2024 in record reviews: white-hot prophets, sensitive souls, a German in Venice, Holst's organ and the 20th century brass band

Early and late feature heavily in this year's selection, but in the middle a pair of individual performances stand out. The white-hot dramatic impetus of John Osborn's account of the title role in Meyerbeer's Le prophète in a performance from Mark Elder and the LSO that really capture's the work's drama, and a rediscovery of the original orchestral sound of Elgar's The Dream of Gerontius from Gabrieli and Paul McCreesh, with a sensitive account of the title role from Nicky Spence.

Early discoveries include Victoria's Tenebrae Responsories sung one to a part at the original pitch by I Fagiolini and Robert Hollingworth, and  David de Winter and The Brook Street Band putting Schütz's Venetian career in context. In Copisteria del Conte explores late 18th century chamber music from Genoa, giving us a very particular sense of time and place.

And the Choir of Queen's College, Oxford and Owen Rees' disc of Bononcini's English choral music raises him from simply being an interesting footnote to Handel. Turning to Handel, a fully rounded performance of his late masterpiece, Theodora, from Jonathan Cohen and Arcangelo with Louise Alder in the title role.

In recital, Laurence Kilsby and Ella O'Neill's Awakenings was an intriguing and eclectic programme full of disturbing elements complemented by performances of remarkable maturity.

Transcription was the order of the day with three striking recordings. Holst's The Planets was superbly reimagined for the Father Willis organ at Salisbury Cathedral by John Challenger, whilst discs of brass band music by Bliss and Arnold mixed the composers' works for brass with transcriptions of other pieces to create two brilliant and highly satisfying portraits.

Contemporary music included the mad, magical and mesmerising world of Tom Coult's Pieces that Disappear, his debut disc from NMC Records, and another remarkable debut, a disc of chamber music by 25-year-old Sam Rudd-Jones 

2024: A year in concert reviews, astonishing youth, late-romantic rarities, riveting symphonic theatre

Janine Jansen, Martha Argerich, Mischa Maisky - Le Piano Symphonique, Lucerne (Photo: Philipp Schmidli, Luzerner Sinfonieorchester)

Baroque music featured highly this year, Lawrence Cummings and the AAM used just eight singers for their moving version of Bach's St Matthew Passion and equally life-enhancing was Bach's Brandenburg Concertos from the OAE. We heard Handel's original version of Esther from Solomon's Knot, who also popped up in Monteverdi's Vespers of 1610, one of a pair of contrasting performances of this work, the other by from the ever admirable Sixteen. There was more Handel at the Wimbledon Festival with Benjamin Hulett and Helen Charlston in Jephtha.  I Fagiolini took us to 17th century Venice for glorious multi-choir music by Benevoli.

Thanks to baritone Florian Störtz and pianist Aleksandra Myslek I finally got to hear a goodly selection of songs by Robert Kahn, whose music was forbidden by the Nazis and who was forced to flee to England in his 70s, whilst tenor Laurence Kilsby and pianist Ella O'Neill took us on a journey of remarkable emotional depth.

At Le Piano Symphonique in Lucerne, Martha Argerich and two friends created a little bit of magic in an evening that moved through from large-scale Liszt and Grieg to poetic intimacy.

There were rarities. At the Proms, Benjamin Grosvenor, Edward Gardner and the LPO turned Busoni's Piano Concerto into riveting symphonic theatre whilst Andras Schiff and the OAE brought their Mendelssohn festival to a close with his rarely performed symphony-cantata Lobesgesang. And a real rarity, impressively tackled by the North London Chorus was Ethel Smyth's late work, The Prison. And on a different scale, pianist Simon Callaghan tackled Cyril Scott's unjustly neglected Piano Sonata.

In contemporary music, the National Youth Orchestra and National Youth Brass Band combined forces for Gavin Higgins's epic Concerto Grosso for Brass Band and Orchestra, whilst horn player Ben Goldscheider joined forces with Britten Sinfonia for the premiere of Huw Watkins' Horn Concerto.

Bach: Brandenburg Concerto No. 1 - Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment, Queen Elizabeth Hall

2024: A year in opera reviews, strong individual performances, reinventing classics and historically informed Wagner

Britten: Death in Venice - Antony César (Tadzio), Frederico Saggese (Jaschiu) - Welsh National Opera (Photo Johann Persson)

It was one of those evenings about which you can say 'I was there', Wagner's Die Walküre at Dresden Music Festival as their historically informed Ring Cycle unfolds. And there was something astonishing about Olivia Fuchs' new production of Britten's Death in Venice for Welsh National Opera, too with its combination of theatrical and circus arts.

Strong individual performances were a theme throughout the year. A strong ensemble of singing actors made Welsh National Opera's revival of Puccini's Il Trittico a special treat. Kate Lindsey's emotional roller-coaster performance as both Offreds anchored a strong revival of Poul Ruders' The Handmaid's Tale at English National Opera. Nina Stemme was back on form with a coruscating performance in the title role of Strauss' Elektra at the Royal Opera House.

Stravinsky's Rake's Progress at the Grange Festival made us really care for about the characters, at Opera Holland Park their revival of their 2008 production of Puccini's Tosca took us back to the revolutionary 1960s. The youthful vitality of the cast was compelling in Irish National Opera's production of Vivaldi's L'Olympiade. Opera North's 'in the round' production Britten's Albert Herring was wonderfully involving. And in Zurich, Benjamin Bernheim led a wonderfully memorable account of Massenet's Werther.

Reinventing classics was another theme of the year with Jack Furness' thought-provoking take on Hänsel und Gretel at the Royal Academy of Music, and English Touring Opera gave us a brilliant reinvention of Judith Weir's Blond Eckbert, whilst Glyndebourne's stripped down yet intelligent production of Bizet's Carmen at the BBC Proms was highly satisfying. David McVicar's iconic production of Handel's Giulio Cesare returned to Glyndebourne as vivid and vibrant as ever thanks to a terrific young cast.

Sui generis, professionals & amateurs came together at Sheffield's Crucible Theatre for Jonathan Dove's The Monster in the Maze.

In a year when there was G&S at Opera North, English National Opera and Opera Holland Park, it was Opera North's revival of Ruddigore that stayed in the mind. Still with comedy, Rossini's The Barber of Seville was rather flavour of the Summer with new productions at Opera Holland Park, Waterperry Opera, and West Green House Opera where Victoria Newlyn's new production was a complete delight.

Humperdinck: Hänsel und Gretel - Zahid Siddiqui (Witch) - Royal Academy Opera (Photo: Craig Fuller)

Season's Greetings from all at Planet Hugill

 

Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year

 

from
Robert
and all at Planet Hugill

Modern aspects of the Christmas story: Gabriel Jackson's The Christmas Story and Edward Nesbit's Nativity

Gabriel Jackson: The Christmas Story; Choir of Merton College, Oxford, The Girl Choristers of Merton College, Oxford, Owen Chan & Francois Cloete (organ), Oxford Contemporary Sinfonia, Benjamin Nicholas (conductor); DELPHIAN
   
Edward Nesbit: Nativity, Wycliffe Carols, Metaphysical Songs, Four Christmas Lyrics; The Choir of King's College, London, Angharad Lyddon (mezzo-soprano), Benedict Nelson (baritone), Anneke Hodnett (harp), Martin Owen (horn), Joseph Fort (conductor); DELPHIAN

Reviewed 24 December 2024

Two very different but equally thoughtful and engaging contemporary approaches to a musical telling of the Christmas story. Gabriel Jackson and Simon Jones combine contemporary poetry, Biblical narrative and Latin liturgical texts into a colourful and wonderfully diverse expressive whole, whilst Edward Nesbit turns to the York Mystery Plays and Metaphysical poet Henry Vaughan for something compact yet no less expressive

The musical traversal of the two great narratives of the Christian church, Christ's birth and events leading up to his death, has taken remarkably different directions. There is a liturgical aspect to this, the church retains the reading of the Passion narrative from the Gospel as part of the liturgy, but the story of Christ's birth tends to be split over the Christmas period, originally the Octave of the Nativity. This means that whilst we have Passions where the narrative is the core, Christmas stories can be more diverse. Just think of Bach's Christmas Oratorio with its six separate cantatas, or Handel's Messiah where the first part tells the story of Christ's coming more as something presaged than a narrative.

Two recent discs from Delphian showcase two modern composers' rather different takes on the idea of the Christmas story. Gabriel Jackson's The Christmas Story features the Choir of Merton College, Oxford, the Girl Choristers of Merton College, Oxford, Oxford Contemporary Sinfonia conducted by Benjamin Nicholas in a large-scale work that has a text assembled by the then Chaplain of Merton College, Simon Jones. By contrast, Edward Nesbit's Nativity, features the Choir of King's College, London with harpist Anneke Hodnett, horn player Matin Owen, mezzo-soprano Angharad Lyddon and baritone Benedict Nelson, conducted by Joseph Fort on a disc which showcases Nesbit's Christmas music.

The Dunedin Consort at Wigmore Hall: Caroline Shaw premiered alongside rare Stradella and Christmas Corelli

Signed handwritten draft of Thomas Hardy's The Darkling Thrush with original title

Pietro Antonio Locatelli: Concerto grosso in F minor Op.1 No.8; Alessandro Stradella: Ah! troppo e ver, Sonata di viole 'Concerto-concerto grosso', Caroline Shaw: The Holdfast, Arcangelo Corelli: Concerto Grosso in G minor Op.6 No. 8 'Fatto per las Nottle di Natale'; Rachel Redmond, Joanna Songi, Helen Charlston, Samuel Boden, Ashley Riches, Dunedin Consort, John Butt; Wigmore Hall
Reviewed 23 December 2024

The premiere of a fascinating new Caroline Shaw piece that explodes Thomas Hardy's Darkling Thrush at the centre of a concert that placed the Shepherds and Winter at the centre of a wonderfully engaging and imaginative programme. 

The Dunedin Consort's concert at Wigmore Hall on 23 December 2024 drew together various fascinating threads. Directed by John Butt and joined by sopranos Rachel Redmond and Joanna Songi, alto Helen Charlston, tenor Samuel Boden and bass-baritone Ashley Riches (Matthew Brook had been previously scheduled, but no announcement was made) the Dunedin Consort gave us a nod to the season with Corelli's Concerto Grosso in G minor Op.6 No. 8 'Fatto per las Nottle di Natale', Pietro Antonio Locatelli's Corelli-inspired, Concerto grosso in F minor Op.1 No.8, Alessandro Stradella's Christmas cantata, Ah! troppo e ver alongside his Sonata di viole 'Concerto-concerto grosso' plus the premiere of Caroline Shaw's The Holdfast.

Stradella seems to be having something of a moment, and we caught another of his Christmas cantatas, Si apra al riso ogni labro at Wigmore Hall on Saturday performed by the English Concert [see my review]. The Dunedin Consort's concert featured a cantata which uses concerto grosso-like forces in the accompaniment, solo trio of two violins and cello against ripieno ensemble, but more fascinatingly they also included Stradella's Sonata di viole 'Concerto-concerto grosso' which uses these same forces without the vocal accompaniment to create what is regarded as the first concerto grosso. This form would go on to have enormous influence, and Corelli's Opus 6 would cast a long shadow, on Locatelli and beyond. 

Caroline Shaw's work also crossed our path recently as the Kyan Quartet played her Valencia and Entr'acte at Conway Hall earlier this month [see my review]. Her new piece, The Holdfast was written for the Dunedin Consort (a co-commission with Wigmore Hall) and Shaw uses the same instrumental forces as the Stradella cantata plus the same soloists. It is not a Christmas piece, but it is most definitely a Winter piece, centred around text taken from Hardy's The Darkling Thrush, edited, adjusted and amplified by Shaw. 

Vivid engagement, vigorous articulation & imaginative programming: The English Concert at Wigmore Hall

Vom Himmel hoch - Luther's hymn in a 1541 songbook
Used by Bach in his Magnificat in E Flat

Marc-Antoine Charpentier, Alessandro Stradella, Purcell, Bach: Magnificat in E Flat; Ciara Skerath, Katie Bray, Jess Dandy, James Way, Morgan Pearse, the English Concert, Harry Bicket; Wigmore Hall
21 December 2024

An early Baroque Christmas with a variety of Christmas cantatas, French, Italian and English, alongside Bach's Christmas version of his Magnificat in a vividly articulated, brilliant account 

A packed Wigmore Hall on Saturday 21 December 2024 enjoyed a Christmas programme with a touch of the unusual when Harry Bicket and the English Concert presented their selection of 17th and early 18th century Christmas-themed sacred works, with Marc-Antonine Charpentier's In nativitatem Domini nostri Jesu Christi canticum H414, Alessandro Stradella's Si apra al riso ogni labro, Purcell's Behold, I bring you glad tidings Z 2 and Bach's Magnificat in E Flat BWV 243.1 (the one with the Christmas interpolations). The performers included the soloists Chiara Skerath (soprano), Katie Bray (mezzo-soprano), Jess Dandy (contralto), James Way (tenor) and Morgan Pearse (bass). [Incidentally, the last time we saw Morgan Pearse he was Scarpia in Opera Holland Park's production of Puccini's Tosca this Summer, see my review].

The first half centred around the works by Charpentier, Stradella and Purcell for soloists, five ripieno singers and a small string ensemble plus continuo, with the stage filling for the Bach in the second half. 

Opera Up-Close: Unveiling the dramatic process with Paul Curran & young artists of Palm Beach Opera

Verdi: Rigoletto - Bernardo Medeiros (Rigoletto)
Palm Beach Opera (Photo: Coastal Click Photography)

Opera Up-Close: Unveiling the dramatic process with Paul Curran; Paul Curran, Palm Beach Opera; The Cornelia T. Bailey Opera Center; Palm Beach, Florida
14 December 2024, Robert J Carreras

For his latest Letter from Florida, Robert J Carreras eavesdrops on director Paul Curran working on opera scenes with young artists from Palm Beach Opera. Opera Up Close featured scenes from seven operas. Stage director Paul Curran, who was artistic director of the Norwegian National Opera from 2007 to 2011, provided expert commentary about each scene.

“Greek theatre is, for me, an examination of what it is to be an human being. It is the basis of all theater. It is the basis of all film…of cinema as a whole.” In a video precis of Phaedra, based on Euripides’ Hippolytus, Paul Curran provides the structure on which to frame his conceptual machinations of stagecraft and how he approaches the work he does with opera-artists in training. So it is that Curran, along with members of Palm Beach Opera’s Young Artists Program, set us off on a vivid voyage of self-discovery via a tilt-a-whirl of emotions.

Workshops like these – open to the public and with experts narrating, setting up scenes and ad-libbing – work toward the furtherance of opera-awareness. They attest to the healthy state of healthy competition in opera today. They serve to demonstrate how opera has moved another step on from prima la voce into the internalization of acting as a rightful and equal part of the artform. For those farther along in an opera-loving journey, these amount to positive developments – opera has a future. 

Celebrating the viola at the Glasshouse International Centre for Music

There is a week celebrating the viola at the Glasshouse International Centre for Music, Gateshead, as it hosts the Tertis and Aronowitz International Viola Competitions from 19 to 26 January 2025. Named for two great English violists, Lionel Tertis (1876-1975) and Cecil Aronowitz (1916-1976) the competitions bring together talented young violists from across the globe for a week of outstanding performances, masterclasses, and workshops. Alongside the competitions, Tertis (for ages 19-30) and Aronowitz (for ages 18 and under) there is a programme of performances.

Viola player Timothy Ridout gives a solo recital performing music from Bach's suites for solo cello arranged for viola alongside a piece by Caroline Shaw. Two members of the Aronowitz jury, Asdis Valdimarsdottir and Thomas Riebl perform music by Telemann, Bach and Garth Knox, and Thomas Riebl will be playing a 5-string tenor viola! Members of the Tertis jury, Thomas Selditz, Lilli Maijala, Françoise Gneri (violas) with James Baillieu (piano) will perform music by Schumann, Lindberg, Korngold and Damström. Timothy Ridout and Nobuko Imai are joined by James Baillieu for a recital including music by Bach, Bridge, and Mozkowski. Nobuko Imai and Robin Ireland will be joined by competitors from both competitions for an evening of music for four violas including Ireland's own arrangements of Bach.

On Friday 24 January there is a concert featuring highlights from both competitions, and then the finales take place on Saturday 25 January with the Royal Northern Sinfonia.

There is also an exhibition and Timothy Ridout will give a session performing on fine instruments and bows made by makers from the exhibition, and Ridout joins violist Nobuko Imai for My viola and I.

Full details from the competition website.

Letting in the Light: from Rameau's Pygmalion & Wagner's Parsifal to Christian Forshaw, Anna Semple and Schumann's Kerner Lieder at Temple Music

Temple Music has announced an intriguing range of events for 2025, with everything from Rameau and Wagnerian opera to song recitals from Helen Charlston and Roderick Williams. Things kick of in January 2025 with Handel's Solomon with Paul McCreesh and Gabrieli Consort & Players with Tim Mead, Rowan Pierce, Anna Dennis, Hilary Cronin and Frances Gregory (this was announced as part of their Autumn 2024 season).

Conductor Peter Selwyn and director Julia Burbach (who brought us the Grimeborn Ring Cycle) are at the helm for a staging of Act Three of Wagner's Parsifal with Neal Cooper as Parsifal, Natasha Jouhl as Kundry, Simon Wilding as Amfortas and Freddie Tong as Gurnemanz. The opera will be given in Temple Church using a 35 piece orchestra. At the other end of the operatic scale, Christian Curnyn and the Early Opera Company are presenting Rameau's Pygmalion, with Samuel Boden, Hilary Cronin, Jessica Cale and Lauren Lodge-Campbell, preceded by a suite of music from Les Boreades.

Mezzo-soprano Helen Charlston is joined by pianist Sholto Kynoch for Note for Old, a recital that weaves together music by Bach, Monteverdi and Sweelinck with Schubert, Hahn, and Anna Semple, followed by Schumann's Kerner Lieder. Baritone Roderick Williams and pianist Julius Drake return to Middle Temple Hall for Eternal Summer, an evening of songs and readings from Shakespeare with music from Purcell, Haydn, Schumann to Britten, Tippett, and one of Williams' own songs.

In recital, Guitarist Plínio Fernandes will be performing Bach alongside, Heitor Villa-Lobos, Paulinho Nogueira, Mário Albanese and Sérgio Assad, violinist Sophie Rosa and pianist Martin Roscoe perform Beethoven's Spring Sonata and Franck's Violin Sonata

Stile Antico are performing a programme centred around Palestrina and his contemporaries, Thomas Allery directs Temple Singers in programme of arrangements and re-imaginings of music from ancient chant, through Renaissance polyphony to Barber’s own arrangement of his Adagio for Strings, including music by Anna Semple, who is Temple's featured emerging composer, and saxophonist Christian Forshaw joins the Choir of King's College London for Sanctuary, presenting works from Forshaw's acclaimed album.

The season closes in July with Temple Church Choir, director Thomas Allery in Marian music by Grieg, Giles Swayne, Bruckner, Tavener, Howells and Parsons.

Full details from the Temple Music website.

The songs of Robert Kahn: Florian Störtz & Aleksandra Myslek reveal some of the gems to be found in the output of a relatively forgotten composer forced into exile by the Nazis

Robert Kahn

Robert Kahn, Robert Schumann, Erich Korngold, Paul Hindemith; Florian Störtz, Aleksandra Myslek; City Music Foundation at Tallow Chandlers' Hall
Reviewed 16 December 2024

Forbidden by the Nazis and forced to feel to England in his 70s, the music of Robert Kahn has remained somewhat undervalued and here we were treated to a rich exploration of his song output alongside music of his contemporaries and influences

I have been aware of Robert Kahn and his music for some considerable time as I became friends with one of Kahn's great-grandchildren in the 1990s. But Kahn's music has remained somewhat elusive in performance. Kahn (1865-1951) was highly influenced by the music of Robert Schumann and friendship with Johannes Brahms in the 1880s also had a significant effect on his music. Kahn trained with Clara Schumann's half-brother and with Josef Rheinberger. He was also a distinguished lieder accompanist, his music perhaps somewhat conservative when compared to his colleagues. 

His Jewishness led to problems, however; Kahn and his wife fled to England in the 1930s and he died in Biddenden in Kent in 1951. You can read more about Kahn in Norbert Meyn's article on the Royal College of Music's website, whilst the Robert Kahn website provides lots of information and a list of works

The good news is that London-based German bass-baritone Florian Störtz and pianist Aleksandra Myslek are planning to record a goodly selection of Kahn's songs. At their City Music Foundation lunchtime recital on Monday 16 December 2024 at the Tallow Chandlers' Hall, Störtz and Myslek performed a selection of Robert Kahn's songs alongside those of Robert Schumann and Kahn's contemporaries, Erich Korngold and Paul Hindemith.

A Visit to Friends: a new opera by Colin Matthews, residencies from Allan Clayton, Helen Grime, Daniel Kidane and Leila Josefowicz at the 2025 Aldeburgh Festival

Colin Matthews

Whilst most people are still frantically planning for Christmas, the good folk at Britten Pears Arts are thinking much further ahead and have announced the highlights of the 2025 Aldeburgh Festival which runs from 13 to 29 June 2025.

The Festival opens with the world premiere of Colin Matthews’ new opera A Visit to Friends, with a libretto by William Boyd. An opera about love. Or, more accurately, about love’s frustrations. Drawing on Anton Chekhov’s short story and William Boyd’s Chekhovian play LONGING, A Visit to Friends is, beguilingly, an opera within an opera, with music strongly influenced by Scriabin. Additionally, there will be a reading of Chekhov’s short story that inspired the opera in the enchanting woodland setting of Thorington Theatre.

Colin Matthews' links to the festival go back to the 1970s when he worked at Aldeburgh with Benjamin Britten and Imogen Holst, and he was was Chair of the Britten Estate for many years, and is Joint President of Britten-Pears Arts. Other Colin Matthews' works in this festival include String Quartet No. 6 with the Gildas Quartet, and Paraphrases written for featured artist Leila Josefowicz alongside brothers Paul and Huw Watkins, plus a new orchestration of Debussy’s Images (Book 2) performed in the final concert of the 2025 Aldeburgh Festival by the London Symphony Orchestra and Sir Antonio Pappano.

Four featured artists – tenor Allan Clayton, violinist Leila Josefowicz, and composers Helen Grime and Daniel Kidane – are at the heart of this year’s programme. 

Clayton joins the Knussen Chamber Orchestra and conductor Ryan Wigglesworth to perform Clayton’s favourite Britten song cycle - Nocturne, and with the BBC Symphony Orchestra and Sakari Oramo he performs Britten's Our Hunting Fathers, and with Antonio Pappano at the piano he performs Britten's Seven Sonnets of Michaelangelo plus Vaughan Williams’ On Wenlock Edge with members of the LSO. With Edward Gardner and the Royal Academy of Music Symphony Orchestra he performs Mark-Anthony Turnage’s Refugee - written for him - with texts by Emily Dickinson, Benjamin Zephaniah, W.H. Auden and Brian Bilston. The Dunedin Consort and Clayton combine new and old in a programme including the first performance of a Britten Pears Arts commission by Tom Coult based on the text of the Lamentations of Jeremiah.

Helen Grime's Festival residency offers a chance to hear a wide range of work including her string quartets from the Heath and Fibonacci Quartets, her Violin Concerto from Leila Josefowicz and the BBC Symphony Orchestra and Sakari Oramo, and i written for Knussen’s 60th birthday in 2012, heard next year again from the BBC SO and Oramo. Grime's new song cycle for soprano and orchestra Folk, which draws on the folklore of the Isle of Man, was written for soprano Claire Booth – who had the idea for the piece - and she performs it with the Knussen Chamber Orchestra and conductor Ryan Wigglesworth. Other Grime works in the festival include her Missa Brevis at the Festival Service and her cello solo, Harp of North inspired by lines from Walter Scott’s folk-inflected poem The Lady of the Lake.

Daniel Kidane's orchestral work Sirens, a collaboration with Zimbabwean writer and poet Zodwa Nyoni, is performed by Edward Gardner and the Royal Academy of Music Symphony Orchestra, his work for the Last Night of the Proms in 2019, Awake, is performed by the BBC Symphony Orchestra and Sakari Oramo, Royal College of Music Symphony Orchestra and Kirill Karabits are joined by YCAT artist, Sphinx Prize winner and Classic FM Rising Star Nathan Amaral to perform Kidane’s violin concerto Aloud. Tenor Nick Pritchard and pianist Ian Tindale perform Kidane’s Songs of Illumination, pianist Mishka Rushdie Momen performs Kidane’s Three Etudes inspired by a Kandinsky painting, Carducci Quartet gives the first performance of Daniel Kidane’s new String Quartet – a Britten Pears Arts Commission, BBC Singers and Sofi Jeannin perform his lockdown piece The Song Thrush and the Mountain Ash, with text set by Simon Armitage, Alisa Weilerstein’s solo cello recital includes Daniel Kidane’s Sarabande Parts 1 – 3, and the Festival Service includes his Christus factus est.

Leila Josefowicz makes her Aldeburgh Festival and Snape Maltings debut, and she performs Helen Grime's Violin Concerto, and is joined by brothers Huw and Paul Watkins, for a chamber concert that includes the world premiere of Colin Matthews' Paraphrases, written especially for her, plus The Psychology of Performance where Leila Josefowicz leads a fascinating study of topics such as stage anxiety, interpretation from a non-musical point of view, and other matters to do with performance.

Full details from the festival website, and the festival brochure is also available online.

Satisfying, yet thought-provoking: Handel's Messiah from Laurence Cummings and the Academy of Ancient Music

The chapel of the Foundling Hospital where Handel performed Messiah annually

Handel: Messiah; Anna Devin, Tim Mead, Nick Pritchard, Cody Quattlebaum, Academy of Ancient Music, Laurence Cummings; Barbican Hall
Reviewed 16 December 2024

Sometimes avoiding traditional readings and emphasising contrasts, this was a Messiah where the word was of primary importance, delivered with remarkable directness at times.

I would imagine that neither Handel nor Charles Jennens (who created the libretto) thought of Messiah as a Christmas piece. In fact, for Jennens the work had a purely didactic purpose bringing the Word of God to those in the concert hall, and Messiah narrates the entire arc from Christ's coming, through his Passion to the Resurrection. Returning to Handel's Messiah at the Barbican for the first time since 2022 [see my review of that performance]. Laurence Cummings and the Academy of Ancient Music seemed to relish this didactic element, the telling of a narrative as serious and intense as the Passion. The soloists this year were Anna Devin (replacing Louise Alder), Tim Mead, Nick Pritchard and Cody Quattlebaum.

This wasn't a large-scale performance, an orchestra based on an ensemble of some 14 strings, with a continuo based around two harpsichords (one played by Cummings), organ and theorbo, plus a choir of 18. Not a huge group for the Barbican Hall, but entirely sufficient.

Visionaries: a multi-sensory experience

Back in June 2024 Vache Baroque staged six multi-sensory concert experiences of Handel’s L’Allegro Part I (setting a text based on Milton) in collaboration with BitterSuite (a group that creates music experiences that take inspiration from and draw on expertise in both arts and wellbeing), Milton’s Cottage (a museum based in a house in Chalftont St Giles near The Vache where Milton once lived) and Bucks Council’s Integrated SEND Service (MSI Specialist Team).

This project has been awarded Best Collaboration 2024 by Bucks Culture as part of their inaugural Bucks Spark Awards.

Dancer Guides from BitterSuite led audience members through a blindfolded, immersive journey designed to heighten awareness of how sound and the senses unite. The performance features sopranos Sarah Gilford & Victoria Oruwari, alto Sarah Denbee, tenor Frederick Jones, baritone Malachy Frame, musical director Jonathan Darbourne. This short film created by videographer Hannah Lovell brings out the highlights of the project.

See the film on YouTube 

Sinfonia Smith Square Hall awarded National Lottery Heritage Fund grant

Sinfonia Smith Square

Sinfonia Smith Square (formed from the merger of Southbank Sinfonia and St John's Smith Square) has been awarded £452,035 grant by The National Lottery Heritage Fund for upgrades to Smith Square Hall. The project aims to repair the historic fabric of the building, improve accessibility, expand the facilities for players and guest artists, and create outstanding experiences for audiences and visitors through upgraded lighting, sound, heating, and ventilation systems. In line with Sinfonia Smith Square’s ambition to become carbon neutral, the project will install renewable energy technologies throughout the building.

The initial investment has been awarded by The National Lottery Heritage Fund to support Smith Square Hall in progressing its plans to apply for a full National Lottery grant at a later date

Alongside the upgrade, the project will aim to capture reminiscences of people who have lived and worked in the local area or taken part in performances in the Hall, forms a key part of the engagement activities. The project is keen to hear from anyone who has a story to share, or who would like to volunteer to help record these stories and use them to better understand the building's history and significance.

The building, dating from 1728, is Grade I listed and now requires urgent repairs. It was bombed during the Blitz and rebuilt to its original design in the late 1960s. Work on the building is expected to commence in early 2027 and take around 18 months to complete. As part of the project, new 3 partnerships are emerging to embed the building within its local community and provide meaningful engagement opportunities for young people through training and volunteering placements. 

He would stop writing if there was no-one to perform his music: for composer Stephen Goss' his latest triple album is all about a celebration of collaboration

Stephen Goss

Composer Stephen Goss has a new triple album out, Landscape and Memory on Deux-Elles, which showcases his recent work and celebrates his 60th birthday. The disc includes everything from music for solo guitar to his Theorbo Concerto, not to mention his Intermezzi for romantic guitar and fortepiano, along with one or two older recordings such as John Williams (guitar) and the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, conducted by Paul Daniel, in Stephen's 2012 Marylebone Elegy, in all 19 works in all.

In fact, the project started as an idea for a single album. Stephen tends to work on a project basis, writing a work, touring it, and recording it, but with no album in mind. The idea was to assemble the recordings of works from the last ten years into an album. It was all planned, but the pandemic delayed things. Matthew Wadsworth, who runs the record company Deux-Elles, suggested adding other recordings, including older work, the recording of Stephen's 2018 Theorbo Concerto, written for Wadsworth, as well as a recording from Stephen's days playing in the Tetra Guitar Quartet, thus making the discs something of a retrospective. There was originally no grand plan, the programme developed thanks to encouragement both from performers and from the record company, as well as some pieces being recorded specially. 

The title Landscape and Memory not only suits the album but suits Stephen's music, referring to things that are important to him, time and place, distant and close by, nostalgia, and quotation. The phrase Landscape and Memory comes from a Simon Schama book of that name from the 1990s where Schama considers how human society developed in three different landscapes, rivers, mountains and forests.

Stephen's fondness for reference and for quotation partly comes from his writing from a player's perspective, he has never lost the connection to being on stage as a guitarist himself. Stephen finds that using quotations and stylistic references helps to draw people in so that you get them to listen to new and unfamiliar repertoire. He is also known for his music for guitar, but this was not a deliberate strategy, it is just how his career has developed. As he became more well-known, he developed a place in the guitar world. He feels that it is hard writing for non-guitarists as it is harder to find your place in the canon. The guitar canon tends to be highly dynamic with many performers bringing a creative element to their programmes. The nice thing about the guitar world is that the repertoire is not fixed, there is always new repertoire coming along and becoming a new part of the repertoire. Many works are presented in transcriptions or arrangements. Stephen sees the guitar world as having more momentum and more change, which he finds a positive thing. This is very different from, say, the piano world with its more fixed canon; it is harder to find your place in this world. 

British Youth Opera's Christmas on the Strand

British Youth Opera is promising a candlelit blend of music, readings and champagne that really captures the essence of the season at its Christmas on the Strand event in Tuesday 17 December 2024 at St Clement Danes Church, the enchanting Christopher Wren church between the Aldwych and the Royal Courts of Justice. Built in 1682, Wren's church as gutted by bombing in the Blitz and restored in 1958 as the central church of the Royal Air Force.

Special guest at Christmas on the Strand, Joanna Scanlon will be reading a selection of secular Christmas literature, whilst mezzo-soprano Claire Barnett-Jones, soprano Elin Pritchard and BYO Alumni will be on hand to provide Christmas classics, popular opera favourites and winter curiosities including, we are promised, a Joni Mitchell number.

Full details from BYO's website.

The Norfolk & Norwich Festival, which evolved from the old Norfolk & Norwich Triennial, blazes a cultural trail for the East Anglian region

The Norwich Nine - Bootworks Theatre Co. and a local group of nine-year-old children - Norfolk & Norwich Festival

By far the largest arts festival in the East of England and the fourth largest in the UK, the 2025 Norfolk & Norwich Festival (which has been held on an annual basis since 1988) runs from Friday 9 to Sunday 25 May offering a huge variety of work staged in and around the fine city of Norwich. 

To give one a glimpse of the programme and an idea of what’s to come, the festival’s energetic, appealing and hard-working artistic director, Daniel Brine, has just announced the first shows ahead of the full programme announcement due in February. They include opening concerts from each of this year’s artists-in-residence Sean Shibe and Lotte Betts-Dean while the Britten Sinfonia returns to the fold plus an exhilarating circus show débuts in Norwich at the Adnams Spiegeltent in Chapel Field Gardens. 

Who will be the new face of circus? That’s the question posed in the Adnams Spiegeltent headline show appropriately entitled Showdown. Part talent contest, part beauty pageant, this all-encompassing affair offers a little touch of The Hunger Games about it as the show witnesses half-a-dozen contestants battling it out to reach the top in a puzzling and mind-blowing show conjured up by the multi-award-winning, UK-based contemporary circus company, Upswing, founded by Vicki Dela Amedume in 2006. As the unwritten rules of the game emerge, the question arises: Who makes sure the winner is the right winner? 

Who, indeed! 

Adnams Spiegeltent - Norwich & Norfolk Festival (Photo: Chris Taylor)

Mad, magical and mesmerising: Tom Coult's Pieces that Disappear, his debut disc from NMC Records

Tom Coult: Three Pieces that Disappear, Beautiful Caged Thing, Pleasure Garden, After Lassus; Anna Dennis, Daniel Pioro, BBC Philharmonic, Martyn Brabbins, Andrew Gourlay and Elena Schwarz; NMC Records

Music that is misremembered or did not exist in the first place, music that layers Lassus with evocative reminiscences merging Britten and Ravel. Throughout, Coult's command of his orchestral palate is devastating and his writing for soloists Anna Dennis and Daniel Pioro highly seductive

Tom Coult is currently composer in association with the BBC Philharmonic and this new disc, Pieces that Disappear from NMC Recordings features a selection of Coult's orchestral music all performed by the BBC Philharmonic conducted by Martyn Brabbins, Andrew Gourlay and Elena Schwarz, including Three Pieces that Disappear, Beautiful Caged Thing and After Lassus with soprano Anna Dennis (who sang the title role in the premiere of Coult's opera Violet), and Pleasure Garden with violinist Daniel Pioro.

Three Pieces that Disappear was written in 2023 for the BBC Philharmonic and is heard here conducted by Martyn Brabbins. Inspired by personal events including writers block during lockdown, illness and the birth of a child, the pieces represent ideas about music misremembered; Coult describes them thus, 'The three movements of this piece are linked by a vague, loosely connected set of ideas about music being remembered, forgotten, misremembered, imagined or deteriorating'. They are for orchestra and fixed audio, with a 1951 recording of Schoenberg's Concerto for String Quartet and Orchestra threading its way through the final movement.

Lights in the Dark: Vasily Petrenko & the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra explore the ways composers have responded to the existential threat of war and oppressive regimes

For their series Lights in the Dark at the Royal Festival Hall (with two concerts at the Royal Albert Hall), the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra and music director Vasily Petrenko explore the many ways in which composers have responded to the existential threat of war and the suffering unleashed by oppressive regimes. The series opens on 26 January 2025 with Berg’s Three Pieces for Orchestra, Beethoven’s Piano Concerto No.5 ‘Emperor’, with Paul Lewis as soloist, and Stravinsky’s The Rite of Spring. Both Berg and Stravinsky were both booed when these pieces were first played, whilst it is often easy to forget that Beethoven's concerto was written in the middle of large-scale conflict.

On 23 March, the programme combines three movements from Korngold’s The Sea Hawk Suite, Rachmaninov’s Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini, with Bruce Liu as soloist, and Bartók’s Concerto for Orchestra. All three composers ended up fleeing their homes because of politics. Rachmaninov fled the Russian Revolution and his Rhapsody reflects his itinerant life as a virtuoso pianist, written in Switzerland, premiered in America and suffused with the Russia that had gone with the Revolution. Korngold travelled to Hollywood at the request of Max Reinhardt to work on the film of A Midsummer Night's Dream. After a few films, Korngold became disillusioned and planned to return home, but news of the Anschluss meant that Jew, return to Vienna was not possible. Bartók similarly fled Fascism and sought refuge in America but like Rachmaninov, Bartók found his new life a challenge. His Concerto for Orchestra, written at this time, partially reflects this.

Other programmes include Sibelius’s Finlandia, Weill’s Four Walt Whitman Songs, with baritone Roderick Williams, and Shostakovich’s Symphony No.7 ‘Leningrad. Shostakovich's was written in the middle of Hitler's siege of Leningrad whilst Sibelius was writing when nascent Finnish nationalism was defying Russian Imperialism. Weill's Whitman settings represent the exiled composer addressing his new home.

There are also two concerts in the series at the Royal Albert Hall in May. Richard Strauss' An Alpine Symphony, written in the middle of World War I, is combines with music from another exile, Chopin's Piano Concerto No. 1, and Mussorgsky's Pictures at an Exhibition, whilst Strauss' Don Juan is performed with Sibelius' Violin Concerto (with Maxim Vengerov) and Stravinsky's complete Firebird.

The series concludes on 25 June at the Royal Festival Hall with Dorothy Howell’s symphonic poem Lamia, written at the end of the First World War, and the Piano Concerto in One Movement by African-American composer Florence Price, a composer whose success in life was not reflected in her enduring reputation until her more recent discovery. The third work in the programme is Tchaikovsky’s Symphony No.4, a work where we can, perhaps, hear Tchaikovsky trying to come to terms with being an outsider in Russian society.

Full details from the RPO website.

Inspired by Auden & Isherwoods' The Ascent of F6, Nathan Williamson's new opera for London Youth Opera has a clear message

London Youth Opera's latest production is a new opera, The Quest inspired by the Auden and Isherwood play, The Ascent of F6. The opera has a clear, contemporary message both for the young performers and for older adult audience members. I recently met up with composer Nathan Williamson to find out more.

London Youth Opera's 2024 production is the world premiere of The Quest by composer Nathan Williamson and librettist Megg Nicol at the Shaw Theatre with performances on 14 and 15 December 2024. Now over 50 years old and originally formed as W11 Opera, the company is an opera company for young performers aged 9-18, staging original commissions written for and performed exclusively by children, with a profession team directing and staging the work.

The Quest is a 75 minute piece with small instrumental ensemble and Nathan has been working on it with the company's music director Alastair Chilvers for over a year. This year there is a cast of some 45 children, mainly 11 and above but some younger. The new opera has some three or four lead characters with the other singers in a variety of roles in different ensembles. Before COVID the company had around 60 performers but having lost two years to the pandemic, they are gradually building up numbers again. The company runs an annual season from September to December with two rehearsals per week, though when I spoke to Nathan the rehearsal schedule had ramped up as the performances neared. 

The opera concerns a group of young scientists who have found a way to save the planet from the current environmental crisis. But politicians get involved and try to piggyback on the developments to suit their own ends. The heroes of the opera have to decide whether to stick to their scientific principles or to compromise.

The concept of a group of  very pure idealists versus pragmatic, self-serving politicians is drawn from the play, The Ascent of F6 which was written in 1936 by WH Auden and Christopher Isherwood (with Britten providing the incidental music for the play's premiere in 1937). In the play a group of explorers set off to reach the peak of a mountain as the government tries to take over their achievements.

For Nathan, their opera has messages both for the young performers and for the older audience members. For the young people, the message is that there isn't just wisdom amongst those in charge; in the opera it is the young people who have integrity. Whilst the message to the older audience members is listen to the young, the young are the future. Nathan comments that it isn't rocket science to understand why they feel moved to address the issue.

The work was written specifically for London Youth Opera, for children to sing. Nathan has worked on pieces for children before including one of Mahogany Opera's Snappy Operas. For Nathan, a child's voice is simply a different instrument to the trained voice and writing for children is neither a compromise nor less ambition in artistic aims. He sees the children's voices as simply different, and he points out that anything is a compromise if it isn't what you want to do.

The advantage of having the children as performers is the lightness their voices, the greater emphasis on the text, with a more conversational way of delivery. Untrained voices have a certain natural feel to them which Nathan finds rather wonderful, and he comments about imagining Pavarotti singing the opening solo to Once in Royal David's City rather than a lone treble. Nathan's writing has needed to avoid anything overtly virtuosic and he has created music that is deliberately melodic. Megg Nicol's text is written in metre and rhyme, for ease of learning and his music follows this and is largely symmetrical in form. There is quite a bit of G&S-like patter and Nicol's text is often busy, though some passages are more romantic and mystical. 

Stuart Hancock: Pandora's Box - London Youth Opera at Susie Sainsbury Theatre, Royal Academy of Music in 2023 (Photo: Nina Swann)

The opera represents, for Nathan, an opportunity to put words and melody together in a form of vocal writing that is not entirely common for a modern composer. Setting stropic/metrical texts is not something routinely asked of a contemporary composer and Nathan has found that he has enjoyed it. He has experience doing arrangements and writing music for theatrical shows and admits to enjoying writing a melody that anyone can sing. And he points out that we all started out in music by singing in some way.

Full details from London Youth Opera's website.

Fundraising concert for Nadine Benjamin

As many of you are probably aware, the soprano Nadine Benjamin is suffering from severe and debilitating complications from Long Covid and she currently needs 24 hour care to keep her safe and help her get back on her feet. As the NHS does not currently have an in-patient Long Covid facility, she is currently in a private hospital, recovering, and unable to function fully or work. Friends have started a GoFundMe page for her.

On Thursday 12 December 2024, there is a fundraising gala for her at St Paul's Church, Covent Garden. We are promised an evening of opera and Christmas tune, and planned performers include sopranos Phillipa Boyle, Alison Langer, Hannah Macaulay, Sofia Livotov, tenors Charne Rochford,  Brian Smith Walters, mezzo-soprano Siv Misund, baritones, Jack Holton, Felix Kemp, pianist George Ireland, and conductor Matthew Kofi Waldren.

The proceeds of the event will go towards the Nadine Benjamin Fundraising appeal, full details from the St Paul's Church website.

Fine-grained tone & classical style: Kyan Quartet in Beethoven, Schumann & Caroline Shaw at Conway Hall's Sunday Concert Series

Andrey Razumovsky from 1810
by Austrian artist Lampi the Younger

Caroline Shaw: Valencia, Schumann: Quartet in A, Op.41 No.3, Caroline Shaw: Entr'acte, Beethoven: Quartet in E minor, Op.59 No.2 'Razumovsky'; Kyan Quartet; Conway Hall Sunday Concerts
Reviewed 8 December 2024

The young Kyan Quartet bring fine grained tone and fine classical style to a programme that moved from Beethoven to Schumann to contemporary composer Caroline Shaw

On 8 December 2024, the Kyan Quartet (Naomi Warburton, Sydney Grace Mariano, Wanshu Qiu and Simon Guémy) made their appearance at Conway Hall Sunday Concerts in a programme that combined Caroline Shaw's Valencia and Entr'acte with Robert Schumann's Quartet in A, Op.41 No.3 and Beethoven's Quartet in E minor, Op.59 No.2 'Razumovsky'. Before the concert, I gave a pre-concert talk, Past, Present and Future introducing the composers and their works.

Formed in 2020 at the Royal Academy of Music, the Kyan Quartet brings together players from UK, the USA, China and France, and they are one of this year's City Music Foundation artists. Back in 2022, Florence Anna Maunders caught them at Wigmore Hall in a programme of Haydn, Fanny Mendelssohn and Jessie Montgomery [see Florence's review]

At Conway Hall they began with Caroline Shaw's 2012 piece, Valencia, inspired both by her own performing and by the humble orange. It began light and transparent in texture, with the melodic basis of the work gradually appearing on the cello. The whole displayed Shaw's delight in varied textures combined with regular repeated patterns, all engagingly presented by the quartet.

Bayreuth goes to Venice: Cavalli's Pompeo Magno the centrepiece of the 2025 Bayreuth Baroque Opera Festival

Handel's Flavio at Bayreuth Baroque Opera Festival in 2023
Rémy Brès-Feuillet (in bath), Yuriy Mynenko - (Photo: Clemens Manser)

The Bayreuth Baroque Opera Festival, based at the 18th century Margravial Opera House in Bayreuth, will be going to Venice for the 2025 festival. Running from 4 to 14 September 2025, next year's festival will feature a new production of Cavalli's 1666 opera Pompeo Magno. The festival's artistic director, countertenor Max Emanuel Cenic will direct and sing the title role with Sophie Junker as Giulia, and Valer Sabadus as Servilius. In the pit will be Cappella Mediterranea under its music director, Leonardo García Alarcón.

Cavalli's Pompeo Magno premiered in Venice at the Teatro San Salvatore in 1666. The libretto is by Niccolo Minato and the work was dedicated to Maria Mancini Colonna, wife of Lorenzo, Duke of Colonna, who was the niece of Cardinal Mazarin. The work came late in Cavalli's career and was in fact his final opera to be premiered in Venice. The plot concerns the political intrigue surrounding Gnaeus Pompeius Magnus (108 BC – 48), consul, then member of the triumvirate with Caesar and Crassus. The opera was revived in Bologna in 1692, and there were performances in the UK in the 1970s which made it onto disc conducted by Dennis Stevens, with Paul Esswood in the title role. [further details].

Also at the 2025 festival, there will be recitals from soprano Julia Lezhneva and countertenor Franco Fagioli [see image below] with the Orchestre de l’Opéra Royal under Stefan Plewniak, countertenor Carlo Vistoli with Cappella Mediterranea and Leonardo García Alarcón, and countertenor Rémy Bres-Feuillet (see image above) with with I Porporini and Gerd Amelung. The the Orchestre de l’Opéra Royal under Andrés Gabetta return for a second concert with mezzo-soprano, Marina Viotti. Mezzo-soprano Malena Ernman will explore the theme of nature in music with L’Arpeggiata under Christina Pluhar.

Leonardo Vinci's Alessandro nell'Indie at Bayreuth Baroque Opera Festival in 2022
Jake Arditti, Franco Fagioli, Mayan Licht (Photo Falk von Traubenberg)

Previous operatic rarities at Bayreuth have included an extravagantly theatrical production Handel's Flavio in 2023 [see my review] and Vinci’s Alessandro nell’Indie performed with an all male cast in 2022 [see my review]

Full details of the 2025 festival from the Bayreuth Baroque Opera Festival's website.