A Life On-Line: Jam today, and full of beans

I Fagiolini

This week has been one of on-line festivals, with Voces8's Live from London continuing on Saturdays, and the on-line JAM on the Marsh coming from Romney Marsh in Kent. 

We caught up with I Fagiolini's recital for Live from London, which was broadcast live on Saturday 8 August 2020. Monteverdi: the ache of love featured Robert Hollingworth and the ensemble (Rebecca Lea, Clare Wilkinson, Nicholas Mulroy, Matthew Long, Greg Skidmore, Charles Gibbs, Linda Sayce) in madrigals and sacred music by Monteverdi, what Robert Hollingworth described as 'comfort food'. Moving between six-voiced unaccompanied madrigals in Monteverdi's earlier style to single voice pieces with theorbo (Linda Sayce) and organ (Robert Hollingworth), the short recital presented us with the full imaginative range of Monteverdi's music from two works from the 1603 Fourth book of madrigals, to Lamento della ninfa from 1638, and along the way there was the lovely Duo seraphin and Felle Amaro a fascinating sacred contrafactum of Cruda Amarilli. Whilst in one way this was small scale performance, each individual was a vibrant part of the whole, thus giving us a vividly rich and emotional experience. If only we could have been there. [LiveFromLondon]

JAM on the Marsh has been presenting concerts all week, recorded at the churches in Romney Marsh. We caught mezzo-soprano Rebecca Afonwy-Jones' lovely recital with pianist Anna Tilbrook. They started with Elgar's Sea Pictures which always seem to take on a different quality when performed with piano, and Afonwy-Jones and Tilbrook really brought out the subtle detail of the pieces, with Afonwy-Jones shaping the vocal lines beautifully. It was the sort of performance which made you look at Elgar the song-writer in a different light. This was followed by Jonathan Dove's cycle, Nights not spent alone, which was commissioned in 2015 for Kitty Whately. Setting three Edna St Vincent Millay poems, Dove's complex yet seductive music contrasts nicely with the rather tart sentiments of the poetry, and I have always particularly enjoyed the first song 'Recuerdo' with the evocation of the sounds of the New York ferry in the piano. The composer Madeleine Dring (1923-1977) remains a lesser known 20th century writer of song, so it was lovely to hear two of her Five Betjeman Songs, 'A Bay in Anglesey' and the ever delightful 'The Song of the Nightclub Proprietress'. And we finished on more familiar ground with the Britten/Auden cabaret songs. [JAMConcert]

We returned to JAM for a further concert when the Gesualdo Six were joined by two sopranos and musicians from the London Mozart Players, and Simon Hogan (organ) for a performance of Faure's Requiem conducted by Owain Park.

Co-founder Jonathan Darbourne introduces The Vache Baroque Festival's debut staging of Purcell's Dido and Aeneas with Katie Bray as Dido

The Vache

With current restrictions encouraging the popularity of out-door performance, it is no surprise to find a new festival appearing. The Vache Baroque Festival is the brainchild of counter-tenor/conductor Jonathan Darbourne and soprano Betty Makharinsky, and this year they will be presenting staged performances of Purcell's Dido and Aeneas at The Vache, a house of Tudor origins in Chalftont St Giles.

The production will be directed by Thomas Guthrie [see my recent interview with Thomas], with Katie Bray, winner of the Dame Joan Sutherland Audience Prize at the BBC Cardiff Singer of the World in 2019,  as Dido and Jolyon Loy, one of the National Opera Studio's Young Artists for 2020/21, as Aeneas.  Betty will sing Belinda and Jonathan will conduct, and I recently spoke to Jonathan to find out what is on offer.

This year, the festival will be presenting two performances, but they are hoping to expand and offer a wider experience to audiences in future years. In order to give audience members this year a more interesting experience, they are planning on giving pre-show performances in the grounds of The Vache, taking advantage of the house's attractive setting including a lake. 

These extra performances will probably involve music by Matthew Locke, Purcell violin sonatas, and perhaps something Italian (as Jonathan put it, to get the audience into the violin-based sound-world of Purcell's music) along with arias. The opera's cast of eight includes some fine young singers with people like Rory Carver (who sings with William Christie in Les Arts Florissants' Le Jardin des Voix), Angela Hicks (who has performed with John Eliot Gardiner) and James Geidt in smaller roles, so the extra performance will give them further opportunity and each of the cast (except for the three singers playing Dido, Aeneas and Belinda) will be singing in pre-performance event.  The pre-show entertainment will also feature sound installations by sound artist Dan Samsa from speakers positioned in different areas of the grounds, which will develop themes found in the opera and Virgil's Aeneid.

Words and line: Stuart Jackson and Jocelyn Freeman's fine recital disc, Flax and Fire, moves from Purcell to Britten, via Liszt, Wolf and Schumann

Flax and Fire, songs by Britten, Wolf, Liszt, Schumann, Browne; Stuart Jackson, Benjamin Britten; Orchid Classics
Reviewed by Robert Hugill on 14 August 2020 Star rating: 4.0 (★★★★)
A fine debut recital for the English tenor which moves beautifully from Purcell to Britten, via Liszt and more

Tenor Stuart Jackson has popped up on the blog in a variety of roles over the years, whether as Iro in Monteverdi's Il ritorno d'Ulisse with the Royal Opera or as a Classical Opera Associate Artist, so it is pleasing to be able to welcome his recital disc Flax and Fire on Orchid Classics, performing music by Benjamin Britten, Hugo Wolf, Franz Liszt, Robert Schumann and William Denis Browne with pianist Jocelyn Freeman. The twin centrepieces of the disc are Britten's Canticle I: My Beloved is Mine and Liszt's Tri Sonetti del Petrarca.

The recital centres around songs of devotion and passion, with the title inspired by a line from Britten's Canticle I 'For I was flax and he was flames of fire'.

We open with Britten's realisation of Purcell in the delightfully lively Man is for the woman made, made in 1947 for Britten and Pears to perform, which introduces Jackson's lithely flexible tenor, sense of line and fine attention to the words. These Purcellian elements are to the fore in Britten's Canticle I, which the composer did indeed base on the model of Purcell's Divine Hymns. Britten also wrote it in 1947, a setting of the 17th century Francis Quarles which fascinatingly combines elements of the Song of Solomon with the homo-erotic; rather daring in British music in 1947!

Jackson seems to bring out the fluidity of the vocal line with effortless elegance, all the while giving full attention to the text. The result is Purcellian indeed, and I do hope that we get to hear Jackson joining in the other Britten Canticles. The final Britten is his Goethe setting, Um Mitternacht from around 1960, the only one of a planned sequence of Goethe settings. It is wonderfully haunted and eerie, with Jocelyn Freeman's piano contributing considerably to the atmosphere.

Switched On: Opera North's programme of out-door events and digital projects

Matthew Robins with The Little Match Girl
designed for Opera North in 2012

Opera North has announced a programme of out-door events and digital projects, Switched On, to replace its planned 2020/2021 season. The new programme involves a new piece by Abel Selaocoe, a film of Will Todd's new community opera, live performances of Whistle Stop Hansel and Gretel and an animated film of Puccini's La Boheme.

South African cellist Abel Selaocoe will compose As you are, a new sound-walk for Leeds. The journey will start and end at Victoria Gate, following a route exploring many of the city centre’s most recognisable landmarks as well as its arcades and side streets and the waterfront of the River Aire. Audiences taking part in the sound-walk in small groups will each be given a set of headphones connected to a wireless receiver, triggering new musical chapters at different points on the walk through Leeds, experiencing the cityscape through a new and transformative journey. The music will be recorded by Abel Selaocoe (cello), guest African musicians including Sidiki Dembele, and the Orchestra and Chorus of Opera North.

Will Todd's new community opera, A Song of Our Heartland, was due to premiere in County Durham in May 2020, and the work was developed in partnership with local communities. The work will now be created digitally and released as a 60 minute film. Participants in the Community Chorus and members of the community taking solo roles in the opera have been rehearsing with Opera North’s music team via Zoom sessions during lockdown; their parts will each be recorded individually. 

Directed by Caroline Clegg and conducted by Holly Mathieson, the film of Song of Our Heartland will be filmed on location at Locomotion and the surrounding area and recorded by the Chorus and Orchestra of Opera North and the newly formed Community Chorus, with solo roles shared between members of the Chorus of Opera North and community participants.

John Savournin's Whistle Stop Opera: Hansel and Gretel compresses Humperdinck's opera down to just 40 minutes with a cast of four accompanied by an accordion [I caught a performance in 2017, presented by the Concordia Foundation, my article]. The opera is ideal for socially distanced performances during lockdown, and a good introduction to the opera. Opera North will be presenting it in a range of outdoor settings across the North of England during August and September with a cast including Laura Kelly-McInroy, Jennifer Clark, Claire Pascoe, John Savournin (who also directs), accompanied by Miloš Milivojević.

Act III of Puccini's La Boheme is being re-imagined as an animated film created by Matthew Robins, with a new sound-track recorded by soloists with the Chorus and Orchestra of Opera North.The finished animation will be projected outdoors onto walls in found spaces in towns and cities across the North of England, with limited audiences at each screening listening via headphones. 

I am still missing the planned programmes (and we are assured that the new operas such as Handel's Alcina and Puccini's The Girl of the Golden West will be re-scheduled), but Switched On seems a highly imaginative response to the current restrictions, and an admirable piece of swift thinking from the Opera North team.

Full details from the Opera North website.

I give you the end of a golden string

 In 2018 the vocal ensemble Sansara, artistic director Tom Herring, performed Chris Williams' setting of a text by William Blake at the unveiling of a new tombstone for William Blake at Bunhill Fields. Williams set the text which had been put on the tombstone:

I give you the end of golden string;
Only wind it into a ball,
It will lead you in at Heaven's gate,
Built in Jerusalem's wall

Now the ensemble has returned to Williams' piece, joining forces with videographer Alex McEwen to create an interactive audio-visual experience. Audio recorded by the singers during lockdown has been used to create four separate audio tracks, each with their own accompanying video. Audiences are invited to create their own version of the piece by combining these four layers and exploring the possibilities of their infinite variation.

You can try it out at the work's website.

Premiere of Stephen McNeff and Aoife Mannix's new opera, Beyond the Garden, in Slovenia

Amazingly, a new British opera will receive its stage premiere this September, an event to be celebrated at the best of times and particularly so in the current crisis. 

The staging will take place in Lubljana, Slovenia where Beyond the Garden by Stephen McNeff and Aoife Mannix was commissioned by Slovenian Chamber Music Theatre (SKGG). The premiere, delayed from July 2020, takes place at the Cankarjev dom, the main arts complex in Ljubljana, on 4 September 2020, with Susan Bickley and Katja Konvalinka, conducted by Simon Dvoršak and in a production directed by Rocc (Rok Rappl), former artistic director of the Slovenian National Opera.

Lasting around 70 minutes and written for two singers and five-piece chamber ensemble, the work explores the relationship between Alma Mahler and her daughter Manon, who died at the age of 18. McNeff describes the piece as a ghost story, and the Mannix's libretto explores the outer reaches of memory, what we want to forget and how we try - and usually fail - to control the narrative of our lives.

The artists gave a presentation about the opera, performing excerpts, in July 2019 (see my article) and it is highly commendable that the project has managed to come to fruition despite the current crisis.

Further details from the Cankarjev dom website.

Live opera returns to Northern Irelands with The Festival of Voice

Festival of Voice finalists, Belfast 2020

Live opera is returning to Northern Ireland this August, when Northern Ireland Opera brings The Festival of Voice to Belfast. Normally this annual celebration of the best young voices from the island of Ireland takes place in the Glenarm but the current restrictions mean that this year it will be taking place from 28-30 August 2020 in the First Church Belfast, under the theme of Myths and Legends.

The finalists for the competition are chosen from singers between the ages of 18 and 28, born on the island of Ireland. This year the five finalists are David Corr (baritone), David Howes (bass baritone), Andrew Irwin (tenor), Sarah Luttrell (mezzo-soprano) and Jade Phoenix (soprano), and they will be working with vocal coaches across the weekend and building to finale where they compete by performing arias, duets and Irish songs in front of a judging panel of opera experts. The winner is awarded a monetary prize and the chance to attend Canto al Serchio in Tuscany, run by Belfast-born international baritone, Bruno Caproni.

Also in the weekend there will be three BBC Radio 3 Recitals, from soprano Ailish Tynan, mezzo-soprano Anna Huntley and baritone James Newby, with accompanist Simon Lepper.  BBC Radio 3 will broadcast the recitals in the early autumn while the competition finale will be filmed and released via the Northern Ireland Opera YouTube channel in September. 

Full details from the Northern Ireland Opera website.

 

Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra announces Autumn season in Dorset and on-line

Shirley Thompson and BSO Resound

The Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra has announced plans for 12 socially distanced performances from the Lighthouse, Poole, for its Autumn season. The performances will be available on-line, and will be open to a socially distanced audience when government restrictions allow. The seasons opens on 30 September 2020 when the orchestra's chief conductor, Kirill Karabits, conducts a programme of Bach, Ives, Beethoven's Symphony No 7, and Britten's arrangement of the third movements of Mahler's Symphony No. 3 (the work originally planned to open the season), and the Autumn season ends in December with Robert Howarth conducting a programme of Handel, Bach, Corelli and Vivaldi with soprano Anna Devin performing arias from Messiah.

The 2020/21 season will also include two major new commissions, a symphonic work from German-based Azervaijani composer Franghiz Ali-Zadeh, whose work fuses Azerbaijani traditions with Western classical music, and a chamber work for BSO Resound, the orchestra's disabled-led ensemble, from Shirley Thompson to mark the 60th anniversary of the Independent Living Movement, and the orchestra will be giving the UK premiere of Magnus Lindberg's Absence which was commissioned for the Beethoven centenary. The orchestra's Voices from the East continues, with Karabits conducting a work by the Ukrainian composer Theodore Akimenko (1876-1945), who was Stravinsky's first teacher, and the Trumpet Concerto by the Soviet Armenian composer Alexander Arutiunan (1920-2012)

Pianist Benjamin Grosvenor is the orchestra's artist in residence for 2020/21, and he will be performing Chopin's Piano Concerto No. 1 in December.

All the concerts will be an hour long without an interval, and the stage at the Lighthouse is being extended to allow the members of the orchestra to be socially distant.

Full details from the orchestra's website.

Benjamin Grosvenor, Hyeyoon Park, Raja Halder launch the Bromley and Beckenham International Music Festival

Church of St Peter and St Paul, Bromley

The collapse of live performance and the lack of opportunities for artists has made some performers create their own luck. 

Three artists who all happen to be based in Bromley, have decided to get together and create the Bromley and Beckenham International Music Festival. This has been launched by pianist Benjamin Grosvenor, and violinists Raja Halder and Hyeyoon Park, and the first festival runs at St Peter and St Paul Church in Bromley from 17 to 20 September 2020. 

The programme includes four socially-distanced chamber concerts with guest artists including Tomo Keller, Timothy Ridout, Leon Bosch, David Cohen, and festival co-founders Raja Halder, Benjamin Grosvenor and Hyeyoon Park. Whether by accident or design the programme has a variety of quintets to the fore, including Beethoven's Violin Concerto in a version for violin and string quintet with soloist Hyeyoon Park, Schubert's Trout Quintet and Dvorak's Piano Quintet no. 2, plus piano quartets by Brahms and Mahler.

Care has been taken over socially distancing the concerts, but if regulations prevent a live audience from being present then the concerts will take place without one and will be live-streamed for ticket holders.

50% of profits from the 2020 festival will go to St Christopher’s Hospice, a local hospice offering palliative and end of life care whose fundraising streams were devastated by the pandemic. The remaining 50% of profits will be invested in the 2021 festival.

 

Full details from the festival website.

Born in Cyprus, trained in London, the name Kemal Belevi is perhaps not well known but this disc from Duo Tandem is full of delightfully evocative pieces

Kemal Belevi Guitar duos; Duo Tandem; NAxos
Reviewed by Robert Hugill on 12 August 2020 Star rating: 3.5 (★★★½)
Imaginatively written for two guitars, music by the Turkish-Cypriot born, London-trained composer

I have to confess that until I was sent this disc, I had never come across composer Kemal Belevi, who was born a Turkish Cypriot and trained in London as a guitarist and composer. This disc from Naxos features music for guitar duo by Kemal Belevi, performed by Duo Tandem. Kemal Belevi was born in Nicosia, he started playing guitar in his brother's band as a teenager but moved to London in 1972 to study music, eventually studying classical guitar and composition (with David McBride, a pupil of Benjamin Britten's) at the London College of Music.

When Belevi arrived in London (aged 18) to stay with his uncle, he had never come across the classical guitar and becomes entranced by the sight and sound of the instrument as played by Julian Bream and John Williams on his uncle's television. In the UK he initially studied for his O and A-levels, but by 1977 he is auditioning for the teachers course at the London College of Music, but when its director, composer William Lloyd Webber (1914-1982) hears Belevi, he immediately suggests Belevi go on the performers course, and another successful audition gets Belevi a scholarship. 

As a composer, Belevi's music extends well beyond the solo guitar, and he has written a number of guitar concertos as well as other orchestral works. As a performer, Belevi has produced discs of his own music but on this disc the guitar duo, Duo Tandem performs his music for guitar duo.

Duo Tandem (Necati Emirzade, Mark Anderson)

Duo Tandem features London-based, Necati Emirzade and Chicago-based Mark Anderson. They formed the duo in 2012 whilst studying at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music, and much of their collaboration is technology-enabled, and they often only meet to perform and record. Guitar Duos of Kemal Belevi is their third disc.

Calling all young composers: National Youth Choir of Great Britain's Young Composers Scheme 2021

The National Youth Choirs of Great Britain (NYCGB) is again looking for young composers for its Young Composers Scheme 2021. Four composers aged 18 to 29 will be provided with a fully-funded, year-long programme of professional development including the opportunity to write for NYCGB's choirs. Professional mentoring is led by Ben Parry, artistic director of NYCGB, along with guest mentors, and the year-long programme also includes residential courses, workshops, peer mentoring, performance showcases and the opportunity to work with the National Youth Choir and the NYCGB Fellowship.

Applications are now open and close at 5pm on Friday 4 September 2020. Full details from the NYCGB website.

On disc at last: Ethel Smyth's late masterwork, The Prison, receives its premiere recording in a fine performance from American forces

Ethel Smyth The Prison; Dashon Burton, Sarah Brailey, Experiential Chorus and Orchestra, James Blachly; Chandos
Reviewed by Robert Hugill on 10 August 2020 Star rating: 5.0 (★★★★★)
Ethel Smyth's final major work makes it to disc at long last, in a fine recording from American forces which brings out the subtlety of the work
Ethel Smyth's last major work, The Prison, a symphony for soprano, bass-baritone, chorus and orchestra with words by H.B. Brewster has finally made it to disc, giving us a chance at long last to put the composer's post-World War One career into focus. Issued on Chandos Records, this new recording of Ethel Smyth's The Prison features bass-baritone Dashon Burton, soprano Sarah Brailey, Experiential Chorus and Orchestra, conductor James Blachly, and you can read more about the background to the recording in my interview with James.

Until recently, mention Ethel Smyth and three things were likely to pop up. One, she was a suffragette and conducted her March of the Women whilst in prison, two, she wrote an opera The Wreckers and three, wasn't there also a Mass. In fact Smyth wrote six operas and much else besides. The First World War brought a radical break in the career of a composer who had trained and worked largely in Germany and German-speaking areas (she had studied privately in Leipzig with the composer Heinrich von Herzogenberg who was a friend of Brahms' and married to one of Brahms' pupils). Back in England, with fewer possibilities of performance and suffering increasingly from deafness, Smyth's musical output declined in quantity, but not quality. Retrospect Opera recently gave us the chance to hear her 1921-22 opera Fetes Galantes [see my review], though any plans to record her final opera Entente Cordiale (1923) founder on the fact that the score and performing materials seem to have disappeared.

So it is doubly welcome that we now have her final large scale work, The Prison which, heard in tandem with Fetes Galantes, gives a chance to detect the voice of late Ethel Smyth. To that end it is also worth investigating the Concerto for Violin and Horn (from 1926) on Chandos with Odaline de Martinez and the BBC Philharmonic (available for download).

Come on outside, the weather's lovely: with restrictions still in place, performers are taking music outside to re-connect with audiences.

The Orchard Tea Garden in Grantchester
venue for concerts by Eboracum Baroque

With the advent of the Summer weather and lockdown restrictions continuing to cause uncertainty for performers, groups are starting to go outside to create performance opportunities. Of course, it helps if you have an outdoor space already that can be used. Opera Holland Park showed the way, with its season of concerts which finished on Saturday, and next weekend (13-15 August 2020) Waterperry Opera Festival is holding its mini-festival with performances of Jonathan Dove and Mozart's Cosi fan tutte in a socially distanced manner.

At the Grange Festival they are premiering an out-door promenade piece Precipice (21-23 August 2020) which promises to utilise many of the site's interesting spaces and a wide range performers from singers Sir John Tomlinson, Claire Barnett Jones, Kiandra Howarth to the Grange Festival Chorus, conductor John Andrews, to choreographer Shobana Jeyasingh, directed by Sinéad O’Neill (full details from The Grange Festival website). Nevill Holt Opera has already had musical events in the lovely gardens at Nevill Holt, and there are further concerts (29 August to 12 September) with music provided by Nevill Holt Opera Young Artists performing everything from Monteverdi, Palestrina and Gabrieli to Percy Grainger, Elgar and Parry, to John Rutter and George Shearing (full details from the Nevill Holt Opera website). West Green House is doing something similar, with a programme of concerts inviting people to come and picnic in the garden and listen to young artists performing, here the music ranges from Operas Villains to In an English Country Garden to Mozart in Love, with performers including young artist Chloe Morgan, and soprano Kirsty Hopkins (full details from West Green House website).

But other spaces are being re-invented as concert venues. On Sunday we heard the Corran Quartet in a courtyard in Islington [see my review], and London Concertante's Secret Garden concerts are using the garden of the artistic director, Chris Grist's house in Streatham as a venue for Sunday concerts featuring everything from baroque through classical to jazz (see the London Concertante's website for details).

That enterprising group Eboracum Baroque, artistic director Chris Parsons, having given us their on-line Heroic Handel concert [see my interview with Chris] is venturing outside for a pair of concerts at the Orchard Tea Garden in Grantchester (28 August and 4 September), which has been frequented by generations of Cambridge students from Alan Turing to Stephen Hawkin. Here there will be a chance to hear Vivaldi's The Four Seasons (in the version for recorder), Purcell's King Arthur and The Fairy Queen, and Handel arias from Charlotte Bowden (soprano), Jamie Woollard (bass) and an instrumental ensemble (full details from the Eboracum Baroque website). 

An entirely new event is The Vache Baroque Festival which will be staging Purcell's Dido and Aeneas in the grounds of a 17th century house in Chalfont St Giles with a fine cast including Katie Bray as Dido, directed by Thomas Guthrie and conducted by Jonathan Darbourne (who co-founded the festival, and my interview with Jonathan will be published on Saturday), further details from the festival website.

Waterperry Opera is already sold out, and the first of Eboracum Baroque's dates is sold out, and tickets for Opera Holland Park sold remarkably quickly, so there is clearly a need for such events. Not only do they give performers the chance to perform in front of live audiences again, about it allows audience members to experience the delights of music performed by real (as opposed to virtual) performers despite the vagaries of the English weather and the limitations of outdoor performance.

Outdoor engagement and energy: the Corran Quartet in Mozart, Haydn and Beethoven in an Islington courtyard

The Corran Quartet live in Islington

Mozart, Haydn, Beethoven; Corran Quartet
Reviewed by Robert Hugill on 9 August 2020
In an enterprising re-start to performing, this young string quartet brings finesse to outdoor performance in Islington

After months of isolation, performers are gradually emerging and exploring the possibilities of outdoor performances. Having said an emotional goodbye to Opera Holland Park on Saturday [see my article], Sunday 9 August 2020 saw us in the courtyard of a modern housing development in Islington where we heard the Corran Quartet performing Mozart's String Quartet No. 12 in B flat major, K 172, Haydn's String Quartet in E flat major, Opus 20, No. 1, and Beethoven's String Quartet in A major, Opus 18 No. 5

The Corran Quartet (Joana Ly, Kirsty MacLeod, Edward Keenan, Molly McWhirter) is a young string quartet (three Scots and a Portuguese), and they had planned to devote 2020 to performing the quartets of Beethoven, however circumstances intervened. On Sunday, the quartet launched a series of garden concerts with an event in Islington, an enterprising way to kick-start the performing season in a way that is socially responsible.

The outdoor acoustics of a courtyard in a modern housing development are not ideal. The sound was clear but, understandably dry without any of the bloom you get from a good building, it seemed to favour the lower strings. Yet the four young players embraced the challenges of the venue, and gave us a trio of fine quartets, all performed with engagement and energy, the performers clearly delighted at being back performing.

The close of an amazing season, and a farewell: the last Opera Holland Park of 2020

Opera Holland Park - the final concert in the 2020 season (Photo Ali Wright)

And so Opera Holland Park's enterprising 2020 season came to its end. Saturday 8 August 2020 would have been the final performance of the planned 2020 season, and instead it marked the end of the short lockdown season of three concerts of opera arias and a family performance based around G&S' The Pirates of Penzance, which was, frankly, little short of amazing in the current circumstances. For many people, the music at Holland Park would be the first live music they had heard in months. 

Opera Holland Park - Emma Stannard, Matthew Kofi Waldren,
City of London Sinfonia(Photo Ali Wright)

Saturday saw a talent cast of opera singers performing everything from Handel and Mozart, through Tchaikovsky and Dvorak, to Verdi and Puccini, along with something from Rogers & Hamerstein's Carousel. We began with Jennifer France in 'Mein Herr Marquis' from Strauss' Die Fledermaus, and ended with David Butt Philip in 'Nessun Dorma' from Puccini's Turandot. The list of performers, a terrific line up by any reckoning, was sopranos Lauren Fagan, Jennifer France, Anush Hovhannisyan, Alison Langer, Anna Patalong, Natalya Romaniw, and Nardus Williams, mezzo-sopranos Aigul Akhmetshina and Emma Stannard, tenors Jack Roberts, David Butt Philip and Samuel Sakker, baritones Grant Doyle and Ross Ramgobin, accompanied by nine members of the City of London Sinfonia, conducted by Matthew Kofi Waldren.

Unlike the opening night, the sun shone and the effect was glorious. Never has live performance, and the emotional effect of having a singer in direct contact with the audience made so much effect. The programme was an evening of popular operatic excerpts, but having had a break from hearing live performance made even the most hackneyed piece seem different, and you began to understand the reasons for the arias' continued popularity. There were plenty of moments of strong emotional pull, and for me the twin highlights, unfairly singling out individuals, were Jennifer France in 'Lascia ch'io pianga' from Handel's Rinaldo and Natalya Romaniw in the Song to the Moon from Dvorak's Rusalka. But what came over from every single artist was a sense of the sheer joy of being there, of performing.

We heard from two of Opera Holland Park's Young Artists, who should have been giving us Tchaikovsky's Eugene Onegin this year. So, Emma Stannard gave a delightful account Olga's aria and Jack Roberts gave a fine rendition of Lensky's aria.

A Life On-Line: Elektra from Salzburg, Alceste from Munich, Russian song from Thomas Humphreys

Richard Strauss: Elektra - Ausrine Stundyte - Salzburg Festival (Photo Bernd Uhlig)

Having seen the Italian version of Gluck's Alceste recently from La Fenice in Venice, it was fascinating to follow it with the French version of the opera performed by Bavarian State Opera and available on Arte TV. This 2019 production was directed by the choreographer Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui with his Antwerp-based Eastman Dance Company, along with soloists Dorothea Röschmann (Alceste), Charles Castronovo (Admète), and Michael Nagy (le Grand Prêtre d'Apollon, Hercule), conducted by Antonello Manacorda. Larbi Cherkaoui's choreography was very striking, but he could not quite avoid the suspicion of the dance happening around the singers, rather than the two coalescing into a whole and I had wondered whether they should have gone the whole hog and given a fully danced version. 

Still, it was in many ways a powerful performance, though the choreographer/director seemed not to know what to do with the chorus and instead of forming a distinct character in the action they were usually left on the sidelines. Röschmann made a moving Alceste, though you suspect the role lies a little low for her, whilst Castronovo floated admirably through Admète's high-lying line. The orchestra under Manacorda did not produce quite the sort of historically informed performance that we expect from major opera houses, fine though the playing was.

Still on Arte TV, we caught the opening event of this year's Salzburg Festival, Richard Strauss' Elektra in a production directed by Krzysztof Warlikowski and conducted by Franz Welser-Möst with the Vienna Philharmonic in the pit. Ausrine Stundyte was Elektra, Asmik Grigorian was Chrysothemis and Tanja Ariane Baumgartner was Klytemnestra. Warlikowski took full advantage of the huge space of the Salzburg Felsenreitschule, with sets by Małgorzata Szczęśniak. There were projections above the stage of some of the action, and the production was very much about opening the work up. 

We prefixed things with a powerful speech from Baumgartner's Klytemnestra, a justification immediately after her killing of Agamemnon. Things never quite lived up to this strong opening. Warlikowski gave us a lot of the action happening off-stage, and we even had the ghost of Agamemnon wandering about. The result was to dilute the closed box claustrophobia of the piece. In the opera, Baumgartner's Klytemnestra seemed to straight out of a 1980s soap opera, and Ausrine Stundyt's lighter voiced Elektra was wonderfully neurotic and nervy without ever quite catching the character's dark intensity.  Asmik Grigorian made a strong Chrysothemis, and Derek Welton was a wonderfully traumatised Oreste.

With the lack of live performances and venues, many performers are becoming pro-active and organising performances themselves, though the financial investment can be significant.

2000 years of history: guitarist Xuefei Yang on exploring the music of her homeland on her new disc Sketches of China, on DECCA

Xuefei Yang

The guitarist Xuefei Yang has a new disc out, Sketches of China which has a digital release on Decca this month. This not standard repertoire but an exploration of the music of her homeland, China, ranging from traditional tunes to contemporary pieces. Now based in the UK, Xuefei trained first at the Beijing Conservatoire before studying at the Royal Academy of Music, and she was something of a ground-breaker in China, the first guitarist to graduate from Beijing Conservatoire.

A disc of music from China has long been a dream, and she describes the disc as the result of a 20-year journey. She spent 10 years studying in Beijing, and where colleagues would play all sort of music including that from China, but she found that there was no repertoire for the guitar. This is how she came to make her first arrangement of a Chinese traditional tune, which was originally performed on the Pipa a traditional instrument which is sometimes known as the Chinese lute. And the arrangement proved to be popular.

In concert, she plays a lot of different music, but she also wants to include the music from her homeland. She tends to feel more Chinese when she is abroad, and she wants to present Chinese music, so she has been performing traditional Chinese melodies, and new commissions from composers. At first, she commissioned Western composers who used Chinese elements in the music, and then she was able to have works written by contemporary Chinese composers.

Sing Gently: Eric Whitacre's latest Virtual Choir premiere

Eric Whitacre

Eric Whitacre Sing Gently; Virtual Choir, Sam GLicklich, Eric Whitacre; YouTube
Guest review by Jill Barlow on 7 August 2020 Star rating: 3.5 (★★★½)
Eric Whitacre’s largest virtual choir project to date—prevailing, gently, amidst Covid-19 Pandemic

Eric Whitacre’s Sing Gently premiered on 19 July 2020 on YouTube, with a virtual choir - with 17,572 singers from 129 different countries – each voice singing remotely, individually – miraculously blended into one harmonious whole electronically under the composer’s skilfully controlled baton.

The Covid-19 pandemic with the ensuing Lockdown has had a devastating effect on the Arts, with a pretty well complete ban on live performances across the spectrum in our hallowed concert halls and theatres nationwide. Hence, the Virtual Performance has entered its heyday, but American composer Eric Whitacre had already been engaged in Virtual Choir projects for the last 10 years from choice not necessity. BBC World Service radio drew my attention to their In the Studio arts programme broadcast recently (28 July 2020) presented by Emma Kingsley featuring an interview with Eric Whitacre who described how once having dipped his toe so to speak in this novel concept, which had been inspired by a video sent to him by a singer, he went from strength to strength including some of his virtual choir videos being featured as installations as part of the 2012 Olympics.

Originally having dreamed of becoming a pop star, Whitacre revealed to Emma Kingsley in his BBC Interview with her, that his direction changed to a more classical vein when he found himself perchance co-opted into singing in a local performance of Mozart’s Requiem and was completely overwhelmed by the famous Kyrie, having not met the work before, nor could he read music at that stage.
His whole approach to composition is defiantly individualistic, and particularly during the current Covid-19 climate  he likes to start with the words and then the music will follow: ’the better the poetry I  choose, the better the music I write ‘ seems to be his motto. Sing Gently he feels is his way of saying to the world ‘Sing as One'. He describes his ‘method’ as ‘to create the emotional architecture’ before a note of music is written.

Well what of his actual virtual-choir premiere Sing Gently on YouTube. Its entire duration is not much over 10 minutes, opening with a piano intro which introduces the emotive theme tune, slow almost lethargic in character oft repeated throughout by the choir, dominant piano, and string ensemble with little progression or development apart from a welcome strings interlude which makes for a rather repetitive whole. Overall, sure, one can but marvel at the amazing feat of synchronizing no less than 17,572 voices from 129 countries so apparently seamlessly, but now wouldn’t it be great if he could build on this achievement to develop a more varied and meaningful in-depth whole which would speak out with more impact to his captive audience worldwide, in his next foray into this virtual world with its limitless possibilities and endless boundaries -even into space itself ?

There’s a thought ----A future which doubtless other composers will explore to follow in his footsteps with ever widening success ---. This is but a BEGINNING --.
c Jill Barlow, 7 August 2020


Composer & conductor - Eric Whitacre
Pianist – Sam Glicklich (with background instrumental ensemble )
Collaborators – Colburn School, Namm Foundation
Produced by Music Productions
Album Sing Gently'

Engaging dexterity: Bach's English Suites from the young Italian harpsichordist Paolo Zanzu

Bach English Suites; Paolo Zanzu; Musica Ficta
Reviewed by Robert Hugill on 7 August 2020 Star rating: 4.0 (★★★★)
Using a modern copy of a harpsichord by a maker known to Bach, this new recording of Bach's English Suites from a young Italian harpsichordist is a fine way to explore Bach's earliest major keyboard work

Like much of Bach's music, one can use the word probably a lot when writing about his English Suites. We know little about when or why they were written, and even the origins of the name are something of a surmise. If they were indeed Bach's first major keyboard suites then they represent a remarkable marking of his territory, which would be explored in further keyboard suites leading to the magisterial late large-scale keyboard works. Players have recorded them on both piano and harpsichord on this new disc from Musica Ficta the young Italian harpsichord player Paolo Zanzu performs them on a 1995 copy of a 1735 two-manual instrument by Gottfried Silbermann (1683-1753), an organ-builder, harpsichord and piano maker based in Dresden who had a number of documented interactions with Bach.

The suites were not printed in Bach's lifetime, but a number of copies survive including one in the hand of his son Johann Christian Bach, and another in the hand of his friend and disciple Heinrich Niklaus Gerber, and thankfully there are no major editorial discrepancies between them. One manuscript of an early version of the Suite in A major refers to it as Prelude avec les Suites. It is from JC Bach's copy that we get Fait pour les Anglois, which may refer to the suites being written for a potential English patron. Though it is conceivable that the title may refer to the fact that Bach drew inspiration for the suites from the harpsichord suites of Charles Dieupart (1667-1740).

Certainly Bach owned a copy of Dieupart's harpsichord suites, and Bach's English Suites follow Dieupart's structure of a regular sequence of French dances (though Bach replaces the ouverture with an Italian prelude), and Dieupart's suites were best known in England. But it all seems a bit contrived, and we will never know for certain. Similarly, other factors have to be used when deciding the date. The CD booklet suggests that they were written in around 1720 (earlier has also been suggested) whilst Bach was working in Köthen, at the court of Leopold, Prince of Anhalt-Köthen. A lot of Bach's instrumental music dates from this period (the violin Sonatas and Partitas, the Cello Suites, the French Suites, the original versions of his orchestral suites). However, Christoph Wolff in his biography, Johann Sebastian Bach: The Learned Musician dates them to earlier, to the end of Bach's time in Weimar where he was director of music, but fell out of favour in 1717. 

 

This earlier date would assign them to the period when Bach's fame was sufficient that he had a keyboard contest with the French harpsichordist Louis Marchand in Dresden. Though the contest was aborted, Bach did play in Dresden and was exposed to the rich musical life at the court. If the English Suites date from this earlier period, then we can imagine him playing some of them.

Paolo Zanzu

However, if we take the later date then the origins of the suites is equally plausible. For a small court, the capelle at Köthen was moderately distinguished as a little before Bach joined the court (in 1717), a group of musicians from Berlin (made unemployed by King Friedrich Wilhelm I of Prussia dissolving his father’s court capelle) joined the Köthen capelle. And as the music loving Leopold, Prince of Anhalt-Köthen was a Calvinist, the music at court was secular and largely non-vocal, Bach wrote a significant amount of instrumental music during this period. And of course, there is nothing to say that the music did not assemble over a period. 

 

Clearly the early version of the first suite might date from the Weimar period, with the others gradually appearing. Like much else in Bach, origins and original structure are unclear, all we can do is listen to the music.

these bones, this flesh, this skin: the first of the Scottish Ensemble's Solo Collaborations mixes music, video and dance

João Castro in Joan Clevillé & Martin Suckling's these bones, this flesh, this skin

The Scottish Ensemble is launching a series of Solo Collaborations, each of which will be a new short work created in partnership between a composer, a collaborator from another art form and a member of Scottish Ensemble. And the works will give people an experience that would not be possible live, embracing the possibilities of digital technology.

The first Solo Collaboration is these bones, this flesh, this skin, a new work for solo violin and solo dancer from composer Martin Suckling and choreographer Joan Clevillé, artistic director of Scottish Dance Theatre, danced by João Castro (who collaborated on the choreography), performed by violinist Jonathan Morton, artistic director of the Scottish Ensemble, and filmed by Genevieve Reeves.

Three four-minute musical works have been created, and three four-minute choreographed films, and using a bespoke website, the audience is invited to combine different music and visual layers, with up to 21 different variations.

Composer Martin Suckling said: "I wanted to be certain we produced something which wasn’t simply a filmed version of a live performance but rather something which was made to be experienced online and took advantage of the possibilities this opens up. Something which allows the audience to participate in the experience; something which would not be possible 'in real life'."

View the full work at https://www.thesebonesthisfleshthisskin.com/

Trailer: these bones, this flesh, this skin from Scottish Ensemble on Vimeo.