Barbican 2013/14 classical season

The Barbican Centre's 2013/14 classical season is full of some amazing goodies. I have already covered the baroque opera and oratorio, the Britten 100 season and the Academy of Ancient Music's residency in previous posts. Other highlights include celebrations of Harrison Birtwistle's 80th birthday with concerts including Gawain and Yan Tan Tethera. Valery Gergiev is doing a Berlioz cycle with the LSO including La Damnation de Faust and Romeo et Juliette. The new BBC Symphony Orchestra chief conductor Sakari Oromi has his first season in charge with some giants of the symphonic repertoire, and the BBC SO are also celebrating Michael Tippett's symphonies and concertos.

Bach's Well-Tempered Clavier Volume 1 - Complete - Live

Kimiko Ishizaka

The pianist Kimiko Ishizaka made her appearance at the 1901 Arts Club in London, last night (30 January 2013) playing Bach's Well-Tempered Clavier, Volume 1 complete. Around two hours of music, played from memory, enabling us to hear Bach's genius complete. Ishizaka, born in Germany of Japanese heritage, is perhaps best known for her Open Goldberg project where a her high-quality recording of Bach's Goldberg Variations is available for free download, along with the score. This is part and parcel of her fervent advocacy of the idea of making the music of Bach accessible to everyone. Her performance at the 1901 Arts Club is one of a number that Ishizaka has been making of the complete Well-Tempered Clavier, Volume 1 and this will also lead to a recording.

New track for the Choir

Aled Jones

Aled Jones moved to ITV's Daybreak sofa last year and has now vacated his position in charge of Radio 3's much loved Sunday evening programme The Choir. From Sunday 3 February, Jones's position will be taken, in six special programmes, by what the BBC's press release calls 'Stars from the choral community'. Suzi Digby, Paul Mealor, Ken Burton, Harry Christophers, Mary King and Eric Whitacre will each present a single programme concentrating on subject close to their hearts. There is no word, so far, about what will happen after six weeks, or who is being considered for permanent replacement.

Cool fusion - sounds from Japan and the west

Okeanos

As part of the BBC Symphony Orchestra's Total Immersion event, Sounds from Japan, this Saturday 2 February at the Barbican Centre there is the opportunity to hear a variety of music written not just for symphony orchestra. Most of the music is written by Japanese composers for western instruments, though Takemitsu's November Steps, which receives its UK premiere at the evening concert, is written for shakuhachi, biwa and orchestra. But the combination of western and Japanese instruments is developed most fully in the concert at 5pm by Okeanos. Okeanos are an ensemble of musicians trained in the Western classical tradition who play a combination of western and Japanese instruments.

Academy of Ancient Music

Picture credit Marco Borggreve

The Academy of Ancient Music's 2013/14 London season all takes place entirely at the Barbican with them taking advantage of the new Milton Court Concert Hall for many of the concerts. It is an entirely luscious season, starting with Monteverdi's L'Orfeo and moving through Bach, Vivaldi and Handel to Mozart and Beethoven taking in music by JS Bach's sons and grandson, and finishing with Beethoven's Choral Symphony. Artists appearing include Alina Ibragimova, Andreas Scholl, Angelika Kirschlager and Richard Tognetti.

Londinium - Britten in America

The choice of venue and acoustic can make a very big difference in the performance of a piece of music. Having recently heard Britten's Hymn to St Cecilia sung by the choir of Clare College Cambridge at Kings Place, it was fascinating to hear the piece sung by a larger group of singers in the more generous acoustic of St. Sepulchre without Newgate. On 29 January Londinium, director Andrew Griffiths, sang Britten's dazzling setting of Auden as part of their programme Britten in America exploring Britten's years in America. They sang music by Britten's friends and contemporaries, Aaron Copland and Samuel Barber and finished with a performance of Britten's A.M.D.G. A setting of words by Gerard Manley Hopkins which the composer suppressed during his lifetime.

Wagner - Kaufmann - Anticipation!

Jonas Kaufmann's much anticipated Wagner disc is being released by Decca on 12 February. Accompanied by Donald Runnicles and the orchestra of the Deutsche Oper, Berlin, German tenor sings music from Die Walkure, Siegfried, Rienzi, Tannhauser, Meistersinger and Lohengrin. Rather curiously he is also singing the Wesendonck-Lieder, in Felix Mottl's orchestration.

Barbican 2013/14 season - Britten

Benjamin Britten

Like many other people and organisations, the Barbican is celebrating Britten centenary. Sensibly, they have packed all their events into November 2013, centred around the composer's birthday. There are some very tempting events with some major performers including Ian Bostridge, Christine Brewer and the Richard Alston Dance Company, plus a three day conference led by John Bridcut. The Britten Sinfonia and the BBC Symphony Orchestra are providing the main orchestral support.

Silent Opera - L'Orfeo

Silent Opera - L'Orfeocredit Oliver Hyde-Tetley

Opera has a fundamental problem with intimacy. Whether it be the need to coordinate singers and orchestra, or the fact that big voices are distinctly uncomfortable heard close up, the difficulties of bringing audiences closer to the drama seem insurmountable. Despite a huge number of successful immersive theatre performances, and several great productions from a cappella vocal groups such as I Fagiolini with their shows The Full Monteverdi and Tallis in Wonderland, there have been very few opera companies that have attempted a move away from an ‘audience there - stage here - never the twain shall meet’ kind of approach.

Step forward Silent Opera, a new company formed in 2011. The idea came to founder Daisy Evans when she was listening to music on the train and found herself transported away from the environment around her. So audiences to their productions are given wireless headphones to wear as they arrive which relay a mixture of live and recorded sound. It’s not a new idea – there was even a trend for silent discos where people danced around to music that only they could hear – but Silent Opera have cornered the market in applying it to this art form.

Felicien David's Lallah Roukh receives modern revival

Emma Calve as Lallah Roukh in 1885

Felicien David (1810 - 1876) is a French composer whose name has almost disappeared from contemporary view. But his symphonic ode Le Desert was hailed as a masterpiece by Berlioz after its premiere in 1844 and the work would have great influence on Bizet. (you can hear the piece on YouTube). David also wrote operas, and in 1862 his opera Lallah Roukh was premiered at the Opera Comique with a libretto based on Thomas Moore's  1817 oriental romance dealing with the tale of the daughter of the Mughal Emperor. Between 1862 and 1898 the opera received 376 performances at the Opera Comique, during the same period the work was performed at a significant number of other opera houses. But then it entirely dropped from view, its orientalism woefully out of fashion.

New season at the Barbican - Baroque Opera and Oratorios

The Barbican's classical music season for 2013/14 is openening for booking and is full of goodies. I will be covering the Britten, Berlioz and Birtwistle in further posts. I start with looking at their season of Baroque Opera and Oratorio, with music by Bach, Handel, Rameau and Monteverdi. No rarities this year, just some of the finest music that each composer wrote. Booking is already open for some Barbican members, for others it opens on Wednesday 30 January and for the general public on 4 February.

Un Jour Infini: a Samson Marzbani premiere

An infinite day.

Performed last night at the RoyalCollege of Music Amaryllis Fleming Concert Hall by three quarters of the Brodsky Quartet Daniel Rowland (violin), Paul Cassidy (viola) and Jacqueline Thomas (cello) and flautist Wissam Boustany,  Un Jour Infini was a breath of fresh air. Samson Marzbani is a self-taught composer interested in improvisation. In a short talk he described how, at age seven after hearing a pianist, he passionately believed that one day he too would be able to play piano. It was several years before he had the opportunity to learn, and several more before he worked out the skills necessary to improvise at the keys. But since then he has become more and more interested in improvisation and live composition, and both of tonight’s pieces were rooted in informality and freedom of expression.

Dream of Gerontius with Mark Elder and LPO

Manuscript score of The Dream of Gerontius
signed by Elgar and the performers at the premiere.

I missed John Barbirolli's reign in Manchester by 3 years, but as a student there in the 1970's there was still a strong Elgar tradition; they were amongst the few ensembles of the period who played the Elgar violin concerto with any regularity. So it is pleasing that Mark Elder, at the helm of the Halle since 2000, is continuing this tradition. I had heard Elder's account of Dream of Gerontius on disc (on the Halle Orchestra's own label) and on the radio but was much anticipating the performance of the work 26 January 2013 at London's South Bank Centre with the London Philharmonic Orchestra as part of the opening group of concerts in the Rest is Noise festival. Paul Groves sang the title role, with Sarah Connolly and James Rutherford (standing in for an indisposed Brindley Sherratt) the other soloists. The London Philharmonic Choir was joined by the choir of Clare College, Cambridge, singing the semi chorus.

Handel opera revival, the early days in England

Unicorn Theatre, Abingdon

When I first came to London in 1981, a highlight of the year was the annual Handel Opera Society performances at Sadlers' Wells Theatre, providing a rare opportunity to see Handel's opera seria on stage. But things were changing, English National Opera's productions of Julius Caesar and Xerxes, Kent Opera's Agrippina,  and then the 1985 Handel centenary meant that Handel opera started to go mainstream. But it was the pioneering work of smaller groups such as the Handel Opera Society, Alan Kitching at the Unicorn Theatre in Abingdon and the Barber Institute in Birmingham which laid the ground work for this revival.

SMITF Chamber Music Competition

Applications close on 1 February for the 2013 St Martins in the Field Chamber Music Competition. Founded in 2010, the competition focuses on nurturing the fledgling careers of the UK’s most talented and hard-working young musicians through practical means. The competition’s prize is a series of professional engagements around Britain, offering the invaluable opportunity of paid performance experience and professional exposure to the winners. The competition is open to acoustic classical ensembles based in the UK with between 3 and 8 members aged between 18 and 30 years on the date of entry. Entries for the 2013 Competition close on 1 February 2013.

Composer insights with Samson Marzbani

Samson Marzbani, a composer based in France but of Iranian/Indian parentage, is having an event tomorrow (Saturday 26 January) at the Royal College of Music, which will give the audience an insight into his compositional techniques and current project, Un jour infini. The event will include a performance of the composer's new work for flute quartet Un jour infini, a substantial piece lasting over 50 minutes which is due to be recorded and issued on disc. The performers will be Wissam Boustany (flute) and Daniel Rowland (violin), Paul Cassidy (viola) and Jacqueline Thomas (cello) - members of the world renowned Brodsky Quartet. The flute quartet, Un Jour Infini, is the transcription from piano improvisations where no notes were either added or changed from the original impulse of the work. During the recording of Un Jour Infini  Marzbani will be also recording piano compositions for an upcoming new solo piano CD. The event takes place at 7pm in the Amaryllis Fleming Concert Hall at the Royal College of Music on 26 January.

Choir of Clare College, Cambridge at the London A Cappella Festival

The choir of Clare College Cambridge, directed by Graham Ross, opened this year's London A Cappella Festival at Kings Place. The choir sang a programme of 20th century choral works, including major works by Britten, Arvo Part, John Rutter and Arnold Schoenberg, plus motets by Poulenc and Durufle. The 27-strong mixed-voice choir was founded in 1971 and sing three college services per week plus concerts and recordings. Their programme was based around music for the octave of Epiphany (a period which finishes on 3 February).

Instructions for audience - some Dos and Don'ts of concert attendance

I recently attended one or two concerts where the audience did not seem to understand the subtle rules which apply to concert goers. Concert and theatre going is a communal activity which works best when everyone understands the implicit compact for civility between audience members, and between audience and performers. Hence my suggested list of dos and don'ts.

Happy Birthday to the Royal Philharmonic Society

Today, the Royal Philharmonic Society is 200, and along with a celebratory concert there is a whole year of events (see my blog post). One of the major events, already announced, is the commission of a new work to accompany Beethoven's Ninth Symphony, perhaps the society's most high profile commission. This new companion work will be called Frieze and is being written by Mark-Anthony Turnage. It will be performed at the Proms by the National Youth Orchestra and National Youth Choir of Great Britain under Vasily Petrenko. The US premiere (and four further performances) by the New York Philharmonic under Alan Gilbert feature in the orchestra’s 2013-14 season at the Lincoln Center.

Honouring back-office and back-stage staff

The second ABO/Rhinegold Awards were presented last night at the Association of British Orchestra's conference in Leeds. The awards aim to honour backstage talent in the UK’s classical music industry. Presented by violinist Nicola Benedetti, the awards went to Kevin Appleby, Turner Sims Concert Hall, Southampton (Concert Hall Manager of the Year),  James Brown, Hazard Chase (Artist Manager of the Year) and David Butcher, Chief Executive, Britten Sinfonia (Orchestra Manager of the Year), with the Royal Philharmonic Society receiving the ABO Award.