Celebrating Jommelli in style: Ian Page & The Mozartists with Fflur Wyn, Ambroisine Bré, Hugo Brady make a compelling case for this neglected music

Jommelli: a celebration - Fflur Wyn, Ambroisine Bré, Ian Page, The Mozartists at Wigmore Hall (Photo: Benjamin Ealovega)

Jommelli - a celebration: Fflur Wyn, Ambroisine Bré, Hugo Brady, The Mozartists, Ian Page; Wigmore Hall
Reviewed 18 September 2024

Celebrating the 250th anniversary of Jommelli's death with an evening of his fascinating and unjustly neglected music in killer performances from a trio of soloists that combined virtuoso dazzle with emotional commitment and great style

Opera composer Niccolò Jommelli died 250 years ago this year, not that you would know it looking at opera companies schedules. In a world where pre-Mozartian 18th century opera seems to start at Handel and stop at Gluck, with a brief stop at Vivaldi, exploring further is rare. Jommelli was enormously popular in his day, wrote some 80 operas and was something of a revolutionary. But since his death in 1774 he has been substantially ignored.

In 2016, Ian Page and The Mozartists revived Jommelli's opera Il Vologeso and now they followed that up with a concert exploring the composer's whole operatic output, 12 arias and duets spanning a 34 year period. At Wigmore Hall on Wednesday 18 September 2024, Ian Page conducted the Mozartists in Jommelli - a celebration, with soloists Fflur Wyn, Ambroisine Bré and Hugo Brady. 

Jommelli: a celebration - Fflur Wyn, Ian Page, The Mozartists at Wigmore Hall (Photo: Benjamin Ealovega)

Shortly before the concert, a conductor's worst nightmare happened; faced with a programme of rare and unperformed virtuoso vocal music, soprano Emily Pogorelc became ill and was unable to sing. Enter soprano Fflur Wyn who with remarkable virtuosity, killer sight-reading skills (presumably), superb aplomb, and a fabulous frock, sang the soprano solos. And don't forget that at that period, the soprano was the diva, so Wyn got to be Dido dying and Armida vowing her revenge on Rinaldo, along with much else besides.

Fire and water in the library: Siren Duo in an imaginative flute and harp recital for Temple Music

Siren Duo (Claire Wickes, flute, and Tomos Xerri, harp) in Middle Temple Library.

Debussy, Mozart, David Watkins, Astor Piazzolla, Adina Izarra, Toru Takemitsu, William Alwyn; Siren Duo (Claire Wickes, Tomos Xerri); Temple Music Foundation at Middle Temple Library
Reviewed 17 September 2024

Temple Music's first concert in the attractive 1950s neo-classical library with a wonderfully imaginative flute and harp programme based around images of fire and water

Temple Music puts regular concerts on in the grand historical spaces of Middle Temple Hall and Temple Church, but on Tuesday 17 September 2024, they presented their first concert in a smaller, more modern space, Middle Temple Library. Siren Duo (Claire Wickes, flute, and Tomos Xerri, harp) gave a chamber recital of music themed on Fire and Water (a theme perhaps not dear to the librarians' hearts) with music by Debussy, Mozart, David Watkins, Astor Piazzolla, Adina Izarra, Toru Takemitsu and William Alwyn.

The origins of Middle Temple Library are lost in the mists of time, but a new building was created in 1625, to be eventually replaced in the 1860s by a Gothic style building which was badly damaged in the Blitz. The present library was designed by Sir Edward Maufe and opened in 1958. Inside it is striking, mid-Century classical with the main library room having a mezzanine running around it. The acoustic was on the dry side, but highly sympathetic for an intimate chamber recital.

An interview with the Snow Maiden: I chat to Ffion Edwards about taking on the title role in Rimsky Korsakov's opera with English Touring Opera

Rimsky Korsakov: The Snowmaiden - rehearsals - English Touring Opera (Photo: Craig Fuller)

Rimsky Korsakov wrote some fifteen operas across his career yet if you discount performances by visiting companies, the number of his operas performed in the UK remains alarmingly low and each time one comes along it is something of an event. Having performed Rimsky Korsakov's The Golden Cockerel in 2022 [see my review], English Touring Opera (ETO) is returning to Rimsky Korsakov and presenting The Snow Maiden as part of its Autumn 2024 tour. The work is being directed by Olivia Fuchs and will be conducted by Hannah Quinn with a cast including Ffion Edwards, Hannah Sandison, Edward Hawkins, Joseph Doody and Kitty Whately. 

The production opens at the Hackney Empire on 28 September 2024 and tours to Snape Maltings, Saffron Hall, Buxton Opera House, The Hawth in Crawley, Northcott Theatre in Exeter and The Lighthouse, Poole, [further details] as part of an Autumn season that also includes Judith Weir's Blond Eckbert [see my recent interview with Aoife Miskelly who sings Bird in that production]. In a break from rehearsals, I recently chatted to Ffion Edwards, a former Young Artist at National Opera Studio, about performing the title role in The Snow Maiden.

Rimsky Korsakov's opera The Snow Maiden, which premiered in St Petersburg in 1882, remained the composer's own favourite work. Based on a play by Alexander Ostrovsky (to which Tchaikovsky wrote incidental music in 1873), the story deals with the opposition of the eternal forces of nature. It involves the interactions of mythological characters and real people, centred on the Snow Maiden who is the child of Spring Beauty and Grandfather Frost. 

The opera does not get many outings in the UK, I saw the Chelsea Opera Group performing it in 1986 and the Kirov Opera performed the work in concert at Covent Garden in 2000, more recently University College Opera presented it in 2014, then Opera North staged it in 2017 in a production directed by John Fulljames [see my review], incidentally with Aoife Miskelly in the title role.

When I chatted with Ffion recently, she was in the midst of rehearsals for the production; she was busy as her character is on stage for a lot of the time.

New season, new challenges, new collaborations: Britten Sinfonia launches its ambitious 2024/25 season

Britten Sinfonia with sitarist Anoushka Shankar and percussionist Manu Delago at Barbican Hall, 2022 (Photo: Mark Allan

The Britten Sinfonia's 2024/25 season launches on 8 October with a trio of concerts (at the Barbican, and in Saffron Walden and Basingstoke) with Will Gregory’s Moog Ensemble, an event which promises a fusion of maths, music, and retro-futurist synths including tributes to electronic music pioneers Delia Derbyshire and Wendy Carlos, and the premiere of Gregory’s Archimedes Suite. Other cross-genre partnerships in the season include Irish folk singer Lisa O’Neill, jazz-giants Tim Garland’s Lighthouse Trio and the American bluegrass singer and mandolin virtuoso Chris Thile.

The ensemble will be marking 80 years since the end of World War II, the 50th anniversary of Shostakovich's death and Arvo Pärt's 90th birthday. Performances will include Shostakovich's Chamber Symphony op.110a, a scaling-up of his String Quartet No.8, dedicated to the “Remembrance of the Victims of Fascism and War, the world premiere of Michael Zev Gordon’s A Kind of Haunting, which explores the enduring and cross-generational trauma of the Holocaust, and Messiaen's rarely performed tribute to the victims of the World Wars, Et exspecto resurrectionem mortuorum. Some of Pärt’s greatest works -including Tabula Rasa - as well as the world premiere of a work for strings and percussion by Cheryl Frances-Hoad.

The ensemble continues to experiment with ways to expand and develop audiences for classical music in the East of England. Its Surround Sound Playlist tourfeatures performances in the cathedrals of Chelmsford, Ely, Peterborough, Norwich and St Edmundsbury, and audiences are invited to take in the music and majesty of these glorious cathedrals in less formal ways. Guests at these concerts include saxophonist Amy Dickson, oud virtuoso and composer Joseph Tawadros, and Tenebrae conducted byNigel Short.

The ensemble is also presenting concerts celebrating its own musicians. Principal trumpet Imogen Whitehead, who in 2023 became the first woman to be appointed to a principal brass role in a major UK orchestra in more than a decade, stars as soloist in Hummel’s Trumpet Concerto. Principal oboe, Nicholas Daniel, conducts Messiaen's powerful Et exspecto resurrectionem mortuorum, and other works by Stravinsky. Britten Sinfonia’s winds, brass and percussion are joined by those of Sinfonia Smith Square in the resonant expanses of Pugin’s St George’s Catholic Cathedral in Southwark.

Other performing partners include joining the Choir of King’s College, Cambridge, conductor Daniel Hyde, for Mozart’s Requiem in King's College Chapel as part of Cambridge Music Festival’s 2024 Autumn series. The orchestra celebrates St Cecilia’s day with Saffron Walden Choral Society at Saffron Hall, in Britten’s Saint Nicolas.In 2025, Britten Sinfonia will begin a residency at Merton College, Oxford, with concerts, recordings and chamber music coaching across the year, including Bach’s St John Passion, conducted by Benjamin Nicholas in the University Church of St Mary the Virgin, Oxford.

Britten Sinfonia is commissioning and collaborating with three graduates of its Magnum Opus scheme, Jonathan Brigg, David John Roche and Crystalla Serghiou. This season’s cohort of Opus 1 composers will showcase eight world premieres in Cambridge, while the Magnum Opus Composer Showcase in London will present new concertos by Anibal Vidal, Alex Groves, and Eden Lonsdale performed by Britten Sinfonia musicians with soloists Imogen Whitehead (trumpet), Rakhi Singh (violin) and Alexandra Achillea Pouta (mezzo soprano)

Full details from Britten Sinfonia's website.

Exploring Georgian life: 18th-century food at Handel's House and celebrating the queer-coding of the Accademia dell’Arcadia at the Foundling Museum

Food historians Marc Meltonville and Robert Hoare

Two intriguing aspects of Georgian life are being examined this month as the Handel Hendrix House is bringing Georgian food demonstrations to Handel's kitchen, whilst at the Foundling Museum, A Queer Georgian Social Season launches its 2024/25 season with Queen Christina's Queer Cabal: Handel & Corelli.

As part of the recent restoration of Handel's house, which included returning the lower floors to their original layout, the kitchen's were recreated. Whilst we call this Handel's kitchen, of course it would have been the domain of his cook. And on 28 and 29 September 2024, as Simon Daniels, director of Handel Hendrix House explains: "Food historians Marc Meltonville and Robert Hoare will be in period costume and using replica Georgian kitchenware. For the first time since the house’s £3million restoration, visitors will be able to experience a kitchen filled with the sights and smells of Georgian cooking using recipes from the 1747 cookbook The Art of Cookery Made Plain and Easy by Hannah Glasse."

Visitors will be able to watch and talk to the cooks as they prepare different dishes throughout the day as well as finding out what life was like for the cooks working in the townhouses of Georgian London. And upstairs, there will be 18th-century music performed live by professional musicians in the room in which Handel himself performed. 

Full details from the Handel Hendrix House website.

At the Foundling Museum, the latest Queer Goergian Social Season launches on 19 September with Queen Christina's Queer Cabal: Handel & Corelli featuring Peter Bugeja and his ensemble, Les Bougies Baroques, with drag artist Aphrodite 1st, violinist Sam Kennedy and mezzo-soprano Maria Schellenberg.

Variously called by her contemporaries, a lesbian, a prostitute, a hermaphrodite, and an atheist, Queen Christina of Sweden eventually settled in the Palazzo Farnese in Rome where in 1656 she opened the Accademia dell’Arcadia (‘Academy of Arcadia’) where the participants enjoyed music, theatre, and literature. Participants, Queen Christina excepted, were largely male and there is a significant amount of queer-coding around the academy. Later members of the academy were Corelli and Handel, both of whom have homo-social links at the very least. Whilst in Rome, Handel wrote cantatas for the academy, many deliberately sexually ambiguous and commissioned by men, Cardinal Ottoboni and Prince Ruspoli in particular, who were identified with the homosexual/homosocial culture of their time.

The grand opening salon concert and social will be celebrating all these links, further information from EventBrite.

A journey of remarkable emotional depth: Laurence Kilsby and Ella O'Neill at Wigmore Hall

Brahms, Saint-Saens, Wolf, Schoenberg, Stenhammar, Rebecca Clarke, Hugh Wood, Weill, Britten, Jake Heggie; Laurence Kilsby, Ella O'Neill; Wigmore Hall
Reviewed 15 September 2024

With a a remarkable combination of confidence and style, the young duo filled the hall with great presence in a thoughtful programme of remarkable emotional depth

Tenor Laurence Kilsby and pianist Ella O'Neill released their debut recital, Awakenings earlier this year [see my review] and on Sunday 15 September 2024 the two were at Wigmore Hall to present a programme based around the disc. Using a sequence of songs by Brahms, Saint-Saens, Wolf, Schoenberg, Stenhammar, Rebecca Clarke, Hugh Wood, Weill, Britten and Jake Heggie, the programme took is from innocence through experience to sheer animal passion.

We began with Brahms, Unbewegte laue Luft going from mesmerisingly still yet intent and concentrated to far more as Kilsby's rich tone expanded as Brahms unleased his inner passion. Saint-Saens and Wolf then returned us to innocence. Saint-Saens' La coccinelle proved to be a delightful narrative, with Kilsby relishing the story's details full of vocal colours and wit. Then Wolf's Der Knabe und das Immlein took us on a similar journey, the two performers filling out Wolf's narrative until the touching end.

At rest, Kilsby had quite a demure presence on stage, but he performed with a remarkable combination of confidence and style, effortlessly filling the space with presence without overdoing things. 

Engaging charm: Bampton Classical Opera in a delightful version of Alcina that does not take itself too seriously

Gazzaniga: Alcina's Island - Inna Husieva - Bampton Classical Opera (Photo: Anthony Hall/Bampton Classical Opera)

Gazzaniga: L'Isole d'Alcina (Alcina's Island); Inna Husieva, Sarah Chae, Charlotte Badham, Dafydd Allen, Monwabisi Lindi, Jonathan Eyers, Magnus Walker, Owain Rowlands, director Jeremy Gray, Chroma, conductor Thomas Blunt; Bampton Classical Opera at Smith Square Hall
Reviewed 13 September 2024

A comic take on Alcina with an opera that does not take itself too seriously in an engaging performance that showcased Inna Husieva's charmer of a sorceress

Last week we caught Vache Baroque in Pergolesi's 1736 opera, L'Olimpiade [see my review] with a libretto by Metastasio that wants to be serious and consider moral problems but uses dramaturgical infelicities that mean that modern audiences have difficulty taking the work's resolution seriously. 

Then this week, Bampton Classical Opera brought their production of Gazzaniga's L'Isole d'Alcina (Alcina's Island) to London. Written in 1771 and premiered in Venice, Giovanni Bertati's libretto does not take opera seria too seriously. It begins like the classic joke, an Englishman, a Frenchman, an Italian and a Spaniard are washed up on a desert island. Not any old island, but Alcina's island, yet the time period is contemporary and the four men (later five) are well aware of Alcina and her tale, told in Ariosto. The result is a delightful comic operatic romp.

On Friday 13 Setpember 2024, Bampton Classical Opera presented Gazzaniga's Alcina's Island at Smith Square Hall (St John's Smith Square) in a production directed and designed by Jeremy Gray with Thomas Blunt conducting Chroma, with Inna Husieva, Sarah Chae, Charlotte Badham, Dafydd Allen, Monwabisi Lindi, Jonathan Eyers, Magnus Walker and Owain Rowlands.

Gazzaniga: Alcina's Island - Magnus Walker, Monwabisi Lindi, Jonathan Eyers - Bampton Classical Opera (Photo: Anthony Hall/Bampton Classical Opera)

If the name of Giuseppe Gazzaniga seems familiar, that is because he and Giovanni Bertati wrote Don Giovanni in 1787, which was plagiarised by Da Ponte for Mozart! Gazzaniga's L'Isole d'Alcina was premiered in Venice at the Teatro San Moise, where Bertati was principal comic librettist. The theatre's first opera production was Monteverdi's Arianna in 1640 and its final productions were a series of farse by Rossini.

The Game: director Leo Doulton on blending opera with interactive storytelling and video game at this year's Tête à Tête

Director and writer Leo Doulton has quite a varied practice, he is the marketing director of Tête à Tête, whilst as a writer he has a particular interest in interactive theatre and we caught We Sing/I Sang at Tête à Tête in 2020 [see my review]. This Summer he was assistant director on Wagner's Die Walküre, at Longborough Festival Opera and on 28 September he directs the premiere of Elif Karlidağ and Sam Redway's The Game at the Cockpit Theatre as part of Tête à Tête: The Opera Festival, with singers Eliran Kadoussi, Lore Lixenberg, Hestor Dart, and Rachel Roper, actor Mayra Stergiou, and Edo Frenkel as musical director, with game and AV design by Utkucan Eken.

The Game is described as 'blending opera with modern interactive storytelling and propelled by an experimental, narrative-driven, first-person video game', so is it an opera at all?

Leo is firm that The Game is an opera, he describes the set-up as depicting someone who is at The Cockpit and who starts playing a game and finds that they can't escape. On-stage there is the person playing The Game along with three singers playing the assets of the game, with a commanding off-stage voice. In many ways the piece is an absurdist comedy, examining the human situation and Leo is interested in examining how we fit into the world, and also how gameplay fits into the world. He is also relishing the challenge of doing the work at The Cockpit.

All change at the National Youth Choir as they bid farewell to three principal conductors

Greg Beardsell and National Youth Choir [Photo: Belinda Lawley]

It is all change at the National Youth Choir as three principal conductors reach the end of their five-year contracts and will be finishing in their current roles at the end of September. The three are Greg Beardsell, principal conductor of the National Youth Choir (15-18 Years) - formerly the National Youth Training Choir, Joanna Tomlinson, principal conductor of National Youth Choir (9-15 Years) - formerly the National Youth Girls’ Choir and Lucy Joy Morris, principal conductor of National Youth Choir (9-15 Years) - formerly the National Youth Boys’ Choir.

Greg Beardsall's association with the National Youth Choir goes back 30 years as he was a choir member and then section leader in the late 90s, more recently roles have also included associate director and deputy artistic director. Highlights from his time include leading the International Youth Choir Festival in 2017, working with beatboxer SK Shlomo to create She Lost My Crossed Heart, supporting the development of five new commissions by graduate Young Composers and creating the staged performance of Eric Whitacre’s Leonardo Dreams of His Flying Machines at the National Youth Choir’s 40th anniversary concert in 2023. Greg Beardsall was also instrumental in developing early engagement work, including partnerships in Nottinghamshire, Cornwall and Cumbria.

Joanna Tomlinson & National Youth Choir [Photo: Sara Platt]

During her five years as principal conductor, Joanna Tomlinson premiered three new commissions including A Short Story of Falling by Joanna Marsh, which was nominated for an Ivor Novello award. She has also worked with our older participants, including preparing the National Youth Choir (18-25 Years) for the BBC Proms in 2022, and conducting the National Youth Chamber Choir. 

Highlights of Lucy Joy Morris' time with the choir include premiering the new commission I Am. We Are. by Oliver Tarney, and Just Being ME by Ben Parry (alongside Joanna Tomlinson). She has conducted the National Youth Choir (18-25 Years) for Carols at the Royal Albert Hall, and the National Youth Chamber Choir at the New Music Biennial festival. 

Full details from the National Youth Choir website.

Farinelli's Violin

Later this month violinist Jorge Jiménez and his ensemble Tercia Realidad are releasing their disc, Farinelli's Violin on Pan Classics. 

The disc features arias writtens for the castrato Farinelli in new versions where it is Jimenez' violin that astonishes. To give you a taster of the delights to expect, here is a video of Jorge Jiménez and Tercia Realidad performing live at the Festival de Musica Antigua de Ubeda y Baeza. They are performing Jiménez' arrangement of the aria 'Nell' Attendere Mio Bene' from the opera Polifemo by Nicola Popora, who also happened to be Farinelli's teacher.

The disc presents arias from Hasse's Artaserse, Broschi's Idaspe, Handel's Rinaldo, and Porpora's Polifemo.

Further details from Jimenez' website.

Opera in Virtual Reality: Alastair White's #CAPITAL direct from the Metaverse courtesy of Tête à Tête

Alastair White: #CAPITAL

Wikipedia defines the Metaverse as 'a loosely defined term referring to virtual worlds in which users represented by avatars interact, usually in 3D and focused on social and economic connection.The term metaverse originated in the 1992 science fiction novel Snow Crash, and is now often linked to virtual reality technology, and beginning in the early 2020s, with Web3.'

In 2023, the worlds of opera and the Metaverse collided when Alastair White’s sixth fashion-opera, #CAPITAL, premiered at Metaverse Fashion Week 2023. The event took place within Metaverse Labs’ platform Dragon City, in bespoke fashion-opera house, the House of Synergos, designed by Sybarite architects (real-life architects working in a virtual/digital world).

When Alastair told me about the premiered last year, it was an event that you could only really appreciate if you had the right technology, if you could be [Virtually] there. 

But thanks to the wonderful people at Tête à Tête, those of us who live in a simple digital 2D world, can appreciate something of the event. #CAPITAL is being presented digitally, a Vimeo video, on the Tête à Tête website. The video presents a particular experience of the event, we are watching someone participate rather than being there ourselves, but it give us the feeling of the Greek amphitheatre-inspired opera house along with the astonishing fashion show curated by the events producer, Gemma A Williams.

The video begins with a discussion with Alastair White, and Gemma A Williams, plus Simon Mitchell (architect and co-founder of Sybarite), the architect of the bespoke fashion-opera house. As anyone who knows Alastair [see my 2021 interview with him], will understand, the discussion becomes fascinatingly theoretically challenging, talking about all sorts of advanced concepts and making us realise that there might be more to the arts and to musical theatre than simply an orchestra, singers and an opera house.

#CAPITAL itself is an astonishing solo performance from soprano Kelly Poukens who has featured in several of Alastair White's other operas, along with a performance from dancer/choreographer Zara Sands. And the video includes the opera not once, but twice, thus giving us two different views of the same reality.

I still miss the visceral thrill of hearing and seeing a performance live but this gives you a taster of what opera in virtual reality might be.

Full details from the Tête à Tête website.

Ghost: Emma Wheeler & Anna Appleby's life experience as queer, neurodivergent women has inspired their new electronica-opera premiering at Tête à Tête

If You Died, Who Would You Choose To Haunt?

Manchester-based composer and songwriter Anna Appleby's work includes a chamber opera-ballet Citizens of Nowhere in 2016/17, an opera, Drought in 2022, for the BBC Philharmonic and an award-winning collaborative youth opera for Glyndebourne, Pay the Piper. But she also has a performance alter-ego called Norrisette, the moniker under which she writes, records, performs and produces electronic music and contemporary songs, as well as starting a regular music night in collaboration with Industries called FLUFF which is a platform for queer electronic artists. FLUFF was featured in the Guardian for its role in the underground music scene in Manchester.

Now Appleby and classically trained singer, Emma Wheeler have created Ghost, a new electronica-opera premiering at Tête à Tête Festival on the 28th September 2024, at the Cockpit Theatre, London. It features just the two performers, who have also written and composed the show together, and you can expect to hear everything from synthesizers and hyperpop to haunting vocals and fast-paced comic monologues.

Ghost is built on Emma Wheeler and Anna Appleby's life experience as queer, neurodivergent women - stories that have not historically been told in opera. This opera is the coming-together of two musical worlds, from Appleby's Glyndebourne and BBC Philharmonic opera composition history and Emma Wheeler's rich mezzo vocals, to Norrisette and Rosé Gold's grungy underground electronica and DIY drag fashion extravagance. 

Prepare for a ghost story like no other!

Full details from the Tête à Tête website.
 

Web of influences: Harry Christophers & The Sixteen at Old Royal Naval College Chapel, Greenwich for latest stop of their Choral Pilgrimmage

Orlande de Lassus and the Bavarian court musicians, circa 1563-70 by Hans Mielich (1516-1573)

Masters of Imitation: Lassus, Casulana, Josquin, Châtelet, Bob Chilcott; The Sixteen, Harry Christophers; Old Royal Naval College Chapel, Greenwich
Reviewed 10 September 2024

Lassus' endlessly inventive and imaginative music in a programme that showcased 16th century composers' fascination for basing new works on existing material

The Chapel at the Old Royal Naval College in Greenwich dates from the early 18th century, built to Sir Christopher Wren's designs, but its interior is rather later, being rebuilt in 1779 following a fire by James 'Athenian' Stuart. Regarded as one of the finest neo-Classical interiors of the period it might seem an incongruous setting for a programme of 16th century music but Stuart's combination of richness, formality and artifice proved just the right backdrop for the Sixteen's programme of music founded on that example of very 16th century musical artifice, parody.

Tuesday 10 September 2024 was Harry Christophers and The Sixteen's latest stop on their 2024 Choral Pilgrimmage, Masters of Imitation, a tour that encompasses 20 concerts in seven momths, along with eight choral workshops. The programme featured pieces linked by a web of influences and connections. Lassus' motet Osculetur me osculo oris sui, setting the song of songs, and the Credo from his mass based on it, Missa Osculetur me. Josquin's Benedicta es caelorum,  Lassus' Magnificat Benedicta es caelorum Regina based on it and Jean Guyot de Châtelet's remarkable Benedicta es caelorum where he adds extra voice parts to Josquin's motet. There was the plainsong psalm Lauda Jerusalem Dominum and Lassus' motet that uses it, Lauda Jerusalem Dominum, and even more complex, Bob Chilcott's Lauda Jerusalem Dominum, commissioned for the tour, which used the same text but was a parody of Lassus madrigal Cantai, or piano. 

There was also Lassus' Salve Regina, along with two madrigals by Lassus' contemporary, Maddalena Casulana, and we know that her music was performed at the festivities for a ducal wedding in Munich that Lassus supervised, so the web of connections was completed.

With this style of music, we are not necessarily meant to perceive the complexity of the mechanism, instead we are often presented with textures whose sheer richness masks the more formal structure, the composer displaying their skill with the sheer inventiveness with which the original was used.

Showcasing the talents of young Welsh musicians: Cowbridge Festival's Young Artists Programme features Bute Wind Quintet & Quartet Draig

Since 2010, the Cowbridge Festival has been bringing classical music, jazz and folk to the community in the Vale of Glamorgan. The festival, which is now under the direction of the husband and wife team of violist Rosalind Ventris and conductor Joseph Fort, runs this year from 13 to 22 September, opening with the Castalian Quartet and Rosalind Ventris in Schubert, Coleridge Taylor, Beethoven and Dvorak.

Ahead of this, the festival has announced its 2024 Young Artists Programme, showcasing the talents of young Welsh musicians in two emerging ensembles, the Bute Wind Quintet and Quartet Draig. 

Bute Wind Quintet

Based in Cardiff, the award-winning Bute Wind Quintet (Gabriella Alberti, Sam Willsmore, Hannah Harding, Nathan Barker, Meg Davies) promotes contemporary and underperformed chamber music, delivering an uncompromising artistic image to a range of audiences. In addition to their festival performance, the quintet will receive masterclasses from renowned musicians and mentorship in areas such as stage presence and the business aspects of a musical career.  

Quartet Draig (Elliot Kempton, Jessica Meakin, Ben Norris, Tabitha Selley) formed in 2020 at the Royal Welsh College of Music and Drama, winning several prizes, and performing at the Wigmore Hall as well as being Junior Quartet in Residence at the 2021 ESTA Conference. From 2021-2023, they developed creative programming at Saxon Barn with concerts on various themes to engage broader audiences. 

Quartet Draig

Both ensembles will be performing at the festival on 17 September, with an eclectic programme of music by Ross Edwards, Mervyn Burtch, Valerie Coleman, Imogen Holst, Dilys Elwyn-Edwards, Edward Kempton, Ernest Bloch, and Percy Grainger. Further details from the festival website.

 

L'Olimpiade: Vache Baroque makes an engaging case for Pergolesi's penultimate opera

Vivaldi: L'Olimpiade - Natasha Page
Vache Baroque (Photo: Michael Wheatley)

Pergolesi: L'Olimpiade; Aoife Miskelly, Nazan Fikret, Natasha Page, Shafali Jalota, Bechara Moufarrej, Frances Gregory, Robert Forrest, director: Laura Attridge, musical director Jonathan Darbourne; Vache Baroque Summer Festival
Reviewed 8 September 2024

Outdoors and in the rain, yet enterprising Vache Baroque make an engaging case for Pergolesi's penultimate opera, along with some vividly virtuosic singing

Vache Baroque is an enterprising company centred on an annual festival in the grounds of The Vache, a 17th century house in Buckinghamshire. Previous operas presented include Purcell's Dido and Aeneas, Handel's Acis and Galatea and Charpentier's La descente d’Orphée aux enfers but the company is developed a year-round programme and last year included events celebrating Salmone Rossi [see my review], as well as an educational programme which includes collaborations with Bucks Music Trust and Bucks Council Multi Sensory Imparment team.

This year, Vache Baroque staged Pergolesi's L'Olimpiade in the grounds of The Vache in a production directed by Laura Attridge, designed by Caitlin Abbott, with movement by Ami Nagano, and directed from the harpsichord by Jonathan Darbourne. We caught the final performance on Sunday 8 September, with Aoife Miskelly as Licida [see my recent interview with her] Nazan Fikret as Aristea, Natasha Page as Megacle, Bechara Moufarrej as Clistene, Shafali Jalota as Argene, Frances Gregory as Alcandro and Robert Forrest as Aminta. The opera was accompanied by a period instrument ensemble of some fifteen players

Pergolesi's arias were presented in the original Italian but Attridge had replaced the original recitative with her own English script. The presented the plot engagingly, with a nice clarity and whilst never sending up Metastasio's libretto did have a wry view of the extreme coincidences on which the plot relies.

Vivaldi: L'Olimpiade - Vache Baroque (Photo: Michael Wheatley)

Metastasio's original libretto for L'Olimpiade was extremely popular, being set some 50 times, and Pergolesi's opera was a notably popular version. The sheer popularity of this piece of dramatic nonsense highlights the difference between the Baroque audience and the modern one. Not only does Metastasio's L'Olimpiade rely on coincidence but it has an extreme case of lost baby syndrome - Licida, who has caused havoc for three acts and is condemned to death, turns out to be the long lost son of King Clistene and brother of Aristea whose hand in marriage he was trying to win. 

Not only that, but after two acts where Licida is the main engine of the action, he is found out and then Metastasio loses interest in him and most of Licida's actions in Act Three take place off stage, whilst the final stages of the plot focuses much more on the positively homoerotic relationship between Licida and Megacle rather then the men's relationships to their female beloveds. Here all four leads (all sopranos!) were played by women (the original had castrati in all the role was female singers were banned on stage).

A subtle depiction of a complex man, Green Opera's 555:Verlaine en prison at Grimeborn

Verlaine drinking absinthe in the Café François 1er in 1892, photographed by Paul Marsan Dornac (Photo: Musée Carnavalet)

Logan Lopez Gonzalez, Eleanor Burke - 555:Verlaine en prison; Logan Lopez Gonzalez, Anna Sideris, Stella Marie Lorenz; Green Opera at Grimeborn Festival at Arcola Theatre
Reviewed 6 September 2024

Interweaving settings of Verlaine's poetry with contemporary narrative, an imaginative evening that sought to illuminate the remarkable interior life of poet Paul Verlaine set against the violence of his everyday existence

Green Opera's 555:Verlaine en prison is a music theatre piece that combines Verlaine's poetry and contemporary narrative with settings of Verlaine's poems by Fauré, Hahn, Debussy, Deodac de Severac, Léo Ferré and others, to explore the poet Verlaine's remarkable narrative. Verlaine comes over as a rather unpleasant and disreputable character, his relationship with Arthur Rimbaud less of a great love story and more of a giant conflagration of passion and violence. 

Verlaine would die a destitute alcoholic. But in 1873 he was sentenced to two years in prison (in fact 555 days) for shooting his then lover Rimbaud, yet for Verlaine, the residence in prison was a positive experience, he wrote of it 'I once lived in the best of castles. In the finest land of white water and hills.  Four towers rose up from its four-winged front.  And one was my residence for long long days'. During his tenure he wrote poetry, poems that would change the face of French poetry and which, at first, seem remarkably out of keeping for the drunken sot that Verlaine appeared to be.

555:Verlaine en prison - Logan Lopez Gonzalez - Green Opera (Photo: Laurent Compagnon)

It is this dichotomy that Green Opera's 555:Verlaine en prison seeks to explore. Conceived by Belgian countertenor Logan Lopez Gonzalez and director Eleanor Burke, the work debuted last year and was performed at the Arcola Theatre in September 2023. 555:Verlaine en prison returned to the Arcola Theatre for further performances at the 2024 Grimeborn Festival, with Logan Lopez Gonzalez and Anna Sideris, plus Stella Marie Lorenz on piano.

Scaling the peak: David Skinner on completing his Byrd project with The Great Service with Alamire in a recording reflecting new ideas about pitch and scoring

Alamire & His Majesty's Sagbutts and Cornetts at All Hallows Gospel Oak for recording sessions for Byrd's Great Service

For such a large-scale and important work, William Byrd's Great Service remains tantalising in many ways and complete performances have been relatively rare on disc. We don't really know when it was written, the earliest partbooks date from the last years of the 16th century and it is thought to have been written for the the Ruby Jubilee of Elizabeth I.

The text used is that of the Elizabethan Book of Common Prayer which was superceded in 1604. It was never published in Byrd's lifetime and survives in a disparate group of early part books. Byrd wrote it for the Chapel Royal whilst his other surviving Anglican services are presumed to have been written for Lincoln Cathedral earlier in Byrd's career.

It is a substantial work, setting the seven seven movements which by tradition were sung during the main services of the Anglican liturgy - Matins, Holy Communion, and Evensong - for the two choirs of five voices (mean, two tenors, baritone, bass), ideally with at least two people to each part to take account of Byrd’s kaleidoscopic scoring requiring full passages and verse passages with only one voice singing each part. The full choir sections were doubled by organ (organ parts survive) though there is documentary evidence of the use of cornetts and sackbuts too.

David Skinner and his ensemble, Alamire chose to record the work as the last of their three albums celebrating Byrd's anniversary. They released Byrd 1588, the first complete recording of his 1588 collection, Psalmes, Sonets & songs of sadnes & and pietie on Resonus Classics Inventa label in 2021 with Byrd 1589, recording Byrd's 1589 Songs of sundrie natures in 2023, thus meaning that all of Byrd's early songs were now on disc. For their third disc, released this month, David Skinner conducts Alamire, His Majestys Sagbutts & Cornetts and organist Stephen Farr in Byrd's The Great Service and a selection of his English Anthems.

But David's choice of Byrd's The Great Service deliberately reflects another anniversary too, that 1924 represented the modern premiere of the work after it was rediscovered (in Durham) by E.H. Fellowes and included in his Tudor Church Music series in 1922. 

Discovering Imogen: A relatively underrated British composer, Imogen Holst is put centre stage in this brand-new recording on NMC

Discovering Imogen - Imogen Holst: Overture Persephone, Suite in F Allegro assai for strings, Suite for Strings, Variations on ‘Loth to Depart’, What Man is He?, Festival Anthem, On Westhall Hill; BBC Concert Orchestra, BBC Singers, Alice Farnham; NMC Recordings
Reviewed by Tony Cooper, 19 August 2024

A relatively underrated British composer, Imogen Holst is put centre stage in this brand-new recording of her works on the NMC label, Discovering Imogen, by the BBC Concert Orchestra and the BBC Singers conducted by Alice Farnham

Of mixed Swedish, German and Latvian ancestry, Imogen Clare Holst (the only child of composer Gustav Theodore Holst and Isobel née Harrison) was born April 1907, Richmond-upon-Thames, Surrey; died March 1984, Aldeburgh, Suffolk, aged 76. Her family had resided in England since 1802 and musicians for several generations while her father followed the family tradition and studied at the Royal College of Music (Benjamin Britten’s alma mater) where he met Isobel Harrison, who was a member of one of the amateur choirs he conducted. Immediately attracted to her, they married on 22 July 1901. 

Although particularly known for her educational work at Dartington Hall in the 1940s, come the early 1950s Holst became Benjamin Britten’s musical assistant at Aldeburgh. She immediately got down to business helping to arrange the annual Aldeburgh Festival which this year celebrated its 75th edition. During her time at Aldeburgh (from 1956 to 1977) Holst helped to engineer the festival to a position of strength and pre-eminence in British musical life. 

Exquisite vocal lines & imaginative storytelling: Harry Christophers & The Sixteen focus on Stanford's secular choral music in Partsongs, Pastorals and Folksongs

Stanford: Partsongs, Pastorals and Folksongs; The Sixteen; Harry Christophers; CORO
Reviewed 22 July 2024 by Tony Coooper

Punctuating Sir Charles Villiers Stanford’s centenary, Harry Christophers and The Sixteen have just issued 17 première recordings of his works, Partsongs, Pastorals and Folksongs on their CORO label. 

As a composer Sir Charles Villiers Stanford (who received his knighthood on King Edward VII’s coronation) might not be a household name but he’s well remembered as a teacher of several generations of British composers and untiringly campaigned for a national opera company as he saw the genre of opera as a vital catalyst in Britain’s musical renaissance.  

Although highly lauded during his lifetime as an exceptional composer of large-scale works for chorus and orchestra, posterity, however, has been less kind to him. The musicologist, Robert Stove, wrote: ‘Sir Charles Villiers Stanford has not so much been neglected but posterity has derived malicious satisfaction from ostentatiously yawing in his face.’ A former pupil, Ralph Vaughan Williams, wrote: ‘In Stanford’s music the sense of style, the sense of beauty, the feeling of a great tradition is never absent. His music is in the best sense of the word Victorian, the musical counterpart of the art of Tennyson, Watts and Matthew Arnold.’ 

A busy man, Stanford composed roughly 200 works including seven symphonies, about 40 choral works, nine operas, 11 concertos and 28 chamber works in addition to songs, piano pieces, incidental music and organ works. Stanford’s technical competence was never in doubt as composer, Edgar Bainton, wrote: ‘Whatever opinions might be held upon Stanford’s music - and they’re many and various - it is always recognised that he was a master of means.’ 

Vampires, the Angel of Death and Prophets - our August e-newsletter is now out

Bizet: Carmen - dancers, Glyndebourne Chorus, London Philharmonic Orchestra, Anja Bihlmaier - Glyndebourne Festival at BBC Proms (Photo: BBC/Andy Paradise

In case you missed it

Our monthly e-newsletter is out - August on Planet Hugill: Vampires, the Angel of Death and Prophets

A month when we caught some rarities including Marschner's Der Vampyr at the Grimeborn Festival, Busoni's Piano Concerto, and Suk's Asrael Symphony at the BBC Proms, and a new recording of Marschner's Le prophète.  

Our interviews this month have something of a string quartet theme with Barbican Quartet and the Miró Quartet, soprano Aoife Miskelly on Pergolesi's L'Olimpiade and conductor Paul Mann on conducting in the Ukraine.

 Read more on our e-newsletter on MailChimp.

A Choral Celebration of Queen Mary II returns with Chapel Choirs of the Old Royal Naval College and the Royal Hospital Chelsea at Chelsea History Festival

A Choral Celebration of Queen Mary at Old Royal Naval College

The Chapel Choirs of the Old Royal Naval College and the Royal Hospital Chelsea are combining forces again in an historic commemoration of the life of Queen Mary II under music director Ralph Allwood and William Vann. 

The programme debuted earlier this year at the Old Royal Naval College [see my review] and now returns on Thursday 26 September in the chapel of the Royal Hospital Chelsea. As before, the programme includes music by John Blow and Henry Purcell for Queen Mary’s coronation, birthday, and funeral, along with George Frideric Handel’s Utrecht Te Deum, written for her successor to the English throne, Queen Anne.

The concert is part of the Chelsea History Festival which runs from 25 to 29 September 2024. The festival is a collaboration between three Chelsea neighbours, National Army Museum (founded in 1960 and in a building on the site of the old infirmary of the Royal Hospital Chelsea), Royal Hospital Chelsea (founded in 1682) and Chelsea Physic Garden (founded in 1673).

This year's festival also features the launch of the Chelsea Heritage Quarter, which brings together four remarkable institutions, the National Army Museum, Royal Hospital Chelsea, Chelsea Physic Garden and Cadogan Estates which has its origins in Sir Hans Sloane purchasing the Manor of Chelsea in 1712  and which was then developed by Sloane's son-in-law the first Earl Cadogan in the later 18th century. The Chelsea Heritage Quarter aims to tell a unique story of London and Britain from 1660 to the present day. 

The festival includes a wide variety of talks and lectures [see website] along with walking tours and a new exhibition in the Stable Yard of the Royal Hospital Chelsea. The Stable Yard is an architecturally significant Grade II* listed building, designed by Sir John Soane when he held the post of Clerk of Works at the Royal Hospital from 1807 until his death in 1837. Soane built the stables between 1814 and 1817, and they remained in use until the 1960s when they were converted into workshops and offices. Thanks to a National Heritage Lottery Fund grant, the Stable Yard will open this autumn following a major restoration project. The Stable Yard includes an exhibition of the history and stories of the Royal Hospital, a new shop, cafe and a regular programme of events.

Information about A Choral Celebration of Queen Mary from the website.

An orchestra re-invented: Chromatica Orchestra's new season with Emerging Conductor Fellowships for Charlotte Politi and Tess Jackson.

The Bath Festival Orchestra is reinventing itself as Chromatica Orchestra, and the new ensemble debuts at Battersea Arts Centre on Tuesday 8 October 2024. The ensemble focuses on gifted early-career musicians under the direction of emerging conductors and the 2024/25 season features two Emerging Conductor Fellowships for Charlotte Politi and Tess Jackson.

On 8 October, Charlotte Politi conducts a programme that includes Barber's Violin Concerto with soloist Kristine Balanas, Manuel de Falla’s El amor brujo with Georgian mezzo-soprano Natalia Kutateladze and music by Copland and Prokofiev. For Armistice Day, Tess Jackson conducts Strauss Horn Concerto No. 1 with soloist Ben Goldscheider, plus Butterworth and Shostakovich at Cadogan Hall (11/11/2024).

Further ahead, Peter Manning, fouding artistic director, conducts Britten’s Les illuminations with tenor Robin Tritschler at Wilton's Music Hall on 11 February 2025. And also in February 2025, Tess Jackson conducts Saint-Saens’ Carnival of the Animals with a new narration, in an interactive, immersive performance for primary school children that will include Music in Secondary Schools’Academy Orchestra.

The Saint-Saens' performance is several where school-age musicians from across the country will play side by side with the orchestra on the professional stage, and the orchestra is working with the David Ross Education Trust and Music in Secondary Schools Trust.

Full details from the orchestra's website.

Music of a Silent World: Chanticleer in an eclectic recital exploring the natural world

Chanticleer

Earlier this Summer, I had the delight of being part of a small audience at the Voces8 centre when the American male-voice ensemble, Chanticleer, music director Tim Keeler, recorded a concert for Live from London, Summer 2024. The whole series is now available from the Live from London website.

Chanticleer's recital is titled Music of a Silent World and is designed to explore the beauty and complexity of the natural world, centring on a song cycle by song-writer and composer Majel Connery, The Rivers are our Brothers written especially for Chanticleer and heard in a new arrangement by Connery and Doug Balliett. The ensemble sings Connery's three songs surrounded by linking items to create an intriguing recital evoking the natural world in popular-style music.

The programme running from Joni Mitchell and Kurt Weill to Hoagy Carmichael and Max Reger, has the ensemble's trademark eclecticism, mixed in with superb technique, and admirably smooth tone, along with a wide variety of musical styles when it comes to the arrangements. Here we move flexibly from close harmony to doo-wop to pop/jazz to gospel. The ensemble is admirably mixed, but you still start to worry a little about cultural appropriation when hearing them in full-throated emulation of gospel performance style.

They begin with a set about stars, Kurt Weill's Lost in the Stars and Hogy Carmichael's Stardust, both given close-harmony style makeovers. Then a set about trees, with I am a tree from Connery's cycle, I miss you like I miss the trees by the ensemble's composer in residence, Ayanna Woods, Abschied from Max Reger's Op. 83 songs which were written for male-voice ensemble, and Ann Ronell's 1932 standard, Willow weep for me. It is a set that is not without stylistic lurches, which the singers all take in their stride, and I felt the Reger might have fitted better sung in English. Connery's style is somewhat unquantifiable, her music here is akin to a lyrical ballad but then it develops somewhat and the arrangement clearly has contemporary classical links. Ayanna Woods' rather touching song is serious with popular hints, then after the rich tone and po-faces of the Reger we emerge into doo-wop with Ann Ronell's song.

The next set moves to the air, with I am the air from Connery's cycle, then two Reger songs, Hochzommernacht and Eine gantz neu Schelmweys, one evoking the Summer breeze and the other something more roguish. Clouds come next with Connery's I am a cloud, given in a highly virtuoso arrangement, followed by an elaborate arrangement of Joni Mitchell's Both sides now which threatens to leave the song too far behind for my taste. The recital ends with an elaborate arrangement of the traditional song, Shenandoah and finally a virtuoso accound of JW Alexander and Jesse Whitaker's Straight Street.

The line up consists of countertenors (high and low), tenor and baritone/bass but all the singers seem to have great flexibility with the countenors going into chest register and tenors going high so that in his solo tenor Vineel Garisa Mahal floats a fine high C.

The sheer virtuoso skill and engagement of the singers is undeniable and all the soloists are of the highest order. The group sings without a conductor and clearly they are engaged with the material. I am not sure that the presentation, with them in white tie, really works and I longed for something a bit more casual. In some songs there is a little movement, and but they feel a bit constrained.

This was the first time I had heard Chanticleer live and was extremely impressed. 

Music of a Silent World
Tavian Cox, Cortez Mitchell, Gerrod Pagenkopf. Bradley Sharpe, Logan Shields, Adam Brett Ward – countertenor
Vineel Garisa Mahal, Matthew Mazzola, Andrew Van Allsburg – tenor
Andy Berry, Jared Graveley, Matthew Knickman – baritone and bass
Tim Keeler – Music Director

Live from London: Summer 2024 is available until 15 September and also features recitals from Voces8, Apollo5,  Mars Smith, Evolution, Ex Cathedra (in Monteverdi's Vespers), Lyrya, Ringmasters, soprano Paula Sides, pianist Sergey Rybin, and pianist Fiachra Garvey