Almost too many to name: established and up-and-coming artists Grenfell Tower benefit at the Cadogan Hall

Soprano Nazan Fikret has just been performing the role of Euridice at Longborough Festival Opera, but she has also been putting her charm and determination to other use and is the presiding genius behind a gala in aid of Grenfell Tower victims at Cadogan Hall on 17 September 2017. A superb line up of soloists, both established and up-and-coming artists will be accompanied by a Super Orchestra made of players from the leading London orchestras including the Philharmonia, the Royal Opera House Orchestra and Royal Philharmonic Orchestra.

There will be solo songs by Schubert, Schumann, Strauss and Quilter, Ailish Tynan and Christine Rice in the Evening Prayer from Humperdinck’s Hänsel und Gretel, an extract from Wagner’s Tristan und Isolde sung by Stuart Skelton and Lee Bisset, the Quartet from Rigoletto, Puccini’s Tosca with Natalya Romaniw singing ‘Vissi d’arte’, and Keel Watson and Gweneth-Ann Rand in ‘Bess, you is my woman now’ from Gershwin’s Porgy and Bess.

Performers include sopranos Lee Bisset; Francesca Chiejina; Samantha Crawford; Nazan Fikret; Janis Kelly; Louise Kemény; Anna Patalong; Gweneth-Ann Rand; Natalya Romaniw; Kirsty Taylor-Stokes; Ailish Tynan; Jennifer Witton; Lauren Zolezzi; mezzo-sopranos Katie Grosset; Anna Huntley; Maria Jagusz; Héloïse Mas; Christine Rice; countertenor Jake Arditti; tenors Luis Gomes; Robert Lewis; Stuart Skelton; Jack Swanson; baritones Gary Griffiths; Martin Häßler; Benedict Nelson; Alan Opie; Joseph Padfield; Ricardo Panela and bass-baritone Keel Watson, pianists Eugene Asti, Dylan Perez, Michael Pugh, Linnhe Robertson and Susanna Stranders, with conductors David Angus, Douglas Boyd, Richard Hetherington, Matthew Morgan, James Sherlock and Edward Gardner


Everyone involved has given their services for free, and all funds raised will go to the London Emergencies Trust (Registered Charity No. 1172307).
Full details from the Cadogan Hall website.

Dark & complex: Samson et Dalila at Grimeborn Festival

Saint-Saens: Samson et Dalila - Grimeborn Festival - Leonel Pinheiro & chorus (photo Robert Workman)

Saint-Saens Samson et Dalila; Leonel Pinheiro, Marianne Vidal, Thomas Humphreys, dir:Aylin Bozok, md: Kelvin Lim; Grimeborn Festival at the Arcola Theatre
Reviewed by Robert Hugill on Aug 16 2017
Star rating: 3.5
A brave attempt at a re-invention of a classic

With its huge choruses, heroic tenor part and undramatic structure, Camille Saint-Saens' lumpen opera/oratorio Samson et Dalila is hardly the obvious choice for a small scale studio performance. But having given us Debussy's Pelleas et Melisande (see my review) and Massenet's Werther (see my review) in previous years, director Aylin Bozok and the Grimeborn Festival at the Arcola Theatre decided to transpose Saint-Saens' grand operatics to the studio in a striking re-interpretation of the piece. Leonel Pinheiro was Samson, Marianne Vidal was Dalila and Thomas Humphreys was the High Priest, with James Ioelu as Abimelech and the Old Philistine. Aylin Bozok directed and designed, whilst Kelvin Lim accompanied on the piano.

Ozgur Boz, Marianne Vidal (photo Robert Workman)

Bozok presented the piece in a striking never-land, where the dark lighting and atmospheric background noises created a mood even before the opera started. With no set, Ian Massah-Harris's makeup designs (executed by co-designer Juan Lopez Alvarez and his team from Seventa Makeup Academy) contributed to the striking look of the piece, as did Robert Price's highly dramatic lighting plot. This was no conventional Samson et Dalila; Bozok's programme note referred to the setting being dream-like, but this was something more nightmarish.

Key to Bozok's interpretation was the removal of Biblical/historical references from the staging. Whilst the text still referred to Israel and Israelites, the stage action was internalised. Samson (Leonel Pinheiro) had a very intense and very personal relation with his god (the sun), and the action of Act Two more related to the bringing down of Samson's god rather than Samson's hair. In Act Three, Thomas Humphreys' High Priest gleefully took on the attributes of Samson's god, but at the end the got rose again to support Samson. The concept was emphasised by having Samson's god personified; Ozgur Boz wearing sun-goggles and floor-length coat. Boz was on-stage before the music started and apart from at the opening of Act Three, he was present for much of the action and we came to understand the atmospheric background noises as being another manifestation of his presence.

It worked at all was because the entire cast gave full commitment to the production and the concept. As with other Bozok productions that I have seen, this one was full of strange details which contributed to the overall effect, but left one puzzling; much detailed and dramatic mime, Dalila's embracing what looked like the pelt of a dead cat during her crucial Act Two solo; Ozgur Boz's remarkable amount of naked belly on show. The fact that one of the main attributes of the Sun god was a pair of dark goggles left the production open to the skittish comment that Bozok had reduced the action down to a fight over a pair of sun glasses. The best known aspect of the plot, however, was lacking; everyone knows that Dalila seduces Samson and, learning of his secret, shears his hair to remove his strength but this was entirely absent

Jazz influence and stylistic virtuosity: Daryl Runswick's piano music

Daryl Runswick dot music, sonatina, Six Studies on b-o-u-l-e-z, Introduction and Fugue in B minor; Tony Hymas; prima facie
Reviewed by Robert Hugill on Aug 16 2017
Star rating: 4.0
A 70th birthday survey of Runswick's piano writing spanning 30 years

Recorded in 2016, this disc on prima facie provides something of a celebration of composer Daryl Runswick's 70th birthday (he was born in 1946). Pianist Tony Hymas performs four of Runswick's piano works which span almost 30 years of Runswick's music making and showcase the stylistic diversity of his art.

Hymas opens with the disc's title track, dot music, a 2000/2001 piece (revised 2013-2016) named for Runswick's music notation where he writes just the black dots on the stave (no stems, rests and bar-lines) and leaves the performer free to interpret/improvise based on the graphic distance between the notes (an interesting compromise between classic notation and a fully graphic score). In three movements, the first is a free flowing prelude marked Scherzando, the second spare yet lyrical with a sense of individual notes being placed, whilst the finale alternates spiky fast and rhythmic material with sparer sections.

LPO Junior Artists expands

LPO Junior Artists with conductor Rebecca Miller

The London Philharmonic Orchestra's scheme to reach young players in communities under represented in professional UK orchestras, the LPO Junior Artists scheme, has just completed a highly successful pilot year. And the good news is that, thanks to the Andrew Lloyd Webber Foundation, the scheme is not only continuing but expanding to include a new strand for younger students. The foundation has allocated £30,000 over three years, to help the orchestra continue and expand its vital work promoting diversity and inclusion among UK professional orchestral musicians and within their administrations.

For the pilot phase of the programme, the 2016/17 Junior Artists were offered four individual lessons with their LPO mentors, a mock audition with feedback from LPO musicians and rehearsal and concert visits. Alongside this, the they took part in Insight sessions on the orchestral profession, conservatoires and solo performance (including a discussion with soprano Angel Blue, cellist Sheku Kanneh-Mason and conductor Rebecca Miller), plus skills development sessions.

This year the orchestra teamed up with music services, junior conservatoires and teachers across London to nominate talented young musicians to audition. Eight Junior Artists have now been recruited for 2017/18, (Sehyogue Aulakh, Uma Baron, Shona Beecham, William Campbell, Elodie Chousmer-Howelles, Rianna Henriques, Nolitha Olusanya and Meera Patel), with full activities running from September to June 2017. This part of the scheme is for musicians aged 15 to 19, and the new LPO Junior Artists: Overture will offer musicians aged 11 to 14 the opportunity to meet the Orchestra, develop their skills and build their understanding of progression routes available to them, including three Overture Weekend Days in Brighton and London.

From Royal Philharmonic Orchestra to Cambridge Summer Music Festival

Ian Maclay recently retired as the managing director of the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra having joined the orchestra in 1972 and become managing director in 1982, and again in 2001. But Maclay is not putting his feet up, and it has been announced that he will be taking over as artistic director of Cambridge Summer Music Festival, with the 2018 festival being the first under Maclay's charge.

This year's Cambridge Summer Music Festival ran from 12 - 29 July 2017, presenting music in iconic Cambridge venues. This year's festival was the last to be directed by Juliet Abrahamson who was festival director fro 1994 to 2015 and did much to shape the present festival.

What a remarkable score: Oklahoma!

Robert Fairchild (centre) as Will Parker in Oklahoma! with the John Wilson Orchestra at the BBC Proms.
(Photo Mark Allan/BBC)

Until I caught the BBC television broadcast of Rogers and Hamerstein's Oklahoma! from the BBC Proms on Sunday (13 August 2017, a televising of the original Prom from Friday 11 August) I had never seen Oklahoma! from beginning to end. John Wilson's performance with the John Wilson Orchestra and Nathaniel Hackmann, Scarlett Strallen, Robert Fairchild, Lizzy Connolly, Marcus Brigstocke, Belinda Lang, and David Seadon-Young gave us every note of the original 1943 Broadway performance.

It made me realise what a remarkable score it is. Whilst later Rogers and Hamerstein musicals dealt with awkward issues such as domestic violence, and racism, Oklahoma! is more about the every day lives of country folk, and part of the musical's revolutionary nature was the way the two developed Oklahoma! as a play with music where the music arises out of the drama and helps to push it along. Musicals like Jerome Kern's Showboat took remarkable steps towards creating a grown-up, serious medium, but the way Rogers and Hamerstein eschewed the traditional Broadway musical construction means that Oklahoma! has every right to be considered one of the first really modern musicals. So we get only one reprise in the second act, the title tune only occurs in the penultimate number and the long first act concludes with a 15 minute dream ballet. The show opens not with a big opening number, but with Curly (Nathaniel Hackmann) singing off stage

But what makes the show stand out is not this, it is the fact that you can hum virtually every one of the songs. I might never have seen the show all the way through, but most of the major numbers are embedded in our collective consciousness. However it takes serious musicological productions like this to make us re-assess works, forgetting the corney excerpts that stick in the mind.

Mind you, 1943 was clearly an interesting year when it came to the Broadway musical. Granted, the year saw the premiere of the revue Bright Lights of 1944 and of Cole Porter's Something for the Boys (Ethel Merman's fifth Cole Porter musical), but there was also What's Up? (Lerner and Loewe's first collaboration, choreographed and directed by George Balanchine), Kurt Weill's One Touch of Venus and Oscar Hamerstein's Carmen Jones (with an all black cast, none of whom had been on the Broadway stage before).

Crossing the century: Leonard Elschenbroich in Dutilleux, Messiaen, Debussy, Ravel and Saint-Saens

Dutilleux, Messiaen, Debussy, Ravel, Saint-Saens; Leonard Elschenbroich, Alexei Grynyuk, BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra, John Wilson, Stefan Blunier
Reviewed by Robert Hugill on Aug 15 2017
Star rating: 4.0
The young German cellist traces a fascinating line across the century between Dutilleux and Saint-Saens' concertos

On previous discs, cellist Leonard Elschenbroich has shown interest in exploring thematic and cultural links between works, a disc last year on Onyx explored Kabalevsky and Prokofiev's reactions to life under Soviet rule (see my review). That disc mixed chamber pieces and concertos, and on this new disc from Elschenbroich on Onyx Classics there is a similar mix. He starts with Henri Dutilleux's 1967-70 Cello Concerto 'Tout un monde lointain...' with the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra and John Wilson, and ends with Camille Saint-Saens' 1872 Cello Concerto No. 1 in A minor op.33 with the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra and Stefan Blunier. Between these Elschenbroich is joined by pianist Alexei Grynyuk to trace the century of French cello music, drawing a line from Dutilleux to Saint-Saens which includes the 'Louange a L'Eternite de Jesus' from Olivier Messiaen's 1940 Quatuor pour la fin du temps, Claude Debussy's 1915 Sonata in D minor for cello & piano, and Maurice Ravel's 1907 Piece en forme d'habanera.

It makes for fascinating and engrossing listening, especially as we start with the Dutilleux and move backwards to end with the Saint-Saens. Excellent programming in that the mystical translucence of Dutilleux gradually gives way to the showy brilliance of Saint-Saens, but it means that we hear the links between the works in a new way.

Support pianist Kimiko Ishizaka's recording of her own completeion of Bach's The Art of Fugue

Kimiko Ishizaka

In March 2016, I heard the pianist Kimiko Ishizaka perform Bach's The Art of Fugue, including the premiere of her own completion, in Cologne (see my review), and she repeated the performance at St John's Smith Square, London in September that year (see my article). I also interviewed Kimiko that year when we talked about her Bach playing (see my interview). Now she is recording Bach's The Art of Fugue with her own completion.

There is a Kickstarter project, to help support the recording project which aims to not only enable the production of a recording (which will be available as a down-load with a very limited edition CD), but to support Kimiko's performances of the work in the Elbphilharmonie, Hamburg and Carnegie Hall, New York, and produce and an Open Score edition of the music.

Rewards range from a copy of the recording download and a PDF of Kimiko's score, to tickets for concerts in Hamburg, New York, and at the Huygens Festival in the Netherlands.

Full details from the Kickstarter.com page.

Remarkable double portrait: Echo and Espoir from Michael Spyres and Joyce El-Khoury

Rossini, Donizetti, Verdi, Halevy, Auber, Berlioz, Meyerbeer, Herold, Weber/Berlioz; Joyce El-Khoury, Michael Spyres, The Hallé, Carlo Rizzi; Opera Rara
Reviewed by Robert Hugill on Aug 12 2017
Star rating: 5.0
French and Italian repertoire intertwine in two fascinating discs exploring the music sung by two major French singers

This pair of discs from Opera Rara are available separately, but the repertoire is very much linked and the two form a pair exploring the music associated with two major French singers of the early to mid-19th century, Gilbert-Louis Duprez and Julie Dorus-Gras. Both discs feature Carlo Rizzi and the Hallé. Espoir features tenor Michael Spyres in arias from operas by Rossini, Donizetti, Halévy, Verdi Auber, and Berlioz, whilst Echo features soprano Joyce El-Khoury in arias from operas by Donizetti, Meyerbeer, Weber/Berlioz, Rossini, Hérold, and Berlioz, with each disc featuring the two singers in duet .

Gilbert-Louis Duprez (1806-1896) is best known for his uses of powerful chest-voice top C's in Rossini's Guillaume Tell (something Rossini deplored) rather than the voix mixte which had been used previously. But his repertoire was far wider than that, and these discs allow us to get to know Duprez alongside his colleague at the Paris Opéra, Julie Dorus-Gras (1805-1896). Their appearances together included Rossini's Guillaume Tell, Halévy's Guido et Ginévra and Berlioz's Benvenuto Cellini. In a sense we already know their voices, as Spyres and El-Khoury incarnated Duprez and Dorus-Gras when they recorded Donizetti's Les Martyrs for Opera Rara (see my review), an opera which Duprez and Dorus-Gras premiered.

These discs provide valuable background to Opera Rara's explorations of Donizetti's French repertoire, giving us the opportunity to hear recordings of arias from operas current at the time, sung by his favoured singers.

In fact, Duprez had an Italian sojourn, one during which his voice seems to have darkened and grown heavier. He started out singing Rodrigo from Rossini's Otello, but the later roles which Donizetti wrote for him including Edgardo in Lucia di Lammermoor and the roles in Les Martyrs and La Favourite show how it changed, and when Duprez returned to Paris he was singing the title role in Otello. Dorus-Gras seems to have had a highly flexible technique, she was known for singing both the soprano roles in Meyerbeer's Robert le diable, and she was highly commended by Berlioz. She and Duprez sang in the premiere of Berlioz Benvenuto Cellini but this did not go entirely well and Duprez only sang in three performances. More intriguingly, when Dorus-Gras sang the title role in Donizetti's Lucia di Lammermoor in London, the conductor was Berlioz!

New opera: Philadelphia/Hackney co-production based on Peter Ackroyd's novel

Peter Ackroyd's novel The Trial of Elizabeth Cree: A novel of the Limehouse murders has been turned into an opera by composer Kevin Puts and librettist Mark Campbell. The new opera is being premiered in September 2017 by Opera Philadelphia and is a co-commission with the Hackney Empire, and the production is being co-produced by Opera Philadelphia, the Hackney Empire and Chicago Opera Theater. The production is directed by David Schweizer and in Philadelphia features Daniela Mack as Elizabeth Cree, conducted by Corrado Rovaris.

Puts's and Campbell’s new opera is set in London in the 1880s, and interweaves multiple narratives, including the trial of the titular heroine for the poisoning of her husband, and a series of brutal murders committed by a Jack the Ripper-style killer, while depicting London scenes that range from the British Library Reading Room to the high-spirited, working-class music hall. Elizabeth Cree is a mystery that fuses history with imaginative fiction.

Alexandra Dariescu's The Nutcracker and I

For her concerto debut disc, pianist Alexandra Dariescu chose to pair Tchaikovsky's Piano Concerto No. 1 with her own transcriptions for piano of movements from Tchaikovsky's Nutcracker (see my review). Now Dariescu is deepening her relationship with the ballet and premiering a new show The Nutcracker and I, which is far more than just a piano recital, at the Guildhall School's Milton Court concert hall on 19 December 2017.

Alexandra Dariescu

The Nutcracker and I is a multi-media performance piece for piano soloist, ballerina and digital animation. Directed by Nick Hillel, the evening will feature Alexandra Dariescu and ballet dancer Désirée Ballantyne, with choreography by Jenna Lee. Ballantyne will be dancing behind a gauze screen on which animations by Yeast Culture. Dariescu will be playing fifteen movements from the ballet, in arrangements by Mikhail Pletnev, Stepan Esipoff, Percy Grainger and three brand new variations by Gavin Sutherland.

The premiere of The Nutcracker and I, by Alexandra Dariescu is part of the Guildhall School’s Alumni Recital Series. Alexandra Dariescu is currently on the Guildhall School’s Creative Entrepreneurs programme, run in partnership with social enterprise Cause4. It is an intensive 12-month programme, which helps entrepreneurs develop ideas offering training in vision development, business planning and marketing, sales and funding and individual support. The aim of the scheme is to enable entrepreneurs to develop sustainable business and to secure vital seed funding.

Following the premiere, there will be 16 performances in Moscow’s International Performing Arts Centre as well as Stavanger International Chamber Music Festival in Norway and multiple tours to China.

Further details about The Nutcracker and I from the Guildhall School's website.

Premiere of Brian Elias' new cello concerto at the BBC Proms

Leonard Elschenbroich

Brian Elias Cello Concerto; Leonard Elschenbroich, BBC National Orchestra of Wales, Ryan Wigglesworth; BBC Proms at the Royal Albert Hall
Reviewed by Jill Barlow on Aug 9 2017
Star rating: 3.0
A complex and rewarding work: premiere of Elias' new cello concerto

Despite torrential rain making for slippery pavements, and a replacement cello soloist having to be found as the much anticipated Natalie Clein was indisposed, a pretty well full house audience duly assembled in the Royal Albert Hall on the night (9 August 2017) to welcome in Brian Elias' new cello concerto, performed by cellist Leonard Elschenbroich, the BBC National Orchestra of Wales, conductor Ryan Wigglesworth at the BBC Proms.

Following Britten's Ballad of Heroes, in came the robust new cello soloist Leonard Elschenbroich, who has been described as 'one of the most charismatic cellists of his generation', projecting the new work with enormous enthusiasm and verve, duly delivering the four movements 'with no break'.

Full of colour and contrasts, well orchestrated, this interesting work was well received by the enthusiastic audience but I couldn't help but feel needed greater definition so that the listener could better distinguish one movement from the next amidst so much overlapping of material.

Singing Wagner - a conversation between Claire Rutter and Dame Anne Evans, our two-part article

Bryan Register (Siegmund), Claire Rutter (Sieglinde) in Wagner's Die Walküre
at Grange Park Opera (photo Robert Workman)

Having had long experience in the Italian repertoire from Elvira (I puritani) and Violetta (La Traviata) to the title roles in Norma, Aida and Tosca, soprano Claire Rutter recently sang the role of Sieglinde in Wagner's Die Walküre at Grange Park Opera (see my review), not only the first time she has sung the role in a staged production but her first major role in the German repertoire.  Claire was coached in the role of Sieglinde by Dame Anne Evans, a renowned Wagnerian soprano famous for her more lyrical approach to the roles. I recently joined Claire and Dame Anne to talk about what it takes to be a Wagner singer, for a two-part article (read the second part here).

Anne Evans as Brunnhilde in Wagner's Die Walküre
at WNO in 1984 (Photo Clive Barda)

Dame Anne feels that many people have the wrong idea about singing Wagner, and think that singers simply fall out of their cradle singing that way. But she insists that it is something that has to be learned, along with the stamina to be able to sing in five-hour operas. She feels that she was lucky, and was able to approach Wagner in a very traditional way by singing small roles first and she has in fact sung 11 different roles in The Ring. This started whilst she was a student in Geneva; she spent two years at the conservatoire opera school which was attached to Geneva Opera where she sang Rhinemaidens and Norns. This continued at the London Coliseum with English National Opera where she sang a Valkyrie and a Norn. Reginald Goodall heard her singing the 'Ho jo to ho' in The Valkyrie and said 'you will sing Brünnhilde one day', and she thought this was a ridiculous idea.

The experience of being part of a company is something which both Dame Anne and Claire had, as Claire was one of the last contract singers at Scottish Opera. But nowadays this type of experience has largely disappeared in the UK, though many German opera companies provide young singers with the experience of being in a company and trying out a large variety of roles, including singing smaller Wagnerian ones.

This sort of experience is important because it is necessary for a singer to get into the correct style of singing Wagner. Here also, Dame Anne takes quite a strong position. She was famous for singing Brünnhilde in a more lyrical fashion, and she points out that Wagner was 'mad about Bellini's Norma' and that this should influence the style of singing his music, and that it needs a lot of portamento. She is very dismissive of what she calls the 'awful Bayreuth bark' and adds that Goodall always said not too much metal in the voice, he wanted a round sound.

Claire came to Wagner far later, have sung a great many other mainly Italian roles, but she feels that she is able to put this experience into the mix. And she also noticed that her Italian roles improved after she started singing Sieglinde.

Miracles and Footsteps: Tenebrae in Joby Talbot and Owain Park

Park Footsteps, Talbot Path of Miracles; Tenebrae, National Youth Choirs of Great Britain, Nigel Short; Signum Classics
Reviewed by Robert Hugill on Aug 2 2017
Star rating: 5.0
Joby Talbot's remarkable 2005 work meditating on pilgrimage with a new companion by young British composer Owain Park

Joby Talbot's Path of Miracles was written for Tenebrae and was due to be premiered on 7 July 2005. The London bombings that day prevented the work's premiere (it was subsequently premiered later that year) but the recording went ahead. For Tenebrae's 15th anniversary Nigel Short have revived Path of Miracles on an extended tour. The work's original 2005 recording is now issued on Signum Classics with a specially commissioned companion work, Footsteps by Owain Park.

Path of Miracles is a remarkable, large-scale work. In four movements, it lasts over an hour and throughout the piece Talbot's control of the emotional texture is superb as he creates an extended meditation on pilgrimage and what it is to be a pilgrim. The work is centred on the pilgrimage to Santiago and the four movements are named after the main stations on the Camino Frances (the French route), Roncevalles, Burgos, Leon, Santiago.

But the text is far more than simply descriptive. The work's librettist, Robert Dickinson, has assembled a striking patchwork of texts in a variety of languages, ranging from medieval texts such as the Codex Calixtinus and a 15th century work in the Galician language, Magres de Santiago, passages from the Roman liturgy, and Dickinson's own poetry.

Joshua Bell renews his contract with Academy of St Martin in the Fields for a further three years

Joshua Bell and the Academy of St Martin in the Fields

Violinist Joshua Bell has been the Academy of St Martin in the Field's (ASMF) music director since 2011, only the second person to hold the title (succeeding Sir Neville Marriner). ASMF has recently announced that Bell has extended his contract for a further three years. Bell has a long relationship with the orchestra, first playing with them under Marriner in 1998 when Bell was just 21 and their first collaboration was an album of Bruch and Mendelssohn violin concertos - Joshua Bell’s first concerto disc.  Bell's tour to Australia with ASMF in 2017 (his first visit to the sub-continent) won in two categories at the 2017 Helpmann Awards.

Bell is artist residence at the 2017 Edinburgh International Festival and his performances include a concert with ASMF. Further ahead they will be appearing together at Wigmore Hall and in January 2018, Bell and ASMF give the UK premiere of Edgar Meyer's Overture for Violin and Orchestra at Cadogan Hall, alongside Vivaldi's Four Seasons and Beethoven's Symphony No. 2, a programme which tours to Dublin, Edinburgh, Manchester, Birmingham, Nottingham and Friedrichshafen in Germany, finishing at Bristol's Colston Hall when it will be recorded for broadcast by BBC Radio 3.

Full details and further concert dates from ASMF website.

Quickening approaches

The new disc of my songs, Quickening: songs to texts by English and Welsh poets,  will be out on the PARMA Recordings' Navona Records label on 8 September (with performances from Anna Huntley, Rosalind Ventris, Johnny Herford, Will Vann). Read more about the disc, with full texts and programme notes, along with a tempting sample, on the on-line programme notes pages. 

Revolutions: Voices of Change - NYCGB's first ever concert livestream

National Youth Choir of Great Britain

Conductor Stephen Layton conducts the National Youth Choir of Great Britain for the first time on 25 August 2017 at a concert in Trinity College Chapel, Cambridge. For those of us not able to get to the concert, the choir is making it available to watch as a multi-camera, high quality audio livestream via their Facebook page, powered by Musicgurus. The first time the ensemble has done such a project.

It is quite a programme, entitled Revolutions: Voices of Change, the music ranges from Poulenc and Messiaen, through Martin's Mass for Double Choir to music by Vytautas Miškinis, Uģis Praulins and Pawel Łukaszewski, as well as the premiere of Ēriks Ešenvalds' Salutation.

Full details of Revolutions: Voices of Change from the NYCGB website.

Holding our attention: Roberta Mameli in Stradella's Santa Pelagia

Stradella Santa Pelagia; Ensemble Mare Nostrum, Andrea De Carlo; Arcana
Reviewed by Robert Hugill on Jul 25 2017
Star rating: 4.0
Stradella's oratorio in a delightful new recording

Alessandro Stradella's Santa Pelagia is a little bit of a mystery. The sole surviving manuscript of the oratorio does not quite give up all the work's secrets and this new recording on Outhere Music's Arcana label is a radically new version. Andrea De Carlo directs Ensemble Mare Nostrum with Roberta Mameli as Santa Pelagia, Raffaele Pe as Religione, Luca Cervoni as Nonno and Sergio Foresti as Mondo.

The manuscript of the work lacks a definitive composer, but other contributing factors confirm authorship, we just don't know where or when (or why) it was written. The libretto is in all probability by a Roman prince, Lelio Orsini who had written libretti for other Stradella oratorios for private performance at his palazzo. On stylistic grounds, the work's instrumental prelude and two violin parts are probably not by Stradella. So this performance removes them, giving us a performance that though stripped down, relishes the richness of an accompaniment provided by nine continuo instruments.

The story largely ignores the dramatics of Saint Pelagia the Penitent's life and instead forms a moral fable Santa Pelagia (Roberta Mameli) choosing between worldly pleasures (as personified by Mondo, Sergio Foresti) and religion (as personified by Religione, Raffaele Pe). The final character is Bishop Nonnus (Nonno, Luca Cervoni) whose sermon caused Saint Pelagia to convert, be baptised and enter a hermitage.

Filling a need: I chat to artistic director, Marcus Farnsworth, about the Southwell Music Festival

Southwell Music Festival (Photo Nick Rutter)

This year is the fourth Southwell Music Festival, the festival founded by baritone Marcus Farnsworth which takes place in and around Southwell Cathedral (also known as Southwell Minster) in Nottinghamshire. This year's festival takes place from 24 to 28 August 2017, and showcases a wide variety of repertoire with the centrepiece concert being in the minster nave on Saturday 26 August which is a celebration of Mozart, with pianist James Baillieu the soloist in Mozart's Piano Concerto No. 21 in C major, K467 and Mozart's Mass in C minor K427 with soloists Sophie Bevan and Rachel Kelly. Marcus Farnsworth conducts the Festival Voices and Festival Sinfonia, the latter being led by the festival's associate artistic director Jamie Campbell.

The Festival Voices and Festival Sinfonia are both professional ensembles with performers fixed from all over Europe. Marcus Farnsworth explained that many players have been coming to the festival since it was founded in 2014, with a healthy mix of those returning and new faces. The Festival Sinfonia is far more than a scratch band, and Marcus feels that because the players get to perform a lot of chamber music during the festival, the orchestra generates a fine sense of ensemble.

Last year the strings of the orchestra's performance of Richard Strauss's Metamorphosen was such a success that this year the festival is presenting a Strings in the Quire concert. This reflects the way the festival tries to tailor programmes to the different venue available. Marcus sees the different parts of the minster as having different acoustics, so the Norman nave is good for big choral pieces as the acoustic is not too resonantly booming, whilst the more resonant Early English Quire is good for strings.

Fragments of Porgy

The Basement Orchestra

Gerswhin Porgy and Bess (Excerpts); Talia Cohen, Masimba Ushe, Basement Orchestra, Guy Jones; Grimeborn Festival at Arcola Theatre
Reviewed by Anthony Evans on Aug 5 2017
Star rating: 3.0
Fascinating and brilliantly performed: the rise of reform opera

“If I am successful it will resemble a combination of the drama and romance of Carmen and the beauty of Meistersinger”

Pity though it is not to hear the majesty of Gershwin’s unifying symphonic vision of Porgy and Bess, it’s easy to understand the universal appeal of the beautiful melodies in the musical theatre arrangement performed on Saturday 5 August 2017, by the Basement Orchestra as part of Arcola Theatre’s Grimeborn season. “I am not ashamed of writing songs at any time so long as they are good songs”. There’s an understatement.

On Saturday evening in a small sweaty studio, under the musical direction of Guy Jones with a forty five piece orchestra, we were given a forty five minute whistle stop tour of some of the most recognisable hits of the twentieth century with the voices of Talia Cohen and Masimba Ushe.

Talia Cohen all laid back charm, and the sonorous and charismatic bass-baritone of Masimba Ushe were at their best in ‘It ain’t necessarily so’ and ‘Bess you is my woman now’. But put under pressure by the size and over exuberance of the orchestra, in such a small venue, they were often swamped. Still, wrapped in such glorious music it was one of the most fleeting forty five minutes of my life.

Reviewed by Anthony Evans