The Cry: a requiem for the lost children of the war in Ukraine

The Cry: a requiem for the lost children in war by Adrian Snell is being performed by London Oriana Choir and Alleyn's School Choir, conductor Dominic Ellis-Peckham with soloist Katy Treharne, as part of a fundraising event on Armistice Day, 11/11/2022, at the Ukrainian Catholic Cathedral of the Holy Family, Duke Street, London, W1K 5BQ. 

The event is being organised by Beyond Conflict, the mental health charity for victims of conflict, in collaboration with the cathedral to raise funds for trauma counselling for children and mothers on the frontline, supported Beyond Conflict, and for The Ukrainian Welcome Centre in London for displaced Ukrainians who fled the war.

The concert will also include Ukrainian music performed by members of the Ukrainian community.

Composer/singer-songwriter Adrian Snell's The Cry was premiered in 2008 at St Paul's Cathedral, followed by performances at Salisbury Cathedral and St George's Chapel, Windsor.

Full details from EventBrite.

Equality & Diversity in Global Repertoire: Orchestras Season 2021-2022

Donne, Women in Music has just released Equality & Diversity in Global Repertoire: Orchestras Season 2021-2022, a report looking at composers' works scheduled or the 2021–2022 season by 111 orchestras across 31 countries. Founded by soprano Gabriella Di Laccio, Donne, Women in Music is a charitable foundation that celebrates, amplifies and promotes women in music. The organisation produced a similar report last year and this year's results represent a marginal improvement. But the figures are still pretty depressing.

Of the 20,400 compositions lined up for performance in the 2021-22 season, 87.7% were written by white men, and only 7.7% by women, most of them white (5.5%). The dominance of music by white men is still so overwhelming that almost one third (27.5%) of all pieces scheduled globally for the 2021-2022 season were by 10 white, historical and well-known European men. Their pieces have been performed nearly four times more than all women combined. 

People who are Black, Asian, Brown, dual-heritage and indigenous to the global south have been referred to as “ethnic minorities” but they represent around 80% of the world’s population, and they are, in fact, global majority. However, only 2.1% of the scheduled works for the 2021/2022 season were written by global majority women composers and 4.5% of the works by global majority men composers.

Tchaikovsky - in the top three most performed composers, after Beethoven and Mozart - was played roughly as often as all Black composers combined. 

The report is available for download on their website [PDF]

Other tools that the foundation makes available include The Big List, a database of works by women composers that includes over 5,000 names and has a variety of search options. They also have free multimedia resources, 

A partnership with Scala Radio UK means that in 2021, 30 women composers were introduced to listeners for the first time, and in January 2022 they launched the first ever radio station dedicated to women composers. They have five albums featuring music just by women, 85 works by women have been recorded, 10 new commissions by women have been funded, and young women composers are mentored for free.

Songs of the Reef: Crouch End Festival Chorus premiere new work by Cassie To inspired by the Great Barrier Reef

On 23 October 2022, Crouch End Festival Chorus, Finchley Children's Music Grup & London Orchestra da Camera, conductor David Temple, will be giving the premiere of Songs of the Reef by Australian composer Cassie To as part of a concert, Adams to Elgar at Alexander Palace Theatre. Chorus and Orchestra will be joined by contralto Jess Dandy for Elgar's Sea Pictures and the programme is completed with John Adams' Harmonium.

To's new piece is a commission from Crouch End Festival Chorus which explores the extinction and regeneration of the coral reefs using texts by Cherissma Blackman-Costelloe that tell of the deep connection between the Reef, its creator Bhiral and the Yidinji People (an Aboriginal Australian people in Far North Queensland). To's music also incorporates recordings of sea creatures.

Full details from Crouch End Festival Chorus' website

Britten & Bridge's viola: Hélène Clément explores the two composers' shared love of the instrument

Frank Bridge: Cello Sonata, arr. Hélène Clément, There is a Willow Grows aslant a Brook, Three Songs, Britten: Elegy, Lachrymae: Hélène Clément, Alasdair Beatson, Sarah Connolly; Chandos
Reviewed 5 October 2022 (★★★★½)

A beautifully realised and highly imaginative recital tracing the viola in the music of Frank Bridge and his pupil, Benjamin Britten from a transcription of Bridge's Cello Sonata right through to Britten's Lachrymae

The viola is one of the many threads that link Frank Bridge and Benjamin Britten. Bridge had a career as a professional viola player before devoting himself solely to composition, whilst Britten was a keen viola player as a young man and Bridge would give Britten his viola when the young man left for the USA in 1939

Yet, neither man wrote a major viola sonata. Despite Bridge's fine sonatas for violin and for cello, there is a lack of a viola one, whilst Britten tended to avoid classical forms and rarely wrote sonatas or symphonies. 

On this disc from Chandos, viola player Hélène Clément (who plays in the Doric String Quartet) and pianist Alasdair Beatson explore Britten and Bridge's music for viola including her own transcription of Bridge's Cello Sonata, to make up the lack, alongside Britten's Lachrymae, plus shorter pieces including Britten's arrangement of Bridge's There is a Willow Grows aslant a Brook and his Three Songs (with mezzo-soprano Sarah Connolly), and Britten's early Elegy. Another link is the Clement is playing Bridge's fine 1843 Francesco Guissani viola that he gave to Britten in 1939 and which is now owned by Britten Pears Arts.

Out of the Shadows: a date for your diary

Out of the Shadows

An evening of music by contemporary composer Robert Hugill for LGBT History Month

'I myself am such a man' - From the twilight world of the 19th & early 20th century homosexual to a desperate search for eternal life.

The concert the world premieres of two cantatas alongside a selection of Robert's songs including settings of Michelangelo, Lord Alfred Douglas and Carl Cook, performed by Ben Vonberg-Clark (tenor), James Atkinson (baritone) and Nigel Foster (piano).

Out of the Shadows takes us from the earliest tentative admissions of same sex attraction, to cruising in a bath house in Imperial Russia to Walt Whitman's unashamed admission of his sexuality. 

Et expecto resurrectionem mortuorum moves between the certainty of the Latin creed, to explorations of cryogenic, the body-snatching of Burke and Hare and Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, before resolving in the homoerotic pantheistic transcendentalism of Walt Whitman with its celebration of Death itself.

Further information from my website.

RWCMD announces new scholarship celebrating the life of Sir Geraint Evans whose centenary is this year

Edward Kim performing at the celebration of Sir Geraint Evans at RWCMD (Photo Kirsten McTernan)

This year is the centenary of the great Welsh baritone, Sir Geraint Evans and the Royal Welsh College of Music and Drama (RWCMD) has been celebrating. Sir Geraint was the college's president when he died in 1992, and to mark the centenary there was a musical event, Not a bad voice and the announcement of a new full scholarship.

To inspire future singers through his example, a £150,000 fund will provide this new scholarship to one student per year in RWCMD's David Seligman Opera School for the next ten years in Sir Geraint’s name. The scholarship, which favours baritones and Welsh candidates, was announced at Not A Bad Voice at the college on 29 September 2022. The first Sir Geraint Evans Centenary Scholar is South Korean baritone, Edward Kim, who joined the opera school in 2021 and who performed at Not A Bad Voice  alongside fellow RWCMD students. 

In 2021 RWCMD also announced a programme, awarding bursaries of up to £1200 to all its new UK undergraduate students with a household income of below £30k per annum, further helping its students in financial need, encouraging diversity and giving opportunities to talented young people, whatever their financial circumstances.  

Not A Bad Voice, led by Nicola Heywood-Thomas, celebrated Sir Geraint’s life with film, singing and storytelling from those who knew him and those he continues to inspire, including Sir Geraint's sons' Huw and Alun, RWCMD director of music, Tim Rhys-Evans, RWCMD head of cocal studies, Mary King, Scottish baritone Donald Maxwell, and students of the College.

I was lucky enough to hear Sir Geraint in a number of unforgettable performances at the Royal Opera House in the early 1980s, including as Coppélius in Les Contes d'Hoffmann, Beckmesser in Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg, the title role in Don Pasquale and Dulcamara in L'elisir d'amore (his final operatic role at the Royal Opera House).

 Further information from the RWCMD website. 

Hallé Orchestra announces its first new leader in almost 25 years and its new composer-in-residence

Roberto Ruis (Photo Tom Stephens / The Hallé)

There is a pair of interesting news items over at the Hallé Orchestra. This week, the orchestra's new leader (its first new leader in nearly 25 years) makes his debut and the orchestra's new composer in residence has been announced.

Roberto Ruisi has been appointed leader of the Hallé Orchestra. Ruisi studied at the Royal College of Music and was awarded the Tagore Gold Medal and he appeared as a guest leader for many orchestras, including L’Orchestre National Bordeaux Aquitaine and the RTÉ Concert Orchestra, all by the age of 19. More recently, he has appeared in guest leading roles with Britten Sinfonia, Hallé Orchestra, and was the leader of Sinfonia Cymru. Roberto was also a core member of 12 Ensemble, who have developed a reputation as one of Europe's most exhilarating collectives

He will make his debut as leader on Thursday 6 October 2022 at Bridgewater Hall in Manchester when Mark Elder conducts Rachmaninov’s Piano Concerto No.3 and Richard Strauss's Ein Heldenleben, a nice light little programme to get him going, then! [see the orchestra's website for details]

Roberto Ruisi comments:  "I remember watching the Hallé rehearse when I was only a teenager, with Sir Mark Elder conducting. Their previous leader, Lyn Fletcher, was a mentor of mine and invited me to come and watch. I was utterly blown away. To now be in a position to join this cherished orchestra as its new Leader is an honour."

 As leader Ruisi will have use of a 1695 Stradivarius violin, known as the Lincoln Strad. This instrument was given to the City of Lincoln in 1970 by the Hon. Mrs Dudley Pelham (widow of the younger brother of the 4th Earl of Yarborough), and it is on loan to the Leader of the Hallé.

The composer Dobrinka Tabakova has been appointed composer-in-residence for the orchestra's 2022/23 season. Tabakova's Cello Concerto was included in the orchestra's opening concerts (21,22, 25 September 2022) with soloist Guy Johnston, conducted by Delyana Lazarova, and Tabakova's other works this season will include a new piece for the Hallé Youth Orchestra.

Full details from the orchestra's website.

Sweet Stillness: Handel's Nine German Arias receive some creative rethinking in these wonderfully engaging performances

Sweet Stillness: George Frideric Handel - Nine German Arias, Sonata in G minor, HWV 364a, Sonata in F minor, HWV 370; Mary Bevan, Davina Clarke, Tom Foster, Alexander Rolton, Sergio Bucheli; Voces8 Records
Reviewed 4 October 2022 (★★★★★)

Highly satisfying musical performances bring out the chamber interactions of these works, whilst never neglecting Brockes' texts and all benefiting from some creative rethinking about the works presentation

Handel didn't set all that much German. He'd avoided the traditional kapellmeister training by going off to Hamburg to play at the opera, and then heading to Italy, home of opera. So, he largely worked in Italian, plus writing church music in Latin, at first and later in English. His major German language work is the Brockes Passion, which may have been written at a time when Handel was considering his career in England and having a German language work would have been useful for possible employment in Germany. The Brockes Passion was probably written around 1716 (i.e. the year after the Jacobite Rising) and was performed in Hamburg in 1719.

A smaller, related work is the Nine German Arias which also sets texts by Barthold Heinrich Brockes, the author of the passion. In fact, Handel and Brockes probably met as students in Halle. By the 1720s (some years after the passion was written), Handel had a copy of the first volume of Brockes collection of his poetic works, Irdisches Vergnügen in Gott (published in 1724) and Handel used this as a source of the texts for Nine German Arias. That Brockes heard these settings we know, because in the introduction to the second volume of his poetry, published in 1727, he mentions the arias. What we don't know is why Handel was writing them!

On this new disc from Voces8 Records, Sweet Stillness, soprano Mary Bevan performs the Nine German Arias with Davina Clarke (violin), Tom Foster (harpsichord/organ), Alexander Rolton (cello) and Sergio Bucheli (theorbo), along with two of Handel's violin sonatas, the Sonata in G minor, HWV 364a and the Sonata in F major, HWV 370.

From folk-inspired music to contemporary music mixing Carnatic and Western classical: finale concert of Hatfield House Chamber Music Festival

The Old Palace, Hatfield House

Finale Concert: Boccherini, Piazzolla, JP Jofre, Joseph Phibbs, Shruthi Rajasekar, Morten Lauridsen; Cantate Youth Choir, Herefordshire County Youth Choir, ORA Singers, Suzi Digby, Festival resident musicians; Hatfield House Chamber Music Festival at the Old Palace
Reviewed 2 October 2022 (★★★★)

A diverse end to the festival, including two world premieres, folk-inspired music from the Nordic countries, Romania, Argentina and Spain, plus cross pollination between Carnatic and Western classical musics

The Hatfield House Chamber Music Festival finished on Sunday 2 October 2022 with a final concert in the Old Palace celebrating the festival's theme of A World of Music, involving the festival's resident musicians and guests including JP Jofre (bandoneon), Adam Walker (flute), Morgan Szymanski (guitar), Nirmala Rajasekar (veena), Thanjavur Murugaboopathi (percussion), the Lodestar Trio, the United Strings of Europe, Ensemble Renard, ORA Singers, Suzi Digby (conductor), Herefordshire County Youth Choir, and Cantate Youth Choir, performing music by Boccherini, Piazzolla, JP Jofre, Stanford, Joseph Phibbs, Shruthi Rajasekar and Morten Lauridsen.

We began with United Strings of Europe (leader Julian Azkoul) in Boccherini's Musica noturna delle strade di Madrid, his quintet evoking the sights and sounds of night-time Madrid. A work that he refused to publish during his lifetime as he said that it would not make sense to anyone unfamiliar with Madrid's night life. It is an idiomatic and colourful piece, with bells, blind musicians, soldiers' drums and far more. The ensemble played it with elegance and verve, as well as with a nice degree of creative freedom, and they were clearly having an enjoyable time, and so were we.

From Madrid at night, we travelled to the cafes of Argentina.

Far more than a musical curiosity: fine musical drama in ETO's revival of Handel's Ottone

Handel: Ottone - Nazan Fikret - English Touring Opera (Photo Richard Hubert Smith)

Handel: Ottone; Elizabeth Karani, Nazan Fikret, Lauren Young, James Hall, Kieron-Connor Valentine, Edward Jowle, director: James Conway, conductor: Gerry Cornelius; English Touring Opera at Hackney Empire
Reviewed 1 October 2022 (★★★★)

Handel's rarely performed Ottone in a revival of James Conway's imaginative and rather beautiful production with a cast who engage us from the outset and take us on a real emotional journey

English Touring Opera's Autumn season launched on Saturday (1 October 2022) with a revival of James Conway's production of Handel's Ottone at the Hackney Empire. This Autumn season is Conway's farewell to the company, as he steps down as artistic director, and the season is a celebration of one of the company's strengths, performances of Baroque opera with three of Conway's Handel productions being featured including a new production of Tamerlano. 

And don't forget that the company isn't just about performing Baroque operas, rare bel canto, Mozart and later classics, it is about touring as well. For the Autumn season seven venues across England will see some or all of the programme. During Conway's 20 something years at the helm of English Touring Opera there have been a remarkable number of operas by Handel and other Baroque composers, all taken round England in a way that no other company can emulate.

James Conway's production of Handel's Ottone was revived by Christopher Moon Little. The Old Street Band was conducted by Gerry Cornelius, ETO's music director. Designs were by takis and lighting was by Tim van't Hof. Gillian Webster was due to sing the role of Gismonda, however owing to illness her place was taken by Elizabeth Karani; evidently this happened at short notice, but Karani performed the role on stage and gave little evidence of her assumption being last-minute. Kieron-Connor Valentine was Adelberto, James Hall was Ottone, Lauren Young as Matilda, Nazan Fikret was Teofane and Edward Jowle was Emireno.

Handel: Ottone - James Hall - English Touring Opera (Photo Richard Hubert Smith)

Theatrical grandeur: ENO launches its new season with Christoph Loy's new production of Tosca

Puccini: Tosca (end of Act 1) - Noel Bouley & ensemble - English National Opera (photo Genevieve Girling)

Puccini: Tosca; Sinéad Campbell-Wallace, Adam Smith, Noel Bouley/Roland Wood, director Christoph Loy/Georg Zlabinger, conductor Leo Hussain; English National Opera at the London Coliseum

Christoph Loy's undoubtedly grand production mixes realism with theatrical artifice. Illness meant we experience a quartet of soloists rather than trio, but there was plenty to enjoy

Back in the 1970s, when English National Opera was producing a series of ground-breaking productions such as Strauss' Salome with Josephine Barstow, there was also a new production of Puccini's Tosca. It was relatively traditional, but long running and remained in the repertoire for some time, I remember seeing the production in 1985 with tenor Charles Craig (66 at the time) and soprano Phyllis Cannan (making her role debut, I think). Since then, ENO has had productions by Keith Warner and Catherine Malfitano, neither of which endured in the repertoire and never giving the company the sort of bread-and-butter production it needs like Anthony Mingella's production of Madama Butterfly.

The problem with Tosca, as with many of Puccini's operas, is that the work is a carefully crafted structure that directors interfere with at their peril; there are only a few rough edges through which a director can insert themselves. Christoph Loy's production of Puccini's Tosca was first seen at The Finnish National Opera and Ballet in 2018 and is the director's first production for the ENO.

Puccini: Tosca - Sinéad Campbell-Wallace, Adam Smith - English National Opera (photo Genevieve Girling)

Christoph Loy's production of Puccini's Tosca, with associate director George Zlabinger, opened ENO's 2022/23 season on Friday 30 September 2022 with Irish soprano Sinéad Campbell-Wallace (last seen at the Coliseum as Mimi, see my review) as Tosca and American-based British tenor Adam Smith as Cavaradossi (in his ENO debut). American baritone Noel Bouley was Scarpia, but Bouley was unfortunately ill and walked the role whilst Roland Wood sang from the side. Msimelelo Mbali was Angelotti, Lucia Lucas as the sacristan, John Findon was Spoletta and Ossian Huskinson was Sciarrone. Designs were by Christian Schmidt, lighting by Olaf Winter. The translation used was the classic one by Edmund Tracey.

From Scandinavia to Buenos Aires by way of Paris and Vienna: the Hatfield House Chamber Music festival opens with a showcase for its varied artists

Queen Elizabeth I presides over an empty stage in Hatfield House's Marble Hall awaiting the performers

Schubert, Poulenc, traditional, Robin Holloway, Dvorak, Jessie Montgomery, JP Jofre; Adam Walker, Julian Bliss. JP Jofre, Guy Johnston, Lodestar Trio, Mishka Rushdie Momen, Charles Owen; Hatfield House Chamber Music Festival at Hatfield House
Reviewed 29 September 2022 (★★★★)

A bandoneon and two nyckelharpas alongside classical music from Schubert to Poulenc to a Robin Holloway premiere and more besides in a wonderfully eclectic start to the festival

There is an eclectic, international genre-crossing feel to this year's Hatfield House Chamber Music Festival where the festival artists include the Lodestar Trio (a collaboration between violinist Max Baillie and the Scandinavian folk duo Erik Rydvall and Olav Mjelva), veena player Nirmala Rjasekar, and Argentinian composer and bandoneon player JP (Juan Pablo) Jofre.

The festival launched on Thursday 29 September 2022 with a pair of concerts in the Marble Hall at Hatfield House. The setting has changed slightly this year, the famous Rainbow Portrait of Queen Elizabeth I, which usually sits right behind the performers, is on its travels having been lent to the Metropolitan Museum in New York, and its place taken by one of the house's other portraits of the queen.

The early evening concert on Thursday featured Jessica Duchen (narrator) and Mishka Rushdie Momen (piano) in Immortal Beloved based on Duchen's book about Beethoven. This was followed by the festival's first evening concert, an eclectic programme which took advantage of the nature of the festival with its resident artists to give us a wide ranging and varied programme that somehow worked. 

We began with Schubert's Quartettsatz in C minor played by a quartet from the United Strings of Europe led by Julian Azkoul, followed by Poulenc's Clarinet Sonata with Julian Bliss (clarinet) and Charles Owen (piano), and the first half ended with a short set from the Lodestar Trio. The second half began with the world premiere of Robin Holloway's Flute Quartet with Adam Walker (flute) and the United Strings of Europe, followed by Dvorak's Waldesruhe, Op.68 No. 5 with Guy Johnston (cello) and Mishka Rushdie Momen (piano), then United Strings of Europe in Jessie Montgomery's Strum. The evening ended with the UK premiere of JP Jofre's Double Concerto for clarinet and bandoneon, string quintet and piano, played by Julian Bliss, JP Jofre, United Strings of Europe and Richard Gowers (piano).

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Gustavo Dudamel been chosen as the fourteenth Glenn Gould Prize Laureate

Gustavo Dudamel & the Los Angeles Philharmonic (Photo Dustin Downing)

Founded in 1983 in Glenn Gould's home-town of Toronto, Canada, the Glenn Gould Foundation celebrates the life, career, and enduring influence of Canadian pianist, writer and broadcaster Glenn Gould. Every two years, the Foundation convenes an international jury to award the Glenn Gould Prize to a living individual for a unique lifetime contribution that has enriched the human condition through the arts. 

Nominees for the international prize come from a broad spectrum of creative disciplines including music, theatre, writing, film, video, radio, television, recording, technology, architecture and design. Past laureates of the international prize include documentary filmmaker Alanis Obomsawin (2020), Jessye Norman (2018), Leonard Cohen (2011), El Sistema founder Dr. José Antonio Abreu (2008), Yo-Yo Ma (1999), and Oscar Peterson (1993).

Venezuelan-born conductor, violinist and music education activist Gustavo Dudamel has been chosen as the fourteenth Glenn Gould Prize Laureate. Gustavo Dudamel is currently music and artistic director of the Los Angeles Philharmonic, and music director of the Opéra National de Paris and Simón Bolívar Symphony Orchestra.  Dudamel was chosen from a distinguished list of international candidates across a broad spectrum of creative disciplines, nominated by members of the general public from around the globe.

Full details from the foundation's website.

Liverpool Philharmonic's £1 ticket sale returns

Royal Liverpool Philharmonic

On Sunday 2 October, the Liverpool Philharmonic will put 1000 tickets for sale for £1 each in response to the cost of living crisis. These will be for 10 events across Liverpool Philharmonic’s season; tickets will be available for purchase in-person only from the Liverpool Philharmonic Hall box office from 10am – 2pm. 

A wide range of concerts will be available, from performances by the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra to rock/pop and Music Room events, all for less than the price of a cup of coffee. The sale has been running for over 10 years, inviting audiences to discover music and Liverpool Philharmonic for an affordable price. 

Domingo Hindoyan, chief conductor of the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra says: "I am delighted that we can once again offer £1 tickets for our concerts. The Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra and I hope that this offer will encourage new audiences to join us for an exciting season at the Philharmonic Hall. Our love and passion for music is at the heart of every concert and performance, and we hope that audiences old and new can experience this."

The Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra is the UK's oldest continuing professional symphony orchestra. The origins of its concert series date back to the formation of the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic, a concert society founded by a group of Liverpool music lovers in 1840. Domingo Hindoyan joined the orchestra as chief conductor in September 2021. 

The orchestra is the largest music organisation and one of the largest cultural organisations in the city. Liverpool Philharmonic premieres and commissions more music than any other UK orchestra, with over 150 works premiered and commissioned in the last 10 years. 

In 2021/22, 107,817 participants of all ages took part in Liverpool Philharmonic's learning and community engagement programmes. Over 14,000 people living with mental ill-health have benefitted from its music and mental health programme over the last 13 years.

Full details from the Liverpool Philharmonic website.

It’s not just the money: Continuo Foundation expands its reach with its fourth funding round

Continuo Foundation has announced the recipients of its fourth funding round, awarding £100,000 to 24 period instrument ensembles, selected from 55 applications requesting support that was three times greater than the funds available. Continuo is supporting 14 new groups, thereby extending its community of grant recipients to 65 period-instrument ensembles. Since its founding in September 2020, the total funding provided by Continuo to the UK's Early Music sector is now £460,000.

The 24 ensembles receiving grants will undertake 67 performances and recordings over the next six months, with projects taking place in 45 locations across the UK, bringing the total number of communities benefiting from Continuo-supported performances to more than one hundred.   

The recently formed ensembles in this grant round include the Cedar Consort, who will tour a Telemann programme featuring recorder soloist Tabea Debus; Figure Ensemble, who will juxtapose Carpentier’s Messe pour les trépassées with the Fauré Requiem; and The Vauxhall Band, who will bring the atmosphere of 18th century Pleasure Gardens and theatre to life in a dramatised concert.

Another ensemble new to Continuo’s grants, Solomon’s Knot, will tour a large-scale project marking the 300th anniversary of Johann Kuhnau. The group's artistic director, bass-baritone Jonathan Sells comments: "It’s not just the money – it is so valuable to be part of the Continuo Foundation community. Continuo is a great ambassador for the whole early music sector, approaching support holistically, giving musicians tools to be more successful and providing a voice for the sector in the UK."

The 24 recipients of Continuo’s fourth round of project grants are, Baroque In The North, Brook Street Band, Cedar Consort, Ceruleo, Chelys Consort of Viols, Ex Cathedra, Feinstein Ensemble, Figure Ensemble, Fiori Musicali, Fretwork, Galliarda, Gonzaga Band, Laudonia, Linarol Consort of Viols, Lux Musicae London, Manchester Baroque, The Mozartists, Musical & Amicable Society, Sackbut Frenzy, Solomon’s Knot, Spiritato, The TFG, The Vauxhall Band, and Yorkshire Baroque Soloists.

Full details from the Continuo Foundation's website.

A wonderfully vivid evening: Blackheath Halls Opera in Bernstein's Candide

Leonard Bernstein: Candide - Nick Pritchard & chorus - Blackheath Halls Opera

Leonard Bernstein: Candide; Nick Pritchard, Ellie Neate, Sarah Pring, Frederick Long, Blackheath Halls Opera, director Sebastian Harcombe, conductor Christopher Stark; Blackheath Halls
Reviewed 27 August 2022

Bernstein's wise-cracking Broadway operetta reinvented as a vividly exuberant community theatre piece with strong solo performances a fine sense of ensemble

Bernstein's Candide has been through innumerable versions since the work's disastrous premiere on Broadway in 1956, and in many ways, it remains a sequence of songs in search of a plot with each iteration of the work taking a slightly different view. But musically there are variations too, there is a world of a difference between the sound-world of the 1950s original with its Broadway theatre orchestra and the Mahlerian luxuriance of the finale of Bernstein's recording with the London Symphony Orchestra in 1989. And the work is now performed as a theatre piece, with miked actors, and as an operetta with opera singers.

The work had something of a further reinvention at Blackheath Halls last night (27 August 2022) as Sebastian Harcombe directed Bernstein's Candide for Blackheath Halls Opera, a community enterprise that brings together members of the community, professional opera singers, production team and students from Trinity Laban Conservatoire. The cast was led by Nick Pritchard as Candide with Frederick Long as Dr Pangloss, Ellie Neate as Cunegonde, Sarah Pring as the Old Lady, James Liu as the Governor, Matthew Kellett as Maximilian plus Hannah Leggatt and Adam Brown, with the Blackheath Halls Chorus, Blackheath Halls Orchestra, Blackheath Halls Youth Opera Company and students from Greenvale School and Charlton Park Academy, all conducted by Christopher Stark. Designs were by Elliott Squire, lighting by Tracey Gibbs, movement by Jasmine Ricketts.

Leonard Bernstein: Candide - Sarah Pring, Ellie Neate - Blackheath Halls Opera

Celebrating the bicentenary of Weber's Bassoon Concerto with Laurence Perkins and Greenwich Chamber Orchestra

 Carl Maria von Weber (1821), by Caroline Bardua

After a stressful four years, from 1807 to 1810, when Carl Maria von Weber worked as secretary to the King of Württemberg's brother and got entangled in his employer's financial machinations, Weber embarked on an international concert tour visiting   Munich, Prague, Dresden, Berlin, Copenhagen, and St. Petersburg. In March 1811, he arrived in Munich where he worked with the court orchestra (descendant of the Mannheim orchestra that had so impressed Mozart). Weber wrote the clarinet Concertino for Heinrich Bärmann, a clarinettist in the court orchestra who would become a lifelong friend. It was such a success that the King of Bavaria commissioned Weber for two clarinet concertos. 

Other court musicians wanted concertante works from Weber, but the only one who convinced him was bassoonist Georg Friedrich Brandt, a student of Mozart's favourite bassoonist. Brandt premiered the work in Munich in December 1811, but by then Weber had left for Switzerland. Brandt subsequently performed the concerto in Vienna (1812), Prague (1813) and Ludwigslust (1817). Weber attended this last concert and as a result revised the work, publishing it in 1822

The work's textual history is complex as later 19th century editions of the work obscured Weber's original intentions regarding articulations, notes and dynamics, not to mention misprints and it is only in the 20th century that Weber's original intentions have been rediscovered.

Bassoonist Laurence Perkins (whom I first heard in recital at the Royal Northern College of Music when we were both studying in Manchester) has just done a new edition of Weber's Bassoon Concerto and has been playing it around the country, celebrating the 200th anniversary of the work's final completion.

On Saturday 22 October 2022, Laurence Perkins joins the Greenwich Chamber Orchestra, conductor David Cutts, to perform Weber's Bassoon Concerto at St Alfege's Church, Greenwich. Also in the programme is Paul Reade's Catalonia which Reade (who died 25 years ago) wrote for Perkins, plus symphonies by Mozart and Schubert.

The Greenwich Chamber Orchestra was formed in 2019 by David Cutts and is now settling in to giving an autumn and a winter concert in St Alfege Church each year. The orchestra is made up of fine amateur players from London and elsewhere who meet for a few rehearsals for each occasion.  The professional leader is the exceptional Gonzalo Acosta. Each concert of includes a concerto by internationally renowned soloists.

Full details of the concert from EventBrite

Much more than niche repertoire: Tredegar Band's Vaughan Williams on Brass

Vaughan Williams on Brass; Ross Knight, Tredegar Town Band, Ian Porthouse, Martyn Brabbins; ALBION
Reviewed 26 August 2022 (★★★★)

A brilliantly engaging and imaginative look at RVW's brass music, mixing the original works with both new arrangements and new versions of old favourites, all superbly played

Vaughan Williams didn't write all that much for brass band, though the medium has come to be more associated with his music thanks to arrangements of RVW's works for military band. On this disc from Albion Records, Tredegar Town Band records a selection of RVW for brass, works originally written for brass such as Henry Fifth and Variations for Brass Band, works originally written for military band such as the English Folk Songs Suite and works more usually performed in other versions such as the Tuba Concerto. Conducting honours are shared between Ian Porthouse, the band's artistic director, and Martyn Brabbins (who conducts The Truth from Above, Prelude on Rosymedre and Variations for Brass Band).

Whilst Britain's brass band tradition stretches back to the 19th century (the history of Tredegar Town Band can be traced to 1849), it took time for British composers to routinely write for the genre. Elgar and Holst were amongst the composers who wrote test pieces for the National Brass Band Championships between the two wars and Holst's 1928 contribution, A Moorside Suite, is arguably the first masterpiece for the medium. 

Its most significant community undertaking yet: The Cumnock Tryst's A Musical Celebration of the Coalfields presents its first public performances this week

(Photo Alex Douglas)

Just over 10 years ago Sir James MacMillan founded The Cumnock Tryst, a four-day music festival in Cumnock, Ayrshire each October, with a commitment to building local pride, musical opportunities, profile for the region and with a significant commitment to community engagement. 

The composer grew up in Cumnock, in the heart of mining country and this legacy both rich and challenging continues to influence the communities in the area; Cumnock for all its problems needs to be in the spotlight for the many things, musical, cultural, social and spiritual that are being pursued in Ayrshire with increasing energy and vision.

Community projects and community engagement plays a big role in the festival's ongoing work, and the most significant such undertaking yet is A Musical Celebration of the Coalfields, a project delivering huge positive impact to the lives of those living in the area. The project is part of The Coalfield Communities Landscape Partnership for which East Ayrshire Council raised £2,220,500 through the Heritage Lottery Fund. The partnership is made up of 22 projects, all working to benefit the people and the area, and The Cumnock Tryst was awarded a major grant to work with local communities to create a musical celebration of their own heritage, culture and environment.

The 2013 collapse of the open cast coaling industry changed the lives of those that depended on it and left behind an ugly, unsafe, and inaccessible landscape. The Coalfields Community Landscape Partnership has initiated a project for the regeneration of the coalfields area from a cultural, physical, social, and historical point of view, and A Musical Celebration of the Coalfields is The Cumnock Tryst’s way of leading the cultural regeneration of the coalfields. 

Originally conceived as a two-year long creative project with community groups, music organisations and young people from across the area A Musical Celebration of the Coalfields immediately hit challenges as Covid-19 changed the ways in which those involved could all interact, gather and create together. The route became online for that period, resulting through a series of star-studded local workshops in a beautiful film – The Moss and the Cosmos (available from the festival website)

A Musical Celebration of the Coalfields involves around 15 local community groups across Cumnock and the Doon Valley who are at the heart of every part of writing, composing, producing and performing their stories. In the first real life iteration of the work in development, A Musical Celebration of the Coalfields brings together local music groups Strings N Things and the Cumnock Area Musical Production Society for a presentation of music they have created themselves with composers Ailie Robertson and Findlay Napier on Saturday 1 October 2022 at the Cumnock Town Hall [full details from the festival website]. Pupils of Hillside School also get in on the action on Friday 30 September 2022, joining a quartet of singers and composers James MacMillan and Matilda Brown, to perform a programme of music they have created in Blue Sky Counterpoint, a collaboration with Drake Music Scotland, Scotland’s leading organisation providing music-making opportunities for children and adults with disabilities [full details from the festival website]

This is only a taste, and the 2023 edition of The Cumnock Tryst will feature a larger project when James MacMillan will work with ten community groups across Cumnock and Doon Valley to help them create a piece of music reflecting their own response to their landscape, social history, community, people, and place. The music they compose will be a major highlight of the 2023 edition of The Cumnock Tryst when it will be performed by the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra alongside musicians from across the area. 

James MacMillan commented "A Musical Celebration of the Coalfields is one of the most exciting projects that The Cumnock Tryst has taken on. It came about through discussions with our colleagues at East Ayrshire Council and the support from the Heritage Lottery Fund. It has enabled The Cumnock Tryst to work closely with a number of community groups in the East Ayrshire area, especially around Cumnock and New Cumnock, right at the heart of what was the coalfields area of East Ayrshire. Some of these groups are musical groups, but some are not. Some are school groups. Although the pandemic curtailed some of our plans, the 2023 edition will see the culmination of much of this work in a very special way, almost like a kind of auditorio of the different elements all coming to fruition."  

Edward Gardner & the LPO's Autumn season opened in spectacular fashion with Schoenberg's Gurrelieder; composer Florence Anna Maunders was there

Schoenberg: Gurrelieder - Edward Gardner, London Philharmonic Orchestra, London Philharmonic Choir, London Symphony Chorus - Royal Festival Hall (Photo: London Philharmonic Orchestra)

Arnold Schoenberg: Gurrelieder; David Butt Philip, Lise Lindstrom, Karen Cargill, London Philharmonic Choir, London Symphony Chorus, London Philharmonic Orchestra, Edward Gardner; Royal Festival Hall
Reviewed by Florence Anna Maunders, 24 September 2022

A spectacular opening concert for the Autumn season as chief conductor Edward Gardner explored the rich treasures of Schoenberg's iconic late-romantic work

Arnold Schoenburg's colossal Gurrelieder formed the entirety of this spectacular opening concert of the London Philharmonic Orchestra's Autumn season at the Royal Festival Hall – a vastly ambitious cantata which, in addition to one of the largest orchestras required by any piece, calls for five soloists, a speaker, three male voice choirs and a mixed chorus. Here we had chief conductor Edward Gardner directing the London Philharmonic Orchestra, London Philharmonic Choir, London Symphony Chorus, David Butt Philip, Lise Lindstrom, Karen Cargill, James Creswell, Robert Murray, and Alex Jennings. With such large forces marshalled, even the large stage of the Royal Festival Hall began to appear rather full – a capacity matched by the audience.

Handel the Cosmopolitan: tenor James Way introduces The Assembled Company's new programme as part of HP Futures at St Martin-in-the-Fields

As part of HP Futures, a concert series in collaboration with St Martin-in-the-Fields and artist management company Harrison Parrott, the Assembled Company, artistic director James Way, is presenting Handel the Cosmopolitan at St Martin-in-the-Fields on 8 October 2022, with Rachel Podger (violin), Rowan Pierce (soprano) and James Way (tenor) in a programme that combines Handel's Nine German Arias and his cantata Caro autor di mia doglia. Here James Way introduces the programme.

The programme started out with a desire to promote the wonderful music of Handel’s Nine German Arias. One of the most common comments about this work is that it’s one of the few things Handel wrote in his native tongue. But what happens if we remove that single feature and present the Arias in a new English translation?

Having recently performed Schubert's Winterreise and Wolf's Italian Song Book in translations by Jeremy Sams, I had begun to enjoy the new perspective that performing English translations brings. This reframing of well-known pieces allows regular audiences to hear a familiar work in a new way, it often invites new audiences in and, last but by no means least, forces the performers to reconsider their interpretations.

For this concert the Nine German Arias are also split between tenor and soprano, instead of chopping them up with instrumental music, as is often done. This change of voice between movements lends a new, almost conversational nature to the piece.

The second half takes us to Handel in another, and this time unchanged, language — Italian.

Some of his lesser performed duet cantatas will be familiar to some because they contain musical material later repurposed for the Messiah. Fantastic works in their own rights and often performed by two sopranos, on this occasion we present them for soprano and tenor.

These are followed by his cantata Caro autor di mia doglia HWV182a, a remarkable piece written during Handel’s first stay in Italy, which epitomises so much of the the style we associate with Handel’s Italian works: intertwining voices often wrought with thinly veiled heartbreak and intense emotion.

The Assembled Company are a group of musicians brought together by James Way whose goal of producing vivid and creative performances is underpinned by the spirit of collaboration.

Handel the Cosmopolitan - Saturday 8 October 2022, 7.30pm, St Martin-in-the-Fields - Rachel Podger (violin), Rowan Pierce (soprano), James Way (director/tenor), The Assembled Company - further details from the church's website 

From low comedy and satire to subtlety and sophistication: conductor John Andrews chats about Lampe's The Dragon of Wantley, Gilbert & Sullivan and more

Lampe: The Dragon of Wantley - recording sessions, John Andrews (Photo Matthew Johnson)

The conductor John Andrews has had rather a Gilbert and Sullivan Summer. He conducted The Yeomen of the Guard at The Grange Festival, The Pirates of Penzance, Iolanthe and Utopia Ltd for the National Gilbert & Sullivan Opera Company in Buxton, and The Mikado for Charles Court Opera in Harrogate. And on disc, John's Sullivan without Gilbert explorations continue with the release of Sullivan's 1864 ballet, L'Île Enchantée with the BBC Concert Orchestra on Dutton Epoch. Also on disc, John has recorded a work that he sees as being, in many ways, a precursor to the Savoy Opera, John Frederick Lampe's Handelian parody, The Dragon of Wantley, on Resonus Classics with the Brook Street Band, Mary Bevan, Catherine Carby, Mark Wilde, and John Savournin [see my review].

Written in the 1730s, The Dragon of Wantley features finely Handelian-style music written by a composer who also played the bassoon in Handel's orchestra, allied to a crazy story that came from a 17th-century broadside ballad, about a dragon ravaging Yorkshire and it being vanquished, ultimately, by an unlikely beer-swilling hero. 

The opera is not quite unknown, but it is certainly nowhere near as popular as it deserves to be, a fact that John finds somewhat puzzling. Many musicians know about it, and he has had plenty of conversations with musicians who have performed it and have happy memories of it, but somehow performances remain largely in universities and on Summer courses, though Peter Holman toured a production in the late 1970s.

But it deserves to be more well known, and it is a highly suitable piece for modern performance, featuring a small cast and good music, allied to the crazy plot. John sees it as representing a tradition of music that we have largely forgotten. That of the English composers writing for the stage at the same time as Handel, names such as Thomas Arne. And we don't quite know where to place the music.

The Dragon of Wantley, in many ways, looks forward to both pantomime and to Gilbert & Sullivan, but the music is of the school of Handel. John points out that we have come to accept and understand Shakespeare's middle-period comedies, with their lack of belly laughs and the balance between funny and serious, but that the 18th-century English musical tradition that has this combination of funny and serious is less well understood, and some of Handel's later works such as Serse and Partenope have similar problems for modern audiences. 

LPO opens applications for its new Conducting Fellowship

London Philharmonic Orchestra

The London Philharmonic Orchestra (LPO) has opened applications for its new Conducting Fellowship, which will develop two early-career conductors from backgrounds currently under-represented in the profession. The scheme is specifically designed to promote diversity and inclusivity in the classical music industry.

The two successful applicants will be Fellows for the 2023/24 season and be guided by the LPO’s principal conductor, Edward Gardner. They will become fully immersed in the life of the LPO, working intensively with the Orchestra over a period of 6-8 non-consecutive weeks. The LPO Conducting Fellowship will include:

• Opportunities to conduct the orchestra in various settings including at LPO residencies, educational programmes, and ensembles of its rising talent programmes
• Assisting opportunities and mentorship sessions with Edward Gardner
• Full immersion into the life of the orchestra, with the aim of forming the basis of a longer-term professional relationship

There will also be the possibility of other assisting opportunities and 1-1 sessions with conductors, feed by from the orchestra's musicians, professional development opportunities and more.

Applications are open until 21 October 2022, full details from the LPO website.

New classical concert series at historic house in Cumbria

Cellist Max Beitan who opens the concert series at Netherby Hall

Netherby Hall in Cumbria has its origins in a 15th century tower house, which was altered and extended in the 17th, 18th and 19th centuries. A recent multi-million-pound restoration has seen the property transformed, creating nine luxury self-catering holiday cottages and apartments, as well as conference facilities. 

The hall is now launching a monthly series of classical music concerts starting on 23 September 2022. Each concert will take place in the Netherby's Oak Hall with the option of having a post-concert dinner in the orangery. The performances at Netherby Hall are part of the Absolute Classics concert series, where visiting musicians tour the region performing at different venues as well as inspiring the next generation through their work with schools and young people. During the concert season, the visiting musicians perform at Netherby Hall; Cochran Hall, Kirkcudbright; and Easterbrook Hall in Dumfries.

The series begins with cellist Max Beitan and pianist John Thwaites in Franck, Rachmaninov, Tchaikovsky & Piazzolla on September 23 followed by Oxana Shevchenko, piano, in Mozart, Brahms, & Prokofiev (October 21), Filip Pogády, violin and John Lenehan, piano (November 18); Adam Laloum, piano, Clémence de Forceville, violin, and Benedict Kloeckner, cello (December 9); Anna Fedorova, piano (January 20); Solem Quartet (February 10); and Tabea Debus, recorder and Jonathan Rees, gamba (March 17).

Full details from the Netherby Hall website.