CD review - Open your eyes

For her recital disc with Malcolm Martineau, Open your eyes, soprano Katherine Broderick has chosen lieder from the turn of the 19th century, with Richard Strauss's Acht Gedichte aus 'Letzte Blätter' Op 10, Alban Berg's Sieben frühe Lieder and Arnold Schoenberg's Brettl Lieder. The Strauss songs include Zueignung, his first published song. The songs illustrate the way that the lied was changing at this period. Rather neatly, Strauss was 10 years older then Schoenberg, whilst Schoenberg was 9 years older than Berg. There are other linkings, with Schoenberg's songs related to the Überbrettl cabaret, founded by the librettist of Richard Strauss's early opera Feuersnot.

Soane by candle light

To the Soane Museum on Monday 4 December, for a candle-lit evening event for patrons and supporters of Grange Park Opera. The library on the ground floor and the yellow drawing room were lit as normal, but the remainder of the ground floor and the magical basements were all lit by candles. This, of course, is how Soane's visitors would have seen the rooms if they visited him in the evening. I believe that Soane himself used to take visitors round with a candle. It is, in fact, an amazing experience; to wander round the basements full of antiquities just by candle light. There were, of course, plenty of room stewards to keep their eye on us, but there were all highly knowledgeable as well. And then there was the music.

O Magnum Mysterium

The Choir of Queens' College Cambridge, director Silas Wollston celebrates the release of its CD.

Thursday 6 December sees the choir of Queens' College Cambridge performing under their director Silas Wollston at the Dutch Church in the City of London. They will be celebrating the release of their CD And comes the Day on the Orchid Classics label. The concert includes an eclectic mix of music for Christmas and Advent, including Bob Chilcott's Advent Antiphons and carols by Britten, Howells and Wollston. There is also the opportunity for the audience to compare and contrast, with settings of O Magnum Mysterium by Gabrieli, Poulenc and Morten Lauridsen. The concert is being repeated on 7 December at Queens' College Chapel, Cambridge, and on Sunday 9 December at L'eglise de la Madeleine, Paris.

Out with a bang

The Peter Moores Foundation has announced that it is winding down its activities, but it is going out with a bang. The foundation's Swansong Project will mark the end of the foundation and celebrate 50 years of philanthropy (the foundation was set up by Sir Peter Moores in 1964). They will be supporting projects at 8 of the companies with which they have been closely associated, Birmingham Opera, English Touring Opera, Opera North, Scottish Opera, Welsh National Opera, English National Opera, Covent Garden and Glyndebourne. There will also be one final opera for Chandos's Opera in English series.

Christmas on the BBC

The BBC has published information about what delights we have to look forward to during the Christmas season, a period which usually frankly has me running for the digi-box and our back-log of recorded programmes. We have the usual suspects, there is Carols from Kings, and we revisit the Military Wives Choir. The Archbishop of Canterbury gives his New Year's message and, in a separate programme muses on his departure from Canterbury. The present Queen's message is, of course, a staple of Christmas Day. There is also a three part programme on Queen Victoria's fraught relationships with her children, and BBC 4 has a Screen Goddesses season.

CD review - Cantata for the Children of Terezin

Mary Ann Joyce-Walter's Cantata for the Children of Terezin sets poems written by the children who were incarcerated in the Terezin concentration camp. Joyce-Walter says that the work was composed with the intention of evoking compassion for the most innocent and vulnerable. This disc on the  Ravello label includes the cantata as well as Joyce-Walter's orchestra piece Aceldama, recorded by the Kiev Philharmonic Orchestra and the King Singers of Kiev conducted by Robert Ian Winstin.

Whitgift School music competition

The Royal Philharmonic Orchestra
and the Whitgift Chamber Orchestra
at Cadogan Hall in April 2012
(photo: Danny Fitzpatrick)

The Whitgift School in Croydon has launched an International Music Competition for young players. There are three categories, (12-13, 14-15 and 16-17) and entry is initially via YouTube video! The prizes include £150,000 in scholarships as well as opportunities to perform with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra. The winners will be selected from live performances in June and July next year with a jury which includes cellist Guy Johnston, Remus Azoitei (professor of violin at the Royal Academy), journalist Jessica Duchen and a member of the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra. Further information from the Whitgift School website; the closing date is 1 March 2013.

Lost and Found - a Brodsky Quartet Adventure

The Brodsky Quartet is currently celebrating their 40th anniversary (see our blog post) with a series of concerts which includes their Wheel of 4Tunes, where the audience gets to choose the programme from 40 different string quartets. Whilst touring the Netherlands, their car was broken into, a laptop stolen along with a bag containing all the viola and cello parts for all the 40 quartets being offered. A devastating loss.

Inaugural performance of the Orchestra Musica Romantica

Orchestra Musica Romantica
Cadogan Hall, 1 Dec 2012

Last night, 1 December, was the inaugural performance (or should I say debut) of the Orchestra Musca Romantica in aid of Action Medical Research at Cadogan Hall, Sloane Square. Dubbed a ‘super-orchestra’ by Classic FM, Orchestra Musica Romantica is the child of Jörg Hammann, who also plays violin with the London Symphony Orchestra and conducts the Orchestra of the Guildhall Music College. It is a project orchestra with the specific aspiration of giving back to the community. As he explains is his blog for Gramphone, it is ‘an orchestra for those in need’.

The Mikado at the London Coliseum

ENO - The Mikado
credit Chris Christodoulou

After a crisply sparkling account of the overture, from David Parry and the English National Opera orchestra, the curtain opened on Stefanos Lazarides dazzling white, Grand Hotel set. Jonathan Miller's production of Gilbert and Sullivan's The Mikado was back, with a strong cast which mixed innocence and experience. The production is 26 years old and looking as good as ever, and celebrating 25 years of Richard Suart's association with the role of Ko Ko. We saw the opening night (Saturday December 1), though the cast had already performed a matinee that afternoon.

I fagiolini - live in York

There is a fascinating film on YouTube of I Fagiolini's July 2012 performances of Striggio's Mass in 40 Parts done live in York Minster, with the audience free to move around within the circle of the performers. Looks as if it was magical. Further information from the I Fagiolini website. See the film after the jump.

Richard Strauss and the gay sensibility

What? Strauss is a composer known for his devotion to the female voice and a who used his own family life as the subject for his work. So where does gay sensibility come in? In 1897 Strauss wrote Vier Lieder Op. 27 as a wedding gift for his wife. The songs include Morgen and Heimlich Aufforderung, songs which have been beloved of sopranos ever since. The opening of Morgen with its long violin melody which is taken up by the soprano is just about perfect. Except of course that Strauss originally wrote it for piano, and when he recorded it himself (which he did twice) he used a male voice. Now, I once heard Dietrich Fischer Dieskau sing the song and frankly, was not completely convinced. So what is going on?

The Big Give - Gabrieli Young Singers' Scheme

Paul McCreesh and forces recording Elijah in 2011
© Ben Ealovega

The Gabrieli Consort and Players' project in this year's Big Give is their Young Singers' Scheme. The first fruits of this scheme were unveiled this year with the stupendous recording of Mendelssohn's Elijah (see my review on this blog), with a choir which included the Young Singers alongside Wroclaw Philharmonic Choir and Gabrieli. In January 2013 Paul McCreesh is going back into the studio to record Britten's War Requiem with the Young Singers and their Big Give project will help.

The basic financial facts are that Gabrieli already has money pledged, if they can raise £10,000 during the three days of the Big Give (6, 7, 8 December) then they will have a total of £20,000. Some of this will go towards the War Requiem recording, but the majority will go towards other activities with the Young Singers.

Bridging that gap

Many opera companies are seeking to help singers bridge the gap between post-graduate study and their full career. Some voice types require a long further period of work before the voice comes into its own, this is particularly true of dramatic sopranos, and also many male voice types. At Grange Park Opera they have a you artists scheme, the Rising Stars, who do a production each year. But in addition there is their Scholarship Fund, which helps singers with lessons and coachings for particular roles. Their website includes some fascinating testimonials about what can be achieved by such means. Now the website also includes a fascinating blog post from tenor Anthony Flaum who is studying at the National Opera studio, it gives a fascinating insight into a young singers world.

Singing for Lely - the Courtauld Community Choir

Peter Lely - The Concert

We attended one of the Courtauld Lates during the run of the Courtauld Gallery's previous exhibition, and had enjoyed the mixture of art, talks and music (see my blog entry), so had every intention of going along on the evening of Thursday 30 November for a similar event themed on their Peter Lely: A Lyrical Vision exhibition. Then an email arrived from someone I had sung with who works at the gallery, with information about a choir being formed to rehearse and perform music from Lely's time. All from scratch. So at 5pm yesterday (30 November) I found myself in the lecture theatre of the Courtauld Institute (which is in Somerset House, next door to the Courtauld Gallery) with a varied mix of people all who had come to sing.

Last night of the London Song Festival

Jonathan McGovern
credit Benjamin Ealovega

Admittedly there was no flag waving or ‘Land of Hope and Glory’ but nevertheless this was an evening the London Song Festival could be proud of. Now in its 6th year, the London Song Festival, founded by Nigel Foster aims to ‘halt the decline of the song recital’. A mixture of showcase concerts and masterclasses run throughout October and November. The showcase concerts feature young professional singers and the workshops are aimed at GCSE and A level students as well as singers from Music College.

Ruby Hughes
credit Camilo Echeverri

Last night’s concert (28 November) was billed as being built around the theme of ‘Songs of Wandering and of the Night’, but both ‘wandering’ and ‘night’ were very inventively interpreted. The singers were Ruby Hughes and Jonathan McGovern. Ruby studied at Chetham’s, Guildhall and Munich and is currently a New Generation Artist at BBC Radio 3. Jonathon studied at King’s College London, Royal Academy of Music and Royal Academy Opera, and is a Britten-Pears Young artist and an Associate artist with Classical Opera. Both have shining credentials, having won prizes galore before settling into recital and opera, and both have sung with the ENO and the BBC Philharmonic. The accompanist was Nigel Foster himself.

ENO Community Choir

If you are a Friend of English National Opera, then you probably received an e-mail recently about a carol concert next week. This is being given by the ENO Community Choir, a group which meets on Thursday evenings during term time. They sing a varied repertoire from pop to opera, world music and seasonal classics. They are directed by Rachel Dawson and are open to anyone, all they ask is that you work on your voice and commit to attending weekly rehearsals. More information from the group's page on the ENO website.

British Composer Awards celebrates 10 years

This year's British Composer Awards will be announced at an awards ceremony at the Goldsmith's Hall on Monday 3 December. Amazingly the awards are 10 years old. When they were first set up by the British Academy of Songwriters and Composers you wondered why no-one had thought of it earlier, and now it has become a brilliant part of the musical year. This year, to celebrate the 10th anniversary, there is also a concert on Wednesday 5th December at the Queen Elizabeth Hall on London's South Bank. This will feature 11 compositions from previous awards, performed by Endymion and the Vasari Singers.

I'Incoronazione di Poppea at the RCM

Louise Alder (Poppea) and Rannveig Karadottir (Nerone)
L'Incoronazione di Poppea at RCM

Monteverdi's operas are the earliest to have a regular place in the repertoire. Whilst his first opera Orfeo was written for the Mantuan Court, his final one L'Incoronazione di Poppea was written for the public theatre in Venice. The performances there were a commercial enterprise and the operas structured in a way which appealed to the Venetian public. This involved a mixture of comic and serious in the same work, something which was distinctive to Venetian opera. Such works were not, however, haphazard with the lower class characters being the comic ones and the upper class ones being the serious. You only have to compare Cavalli's Serse (written for Venice) and Handel's Serse (written for London) to see how time and distance had changed the way opera was structured. Handel's version drops all but one servant, and all the comic flirting and liaisons disappear. But the Venetian idea of a mixture of comic and serious continued into the 18th century when Goldoni wrote the librettos for a series of operas by Galuppi. These, with their serious masters and comic servants, were an important influence on Mozart.

Though Busenello's libretto for Monteveredi's L'Incoronazione di Poppea is quite tightly constructed, it still results in a rather diverse plot, a sprawling work with a substantial running time. It is also a style of opera which is entirely absent from our opera houses (early 19th century Italian operas such as Rossini's The Thieving Magpie use the semi-seria genre but few more recent ones do). So directors tend to go at it with a pair of shears, and no production is ever quite the same as the previous. The new production at the Royal College of Music directed by James Conway, designed by Samai Blak, which we saw on 28 November, uses a heavily cut version with emphasises the drama of Monteverdi's opera at the expense of other elements.

Cello Pilgrimage - over £50

The newsletter for the Friends of the National Churches Trust popped into my letterbox recently. Skimming through it, amongst the information about grants given to churches, was a note about Orlando Jopling and his Cello Pilgrimage. Orlando Jopling has now given over 75 recitals of Bach's Suites for solo cello, in an amazing variety of churches, from huge light-filled Wren masterpieces in city centres to intimate and atmospheric medieval churches on remote moorland. And so far raised over £50,000.