Earth Unwrapped: Sirens for a wounded planet - Kings Place's latest year-long series announced

Kings Place's 17th instalment in its year-long Unwrapped series will be exploring our relationship with nature and the eco-system, plant life and ornithology, the climate crisis, activism, protest and more, through music and spoken word. 

Earth Unwrapped, subtitled Sirens for a wounded planet, begins in January 2025 and continues throughout that year. The series will feature artists in residence, Mercury Prize nominated singer-songwriter Sam Lee, composer and producer Gazelle Twin (aka UK composer, producer, singer and visual artist Elizabeth Bernholz) and sound artist Jason Singh. 

The Sacconi Quartet and Festival Voices open Earth Unwrapped with a rare performance of Terry Riley’s Sun Rings, celebrating Riley’s 90th birthday in 2025 and the first London performance of the work in over 20 years. Utilising audio recordings of NASA’s Voyager I and II, the 10-movement suite questions humanity’s place in the universe. The Ligeti Quartet also celebrate Riley with a performance of his seminal work Cadenza on the Night Plain and the premiere of a new arrangement of Poppy Nogood and the Phantom Band.

Theatre of Voices present the UK premiere of a new work by Julia Wolfe (a Kings Place commission) alongside Nigel Osborne’s The Tree of Life, inspired by his work in Lebanon with Syrian children in refugee camps. Erland Cooper presents the world premiere of his new work The Peregrine for small ensemble, inspired by J.A. Baker’s book of the same name. Cellist Nicholas Altstaedt joins the Carice Singers for an evening of old and new music that questions our relationship with an increasingly threatened environment including premieres from Raquel García-Tomas and Josephine Stephenson, as well as music from Galina Grigorjeva and JS Bach.

Violinist Daniel Pioro joins forces with Manchester Camerata for Vivaldi’s The Four Seasons, interspersed with newly commissioned poetry by Sir Michael Morpurgo preceded by Caroline Shaw’s The Evergreen. Pioro also curates a weekend of deep listening entitled Time Unravelling, Sound Unfolding, inspired by Pauline Oliveros’ concept of deep listening. Audiences will be invited to actively listen and explore emotional states via the music of Bach, Oliveros, Tenney and a new commission in collaboration with Valgeir Sigurðsson. Oliveros’s music is also featured by The House of Bedlam and soprano Juliet Fraser, pairing her To Valerie Solanas and Marilyn Monroe in Recognition of Their Desperation, written in the aftershock of political upheavals of 1968, with Larry Goves Crow Rotations, performed in-the-round and enhanced through the d&b audiotechnik Soundscape system.

The venue's resident ensemble, Aurora Orchestra, present a year-long exploration of Gustav Mahler and his fascination with nature. Resident Quartet, the Piatti Quartet take a contemporary look at our relationship with nature and the English landscape with a programme centred around the poet Alice Oswald, the quartet perform works by Joseph Phibbs, Imogen Holst, Thomas Ades and Britten. Voces8 and the Carducci Quartet present The Lost Birds, an tribute to bird species driven to extinction by humankind. The Solem Quartet contemplate and mourn Earth’s current condition, with works from Hildegard von Bingen, John Metcalf, Nick Martin, Meredith Monk and Max Richter.

All thus plus folk, jazz and much much more. Full details from Kings Place's website.

nonclassical at 20: legendary music promoter celebrates with a concert alongside the London Symphony Orchestra including five world premieres

"in music many people are never exposed to long-form compositions, or more challenging works; and I think they should be"
nonclassical founder, Gabriel Prokofiev

nonclassical in action (Photo: Nick Rutter)

Music promoter, record label and events producer - nonclassical embraces a variety of roles and for twenty years has also embraced other genres and unconventional spaces, cultivating a young and dedicated following. Now celebrating its 20th birthday, nonclassical began in 2004 as a merging of contemporary classical music with electronic music and culture with its first concert of the Elysian Quartet in the Shoreditch club Cargo.

Founded by composer Gabriel Prokofiev, nonclassical reimagined the classical concert experience, with adventurous cross-genre programming using spaces beyond the concert hall that were radical for the early noughties, and directly paved the way for today’s norm of classical music in unconventional spaces and formats. 

Founder, Gabriel Prokofiev, comments: "At the very beginning nonclassical was completely DIY. I had this strong conviction that contemporary classical music had a huge potential audience who just weren’t aware of the existence of new classical music (which they would find to be very relevant and inspiring). The whole project was driven by passion and a belief that contemporary classical was unnecessarily hidden-away, and that it could bring so much to more people's lives. I’ve often commented that most people read long novels, short stories, newspaper articles, comics (a full range of duration & difficulty), but in music many people are never exposed to long-form compositions, or more challenging works; and I think they should be & would benefit from it. Radio & promoters often tend to under-estimate the public, and so us composers need to do out best to get our music out to new audiences."

nonclassical is celebrating 20 years with an event at the Hackney Empire on 26 October 2024, with a programme of music all composed in the last decade, including five world premieres and one UK premiere, showcasing 13 contemporary works from emerging and established composers. 

For the concert, nonclassical joins forces with the London Symphony Orchestra and the evening includes the premiere of sound artist and musician Beatrice Dillon's first work for orchestra, along with the first ever concerto for drum machine and orchestra, plus Tonia Ko demonstrating her bubble wrap virtuosity, Emily Abdy on vocals, Gabriel Prokofiev and Sasha Scott on live electronics, all with the LSO. There will also be a live DJ set from Matthew Herbert.

Further details of the celebratory concert from the Hackney Empire's website.

"Radio & promoters often tend to under-estimate the public, and so us composers need to do out best to get our music out to new audiences" 
 nonclassical founder, Gabriel Prokofiev

From expressionist nightmare to radiant energy: Schoenberg's Pierrot Lunaire & Schubert's String Quintet at Hatfield

Queen Elizabeth I awaiting the performance of Schoenberg's Pierrot Lunaire in the Marble Hall at Hatfield House

Schoenberg: Pierrot Lunaire, Schubert: String Quintet in C; Claire Booth, Ensemble 360, Magnus Johnston, Max Baillie, Brett Dean, Guy Johnston; Hatfield House Music Festival
Reviewed 13 October 2024

A vividly Expressionist account of Schoenberg's influential masterpiece contrasting with Schubert's late chamber work in a performance full of vibrant energy

Two contrasting masterpieces, written under a century apart, each having a completely different effect on its first performance. The premiere of Schoenberg's Pierrot Lunaire in Berlin in 1912 would resonate around the Western classical world. Stravinsky and Edgar Varese and their reports of the premiere would influence French composers such as Ravel, the instrumental ensemble Schoenberg used would become a defining ensemble of 20th century music, and Schoenberg's use of half-speech, half-song would free composers' imaginations. Some 84 years earlier, in Vienna, Schubert's String Quintet in C major had just the opposite effect. Written in the last months of Schubert's life, he failed to interest a publisher in the work and the manuscript languished after Schubert's death. The work was only published in 1853.

The closing concert of this year's Hatfield House Music Festival, in the Marble Hall at Hatfield House on Sunday 13 October 2024 paired the two works. Soprano Claire Booth and Ensemble 360 (Juliet Bausor, flute, Robert Plane, clarinet, Benjamin Nabarro, violin, Gemma Rosefield, cello, Tim Horton, piano) performed Schoenberg's Pierrot Lunaire, then the festival's artistic director, cellist Guy Johnston joined Magnus Johnston, violin, Max Baillie, violin, the composer Brett Dean wearing his viola playing hat, and cellist Gemma Rosefield from Ensemble 360 to perform Schubert's String Quintet.

Claire Booth has lived a long time with Schoenberg's Pierrot Lunaire, she first performed it with Pierre Boulez shortly after leaving college and studied it with Jane Manning. Claire Booth and Ensemble 360 first performed Pierrot Lunaire together last year and they have since recorded the work and done further performances this year. In June this year, Claire Booth and I talked about Schoenberg, see my interview 'Expressionism and rigour', and it is worth revisiting her thoughts on Pierrot Lunaire. 

'Claire is a firm believer in the necessity of being accurate when it comes to the pitches Schoenberg notated, and she points out that if you simply sing the vocal line, then the pitches sung prove to be important to what is going on musically underneath. Whatever else Claire does with the Sprechstimme, she wants it to be accurate and she comments that with the majority of other roles in the classical and 20th century repertoire, it is regarded as important that you are accurate but with Pierrot Lunaire, there has developed the idea that this does not matter. She goes on to emphasise that within the bounds of respect for the notes that are written, there is still lots of scope; once you find the notes, then there is lots that you can do with it. Schoenberg deserves that you be rigorous.'

The performers were placed in an arc, with Booth at its centre. The result, in terms of the sound, meant that she was very much primus inter pares rather than being completely spotlit, her vocal line part of the chamber ensemble. Word, pitch and vocal expression are clearly important to her, but the performance encompassed far more than that and ever syllable was accompanied by vivid gesture. Each of the movements became a small masterpiece in expressionist story-telling with Booth's body language almost as important as the sound of her voice. We were provided with English translations but frankly, if you looked down to read them you missed so much.

The pairing of Marc-Antoine Charpentier’s Actéon with Jean-Philippe Rameau’s Pygmalion proved a perfect double-bill for baroque aficionados offering a delightful, entertaining and pleasant evening

Page from the edition of Ovid's Metamorphoses published by Lucantonio Giunti in Venice, 1497

Marc-Antoine Charpentier: Actéon, Jean-Philippe Rameau:Pygmalion; Anna Dennis, Rachel Redmond, Katie Bray, Thomas Walker , Academy of Ancient Music, Laurence Cummings; Barbican
Reviewed by Tony Cooper, 9 October 2024

Rarities on the British stage such dramas of human emotion and divine power contained in Marc-Antoine Charpentier’s Actéon and Jean-Philippe Rameau’s Pygmalion were penned by two of the most imaginative and well-respected composers of the French baroque era. 

The Academy of Ancient Music’s two mythological masterpieces of baroque opera, Marc-Antoine Charpentier’s Actéon, and Jean-Philippe Rameau’s Pygmalion, sung in French at London’s Milton Court Concert Hall was blessed by an extremely fine and stellar quartet of soloists comprising Anna Dennis and Rachel Redmond (sopranos), Katie Bray (mezzo-soprano), Thomas Walker (tenor) and Laurence Cummings (director/harpsichord). 

Based upon the third book of Metamorphoses, written by the celebrated Roman poet Ovid between 1683 and 1685, the original title of Charpentier’s one-act opera is Actéon - Pastorale en musique; it received a private performance at the Hôtel de Guise, the house of the composer’s appreciative and wealthy patron, the Duchesse de Guise affectionately known as Mlle de Guise. The author of the libretto, however, is not known but is often thought as being Thomas Corneille. An associate of Jean-Baptiste Lully his adaptations of stories from the Metamorphoses bear a likeness to the libretto of Actéon. 

Intimate & communicative: Solomon's Knot brings its distinctive approach to Monteverdi's Vespers of 1610 at Wigmore Hall

Title page of the "Bassus Generalis" for one of the partbooks in which the Vespers were published in 1610

Monteverdi: Vespers of 1610; Solomon's Knot; Wigmore Hall
Reviewed 12 October 2024

A chance to hear Monteverdi's vespers in an acoustic bringing out the more intimate qualities, with the highly communicative singers enjoying the more madrigalian elements of the music

After hearing The Sixteen in Monteverdi's Vespers of 1610 in the acoustic splendour of Temple Church [see my review] earlier in the week, on Saturday it was the turn of a rather different approach.

Solomon's Knot, artistic director Jonathan Sells, returned to Wigmore Hall on Saturday 12 October 2024 with their own distinctive take on Monteverdi's Vespers of 1610, performed by ten singers and 14 instrumentalists, all on a very full Wigmore Hall stage.

The singers sang from memory, and stood in a circle with the instrumentalists behind. The result was quite a feat, both the sense of the singers performing directly do us without intervening music or music stands, but also giving such a complex piece without conductor and there were some passages that seemed to hover on the edge of the possible. It also brought out that, for all the grandness of the writing in some places, much of the work has an intimate quality. 

In the Magnificat, singers only stood up when performing so that many movements were performed by just three or four, so that solo blended into duet or trio into ensemble. There was also a chamber feel to everyone's approach, the sound was very much vocal ensemble, a group of individuals responding to each other (and we could clearly see them doing just that), with individual voices clear rather than a perfect blend. There was also a feeling of spontaneity to it, with each shaping lines accordingly.

This approach is probably closer to what Monteverdi might have imagined. What I missed, however, was a bit of space in the acoustic. In the clarity of the Wigmore Hall, everything came over admirably yet the slightly dry warmth did not compensate for the air that a more generous, church acoustic might bring. That said, it was glorious being able to hear the detail in such clarity.

Waiting till they feel they have something to say: I chat to Trio Bohémo about their debut disc

Trio Bohémo

Formed in 2019 by three Czech musicians, Matouš Pěruška (violin), Kristina Vocetková (cello) and Jan Vojtek (piano), Trio Bohémo released their debut disc on Supraphon in August 2024, featuring Schubert’s great E flat Piano Trio D929 and Smetana’s Trio in G minor Op 15. The disc has already garnered praise, and the trio has a tour of the UK during October and November 2024 [see their website for details]. 

I recently spoke to the three of them, via Zoom, to chat about the new disc, their attitude to programming and performing, and their fondness for England. The result turned into a lively discussion as they proved to be very engaging company.

I was intrigued by the programme for their debut disc, the pairing of Schubert and Smetana is not an obvious one, the two works were written nearly 30 years apart and they rather inhabit different worlds. Recording Smetana's trio was an obvious choice, the three feel a deep connection with the work and the recording linked to the 200th anniversary of Smetana's birth this year. 

The pairing of Schubert's trio took more time to decide, with discussions with the record company but the three pointed out that both are great works for piano trio. Remarkably both composers were similar ages when they wrote the pieces (though Smetana would live to be 60 whilst Schubert died aged 31, the year after he completed the trio). 

There is also a possible thematic link, that of grief and death. Smetana's trio was written in the wake of the death of his daughter, whilst Schubert's trio was amongst the last works he completed before he died. Arguably though, Schubert did not know that he was dying, but both works have an element of hope in the darkness. Smetana's trio ends in the major and you feel, in the piece, that sense of emotional healing that Smetana felt as he wrote the work. The three performers also comment that the more serious aspects of the programme balance their own naturally cheerful personalities!

Alma: Ella Milch-Sheriff's opera based on the life of Alma Mahler premieres Vienna Volksoper

Alma Mahler remains a fascinating figure. Musically active as a composer, albeit for a relatively short time, her life has been rather overshadowed by her relationships. She married the composer Gustav Mahler, the architect Walter Gropius, and the author Franz Werfel, whilst her affairs included the painter Gustav Klimt, the composer Alexander von Zemlinsky and the painter Oskar Kokoschka. The death of daughter Manon Gropius partly inspired Alban Berg's Violin Concerto. 

Since her death in 1964, her life has inspired a wide variety of art and music. Britten dedicated his Nocturne, Op. 60 to her. American satirist Tom Lehrer described her obituary as “the juiciest, spiciest, raciest obituary it has ever been my pleasure to read” and he wrote his song, Alma about her [see YouTube]. Stephen McNeff and Aoife Mannix' opera Beyond the Garden was inspired by Alma Mahler's relationship with her daughter. The opera was commissioned by Slovenian Chamber Music Theatre and premiered by them in Slovenia in 2019, and received its UK in 2022 [see Stephen's article about the opera]

Now, Alma Mahler's life has inspired another composer. Israeli composer Ella Milch-Sheriff's five-act opera, Alma, with a libretto by Ido Ricklin, receives its premiere at the Vienna Volksoper on 26 October 2024. Directed by Ruth Brauer-Kvam and conducted by Omer Meir Wellber, the work asks the question, what happens when a woman is forced to give up her potential as a composer? A portrait opera, the piece focuses on Alma as a mother, with Alma being played by soprano Annette Dasch.

Full details from the Volksoper website.

On tour from New York, the Philip Glass Ensemble at the Cambridge Music Festival

Philip Glass: Akhnaten - English National Opera, 2016 (Photo: © Richard Hubert Smith)

Philip Glass: Glassworks plus excerpts from Satyagraha, Akhnaten and The Photographer; Lisa Bielawa, Peter Hess. Mick Ross, Sam Sadigursky, Andrew Sterman, Philip Glass Ensemble, music director Michael Riesman, sound engineers Dan Bora, Ryan Kelly, production manager Michael Amacio; Cambridge Music Festival at Cambridge Corn Exchange
Reviewed by Tony Cooper, 1 October 2024

Philip Glass’ music is instantly recognisable with its pulsating rhythms, hypnotic repetition and slowly shifting patterns of notes. His music sits somewhere between classical music and rock, intricately constructed yet filled with familiar chords and clean-cut electronic sounds

Showing talent from a very early age, Philip Glass, born 31 January 1937 in Baltimore, Maryland, widely regarded as one of the most influential musicians of the 21st century, developed his great love of music from his father who owned a record shop. He later discovered that many relations on his father’s side of the family had been musicians, too, including a cousin (pianist) as well as several vaudeville performers. His parents, Latvian and Russian-Jewish emigrants, helped Holocaust survivors at the end of the Second World War by welcoming them into their home to learn English, find a job and rebuild their lives in the United States.  

Employing short ideas which gradually change resulting in an exceptionally hypnotic-layered effect so associated with minimalism, Glass much prefers to describe his work as ‘music with repetitive structures’. Therefore, over the course of a long and distinguished career, he has evolved such repetitive structures to produce a style that is instantly recognisable as a piece of ‘Philip Glass music’. 

Originally a flautist, Glass eventually focused his musical education on the keyboard. By the age of 15, he was studying mathematics and philosophy at the University of Chicago followed by composition at New York’s Juilliard School where among his fellow students was Steve Reich, widely recognised as the ‘founding father’ of the ‘Minimalist movement’. Fellow Americans such as La Monte Young, Terry Riley, Moondog and, indeed, John Adams, were in the front line in developing compositional techniques exploiting a minimalistic approach to music. 

The Light of Paradise: Paul Mealor's new choral opera inspired by medieval mystic Margery Kempe

The mediaeval mystic, Margery Kempe (ca.1373-1448) is a fascinating figure. She freed herself from the restraint of marriage and embarked on pilgrimages to sacred sites in Europe and the Middle East, dressed usually in white. Kempe considered her travels as a series of divine trials and whilst nowadays she can be seen a suffering the symptoms of various mental illnesses, she distilled them into The Booke, a spiritual autobiography that she began in 1430, despite being illiterate.

The manuscript was copied, probably shortly before 1450, by someone who signed himself Salthows; this scribe has been shown to be the Norwich monk Richard Salthouse. However after the 16th century Kempe's book was essentially lost; the only surviving manuscript was found again in 1934 the private library of the Butler-Bowdon family, and this is now in the British Library.

The Light of Paradise is a new work by Paul Mealor which was commissioned by the Zurich Chamber Singers. An hour long work for choir and saxophone quartet, Mealor describes it as a choral opera. Its fourteen movements, devotions Mealor calls them, are loosely based on the fourteen stations of the Way of the Cross, using words by Kempe to create a narrative arc, presenting the story of her pilgrimage as well as unfolding her religious universe. 

The result is neither opera nor oratorio, and mixes choral writing with solos and music for the saxophone quartet. Mealor creates a distinctive sound world all of his own. Whilst Mealor's musical style is a long way from that of Arvo Pärt, listening to The Light of Paradise you cannot help but think about the way Pärt reinvented the Lutheran passion in his own image. 

British composers have rather shied away from the more ecstatic, mystical side to Catholicism. You have to remember that Elgar's Dream of Gerontius was regarded as rather too Catholic for the Three Choirs Festival (even as late as the 1930s, the Dean of Peterborough banned the work from the cathedral). So it is intriguing, and heartening, to find Mealor treating religious mysticism so directly and in  work that makes it approachable.

Paul Mealor's The Light of Paradise was premiered by the Zurich Chamber Singers and Sonic Art Saxophone Quartet, conductor Christian Erny in January 2024 [see details], and is released on the Berlin Classics label - https://BC.lnk.to/lightofparadiseID

Everyone clearly enjoyed themselves and brought the house down: Harry Christophers & The Sixteen in Monteverdi's Vespers of 1610 at Temple Church

Basilica of Santa Barbara at the Palazzo Ducale in Mantua
where Monteverdi was working when he wrote his Vespers of 1610

Monteverdi: Vespers of 1610; The Sixteen, Harry Christophers; Temple Music Foundation at Temple Church
Reviewed 8 October 2024

Technically assured and finely expressive performance that filled the Temple Church with extraordinary richness from bravura moments to intimate magic 

There is something rather tantalising about Monteverdi's Vespers of 1610, so many questions. We tend to view it in the light of Monteverdi's subsequent appointment to St Mark's in Venice, but if we think about Monteverdi at the time of writing it (working in Mantua, keen to leave and with an eye on a job in Rome) it is less clear where it was written for. The work is full of questions like that, and prime amongst those of course is whether it is a 'work' at all. But what we cannot question is the extraordinary richness of the music, and all those questions mean that each music director is free to take their own view of the work, make their own decisions.

At Temple Church on 8 October 2024, Temple Music Foundation presented Harry Christophers and The Sixteen in Monteverdi's Vespers of 1610. Christophers took a large-scale, choral view of the work so we had a choir of 20 plus and instrumental ensemble of 18 with soloists Katy Hill and Charlotte Mobbs (soprano), Jeremy Budd and Mark Dobell (tenor), Ben Davies and Eamonn Dougan (bass) stepping out from the choir, though this should not disguise the extraordinary quality of the individual soloists. 

Using full choir to perform the large-scale psalm settings in the work means that you need technically adept choral singers, and The Sixteen had that in spades. This was one of those performances where you never needed to worry about the significant technical difficulties, all was superbly realised, even to the Magnificat which was performed at the high pitch (another one of those questions).

A pathway for the next generation of young voices: BBC Singers and National Youth Choir announce three-year partnership

BBC Singers and National Youth Voices with Nicholas Chalmers
at the BBC Singers' Centenary Concert, October 2024

The BBC Singers and the National Youth Choir have announced a three-year partnership between the two organisations to open the pathway for the next generation of young voices. The partnership will centre on the collective ambition for young singers to gain invaluable experience of performing and recording together, focusing on education initiatives to provide opportunities for students from across the country to experience the joy of singing. It will encompass work involving National Youth Choir’s oldest singers, aged 18-25; its chamber ensemble, National Youth Voices; and its professional development scheme for singers, conductors and composers; the Emerging Professional Artists programme.

The two groups shared the stage at the BBC Proms earlier this year performing Beethoven's Symphony No. 9 from memory with Aurora Orchestra, and the National Youth Choir joined the BBC Singers at their centenary concert at the Barbican on 2 October 2024, where they performed Numbers by former National Youth Choir Young Composer Shruthi Rajasekar, led by Nicholas Chalmers, who is principal conductor of the National Youth Choir’s flagship ensemble, National Youth Choir (18-25 Years), and associate conductor, learning at the BBC Singers.

Secret Kiss: English-language premiere of one of Peter Eötvös' last compositions

In 19th century Japan, a young Frenchman travels to Japan to learn about the secrets of silk production. While visiting a rich man, he observes a young girl with her eyes closed. She suddenly opens her eyes, looks at the Frenchman and points silently to a tea cup in front of her. Out of this single glance, the two protagonists become entangled in a moving and wonderful story.

Inspired by the 1997 novel Silk, by Italian author Alessandro Baricco, Secret Kiss is one of Peter Eötvös' last compositions and it is receiving its English-language premiere in November when BCMG (Birmingham Contemporary Music Group) perform it at the CBSO Centre and Wigmore Hall. Geoffrey Patterson conducts, with soprano Alice Rossi and Meg Kubota as the Reciter. The programme also features music by Rebecca Saunders, Julian Anderson, Lisa Illean and Sir Harrison Birtwistle including his final ensemble work, ...when falling asleep.

The melodrama Secret Kiss was composed for the Japanese singer and performer, Ryoko Aoki and the work was first performed in 2019, in a Japanese translation, by Aoki conducted by the composer 

The same week as the performances of Secret Kiss, BCMG returns to Wigmore Hall as part of the hall's Daniel Kidane focus day when, conducted by Gabriella Teychenné, BCMG perform a programme of Kidane's music with tenor Elgan Llŷr Thomas and guitarist Pétur Jónasson including Cradle Song, a setting of the poem by William Blake for tenor and ensemble, commissioned through BCMG's Sound Investment Scheme and premiered in 2023, plus Winged for electric guitar and string quartet, and Pulsing based on a poem by Zodwa Nyoni

Full details from the BCMG website.

Une messe imaginaire: Bruckner & Frank Martin from Lyon

Une messe imaginaire: Bruckner, Martin; Spirito,  Jeune choeur symphonique, Nicole Corti; NoMadMusic
Reviewed 7 October 2024

Magical moments as the French choir Spirito joins forces with its youth choir for a programme of Bruckner motes and Frank Martin's mass

Spirito is a French chamber choir based in Lyon and directed by Nicole Corti. Corti trained as an orchestral conductor under Sergiu Celibidache amongst others, but since working at Notre-Dame-de-Paris in 1993 her focus has been on choral music and sacred music. For this disc on NoMadMusic, Une Messe Imaginaire, Corti pairs Frank Martin's Mass for Double Choir (written 1922/26) with a selection of motets by Anton Bruckner, inserted between the movements of the mass. The Bruckner motets are Ave Maria, Vexilla Regis, Os Justi, and Tantum Ergo and for the Bruckner recordings, Spirito was joined by its sister choir, Jeune choeur symphonique.

The combination of the adult and the young voices brings a lovely focus and clarity to the sound of Bruckner's Ave Maria, the lower voices adding real warmth. Yet when the climax comes, the sound is admirably focused. Corti does not rush things, and I enjoyed that about all her Bruckner performances on the disc, there is time to appreciate things. Next comes Vexilla Regis, a rather lesser known motet, where we can appreciate the balance and sophisticated tone of the choir along with that combination of warm and clarity.

Walking with Dinosaurs: composer Ben Bartlett reflects on the 25th anniversary

Walking with Dinosaurs - Diplodocus-and-Stegosaurus - SOURCE BBC

More than two decades since the first episode of the iconic series, the award-winning soundtrack of Walking With Dinosaurs has been released to celebrate the 25th anniversary of the show on 3 October. First aired on the BBC in 1999 and narrated by Kenneth Branagh, Walking With Dinosaurs became the most-watched factual science programme on British TV of the 20th century, with 15 million people tuning in to watch the first episode, and it is undoubtedly one of the BBC’s greatest success stories.

Composer Ben Bartlett used music to enhance the storytelling of a nature documentary was a first and set a precedent for future programmes, inspiring later series including Planet Earth and The Blue Planet, where music became a vital part of the viewing experience. Walking With Dinosaurs is also returning to TV after 25 years, with a new series on BBC and PBS in 2025, and the soundtrack to the sequel, Walking With Beasts, is also being re-released on 10 October  and includes seven never-before-heard tracks from the show, performed by the BBC Singers.

Looking back at the original Walking with Dinosaurs, Ben Bartlett explains:

When I was commissioned to write this music by BBC 25 years ago, I had no real idea about what I was dealing with. At that time in 1998, animation was in a very nascent stage and I was presented with images of wireframe models being plonked along a landscape that looked as if they were a kids show. It was explained to me that these preparatory animations would then be rendered with shadows, skin tone et cetera et cetera. With these elements added the animations became game-changingly realistic. However, the challenge for me as a composer, was to take these animations from being amazing, up to level of being moving and emotionally charged. This meant that there was a great opportunity for full scale largely emotive score – something I’ve been dreaming about writing for years. Added to this, the BBC recognised the need for a live orchestra - and provided one, the BBC Concert Orchestra. 

My influences at the time ranged from my total obsession with the Rite Of Spring by Stravinsky to all the works of Shostakovich and also many French composers including Ravel, Duttilleux and Koechlin. Besides these I had always had an interest in jazz  piano, and stone of the functional bitonal mixtures of Dave Brubeck and Gill Evans can be detected in my work. I love to juxtapose for example a D Major stack with A flat Major elements - it’s the most delicious balance of discord and homogeneity. This bitonal approaches offer a really rich seam of possibilities which I still play with today. 

In recent years I have had to deal with progressive arthritis in my hands and although not prohibitive to playing per se, does mean I need to be more effective and efficient with my time spent at the keyboard. I am planning several albums in the near future which will involve my own piano playing. 

• Ben Bartlett's website
• Ben Bartlett on Spotify 
• Walking with Dinosaurs on Spotify, on Apple Music

What lies beneath: a brilliant reinvention of Judith Weir's Blond Eckbert at the heart of ETO's exploration of German Romanticism

Judith Weir: Blond Eckbert - English Touring Opera

Do not take my story for a fairytale, Judith Weir: Blond Eckbert; Abigail Kelly, Amy J Payne, Matthew McKinney, Mark Nathan, Aoife Miskelly, Flor McIntosh, William Morgan, Alex Otterburn, conductor: Gerry Cornelius, director: Robin Norton Hall; English Touring Opera at Hackney Empire
Reviewed 5 October 2024

A brilliant reinvention of Judith Weir's opera places a modern interpretation of German Romanticism at the centre of this intriguing and thought-provoking programme, full of terrific performances all round

The reworking, reinterpretation and repurposing of folk tales is at the centre of English Touring Opera's Autumn season. Things opened last week at the Hackney Empire with Rimsky Korsakov's The Snow Maiden (which we will be covering in a few weeks' time), alongside a new opera by Joanna Marie Skillett and Tatty Hennessy, The Wellies based on a Hans Christian Anderson fairy tale. The Wellies is a highly participatory, sensory and interactive piece for audiences with Special Educational Needs and Disabilities (SEND) and early years audiences and is touring to special schools, libraries and studio theatres.

The final element in the tour opened at Hackney Empire on Saturday 5 October 2024, a double bill which paired a new pasticcio, Do not take my story for a fairytale performed by Abigail Kelly, Amy J Payne, Matthew McKinney and Mark Nathan, with Judith Weir's Blond Eckbert performed by Aoife Miskelly, Flora McIntoch, Will Morgan and Alex Otterburn. The conductor was Gerry Cornelius and the director was Robin Norton-Hale with designs by Eleanor Bull. Both works took early German romanticism as their starting point, with the pasticcio using the music and words of early German romanticism with its folk-influences, and Judith Weir's opera being based on a story by Ludwig Tieck, one of the founders of German romanticism.

Judith Weir: Blond Eckbert - English Touring Opera

A glorious noise: from one to eight choirs in I Fagiolini's evening of music from 17th-century Venice and Rome

I Fagiolini during recording sessions for the Benevoli project

From Venice (to Rome) with Love - Benevoli: Missa Benevola, Monteverdi motets, Carissimi: Jephte; I Fagiolini, the Choral Scholars of St Martin-in-the-Fields, The Lyons Mouth, Robert Hollingworth; Church of St Martin-in-the-Fields
Reviewed 4 October 2024

An evening of glorious musico-spatial magic as I Fagiolini revive a rare 17th-century mass for four choirs written for St Peter's Basilica in Rome

In July 2000, I sang in a performance of Orazio Benevoli's Missa Tu es Petrus, a mass for four choirs based on Palestrina's motet Tu es Petrus. Benevoli, a 17th century Roman composer, was a name that was knew to me and the mass was an astonishing experience. Since then, Benevoli's music has remained somewhat obscure, but in 2023, Robert Hollingworth and I Fagiolini started a project exploring Benevoli's multi-choir works. Their first disc, released last year on Coro, featured the Missa Tu es Petrus and now they have returned to the composer with his Missa Benevola, also on Coro.

On Friday 4 October 2024, Robert Hollingworth and I Fagiolini brought Benevoli's Missa Benevola (Missa Maria Prodigio Celeste) to the Church of St Martin-in-the-Fields in their programme From Venice (to Rome) with Love. The programme featured Benevoli's mass performed by I Fagiolini, the Choral Scholars of St Martin-in-the-Fields and The Lyons Mouth interspersed with smaller scale motets by Monteverdi and completed by a performance of the Historia di Jephte by Benevoli's almost exact Roman contemporary, Giacomo Carissini. Continuo was provided by Catherine Pierron (organ), Aileen Henry (harp) and Eligio Quinteiro (chittarone).

17th century Rome responded to the elephantiasis happening to the church buildings by expanding choral forces for grand occasions. This expansion however, did not involve the sort of mammoth choirs that we have come to expect, following late 18th-century and 19th-century practice in Bach and Handel. Instead, the number of parts was increased, music for three choirs and music for four choirs, and the number of choirs might increase further so that a mass for four choirs would be performed by eight choirs dotted around St Peter's Basilica. Each with their own conductor and organist, the result must have been glorious and, sometimes, a complete mess.

After the humans are gone, the instruments still sing and it is important to listen - Jake Heggie on his song cycle, Intonations: Songs from the Violins of Hope

Jake Heggie (Photo: James Niebuhr)

Jake Heggie's song cycle for soprano, violin and string quartet, Intonations: Songs from the Violins of Hope is receiving its UK premiere at violinist Madeleine Mitchell's The Red Violin Festival which takes place in Leeds from 14 to 19 October 2024, where Intonations will be performed by mezzo-soprano Siân Griffiths, violinists Chloe Hanslip and Hong Chow, with Madeleine Mitchell leading the London Chamber Ensemble. I recently chatted to Jake to find out more about the work's inspiration in The Violins of Hopeproject and how the work links to a group of other works inspired by stories arising from the Holocaust.

Intonations was commissioned by Music at Kohl Mansion, a performing arts series South of San Francisco. He explains how he was originally contacted in 2017 by Patricia Moy, artistic director of the performing arts series, as she was arranging to bring The Violins of Hope to the West Coast of America for the first time. She wanted a new work featuring the violins themselves.

The Violins of Hope project presents instruments that were owned by Jewish musicians before and during the Holocaust, representing strength and optimism for the future during mankind’s darkest hour. They have been refurbished by luthiers Amnon and Avshalom Weinstein, founders of The Violins of Hope. Until Patricia Moy contacted him, Jake had never heard of The Violins of Hope before and found it an astounding story. The question was, how to write a piece that featured the instruments and shared their resonance. The request had been for a chamber work, but Jake felt he does song and story-telling best. He asked whether he could write a song cycle and he approached Gene Scheer, who has written the texts for several works for Jake including the opera Moby Dick.

Innate theatricality: composer Adrian Sutton definitively moves out of the theatre with a challenging yet engaging concerto for violinist Fenella Humphreys

Adrian Sutton: Violin Concerto, Short Story, A Fist Full of Fives, Five Theatre Miniatures, War Horse Suite; Fenella Humphreys, BBC Philharmonic Orchestra, Michael Seal; Chandos
Reviewed 2 October 2024

Best known for his music for the stage, Adrian Sutton turns to pure music with an imaginative response to the image of seagulls flying alongside a repurposing of theatrical cues to create an engaging satisfying and thoughtful disc

Composer Adrian Sutton is perhaps best known for his music for War Horse, the stage adaptation of Michael Morpurgo's story though his output is far wider than that, crossing over to concert music. This latest release from Chandos features Michael Seal conducting the BBC Philharmonic Orchestra in a programme of Sutton's music. War Horse is there, but the focus remains firmly on concert music and the centrepiece is the large-scale Concerto for Violin and Orchestra with violinist Fenella Humphreys, alongside a selection of shorter pieces, Short Story, A Fist Full of Fives, and Five Theatre Miniatures, plus the War Horse Suite.

When Sutton was asked to write a work as a response to RVW's The Lark Ascending, his imagination turned to the images of the flight of seagulls, whilst Richard Bach's Jonathan Livingston Seagull found its way there as well. The resulting concerto is a long work, some 25 minutes in three movements which are intended to play as one long journey, Thermals, Far Cliffs and Life Force.

Masters of Wit

Composer and pianist Louis Mander, fresh from the premiere of his opera The Waves (inspired by Virginia Woolf's novel) at the Oslo Opera Festival, is joining forces with narrator Zeb Soanes and tenor Will Diggle for an evening celebrating music and wit in the parlour. 

Masters of Wit at St Peter's Church, Belsize Park on 11 October 2024 will feature songs by Arthur Sullivan, Cole Porter and Noel Coward, along with other gems, plus wit and wisdom from Noel Coward, Oscar Wilde and a host of others including aphorisms, diary entries and anecdotes.

Zeb Soanes is perhaps best known for reading The Shipping Forecast on BBC Radio, but he regularly presents on Classic FM and has created a series of graphic stories with James Mayhew about Gaspard the Fox, inspired by a London urban fox.

Will Diggle played Neville in the premiere of Louis Mander's The Waves, and in 2023 Florence caught him in the premiere of Edward Lambert's The Masque of Vengeance [see Florence's review]. In 2022, Louis Mander's musical Peter Pan, with book and lyrics by Pam Ayres, premiered at the Stroud Arts Festival with a narration by Zeb Soanes.

Full details from Zeb Soane's website.

Eternity In An Hour: Keval Shah and Jess Dandy on their unique reimagining of the Bhagavad Gita

ETERNITY IN AN HOUR - Jess Dandy and Keval Shah by Clare Park

On Tuesday 15 October at Oxford International Song Festival, contralto Jess Dandy and pianist Keval Shah will give the world premiere of Eternity In An Hour, a concert-meditation-ritual combining Western art song and Godsongs, a new set of Sanskrit songs by Indian-American composer, Reena Esmail [one of whose pieces was included in the most recent BBC Ten Pieces earlier this year, see our article].

Esmail’s songs set portions of the Bhagavad Gita, a central scripture of Hinduism and Vedantic thought. Godsongs will be interspersed with works from the western song canon, all linked with connecting improvisations, creating an unbroken dialogue between European and Indian classical cultures and soundworlds, and exploring ways in which the philosophical traditions of East and West converge and diverge.

In advance of their performance, Keval Shah and Jess Dandy reflect on the process of bringing to life this unique concert experience.

Here be monsters: Music in the Round presents Jonathan Dove's The Monster in the Maze

Jonathan Dove's The Monster in the Maze was commissioned and first performed in 2015 by the Berlin Philharmonic and London Symphony Orchestra with Sir Simon Rattle. A modern re-telling of the myth of the Minotaur (there is no Ariadne in this version) for actor, soloists, adult, youth and children's choruses and orchestra, the work was due to get its second outing at the Grange Festival in 2020 with the Grange Festival Community Chorus, however this performance was cancelled.

The Monster in the Maze will now be receiving its second UK performance in Sheffield on 1 and 2 November 2024 as part of Music in the Round's 40th anniversary celebrations. At the Crucible Theatre, people of all ages from Sheffield will be coming together with Ensemble 360, Consone Quartet, Bridge Ensemble, Sheffield Music Hub Senior Strings, Sheffield Youth Choirs featuring Junior Voices, Youth Voices & Concordia and singers from across Sheffield.

This will be a new arrangement of the opera in collaboration with Jonathan Dove and the music director, John Lyon. The original score has no upper strings, but parts have been created so that the whole of Sheffield Senior Strings can take part, making it a world premiere of this arrangement.

This opera is just one aspect of Music in the Round’s Learning & Participation programme, which engages over 10,000 people around the country each year. It presents storybook concerts for young people aged 3-7, Close Up concerts for 7 to 11-year-olds and ‘Relaxed’ concerts, which are adapted to suit people who may prefer a more relaxed environment when attending an event. Another project is ‘Bridge’, which supports young musicians from backgrounds under-represented in chamber and classical music as they embark on their professional careers. This has recently focused on string players, and the current group is a wind quintet that will perform in The Monster in the Maze.

Full details from the Music in the Round website.

A focus on the flute: London Handel Players in a group of cantatas Bach wrote in 1724 with virtuoso flute parts

Pierre-Gabriel Buffardin
Principal flautist in the Hofkappelle in Dresden

Bach: Cantatas BWV94, BWV114, BWV8, Buffardin: Flute Concerto in E minor; Hilary Cronin, Clint van der Linde, Charles Daniels, Edward Grint, Rachel Brown, London Handel Players, Adrian Butterfield; Wigmore Hall
Reviewed 1 October 2024

Focusing on a group of cantatas Bach wrote with virtuoso flute parts, London Handel Players craft an esoteric but fascinating programme

When Bach arrived in Leipzig in 1723 he embarked on an ambitious cycle of weekly cantatas for the church's year, each geared to that day's readings. Whilst he did use flutes, he did not make significant use of the transverse flute but from mid-August to mid-November 1724 he produced a weekly cantata that included a significant, challenging flute part. We don't know who the flautist was, but clearly Bach had access to a player of some considerable talent and commentators speculate that one of the flautists from the Dresden court must have travelled to Leipzig and the most likely candidate is the French flautist, Pierre-Gabriel Buffardin.

This is the background to London Handel Players' slightly esoteric but fascinating programme at Wigmore Hall on Tuesday 1 October 2024. Directed from the violin by Adrian Butterfield and featuring flautist Rachel Brown, the ensemble performed three of Bach's cantatas from this period, Was frag ich nach der Welt BWV94, Ach, lieben Christen, seid getrost BWV114 and Liebster Gott, wenn werd ich sterben BWV8 plus Buffardin's Flute Concerto in E minor, one of his few surviving works. The soloists were soprano Hilary Cronin, alto Clint van der Linde, tenor Charles Daniels and bass Edward Grint.

The result was a programme that shed an intriguing light on a particular period of Bach's life, though the focus on a particular part of the church's year meant that we had three rather intense cantatas on weighty subjects. And these are substantial pieces, the first half of the concert, which included BWV94 and BWV114 lasted around an hour. 

Celebrating a long partnership: Brighton Festival Chorus joins the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra for an all-Mozart programme at Cadogan Hall

Brighton Festival Chorus (BFC) was founded in 1968 and for that first performance they sang Walton's Belshazzar's Feast with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra. BFC has gone on to have a long partnership with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra (RPO) and the two will be performing together at Cadogan Hall on 20 October 2024 during Cadogan Hall's celebrations for its own 20th anniversary. The programme is an all-Mozart one with conductor James Morgan.

Katherine Lacy, principal clarinet with the RPO will be performing Mozart's Clarinet Concerto, and Brighton Youth Choir will perform Mozart's Ave Verum Corpus, with the Requiem concluding the programme.

BFC's recent performances have included Vaughan Williams's A Sea Symphony and Dona Nobis Pacem for the Brighton Festival in 2022 and 2023 with the Philharmonia Orchestra and Britten Sinfonia respectively, a gala with the BBC Concert Orchestra celebrating the work of Raymond Gubbay in the Royal Albert Hall, Bach's St. Matthew Passion with the Brighton Philharmonic Orchestra in Brighton Dome in February 2023. Highlights of 2024 include the UK premiere of Arnesen’s The Stranger at the 2024 Brighton Festival. 

Full details from the BFC website.

Ever adventurous: Gothic Opera plans the UK stage premiere of Donizetti's Maria de Rudenz at Battersea Arts Centre on Halloween

Having given the UK premiere of Gounod's opera La nonne sanglante in 2021, Gothic Opera are planning the UK stage premiere of another 19th century opera inspired by Matthew Gregory Lewis' gothic novel, The Monk. 

At Halloween, Gothic Opera is presenting Donizetti's Maria de Rudenz at Battersea Arts Centre. The production, a collaboration between Gothic Opera and Battersea Arts Centre, will be conducted by Anna Castro Grinstein and directed by Lysanne van Overbeek with a new chamber orchestration by composer Leon Haxby.

Anna Castro Grinstein is a Britten Pears Young Artist and she made her debut at Opera Holland Park this Summer as conductor of the young artists performance of Rossini's The Barber of Seville. Lysanne van Overbeek directed Will Todd's Alice's Adventures in Wonderland with IF Opera in 2023 [see my review] in a production celebrating the work's 10th anniversary. Leon Haxby's chamber reduction of Bartok's Duke Bluebeard's Castle was used Gothic Opera's radical new version which premiered in 2021 [see my review]. We caught Gothic Opera at the Grimeborn Festival this year when they revived their debut production of Marschner's Der Vampyr [see my review]

Described as a dramma tragico, Maria de Rudenz premiered in Venice in 1838 and was described by Donizetti as 'a fiasco', and further performances of the opera in Rome were unsuccessful, but performances with superior casts led to the opera being more successful. It was presented in concert in the UK by Opera Rara (and recorded) in 1974 but has never been staged here.

Maria de Rudenz came at a time of transition for Donizetti, between the premiere of Roberto Devereux in Venice and the failure to bring Poliuto to the stage in Naples because of censorship problems. Poliuto would be radically reworked as Les Martyrs for the Paris Opera, and from henceforth Donizetti's focus was on performances in Paris.

Full details from Gothic Opera's website.

10 emerging groups & 17 established ensembles awarded £100,000 in the Continuo Foundation's eighth round of grants

Chelys Consort of Viols, one of 27 groups awarded grants
in the Continuo Foundation's eighth round

The Continuo Foundation has just announced its eighth round of grants, with £100,000 going to 27 early music ensembles to enable them to pursue ambitious concert and recording projects, with audience growth and community building at their heart. This brings the amount provided by Continuo Foundation for historical performance projects covering 900 years of history, and played on period instruments, to a total of £850,000.

As a result of the latest round of grants, ten emerging groups formed since 2020 and 17 established ensembles will perform in 48 different locations, ranging from Cornwall and the Scilly Isles, Hastings and Helensburgh to Belfast and Presteigne, East Anglia to South Devon. Their programmes, whether concert, audio recording or film projects, offer a vibrant perspective on the UK’s infinitely varied, world-class historical performance sector. The broad geographical reach of the funded projects is matched by the list of venues, ranging from purpose-built concert halls to art galleries, churches, community colleges and cafés. 

The Grant Round Eight award recipients are - Apollo's Cabinet - Azur Ensemble - Baroque in the North - Bloomsbury Players - The Brook Street Band - Ceruleo - Chelys Consort of Viols - Concert Trombone Quartette - Dialogue Viols -Ensemble Augelletti - Ensemble Molière - Ex Cathedra - Fiori Musicali - Florilegium - Istante Collective - Le Foyer des Artistes - Liturina - Londinium Consort - London Obbligato Collective - Lowe Ensemble - Lux Musicae London -Manchester Baroque - Players of the Hampstead Collective -Saraband - Sestina Music - Sounds Historical - Spiritato. Full details from the Continuo Foundation's website.

Performances associated with these projects can be found through the Continuo Connect website. This digital platform opens access to a fascinating world of music through comprehensive event listings, festivals guide, artist profiles, articles and playlists.

A special treat: strong individual performances & superb ensemble in WNO's revival of Puccini's Il trittico

Puccini: Il tabarro - Yvonne Howard, Natalya Romaniw - Welsh National Opera (Photo: Craig Fuller)

Puccini: Il trittico, Dario Solari, Natalya Romaniw, Andrés Presno, Anne Mason, Haegee Lee, Trystan Llŷr Griffiths, director David McVicar/Greg Eldridge, conductor Alexander Joel; Welsh National Opera at Wales Millennium Centre
Reviewed 29 September 2024

Partially re-cast, WNO's latest revival of David McVicar's fine production reveals a strong ensemble of singing actors with compelling performances including Natalya Romaniw on top form

David McVicar's production of Puccini's Il Trittico debuted at Scottish Opera last year and was revived by Welsh National Opera (WNO) earlier this year, associate director Greg Eldridge. The production returned to Wales Millennium Centre on Sunday 29 Septemer, conducted by Alexander Joel with significant cast changes from WNO's earlier outing. Newcomers included Natalya Romaniw as Giorgetta and Suor Angelica, Dario Solari as Michele and Gianni Schicchi, Andrés Presno as Luigi, Anne Mason as the Princess and Zita, with Haegee Lee as Sister Genovietta and Lauretta and Trystan Llŷr Griffiths as Rinuccio.

The production remains a remarkable achievement, particularly given the problems besetting the company with leaflets being distributed outside the Millennium Centre by Equity in support of the WNO orchestra and chorus, and the chorus taking their final bow (after Suor Angelica) in support WNO t-shirts.

McVicar and designers Charles Edwards and Hannah Clark set the operas in the mid-20th century, creating similar solutions to the opera's challenges as Richard Jones did in his 2011 production for Covent Garden [see my review of the 2016 revival]

Puccini: Il tabarro - Dario Solare, Andrés Presno - Welsh National Opera (Photo: Craig Fuller)