Strong musical performances as Anthony Roth Costanzo makes his debut as Handel's Amadigi di Gaula with Boston Baroque

Handel: Amadigi di Gaula - Anthony Roth Costanzo, Boston Baroque (Photo GBH Production Group)

Handel: Amadigi di Gaula; Anthony Roth Costanzo, Daniela Mack, Amanda Forsythe, Camille Ortiz, Boston Baroque, dir: Louisa Muller, cond: Martin Pearlman; Boston Baroque at Calderwood Studio, WGBH streamed on IDAGIO
Performance on 22 April 2022, reviewed on 27 April 2022

One of Handel's early successes in a made for video live performance from Boston with strong musical performances

For its 2021/22 season Boston Baroque, music director Martin Pearlman, took the bold decision to build on the live streaming it had done during the previous turbulent season and the period instrument ensemble has been presenting its concerts in made for live streaming events where a live audience is able to watch a performance which works for filming too. The performances have been taking place in the the 5,000 square foot Calderwood Studio at WGBH in Boston, USA and all have been available for a month on IDAGIO. 

To close the 2021/22 season, Martin Pearlman conducted Boston Baroque in a staging of Handel's Amadigi di Gaula at the Calderwood Studio at WGBH on 22 April 2022, and streaming on IDAGIO. Directed by Louisa Muller, the staging featured production design by Ian Winters, production design by Christelle Matou, lighting by Elaine Buckholtz and the livestream was directed by Matthew Principe. Counter-tenor Anthony Roth Costanzo was making his role debut as Amadigi, with Daniela Mack as Dardano, Amanda Forsythe as Melissa, and Camille Ortiz as Oriana.

La Bonne Cuisine: Lotte Betts-Dean and Harry Rylance at Fidelio Cafe on OnJam Lounge

Lotte Betts-Dean at Fidelio Cafe, filmed by Andrew Staples for OnJam

Bernstein La Bonne Cuisine, Sondheim, Ravel, Britten, Enescu, Youmans, Bolcom, Schubert, Bricusse; Lotte Betts-Dean, Harry Rylance, dir: Andrew Staples; OnJam
Reviewed by Robert Hugill on 16 November 2021
A delightful and imaginative romp through food and drink themed songs, mixing serious and popular, well-known and seriously undervalued

As part of OnJam Lounge, mezzo-soprano Lotte Betts-Dean and pianist Harry Rylance have recorded a filmed recital of songs with a food and drink theme, La bonne cuisine [to be broadcast on 12 December 2021]. It is one of six OnJam Lounge recitals, filmed at the Fidelio Cafe by Andrew Staples. Betts-Dean and Rylance have put together an eclectic mix of songs ranging from Purcell to Sondheim all of which touch, in some way, on food and drink. The styles are varied too, with Schubert and No No Nanette appearing right next to each other, this isn't one of those recitals that places the popular items at the end, behind a sort of programmatic 'cordon sanitaire', and one of the lovely things is the way Betts-Dean really sings the more popular items, yet she and Rylance also bring out the toe-tapping nature of the material too.

We begin with Betts-Dean sat on top of the Fidelio Cafe's kitchen counter boasting about how she makes the Worst Pies in London (from Sondheim's Sweeney Todd), admirably mixing firm tone with great words and clearly having fun too. 

From a year-long exploration of rare Telemann to Bach at Christmas: adventures online with Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment

Using filmed performance online can enable ensembles to do things rather differently to their concert hall presence. And now that they have returned to live concert giving, the Orchestra of the Age of the Enlightenment is doing just that. 

Telemann’s Essercizii Musici is a colourful feast of 24 musical delights; dating from around 1740 (or before) it consists of 12 solo sonatas (for flute, violin, viola da gamba, recorder, oboe) and 12 trio sonatas. It is difficult to do justice to the collection in concert, and the pieces were not intended to be performed en masse. So, over a year, OAE Player is featuring a monthly concert, Tales with Teleman which will include music from Essercizii Musici, thus enabling us to explore the complete collection. The journey started last month, and November's episode features Violin Sonata in F major and Trio for oboe, violin and basso continuo in G major alongside one of Telemann's sacred cantatas. And the performers don't just include members of the OAE and rising stars, but also students from the orchestra's home, Acland Burghley School reading from Aesop's Fables.

Also released this month on OAE Player, Look no bass! is an intriguing recital in which the violinists from the OAE present music for violins alone, from concertos for four violins by Telemann to arrangements of Matthew Locke, John Adson and Gabrieli. 

Further ahead, there is more conventional Christmas repertoire; on 17 December the OAE joins forces with the choir of Clare College, conductor Graham Ross, for Bach's Magnificat (the version with Christmas interpolations) and Handel's Dixit Dominus, with a fine cast of young soloists, Lucy Knight and Emilia Morton (sopranos), James Hall (counter-tenor), Hugo Hymas (tenor) and Andrew Davies (bass). Further information from OAE website.

dream.risk.sing: Samantha Crawford and Lana Bode explore women's lives in song at Oxford Lieder Festival

dream.risk.sing - Lana Bode, Samantha Crawford - Oxford Lieder Festival

dream.risk.sing - Dvorak, Judith Weir, Charlotte, Bray, Carson Cooman, Ricky Ian Gordon, Helen Grime, Florence Price, Michele Brourman; Samantha Crawford, Lana Bode; Oxford Lieder Festival (on-line)
Reviewed by Robert Hugill on 26 October 2021
Two young performers in a personal project to explore women's lives in the concert hall, using song to look at topics as various as motherhood, discrimination and loss, complex and striking subjects with some powerful contemporary responses

Soprano Samantha Crawford and pianist Lana Bode's dream.risk.sing is very much a personal project, aimed at creating a song recital which explored women's experiences. Predominantly, though not necessarily women composers, but music which takes women's lives as its subject matter rather than the purely masculine gaze of much of the classic repertoire. Crawford and Bode developed the programme during 2020 and will be recording it for Delphian Records in 2022.

On Wednesday 20 September 2021, Samantha Crawford and Lana Bode debuted dream.risk.sing at a late-night concert at the Jacqueline du Pre Music Building as part of the Oxford Lieder Festival. The programme included music by Dvorak, Carson Cooman, Ricky Ian Gordon, Helen Grime, Florence Price and Michele Brourman, plus songs from a new version of Judith Weir's woman.life.song and the premiere of a newly commission cycle by Charlotte Bray. We caught the recital on catch-up, via the Oxford Lieder Festival website.

The repertoire was very much in the contemporary, with only Dvorak providing a nod to classic repertoire, and a Florence Price song providing a welcome continuation of the exploration of her neglected output. This emphasis is not surprising, in the 19th century female composers were often concerned to match their male counterparts, and songs often evoke elements of the male gaze. What wouldn't we give to have a response to Schumann and Chamisso's Frauen-liebe und Leben from Clara Schumann and a contemporary woman poet!

Boxgrove Choral Festival 2021: from Spanish Renaissance to contemporary British music

Joseph Wicks and the Beaufort Singers at Boxgrove Priory

Boxgrove Choral Festival 2021; The Beaufort Singers, Joseph Wicks, Helen Charlston, Michael Craddock, Alexander Soares; Boxgrove Priory
Reviewed by Robert Hugill on 18 October 2021
Young performers in an imaginative mix of repertoire from Spanish Renaissance to contemporary, in an online offering

The Beaufort Singers is a chamber choir formed at the University of Cambridge in 2016 and directed by Joseph Wicks. Named after Lady Margaret Beaufort who founded St John’s College, Cambridge, Joseph Wicks and the choir founded the Boxgrove Festival in 2018, thus giving the choir a new home at Boxgrove Priory. The 2020 festival was cancelled, whilst the 2021 festival went ahead with a small live audience and the concerts were filmed and are available on-line until mid-November. 

 

The membership of the choir comprises singers from across the UK embarking upon the early stages of their careers, and plans for next year's festival are already well under way with a celebration of the centenary of Frank Martin with a performance of his mass.

This year's festival features four concerts online via OnJam, two concerts from the Beaufort Singers and Joseph Wicks, music from the Spanish Renaissance with Lobo's Lamentations for Holy Saturday and Victoria's Tenebrae Responsories, and a concert of largely British music, intended as a reflection on emotions from the last 18 months with Howell's Take him Lord for cherishing, William Harris' Bring us, O Lord God, Edward Naylor's Vox Dicentis: Clama, Philip Moore's Prayers of Dietrich Bonhoeffer and music by James MacMillan, Neil Cox, Holst and Biebl. There is also an organ recital from Joseph Wicks, playing the two-manual Hill organ at Boxgrove Priory with music by Bach, Gibbons, Dupre, Hindemith and Percy Whitlock, and mezzo-soprano Helen Charlston, baritone Michael Craddock and pianist Alexander Soares in songs from their Isolation Songbook [see my review of their disc].

Engaging, imaginative and beautifully thought out: four online recitals from Robin Tritschler, Jess Dandy, Julien van Mellaerts, Harriet Burns and Ian Tindale

Ian Tindale and Robin Tritschler (from video filmed by Tall Wall Media)

In a dynamic response to his own lost work, pianist Ian Tindale organised a series of online song-recitals, which also enabled him to create new programmes with colleagues that he had not had chance to work with over the past year. The result is an engaging series of four 30-minute recitals, tenor Robin Tritschler in Britten and Schubert, contralto Jess Dandy in Schubert and Mahler, baritone Julien van Mellaerts in an English and French programme, and soprano Harriet Burns in a recital based around Schumann's Frauenliebe und -leben, all beautifully filmed by Simon Wall of Tall Wall Media in the lovely music room of a private house.

The online presence is admirably organised, there is a YouTube Playlist, each video has the full programme in the footer (with tracking links), plus a link to the texts and translations. Though with all four singers you hardly need these latter, diction is uniformly superb and communicability excellent, whatever the language the emotion comes over.

Encounters: York Early Music Festival with Tudor motets, Elizabethan viol music, baroque cantatas and the madrigal re-imagined

Encounters, this year's York Early Music Festival at the National Centre for Early Music (NCEM) took place both live and online. The festival's ten online events are available on NCEM's website until 13 August 2021, and I have been dipping into some of the delights on offer with The Gesualdo Six in English Motets, the Rose Consort of Viols in Elizabethan Encounters, Matthew Brook (bass-baritone) and Peter Seymour (harpsichord) in Amore traditore: Cantatas for bass and harpsichord, and The Monteverdi String Band and Hannah Ely (soprano) in The Madrigal Reimagined.

The Gesualdo Six have been spending lockdown learning new repertoire and for their programme English Motets they returned to the English repertoire from Tudor composers, music that they all grew up singing. The 200 years covered by the programme was a turbulent time, with composers such as Tallis and Byrd writing for both Catholic and Protestant monarchs with Tallis' works for the Edwardian Church virtually coming to define the new musico-religious style. 

Tosca in an iconic location: Seattle Opera film's Puccini's opera at St James Cathedral, Seattle

Puccini: Tosca - Alexandra LoBianco during filming of Act Three - Seattle Opera at St James Cathedral (Photo Philip Newton)

Puccini Tosca; Alexandra LoBianco, Dominick Chenes, Michael Chioldi, dir: Dan Wallace Miller, cond: Kazem Abdullah; Seattle Opera filmed on location at St James Cathedral, Seattle
Reviewed by Robert Hugill on 23 June 2021
A film of Tosca in real locations which also manages to pay tribute to the work's melodramatic side

For all that Victorien Sardou's play La Tosca could be described as a 'shabby little shocker',  Giacomo Puccini exercised great care when writing his opera Tosca based on Sardou's play. And whilst the action is pure melodrama, Puccini's anchors it both with the sophisticated way he writes musically for the characters, and the fact that the work is set in real places. For instance, the opening prelude Act Three with its bells, is based quite closely on the actual sounds of the bells in Rome.

But Puccini plays up the melodramatic element too, the way the action in compressed so that the entire opera lasts well under two hours and the second act imaginatively plays two of Sardou's acts simultaneously (Tosca's singing of the celebratory cantata for the Queen off-stage whilst Scarpia and Cavaradossi are on-stage).

This combination of realism and melodrama can trip productions up on stage; I have only seen one production (directed by Anthony Besch for Scottish Opera in 1980 and still going strong) where the religious procession at the end of Act One is liturgically convincing.

Seattle Opera, for its final opera in its digital season, has created a performance of Puccini's Tosca which is filmed almost entirely at St James Cathedral, Seattle. Directed by Dan Wallace Miller and conducted by Kazem Abdullah, the production featured Alexandra LoBianco as Tosca, Dominick Chenes as Cavaradossi, and Michael Chioldi as Scarpia with Adam Lau as Angelotti, Matthew Burns as the Sacristan, Andrew Stenson as Spoletta, José Rubio as Sciarrone, Ellaina Lewis as the Shepherd boy and Ryan Bede as the jailer.

Puccini: Tosca - Alexandra LoBianco, Michael Chioldi - Seattle Opera at St James Cathedral (Photo Philip Newton)

Liesl Alice Gatcheco's costumes were in correct period (1800) and production designer Christopher Mumaw made very effective use of the cathedral which has a very neo-classical look to it. Act Two took place in a room, dressed very much as you might expect, but Act Three opened in the confined area of Cavaradossi's cell, though we transferred to the outer spaces of the cathedral for an imaginatively filmed ending.

The Constant Heart: the Marian Consort at the Dunster Festival

Allegorical portrait of Sir John Luttrell
by Hans Eworth, 1550

The Constant Heart - Tallis, Giles, McKevitt, Van Wilder, Parsons, Rowarth, Clemens non Papa, Parsley; Marian Consort; Dunster Festival
Reviewed by Robert Hugill on 22 June 2021
Themed around 16th century Sir John Luttrell's personal motto from his remarkable portrait by Hans Eworth, the Marian Consort's imaginative programme encompassed familiar and unfamiliar 16th century sacred music alongside two contemporary pieces

This year's Dunster Festival took place between 28 and 30 May 2021 when there were three live concerts presented to small socially distanced audiences, but the festival has also created a Digital Festival which has been going on-line since 11 June, taking footage from the three live concerts and combining it with extra material to create three digital events.

This week the second event went on-line, The Constant Heart, a programme of 16th century and contemporary music presented by the Marian Consort, whose artistic director Rory McCleery is co-artistic director of the Dunster Festival. The concert was themed around a remarkable picture which hangs in Dunster Castle, this is a copy made in the 1590s of a remarkable allegorical portrait of Sir John Luttrell painted by Hans Eworth in 1550 which makes reference to Sir John's military and naval service as well as including his motto, 'More than the Rock Amydys the Raging Seas, / The Constant Hert no Danger Dreddys nor Fearys' which gives the concert its name.

The programme included Lamentations of Jeremiah by Tallis and by his lesser-known contemporary Osbert Parsley, motets by Tallis, Nathaniel Giles, Robert Parsons, Philip van Wilder,  and Clemens non Papa plus two contemporary works, Donna McKevitt's Lament 16 and Ben Rowarth's Ave Maris Stella which was commissioned for the concert and whose text includes Sir John's motto. The on-line concert featured footage from the live concert at Dunster's Priory Church of St George along with items filmed at Cleeve Abbey, where the monks' refectory survives intact.

Still encouraging us to listen in new ways: O/Modernt Festival celebrates its 10th anniversary with a festival live and on-line

Hugo Ticciati and O/Modernt at Confidencen, Ulriksdal Palace, Stockholm

O/Modernt Festival 2021 at Confidencen, Ulriksdal Palace, Stockholm
Reviewed by Robert Hugill on 20 June 2021
O/Modernt is 10 and celebrated with a festival bringing together old and new in typically (un)familiar ways

This year we celebrate anniversaries for Josquin, Stravinsky and Miles Davies though I suspect few festivals will manage to slip all three into the same programme. It says much about the ethos of Hugo Ticciati's O/Modernt Festival based at the 18th century theatre, Confidencen, at Ulriksdal Palace in Stockholm that for their concert on 15 June 2021 as part of this year's O/Modernt Festival, Ticciati and his orchestra along with jazz pianist and composer Gwilym Simcock created a programme which moved easily between all three composers, beginning with Josquin's Ave Maria .... virgo serena and ending with Simcock's arrangement of selections from Miles Davies' Live-Evil whilst along the way taking in Stravinsky's Three pieces for string quartet and Concerto in D (‘Basle’).

The festival this year ran from 11 to 16 June 2021 and whilst the concerts had a small audience at Confidencen they are also available on-line for 30 days through takt1 and I was able to catch up with a selection of music from the festival. This year is O/Modernt's 10th anniversary and essential Ticciati's programmes for the festival celebrated the festival's ethos which embodies Ticciati's ideas. He feels we need to listen with new ears and that juxtaposing different styles of music, there being no correct style so that for the opening concert we even had a new piece combining the music of Beethoven and David Bowie!

Confidencen, Ulriksdal Palace, Stockholm

The opening concert was on 11 June 2021 and titled Inventing the past. The first half was a journey around Bach whilst for the second Beethoven became the focus, though in surprisingly different ways. The ensemble combined the players from O/Modernt with young players from O/Modernt New Generation Artists. We began with Bach's Brandenburg Concerto No. 3 in a vivid performance where it was clear that the players were having a great time. These are modern instruments but very present and full of colours. For the middle movement, just two notes, we had a very 21st century improvisation featuring an electric guitar. 

Sheer enjoyment: Rachel Podger and Royal Northern Sinfonia's Bach to Bach

Bach to Bach - Rachel Podger, Royal Northern Sinfonia

Bach to Bach; Rachel Podger, Royal Northern Sinfonia; Sage Gateshead
Reviewed by Robert Hugill on 11 June 2021
Rachel Podger's debut with the orchestra and their first concert this year with a live audience make for a vibrant mix

Baroque violinist Rachel Podger spent a week with the Royal Northern Sinfonia working on the music of Bach and the results were on display at the concert Bach to Bach at Sage Gateshead on Friday 11 June 2021 (and also on-line, which is how I watched the concert), both Podger's debut with the Royal Northern Sinfonia and the ensemble's first concert with a live audience this year. Rachel Podger directed the Royal Northern Sinfonia from the violin in the sonata from Bach's Cantata BWV31 Der Himmel lacht! Die Erde jubiliert!, Violin Concerto in A minor BWV1041, and Orchestral Suite No. 3.

This was a modern-instrument chamber orchestra but fielding just 14 strings, who were playing with gut strings and seemed to be making such adjustments as using minimal vibrato. The sound quality was warm yet lithe, with a noticeable emphasis on articulation and phrasing.

Meditation and Prayer: new commissions from Sir James MacMillan and Will Todd in an evening themed on the writings of Cardinal Newman

John Henry Newman
by George Richmond (1844)

Cardinal Newman: Meditation and Prayer - Sir James MacMillan, Will Todd; The Sixteen, Harry Christophers, Alexander Armstrong; Church of the Immaculate Conception, Farm Street (via live-stream)
Reviewed by Robert Hugill on 10 June 2021
Two wonderful new commissions at the centre of this programme of words and music themed on the writings of John Henry Newman

Cardinal Newman is a somewhat complex figure who is known to musicians mainly through Elgar's use of his words for The Dream of Gerontius (and the hymns derived therefrom), but the hinterland of Newman's thought and theology remains largely unexplored in music.

Last night (Thursday 10 June 2021, the Genesis Foundation and Classic FM presented Cardinal Newman: Meditation and Prayer at the live at the Church of the Immaculate Conception, Farm Street, with a small invited audience, and live-streamed (I watched the latter). The centrepiece of the evening was the world premiere of two settings of one of Newman's meditations by Sir James MacMillan and by Will Todd, performed by Harry Christophers and The Sixteen. Also in the programme was sacred music by Parsons, Laloux, Tye and Harris, plus readings from Newman and John Donne by Alexander Armstrong.

The Sixteen were at full strength, 18 singers in four ranks taking full advantage of the depth of the church's chancel.

Both new commissions set text from the same Newman passage, A meditation on trust in God (written in 1848, four years after the portrait above and three years after his reception into the Roman Catholic Church), which Alexander Armstrong also read. The impetus behind the writing had remarkable prescience to the modern day but for the average secular person Newman's writing does require you to get behind the language somehow. Luckily, the responses of the two composers were wonderfully direct and approachable.

A Life On-Line: reinventing Machaut, exploring harmoniemusik and Ethel Smyth's teacher

Machaut: How can I forget? - English Touring Opera (Image taken from live stream)

This was a week when we cautiously welcomed audiences back to concert halls and opera houses. Whilst we have caught some live performances, we have also been catching up on-line, with Harmoniemusik from the Academy of Ancient Music, Machaut from English Touring Opera, music by Ethel Smyth's from Opera North and a viola da gamba trip up a mountain with NextUs.

The Academy of Ancient Music's concert from West Road Concert Hall in Cambridge, Harmoniemusik: From field to table was part of AAM's on-line offering but also had a live audience. The programme was directed from bassoon by Peter Whelan, and featured four works by Mozart, Beethoven and Franz Krommer which showed how the style of harmoniemusik was adopted by composers. Mozart wrote a number of works for wind ensemble which come under the banner of harmoniemusik, which was a particular form of the wind ensemble popular in Austria using pairs of instruments and often played outdoors. Everything was arranged for such ensembles (Mozart has fun with this in Don Giovanni), but composers also wrote specific works. 

A Life On-Line: Recovering The White Rose, rediscovering Grainger, rethinking Bach, reimagining Elgar

Jorge Jimenez - Rethinking Bach (Capture from stream)

This week we have been busy rediscovering, rethinking and reimagining whether it be The White Rose's non-violent resistance to the Nazi's, the sheer strangeness and imagination of Percy Grainger's music, a journey towards Bach's Goldberg Variations via a new transcription for violin or David Matthews' reworking Elgar's string quartet.

The White Rose, the non-violent resistance group in Nazi Germany, has been in the news recently partly because 9 May 2021 was the centenary of the birth of Sophie Scholl, one of the founders of the group. There have been a number of artistic responses to the group and its message, from new music [David Chesky's The White Rose Trilogy] to new opera [Udo Zimmerman's Weisse Rose at Hamburg State Opera]. 

The choir Sansara and conductor Tom Herring joined forces with The White Rose Project, a research and engagement initiative at the University of Oxford, to create Voices of the German Resistance, a programme which interleaved music by Bach, Byrd, Rudolf Mauersberger, Max Reger, Philip Moore and Piers Kennedy with readings from the resistance group's writings in new English translations by students at the University of Oxford. 

The programme was recorded last year (for the 77th anniversary of the first White Rose trials) and finally broadcast last Sunday on Harrison Parrott's Virtual Circle platform. The first part featured Bach chorales and William Byrd's Ne irascaris Domine and Civitas sancti tui (which form two parts of a single large-scale work from his 1589 Cantiones Sacrae lamenting the desolation of the Holy City, Jerusalem) alongside readings from the White Rose's pamphlets, texts which have an extraordinary prescience when seen in the context of developments in contemporary politics.

A Life On-Line: reinventing Josquin, rare late Richard Strauss, early Handel on TV, Sir John Eliot Gardiner in Elgar, Britten & Tippett

Josquin: Mille Regretz - Ella Taylor,  William Towers, Jorge Navarro Colorado, Richard Dowling, Stephan Loges - English Touring Opera (taken from live-stream)

This week began and ended with strikingly modern stagings of early music, Josquin from English Touring Opera and Rameau from Mannheim, we also caught early Handel on Sky Arts, rare late Richard Strauss and Nino Rota in symphonic mode from the London Symphony Orchestra, and Sir John Eliot Gardiner conducting the Philharmonia in Elgar. The character of Phaedra was a feature too, cropping up in Rameau's Hippolite et Aricie and in Britten's very different late cantata.

English Touring Opera are releasing a series of videos as part of their ETO at Home digital season. Last week we caught Mille Regretz, a staging of music by Josquin. Conducted by Jonathan Kenny and directed by Liam Steele this brought together a group of Josquin's secular pieces with one sacred work, all performed by Ella Taylor (soprano), William Towers (counter-tenor), Richard Dowling and Jorge Navarro Colorado (tenors), and Stephan Loges (baritone), filmed in Stone Nest (the evocative interior of the former Welsh church in the West End). Whilst a number of the singers in the cast have admirable historically informed performance credentials, this wasn't a period-style performance, anything but. In the pre-concert talks Kenny talked about how he had wanted to bring out the modernism in Josquin's music.

So here were young opera singers performing Josquin accompanied by an intriguing ensemble of violin/viola (Jim O'Toole), violin (Guy Button), theorbo (Toby Carr), accordion (Ilona Suomalainen), vibrophone and percussion (Jonny Raper). Liam Steele's approach was very physical, there was a lot of movement including pieces done almost as choreographed choruses. The costumes were highly stylised with much makeup and the result had something of a look of Mad Max, a group of stylised, stylish transients gathering to sing about personal joys and griefs. And it worked.

A Life On-Line: Stile Antico in Robert Ramsay, Alexandra Dariescu & London Philharmonic in Ravel, Opera North in Gluck

Gluck: Orfeo ed Euridice - Paula Murrihy, Opera North (Photo Justin Slee)

This week we caught Stile Antico exploring the music associated with the short life of Henry, Prince of Wales (eldest son of King James 1 & VI), a sparkling programme of French orchestral music from the London Philharmonic Orchestra including pianist Alexandra Dariescu on terrific form, and a powerful account of Gluck's Orfeo ed Euridice in Leeds. We also caught the on-line press launch of Opera Rara's 2021/22 season with Donizetti, Mercadante and more to look forward to (there'll be an article on the blog in due course).

A Life On-Line: debut in Bournemouth, early English at St Martin's, Bach's Pergolesi and John Eliot Gardiner on Monteverdi

Bach: Tilge, Höchster, meine Sünden, BWV 1083 - Academy Baroque Soloists, Eamonn Dougan - Royal Academy of Music (image from live-stream)

This week featured a notable debut in Bournemouth, early English orchestral music, postcards from Handel's Amadigi, Benventuo Cellini on the radio, explorations of Monteverdi and his contemporaries, and Bach arranging Pergolesi.

In December 2020, I interviewed the conductor Richard Stamp [see my interview] whose recording of music by Richard Strauss and Aaron Copland included Copland's Clarinet Concerto with the late Ernst Ottensamer (long time principal clarinet of the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra), what proved to be Ernst Ottensamer's last concerto recording. During the interview the subject of Ernst Ottensamer's two sons, Daniel and Andreas, came up, both are clarinettists and they performed as a trio with their father. Andreas Ottensamer is principal clarinet with the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra and has made a name for himself as a solo clarinettist. But on Wednesday 21 April 2021, Andreas Ottensamer made his UK debut as a conductor in a performance with the Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra from the Lighthouse in Poole.

Andreas Ottensamer has worked with the orchestra before as a clarinettist (he was artist in residence for the 2017/18 season), and the original intention for this concert was to include a concerto but the combination of restrictions and the need to keep the programme shorter made them re-consider. So the programme was Mozart's Symphony No. 35 'Haffner', Mendelssohn's The Hebrides Overture and Symphony No. 4 Italian. 

A Life On-Line: rare Vaughan Williams, unknown Venetians, Welsh language opera, vertical harpsichords

 

Academy of Ancient Music at West Road Concert Hall (Photo Academy of Ancient Music)

This week we moved from relatively unknown 20th century Vaughan Williams, to a rare 17th century Venetian as well as a recital on a very rare vertical harpsichord. There was also a new opera in Welsh, not to mention and more 17th century music, French this time, to bring things to a close.

On Tuesday, Opera Holland Park premiered a new film of RVW's song cycle The House of Life performed by David Butt Philip and pianist James Baillieu and filmed at Leighton House. Everyone knows RVW's song Silent Noon but the cycle from which it comes, The House of Life is less well known. A sequence of settings of sonnets by Dante Gabriel Rossetti which RVW wrote in 1903-04, around the same period as Songs of Travel and interestingly despite setting songs throughout his life (there were four on his desk when he died in 1958) RVW never completely returned to the song cycle form. The venue, of course, was highly appropriate as Rossetti knew Leighton but what really held our attention was the passionate and beautifully crafted performance from Philip and Baillieu [Opera Holland Park]

Before Wednesday I had never heard of Dario Castello (c1602-1633) but the Academy of Ancient Music, co-directed Bojan Čičić (violin) and Steven Devine (harpsichord), put Castello's sonatas at the centre of their concert from West Road Concert Hall on Wednesday.

New Beginnings indeed: the Royal Northern Sinfonia and its principal conductor designate, Dinis Sousa, launch Sage Gateshead's new live season

Berlioz: Les nuits d'été - Dame Sarah Connolly, Royal Northern Sinfonia, Dinis Sousa at Sage Gateshead
(photo taken from live-stream)

Haydn, Berlioz, Boulanger, Prokofiev; Sarah Connolly, Royal Northern Sinfonia, Dinis Sousa; Sage Gateshead
Reviewed by Robert Hugill on 16 April 2021
Engagement, excitement and a sense of chamber music detail characterised the young Portuguese conductor's first concert with the Royal Northern Sinfonia since being named as principal conductor

There was an extra excitement to the Royal Northern Sinfonia's concert at Sage Gateshead on Friday 16 April 2021. Not only was it the ensemble's first live concert this year, and the start of Sage Gateshead's New Beginnings season of live concerts, but it was the orchestra's first concert with the young Portuguese conductor Dinis Sousa since he was named as the orchestra's new principal conductor (a post he takes up next season). Under the title Dawn and Dusk, Sousa conducted a programme that moved from Joseph Haydn's early Symphony in D 'Le Matin', to Hector Berlioz' Les nuits d'été with mezzo-soprano Dame Sarah Connolly, to Iain Farrington's arrangement of Lili Boulanger's D'un matin du printemps and ending with Prokofiev's Symphony No. 1 'Classical'. But the programme began with an extra item, Elgar's Elegy played in memory of HRH Prince Philip.

Dinis Sousa studied at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama, where he was Conducting Fellow. Since then he has formed his own ensemble, Orquestra XXI which brings together some of the best yung Portuguese musicians from around Europe. He was worked regularly with the English Baroque Soloists and Orchestre Revolutionnaire et Romantique, being appointed the Monteverdi Choir and Orchestra's first ever assistant conductor, as well as working with modern instrument orchestras. 

Haydn's Symphony in D was one of a trio Le matin, Le midi and Le soir, which he wrote shortly after joining the employ of Prince Esterhazy (Haydn would work for the Esterhazy family exclusively for the next 30 years). The first movement began with a lovely sunrise, and employing real chamber forces, Sousa drew stylish playing from his players. In the second movement (where the wind are tacet), there was a chamber elegance to the playing highlighted by the way Haydn writes concerto grosso-like solo passages. Sousa and his players brought a chamber of level of detail to the music along with a sense of engagement, and I look forward to hearing them in lots more Haydn. The minuet was delightfully characterful whilst the trio featured a terrific bassoon solofrom Stephen Reay, whilst the finale went with a zip yet remained full of character.

A Life On-Line: Bach from Leamington Spa, Australia, Perth and Oxford, plus Coleridge-Taylor from London

Bach: Christ lag in Todesbanden - Armonico Consort, Christopher Monks (photo taken from live stream)

Bach was very much a theme of the week, with an early Easter cantata, some bracing Australian arrangements and an exploration of the Mass in B minor which mixed live and on-line in an innovative way, and not to forget Bach's older cousin Johann Christoph. But there were other explorations from Johann Schop to Samuel Coleridge-Taylor to a young contemporary composer from the North East.

Our week began with a continuation of the Easter mood, with Armonico Consort's film of Bach's Easter cantata, Christ lag in Todesbanden, BWV 4.