustic, with a natural resonance that makes string instruments sing and radiate warmth.
A new commission from young composer Anna Appleby and one of our most popular commissions with audiences, a 2022 work by Charlotte Harding, will add a compelling dimension to the concerts along with works by Ina Boyle, Anton Webern and Franz Schubert. All will start at 6:45pm and last no more than an hour.
The Piatti Quartet is named after Alfredo Piatti, a 19th Century virtuoso cellist who was a professor at the Royal Academy of Music (the alma mater of the founders of the quartet) and also a major exponent of chamber music and contemporary music of his time [Piatti's own operatic fantasies for cello and piano were recorded in 2020, see my article]. The quartet won joint second prize and the Sydney Griller Award at the 2015 Wigmore Hall International String Quartet Competition.
They have premiered a mesmerising number of new works over the years beginning with Anna Meredith back in 2009 and including works by Mark-Anthony Turnage, Emily Howard, Charlotte Harding, and Joseph Phibbs, as well as making the premiere recording of Ina Boyle’s String Quartet in E minor, and performing lesser known quartet gems by Ralph Vaughan Williams, E.J. Moeran, Rachmaninov, Ireland, Haas, Ulmann, and Durosoir.
British Piano Concertos: Gordon Jacob, John Addison, Edmund Rubbra; Simon Callaghan, BBC National Orchestra of Wales, Stephen Bell and George Vass; LYRITA Reviewed 27 September 2023
Returning to the treasure-trove of mid-Century British piano concertos, Simon Callaghan comes up with three gems, all receiving first recordings
Pianist Simon Callaghan has followed up his disc of British piano concertos from the 1950s [see my review], by returning to the the era for British Piano Concertos on the Lyrita label with a trio of concertante works by Gordon Jacob, John Addison and Edmund Rubbra, accompanied by the BBC National Orchestra of Wales, conductors Stephen Bell and George Vass. All three are first recordings.
Gordon Jacob is perhaps best known not for his own music but for his arrangements, the orchestral versions of RVW's Folksong Suite and Holst's Moorside Suite are his. But he studied with Charles Villiers Stanford at the Royal College of Music as well as with Howells and RVW, and taught at the RCM from the mid-1920s until his retirement in 1966.
Dorset Garden Theatre, London in 1673 Later the Queen's Theatre where Purcell's King Arthur premiered in 1691
Purcell, Dryden, Thomas Guthrie: King Arthur; Lindsay Duncan, Rowan Pierce, Mhairi Lawson, Samuel Boden, James Way, Edward Grint, Early Opera Company, Christian Curnyn; Temple Music at Temple Church Reviewed 27 September 2023
Stylish musical performances allied to an imaginative dramatic context create a very satisfying evocation of Purcell and Dryden's dramatick opera
17th century semi-opera (or dramatick opera as contemporaries called it) remains a tantalising genre, more akin to a modern West End musical theatre spectacular than anything. It is a curious hybrid that owes its existence to the particularity of late 17th century London where with a court whose tastes overran budget, a highly developed spoken theatre tradition, independent theatres where actors needed to be paid so economics forced the necessity of theatrical performances having a commercial element, and local taste. After all the fondness for mixing spoken and sung in a spectacular setting was still alive and well in 1826 when Weber was commissioned to write an opera for Covent Garden; Oberon in its original form is effectively a semi-opera.
There have been modern revivals of semi-opera in its full form, notably Glyndebourne's production of Purcell's The Fairy Queen (2009) and the Royal Opera's production of Purcell's King Arthur (1995), with a brave attempt at King Arthur by the Buxton Festival in 1986. But the style, dramatic inconsequentiality and sheer length mitigate against regular revival. So what to do? Too many of the best musical scenes in Purcell's semi-operas have little to do with the overall plot and often modern performances simply present the music on its own [Paul McCreesh and Gabrieli did that at their 2019 performance of King Arthur, see my review].
Anna Clyne is the BBC Philharmonic Orchestra's new composer in association. Beginning in October, she will be composing three new scores for the orchestra over the next three years. Her first piece in the role is Glasslands, which she composed for saxophonist Jess Gillam, and will have its UK premiere with the BBC Philharmonic, conductor Ben Gernon at Nottingham Royal Concert Hall on 5 October and broadcast live on BBC Radio 3.
The appointment builds on an existing creative relationship with the orchestra, which includes the UK premiere of This Midnight Hour at The Bridgewater Hall in 2020, and Anna Clyne in Focus, which saw students from the Royal Northern College of Music perform side by side with members of the BBC Philharmonic. Three of Clyne’s original soundscapes were performed alongside original student compositions at the concert in the BBC Philharmonic Studios at MediaCityUK earlier this year.
Composer, multi-instrumentalist, club DJ, and producer Nitin Sawhney will receive an honorary doctorate from the University of Huddersfield in November. His first album Spirit Dance was released in 1994. Five years later, Beyond Skin was nominated for the Mercury Music Prize and his latest work, Identity, is out in October. He will play at London’s Royal Albert Hall to coincide with the release of Identity.
He has worked on over 70 film, TV and video game scores including music for BBC series Human Planet and Wonders of the Monsoon. He received an Ivor Novello Lifetime Achievement award in 2017, and he is the Chair of the PRS Foundation.
Composer Gavin Bryars is 80, and Phaedra Ensemble is celebrating with Gavin Bryars at 80 String Works, a retrospective series of concerts and events across the UK. Founded in 2014, Phaedra has evolved from a string quartet to a larger collective of like-minded performers, drawing from London’s diverse contemporary and chamber music scene. Their tour begins in Cardiff (29/9/2023) then moves to Kings Place, London (1/10/2023) when Gavin Bryars will be joining the orchestra to perform. Further dates include the Little Missenden Festival (11/10/2023), the Arnolfini, Bristol (18/11/2023) and Howard Assembly Rooms, Leeds (2/12/2023).
John McLachlan: Drinking the stars; Mary Dullea; Farpoint Recordings
Uncompromising perhaps, occasionally stark but always vivid and arresting, a survey of the Irish composer John McLachlan's piano music from the last 30 years in stunning performances from Mary Dullea
The Irish composer John McLachlan was born in Dublin and studied music at the Royal Irish Academy of Music, and Trinity College Dublin, and studied composition with William York, Robert Hanson and Kevin Volans. It is perhaps relevant to his own compositional style that for his PhD in musicology from Trinity College Dublin, he specialised in researching the compositional techniques of Boulez, Xenakis, Lutoslawski and Carter.
This new disc, Drinking the stars: Mary Dullea plays the piano music of John McLachlan on Farpoint Recordings, features two discs (a total of over two hours music) with Mary Dullea performing a range of McLachlan's piano music from almost the last 30 years. Whilst the majority of pieces are from the last decade or so, there are works dating back to the 1990s.
As McClachlan explains in his booklet note, this spread of time means that his approach in the works is quite varied, but listening to the whole one senses a fascinating with structure as opposed to focusing on harmony, or melodic material, and a certain uncompromising feeling to his approach.
BBC Young Composer was founded in 1998 and has since then offered a platform for young composers across the UK with alumni including Shiva Feshareki, Kate Whitley, Alissa Firsova, Mark Simpson, Tom Harrold, and Duncan Ward. The results for the 2023 BBC Young Composer have been announced with winners selected from over 350 applications from across the UK, with genres spanning song writing, film/ soundtrack music, choral, solo instrument, jazz, rock, pop, electronic and contemporary.
Each composition was assessed on its compositional idea, creativity and originality, and was judged anonymously. The judging panel of composers and musicians included Lloyd Coleman, Shiva Feshareki, Abimaro Gunnell, Gavin Higgins, Cassie Kinoshi, Eímear Noone, as well as industry experts Katie Tearle and David Pickard, Director of the BBC Proms
The six winners are:
Lower Junior Category (age 12-14)
Atharv Gupta – Demain, Dès L'Aube
Avram Harris – Across the Void
Upper Junior Category (age 15-16)
Advaith Jagannath – Saturn Devouring his Son
Pascal Bachmann – Étude-Grotesque
Senior Category (age 17-18)
Jamie Smith – Into Oblivion
Reese Carly Manglicmot – Rumble
Now, the six composers have been invited to participate in a yearlong tailored development programme to work with a mentor composer on a project with members of the BBC Concert Orchestra. This will culminate in a live performance or broadcast opportunity at a later date.
Additionally, nine entrants have received a ‘highly commended’ award and will be offered a feedback session with a member of the competition judging panel. These composers are:
The Stroud Arts Festival returns to the Gloucestershire market town for the 77th festival from 22 to 29 October 2023 under the directorship of Dave Ayre. An enterprisingly varied programme includes two relaxed performances of a new evening of operatic music created the festival's own ensemble including three, Dave Ayre, Abigail Sudbury and Alistair Sutherland, who met on Opera Holland Park's Inspire outreach programme.
The Bristol Ensemble celebrates the 50th anniversary of Pink Floyd's Dark Side of the Moon with a specially commissioned arrangement of the music alongside Debussy and Einaudi. Another anniversary being celebrated is that of Will Todd's Mass in Blue which debuted 20 years ago. Todd's piece will be performed alongside Duke Ellington's Sacred Concert. Duke Ellington's work will be conducted by Paul McLaughlin and will feature soprano Nina Bennet and dancer Luc Bailey. Will Todd will be directing hi Mass in Blue which will feature a specially created community choir.
Singer Lucy Stevens & pianist Elizabeth Marcus will be celebrating Gertrude Lawrence in Gertrude Lawrence: A Lovely Way to Spend an Evening with excerpts from the actor's memoirs alongside songs written for her by Coward, Gershwin, Weill and Rogers & Hammerstein. The London Tango Quintet celebrate Astor Piazzolla, whilst harpist Elizabeth-Jane Baldry will be providing a live accompaniment to a screening of GW Pabst's 1928 film, Diary of a Lost Girl starring Louise Brooks in a tragic story of corruption and middle class hypocrisy in pre-Nazi Germany.
Founded in 1946 by local benefactors, the festival is one of the oldest festivals in the region. This year's festival is Dave Ayre's third, and he and the festival are gearing up towards celebrating the festival's 80th anniversary in 2026.
The 1922 founding of the International Society for Contemporary Music (ISCM) in Salzburg, showing Smyth and Arthur Bliss alongside such luminaries as Hindemith, Egon Wellesz and Webern. A work by Smyth would be included in the performance days the accompanied the event (see the ISCM website for more details)
Ethel Smyth wrote six operas, Fantasio (premiered at the Hoftheater, Weimar in 1898), Der Wald (premiered at the Königliches Opernhaus, Berlin in 1902), The Wreckers (premiered at the Neues Theater, Leipzig in 1906), The Boatswain's Mate (premiered in London in 1916), Fête galante (premiered in Birmingham in 1923) and Entente Cordiale (premiered in Bristol in 1925), along with two major choral works, the Mass (premiered at the Royal Albert Hall in 1893) and The Prison (premiered at the Usher Hall, Edinburgh in 1931).
All these received major performances during her lifetime, mainly thanks to the composer's own indefatigable energies. After writing a new work, she would set to and stomp around Europe encouraging people to perform the piece - commentators remain divided as to whether the difficulties she faced were owing to her sex or whether her somewhat abrasive personality might have contributed. She broke several glass ceilings, she was the first woman to have an opera performed at the Met in New York and had major performances at Covent Garden.
We now have modern recordings that do the works justice for all her major operas and both choral works, as well as the major Glyndebourne production of The Wreckers from 2022. So it is time to give her work a coherent modern assessment and see it in its proper context and not simply re-legislate past-history and past opinions.
Joy & Devotion, the Adam Mickiewicz Institute's festival of Polish Sacred Music under the artistic directorship of composer Paweł Łukaszewski, returns to St Martin in the Fields from 7 to 11 November 2023 with Polish music from 16th century through to the present day.
Things kick off with the Brabant Ensemble, conductor Stephen Rice, in music by Grzegorz Gerwazy Gorczycki (1665-1734) and Mikołaj Zieleński (1560-1620) alongside music by contemporary Polish composers. Then the Carice Singers, conductor George Parris, present music devoted to the Virgin Mary by Andrzej Panufnik, Henryk Mikołaj Górecki and Krzysztof Penderecki alongside works by Roman Padlewski, who died in the Warsaw Uprising whilst fighting the Second World War, Marian Sawa (1937-2005), and contemporary composers Aldona Nawrocka and Tomasz Soczek.
Passion and Resurrection features the Epiphoni Consort, conductor Tim Reader, in a concert celebrating the passion and resurrection of Christ including two works by Paweł Łukaszewski, plus music by Romuald Twardowski (born 1930), Andrzej Koszewski (1922-2015), a composer who drew from folk music in his compositions, and Józef Świder (1930-2014), a prominent, prize-winning composer.
Dylan Thomas died on the 9 November 1953 and in honour of the 70th anniversary of his death, the Dylan Thomas Birthplace Trust is presenting an immersive performance of Stimpson's captivating song cycle, Dylan on Saturday 4 November 2023 at Dylan Thomas' historic Swansea birthplace.The event will blend spoken excerpts and musical settings, featuring the baritone Gareth Brynmor John and harpist Alis Huws. The event will also be live-streamed on World of Sound.
Stimpson's song-cycle Dylan was premiered in 2003 in the Brangwyn Hall, Swansea by Jeremy Huw Williams and Sioned Williams. The work combines spoken excerpts and musical settings of Thomas's poems, letters, stories and, of course, Under Milk Wood, into a ruminative and evocative monodrama.
There are further performances of Dylan in New York, where the poet's life came to an end, at Rutgers Presbyterian Church on 11 November, home of The Welsh Congregation of New York, and at St John's in the Village on 12 November.
Rania Chrysostomou & Sarah Parkin: On Being Vocal - Sarah Parkin - Tête à Tête at the Cockpit (Photo: Claire Shovelton)
Rania Chrysostomou & Sarah Parkin: On Being Vocal; Sarah Parkin, director: Sarah Parkin & Rania Chrysostomou, filmmaker: Catherine Valve; Tête à Tête at the Cockpit Reviewed by Florence Anna Maunders, 10 September 2023
Intriguing and intense operatic exploration of women's hidden stories
A truly collaborative creation between the British/Cypriot composer Rania Chrysostomou and the Canadian/French soprano Sarah Parkin, On Being Vocal, was presented on 10 September 2023 at the Cockpit as part of Tête à Tête: the Opera Festival. This short opera managed to squeeze an enormous amount of content and variety into a running time just over half an hour. In the setting of a women's support group, and aided by Catherine Valve's projected film, Parkin took on the six different roles, each with its own distinct characterisation and musical voice.
Starting with a nice touch of scene setting – a short film showing the women arriving one-at-a-time to a semicircle of chairs, the action moved to the stage itself, the same arc of chairs recreated, in the real. Initially inhabiting the character of the group leader, and then the other women, Parkin moved from chair to chair, using a few props to clearly establish her multiple roles, each of which had its own aria or song, so that in this manner the work's structure was delineated by the changing characterisations.
The Ukrainian pianist Vadym Kholodenko gives a recital at the London Piano Festival at Kings Place on Friday 6 October 2023 playing a programme that moves from Handel's Suite in Bb HWV 440 and Haydn's Sonata in C sharp minor, Hob XVI No. 36 to Beethoven's Sonata No. 27, Op. 90 to Silvestrov's Bagatelles Op. 1 and Adès' Traced Overhead, ending with Liszt's Après une lecture de Dante and Tarantella in G minor from Années de pèlerinage II (Italy). And Vadym returns to the UK in December for Bartók's Piano Concerto No.3 with the Ulster Orchestra, conductor Elena Schwarz.
He enjoys playing a wide range of composers, and his idea behind the Kings Place recital is partly to show the range and variety he is currently interested in. Music by a composer such as Handel certainly does not sound how the composer might have heard it, but Vadim enjoys playing this music. The score is very minimal, so he takes a fairly free approach to the piece, making his own version by mixing different sections, so for instance the opening material is repeated at the end. He is following the idea of the freedom of improvisation that Handel might have taken, and in many ways, Vadym likens it to jazz, the music consists of a set of chords and he can do his own thing.
Later in our interview, I followed this comment up with a question about playing jazz, but Vadym admits that he is not a jazz performer, he can't do it, though he did once participate in a competition with jazz players in Lithuania!
He very much enjoys playing Haydn's sonatas, but there is a similar problem to Handel, in that the late Beethoven sonatas are the first to work best on a modern piano, earlier sonatas by Beethoven, Mozart and Haydn are not completely appropriate for the big monster. And sadly, Haydn's keyboard sonatas are still not that popular. For Vadym they are beautiful and he finds so many fresh ideas in them that seem to create developments that end in Beethoven. But he adds that the symphonies are similar, they are just not so much done in the concert hall.
EnSEmble26 is a collective of musicians based in the Sydenham area (SE 26) devoted to bringing live music to local areas.
The ensemble is presenting a concert a St. John's Waterloo on Monday 25 September 2023 when Eleanor Meynell and Tom Norris from the ensemble will be joined by violinist Roman Simovic and violist Milena Simovic, Andrew and Julia Joyce from the Puertas Quartet (Principal Cello and Viola of the New Zealand Symphony Orchestra ) and cellist Stephanie Tress and violinist William Newell from the Solem Quartet. In fact, the eight players comprise four married couples, which should make the dynamics of the group rather intriguing (fly on the wall time at rehearsals).
The concert is ending with Mendelssohn's Octet, which needs no introduction, and the first half will include Frank Bridge's Lament for two violas and Ravel's String Quartet.
Handel: Amadigi di Gaula - title page of the libretto - London 1715
Handel: Amadigi di Gaula; Tim Mead, Mary Bevan, Hilary Cronin, Hugh Cutting, the English Concert, Kristian Bezuidenhout; St Martin in the Fields Reviewed 21 September 2023
Much more than a concert, an evening of remarkable theatre where every single performer seemed to draw us in with their vivid enjoyment
When Mark Minkowski's world premiere recording of Handel's Amadigi di Gaula came out in the early 1990s it was something of a revelation, so much terrific music. I saw James Conway's production for Opera Theatre Company in 1996 and then, virtually nothing. But in the last few years the opera seems to have come back onto everyone's radar, popping up in concert at the 2018 London Handel Festival, and then more recent productions at Garsington and English Touring Opera, directed by James Conway [see my review] along with catching it on-line from Boston Baroque [see my review].
The opera is from Handel's fascinatingly experimental early London period [see my article] when the influence of French opera in his output was greater. Amadigi represents something of a cross-pollination between the French and the Italian, before Italian opera seria took over as the main form in his work for the Royal Academy of Music. With its Deus ex machina and hints that the work might have been intended to have a greater danced element, a great Frencher atmosphere, Amadigi di Gaula remains something of a puzzle.
But what cannot be doubted is the quality of Handel's music. He eschews the more dramatic effects from the libretto and concentrates on the emotional journeys of the four protagonists, and whilst there is fine music for all it is the 'evil' couple, Melissa and Dardano, who travel furthest and whose music is so intense, and has such remarkable power.
Gilbert & Sullivan: The Mikado - Charles Court Opera (Photo: Bill Knight)
Gilbert & Sullivan: The Mikado; Matthew Palmer, Robin Bailey, Matthew Kellett, Matthew Siveter, Alys Roberts, Meriel Cunningham, Jennifer Clark, Amy J Payne, director: John Savournin, musical director: David Eaton; Charles Court Opera at the Arcola Theatre Reviewed 20 September 2023
Gilbert & Sullivan's classic delivered with consummate skill and artistry, great pacing and a terrific sense of relish, in a new setting bringing out the innate Englishness of the work
For an operetta, The Mikado is quite a complex, multi-layered piece and part of the work's endurance comes from the fact that all the pieces fit. There is no sense, as there can be with The Gondoliers, of two different works playing simultaneously. At the core of The Mikado is Gilbert's usual topsy-turvey-dom, here a condemned criminal placed as Lord High Executioner to foil the the Mikado's cruel edict, and the Mikado's son disguised as a second trombone. The satire is of English society, but shot through with terrific characters who are comic yet essential to the plot. This is all overlaid with a Japanese setting inspired by the recent fashion for things Japanese. Then there is the fascinating Pirandellian element, the chorus knows that they are only playing characters 'We are gentlemen of Japan'.
Different productions have emphasised different layers, so that New Sadlers Wells Opera's 1986 production was set in the Oriental department of Liberty, the hub of that original fashion for things Japanese, whilst Jonathan Miller's production for ENO honed in on the Englishness with its 1930s Grand Hotel and tap-dancing bell boys.
For his production of Gilbert & Sullivan's The Mikado for Charles Court Opera, director John Savournin has chosen to focus on the English satire. The setting is still Japan, but post-World War Two with British diplomats in the province of Totori, with the Mikado becoming the governor-general of Japan. We caught up with the production at the Arcola Theatre on 20 September 2023, Matthew Palmer was the Mikado and Peter Rush (Pish Tush), Robin Bailey was Charles Chauncey (Nanki Poo), Matthew Kellett was Colin Cole (Koko), Matthew Siveter was Hugh Barr (Poo Bah), Alys Roberts was Victoria Plum (Yum Yum), Meriel Cunningham was Milly King (Pitti Sing), Jennifer Clark was Pip Bow (Peep Bow) and Amy J Payne was Katisha, with the accompaniment played on the piano by David Eaton. Designs were by Rachel Szmukler, lighting by Rachel E Cleary and choreography by Damian Czarnecki.
The very first meeting of the Academy of Ancient Music (AAM) took place on 17th September 1973 at All Saints’ Church, Petersham, in the London borough of Richmond-upon-Thames with founder/director, Christopher Hogwood, recording overtures by Thomas Arne, well known, of course, for his patriotic song Rule, Britannia! Therefore, to mark such an auspicious occasion as their Golden Jubilee, Dame Emma Kirkby, John McMunn and Laurence Cummings (AAM’s current music director) share their memories of the orchestra in a brand-new short film.
'We are thrilled to celebrate 50 years of the Academy of Ancient Music' says Laurence Cummings. 'Our anniversary is an opportunity to look back at AAM’s impressive history and celebrate our continued commitment in using period-specific instruments and original sources thus enabling AAM to bring the music we love so dearly vividly to life in committed and vibrant performances.'
The season launches with a performance of Handel’s Music for the Royal Fireworks at the Barbican (18 October 2023) with AAM - a pioneering orchestra who simply redefined period-instrument performance - offering a fresh perspective and vigour to this iconic work which has been a mainstay of the orchestra’s repertoire since its inception.
The celebrations continue off stage with the release of a new book by acclaimed journalist and former Hogwood Fellow, Richard Bratby (19 October 2023, Elliott & Thompson). The book charts AAM’s journey since its trailblazing first decades through the digital boom of the 1980s right up to the present day.
The 50th anniversary season also sees AAM complete a landmark recording project with scholar-pianist, Robert Levin, 30 years after it first began. Levin and AAM will release the final recordings in their Mozart cycle this season. Upon completion (the last disc is due out in June 2024) the cycle becomes the first recording of Mozart’s complete works for keyboard and orchestra on either modern or historical instruments.
Enjoying a worldwide reputation for excellence in baroque and classical music, AAM has released more than 300 albums to date while collecting countless accolades over the course of their musical journey including Classic BRIT, Gramophone and Edison awards. Now recording on their own label, AAM is immensely proud to be one of the most period-instrument orchestras to be heard online with over one million monthly listeners on streaming platforms.
Beyond the concert hall, AAM is committed to nurturing the audiences, artists and arts managers of the future through their innovative education initiative AAMplify. Working with music colleges and universities across the UK, AAM engages with the next generation of period instrumentalists with side-by-side sessions, masterclasses and other opportunities designed to bridge the gap between the conservatoire and the profession, safeguarding the future of historical performance.
Proudly holding positions of associate ensemble at London’s Barbican Centre and at Venice’s Teatro San Cassiano, AAM is also orchestra-in-residence at the University of Cambridge, The Apex, Bury St Edmunds and at Milton Abbey International Summer Music Festival in Dorset.
Ethel Smyth: Der Wald; Natalya Romaniw, Claire Barnett-Jones, Robert Murray, Andrew Shaw, Morgan Pearse, BBC Singers, BBC Symphony Orchestra, conductor John Andrews; Resonus Classics
Ethel Smyth's first major success receives its premiere recording, revealing a striking piece of late-Romanticism in a terrific and wonderfully empathetic performance
When the guns began to roar and the armies march at the beginning of World War I, it marked a significant divide in Ethel Smyth's career. German-trained, she had remained something of a German composer, performances of her work across Europe being far more common than in England. In 1914, she had major European performances of her operas planned, the two being Der Wald and Strandrecht (the German version of The Wreckers). Whilst she had already started work on her lighter opera, The Boatswain's Mate, you do wonder what Smyth's career would have been like without the interruption of war. Never again would she write large-scale romantic drama and her final three operas are smaller scale and firmly English, and it is perhaps also worth bearing in mind that when the war concluded, Smyth was already 60.
Earlier this year, The Opera Makers give Der Wald it's first London outing since its UK premiere (in 1902) in a small-scale performance [see my review]. Now the work's full romantic atmosphere can be appreciated in a new recording on Resonus Classics from John Andrews, the BBC Symphony Orchestra and BBC Singers on Resonus Classics with Natalya Romaniw, Claire Barnett-Jones, Robert Murray, Andrew Shore and Morgan Pearse on a recording supported by the Ambache Charitable Trust. The work's libretto, by Smyth and her friend (and sometime lover) Henry (HB) Brewster, was written in German, but is here given in English in the translation, I presume, that Smyth had done for the work's triumphant UK premiere at Covent Garden in 1902.
The 18th Malcolm Arnold Festival, celebrating Northampton's colourful and charismatic son, returns in October with a weekend of live events and a digital live-stream.
On 14 and 15 October, Northampton will be filled with Arnold-related musical events. John Gibbons conducts the Northampton Symphony Orchestra in a concert that includes a suite from Arnold's 1954 ballet, Rinaldo and Armida (choreographed by Sir Frederick Ashton), and Hilary Davan Wetton conducts the LGT String Orchestra (an ensemble featuring highly talented young soloists between the ages of 13 and 23 from over 20 nations) in a programme that include Arnold's Oboe Concerto with Melanie Ragge and his Serenade for Guitar and Strings with Hugh Millington.
Throughout weekend there are performances given by The Enderby Band, the Nick Budd Brass Quintet and Northamptonshire County Youth Concert Band featuring Arnold's music for brass and wind, and there is a masterclass with clarinettist Emma Johnson focusing on Arnold's music for clarinet.
The live-streamed event is on Sunday 29 October, full details to come.
De Profundis - the finale to the 2022 Glasgow Cathedral Festival with light, poetry and music from three brass bands
Glasgow Cathedral Festival returns for its seventh season with a weekend of events from 28 September to 1 October 2023 filling Glasgow's oldest building with a wide variety of music from chamber music and cutting-edge electronics to silent film and Minimalism.
The headline event for this year is a performance of Canto Ostinato, a 1974 work by Dutch composer Simeon ten Holt (1923-2012). An iconic work of Dutch Minimalism, Canto Ostinato will be performed on four pianos by 12 pianists from the Piano Association of St Andrews over three hours, against a video backdrop from Trenchone Industries, projected directly onto the gothic cathedral interior. The audience will be invited to move around and get a drink or sit back and relax—creating their own experience of this unique spectacle.
There are two classic silent films with live musical accompaniment. Oleksandr Dovzhenko’s film Earth (1930), a beautiful hymn to nature, will have a new jazz-based score from Ukrainian duo Misha Kalinin (guitar) and Roksana Smirnova (piano). F W Murnau's romance-drama Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans (1927), which won three Oscars at the first ever Academy Awards, will have a score from organist, composer and improvisor Thierry Escaich.
There are lunchtime chamber-music recitals from flautist Matthew James Higham with pianist Hye Soo Kang, the Sacconi Quartet and pianist Emma Abbate, and organist Richard Gowers. Twighlight in the Crypt features Columbian-American soprano Stephanie Lamprea and sound artist Alistair MacDonald for a performance integrating the human voice with avant-garde electronics with music by Katrin Klose, Robert Laidlow, Lisa Robertson and Alistair MacDonald.
There are free tours of the historic building and cathedral’s master stonemason will give a talk explaining the ancient techniques used over the centuries in his fascinating craft, accompanied by a tour of the yard.
Glasgow Cathedral opened in 1197 and is the oldest cathedral on mainland Scotland, though much of the present building dates from the 13th-century rebuilding. The cathedral is dedicated to St Mungo, whose tomb lies at the centre of the building's lower church. Following its foundation in 1451, the University of Glasgow held its first classes within the cathedral's chapter house. Since the Reformation the building has housed Church of Scotland congregations.
Bach: Harpsichord Concertos, BWV 1052, 1055, 1054, 1059; Steven Devine, Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment; Resonus Classics
Single instruments and intimate recording make for a vibrant and satisfying sound on this exciting new disc of Bach's keyboard concertos
I have long been fascinated with Bach's harpsichord concertos, what were they supposed to sound like and what were they for. The concertos for single harpsichord and accompaniment survive in a neat manuscript in Bach's own hand, so no questions there. But put a harpsichord together with an ensemble of instruments and you have problems in a hall of any size, the tone of the keyboard rarely carries as well as other instruments; it fills in gaps well enough (usually, but not always, that is however another discussion), but hardly dominates in concerto mode and I have heard plenty of live performances where the soloist was hardly done justice to from the middle of the hall.
Perhaps my ears are at fault. But, clearly Bach's idea of a keyboard concerto is rather different to our modern ideas. Wanda Landowska playing her steel-frame industrial-sized harpsichord this was not. However, wouldn't it be good to have some sort of eye-witness description of exactly what happened at Cafe Zimmerman? What sort of instrument did Bach play, was there an additional continuo instrument besides the soloist, how many instrumentalist played, how big was the room, what was the acoustic effect. And that is all without going into the fact that Cafe Zimmerman ran and outdoor musical season too!
On this new disc from Resonus Classics, Steven Devine directs the Orchestra of the Age Enlightenment (OAE) from the harpsichord in four of Bach's keyboard concertos, those in D minor, BWV 1052, A major, BWV 1055, and D major, BWV 1054, along with Devine's reconstruction of that in D minor, BWV 1059 which survives in fragmentary form but which was going to be based on the opening sinfonia of the cantata Geistund Seele wird verwirret.
The Dublin Theatre Festival (28 September to 1 October 2023) has as its mission to present a programme of exceptional theatrical experiences that will appeal to the diverse communities and visitors that make up the city. It is Europe’s first theatre festival and still one of the leading ones, presenting the best of international and Irish theatre (also dance and opera). Some of this year's highlights include two pieces from the Irish National Opera, the premiere of Éna Brennan's dystopian chamber-opera Breathwork and a new production of Gounod's warhorse Faust.
Éna Brennan is a Dublin-based composer, arranger, violinist and graphic designer, originally from Brussels. Her most recent commissions include a micro-opera for the Irish National Opera project '20 Shots of Opera' which has led to her participation in INO’s artistic development programme. Her new piece, Breathwork with a libretto by David Pountney is an intimate chamber opera lasting around 20 minutes, a statement of horror and protest in response to the destruction of our environment. It is a companion work to a larger composition Hold Your Breath by Éna Brennan and David Pountney which has been commissioned by Bregenzer Festspiele.
Gounod's Faust will be directed by Jack Furness [who gave a brilliant, poet reimagining to Dvorak's Rusalka at Garsington last year, see my review], so expect something intriguing and striking, and conducted by Elaine Kelly (the company's resident conductor), with American tenor Duke Kim in the title role, and Irish soprano Jennifer Davis as Marguerite.
Elsewhere are the festival Junk Ensemble present Powerful Trouble, Shaune Dunne presents The Solution, a theatrical hybrid mixing dance, theatre and new music, there is a new dance performance for audiences age seven and over from Theatre for Children, whilst Luke Murphy's Volcano blurs the lines of experimental theatre, contemporary dance and psychological sci-fi thriller in live performance made for the Netflix era
The Glasshouse International Centre for Music (Photo: Thomas Jackson Tynesight Photography)
The Sage Gateshead has changed its name. The search for the new name, The Glasshouse International Centre for Music, arose not because of some daft idea of re-branding but simply because it was announced that an arena and conference centre would be built next door and would be called The Sage! The new name is inspired by the idea that 'Music lives and grows here'. The new identity was created with Manchester-based design team Music. Their process kicked off with conversations with people from across the North East.
Across last weekend, 16-17 September, The Glasshouse threw open its doors for two days of live music, building tours and music-making opportunities as part of the Open House weekend. The Glasshouse is also launching a new Music Pass, planting a seed to support future music lovers. For every baby born in the North East and Cumbria this year the charity will give families a voucher to be spent on their concerts, gigs, or classes.
The centre is also taking live music to other parts of the region. The Glasshouse and the Royal Northern Sinfonia plan a season of nine concerts in Middlesbrough Town Hall and return to Carlisle for the first time since 2018 with a season of seven concerts.
The season in Middlesbrough opens with Jaume Santonja conducting Jörg Widmann, Beethoven and Tchaikovsky's Rococo Variations with cellist Bruno Philippe, and other highlights include Dinis Sousa conducting Brahms' Piano Concerto No. 2 with soloist Sunwook Kim, and Peter Whelan conducting Messiah with the chorus of Royal Northern Sinfonia celebrating its 50th birthday, along with soloists Nardus Williams, Jess Dandy, Laurence Kilsby and Ashley Riches.
The Carlisle season kicks of with Eduardo Strausser conducting Beethoven and Mozart, then Dinis Sousa conducts a music by Robert and Clara Schumann including pianist Isata Kanneh-Mason in Clara Schumann’s Piano Concerto.
In Search of Lost Dance - Ravel: Trio, Pavane pour une infante défunte, Le Tombeau de Couperin; Linos Piano Trio; AVI Reviewed 18 September 2023
Creating a ravishing sound world from the opening notes, the Linos Piano Trio bring historically informed techniques Ravel's music and make sophisticated magic, transforming our view of this music
The Linos Piano Trio's In Search of Lost Dance on Avi Music (a co-production with SWR2) pairs Ravel's Trio for violin, cello and piano in A minor with the trio's own arrangements of Pavane pour une infante défunte and Le Tombeau de Couperin. The trio, Prach Boondiskulchok (piano), Konrad Elias-Trostmann (violin) and Vladimir Waltham (cello), play on period instruments, an Érard Concert Grand from 1882, a violin by Peter Greiner (2010), after Guarneri del Gesù from 1743, and a cello from Naples ca. 1880. Both string instruments use gut strings with the top one wound.
The use of historically informed performance practice in 20th-century music is becoming more important, Ensembles like Les Siècles demonstrate how icons of modernism such as Stravinsky's The Rite of Spring can be transformed by period instruments and techniques. For this disc, the Linos Trio have gone beyond the pianos that might have been used in recordings from the 1910s and 1920s to the sort of piano that Ravel had at home. As Prach Boondiskulchok explains in the booklet, "Ravel owned and composed on an Érard piano with parallel stringing and a mostly-wooden frame. This is in contrast to the Steinway design of the same period, which he also knew and played, which was cross-strung and had a steel frame to support the higher tension—the design that has become predominant in concert pianos today. The parallel stringing and lower tension of the Érard produced more timbral differences across the range of the piano, and a more transparent sound that is closer to that of string instruments."
With the string instruments on the other hand, we are mainly talking about the fact that players used gut strings, not metal, and these blend wonderfully with the Érard piano. Something the trio found out by experimenting with other set ups. As regards how to play, there are recordings of course, but these raise questions as well as answer them. But what the trio seem to have achieved seems to be based on a real combination of research, experiment and experience. The results are pure aural magic.
%20Etienne%20Dupuis%20ROH%20Forza%202023%20%C2%A9%20Camilla%20Greenwell%203703.jpg "Verdi: La Forza del Destino - Étienne Dupuis - Royal Opera 2023 (Photo: Camilla Greenwell)")
%20Jean-Baptiste-Millot%202.jpg "Vadym Kholodenko (Photo: Jean-Baptiste Millot)")
.jpg "hoto montage - Wise Music; (photo permissions © Fritz Curzon Photography, ©June Mendoza)")
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