Celebrating Aram Khachaturian: Armenian State Symphony Orchestra launches ten-date UK tour today

Armenian State Symphony Orchestra, artistic director Sergey Smbatyan

2023 is the 120th anniversary of the birth of Armenian composer Aram Khachaturian and in celebration of this the Armenian State Symphony Orchestra and conductor Sergey Smbatyan (the orchestra's founder and artistic director) is launching a concert tour of the UK. Launching today (13 February 2023) at Bridgewater Hall, Birmingham, the ten-date tour culminates in a concert at Cadogan Hall on 24 February 2023. And during the tour, the orchestra is joined by violinists Chloe Hanslip and Jennifer Pike.

While the repertoire of the tour includes Mendelssohn, Tchaikovsky and Rimsky-Korsakov throughout different concert evenings, the programmatic theme is largely centred around Aram Khachaturian’s music, featuring the Violin Concerto in D minor, excerpts from the ballet “Spartacus” and other iconic pieces by the composer.

Full details from the Armenian State Symphony Orchestra's website.

A double celebration: JAM's Music of our Time is both a celebration of new music and a celebration of Onyx Brass' 30th birthday

 

St Bride's Church, Fleet Street, London (Photo: Tristan Fewings)

On 21 March 2023, JAM opens its 2023 season with its annual Music of our Time concert at St Bride's Church, Fleet Street. A celebration of new music including works for choir, brass quintet and organ, the concert showcases eight pieces, all world or regional premieres, including JAM Commissions from Mark-Anthony Turnage, Tara Creme, Daniel Saleeb and works by five successful submitters to JAM’s Call for Music 2022. Michael Bawtree conducts the Chapel Choir of Selwyn College, Cambridge, Onyx Brass and Simon Hogan (organ). 

The concert is by way of a double celebration as it is also Onyx Brass' 30th anniversary and the ensemble opens Music of our Time with the first performance of Mark-Anthony Turnage’s Onyx 30, co-commissioned by JAM and the  Onyx Brass, JAM's longstanding collaborators. Having recorded it in January, Onyx Brass giving its live world premiere.

Other works in the programme include Tara Creme's The Song I Came to Sing, winner of JAM’s 2022 President’s Commission. Creme took part in JAM's second Masterclass Series, a collaboration with the VOCES8 Foundation focusing on how to better write for voices. The concert will be revisiting Daniel Saleeb’s Soliloquy, first performed at JAM on the Marsh in 2019. The piece for choir, brass quintet and organ is set to text by poet Chloe Stopa-Hunt, in response to a fragment of Shakespeare’s dramatic last scene of Richard II. 

There will be works from five successful submitters to JAM's annual Call for Music, championing music from the next generation of composers from across the UK - Simon Beattie, Kerensa Briggs, David Knotts, James Mitchell and Pia Rose Scattergood.  

Full details from the JAM website.

Opera North's 2023 Resonance residences, genres from jazz and R&B to ambient, and rooted in traditional music from across Africa and Asia

Artists taking part in Opera North's Resonance residencies 2023

Opera North has announced the latest round of Resonance residences, its programme for music-makers of colour working in all genres. Over the next two months, Rob Green, Ni Maxine, Babak Mirsalari, Madeline Shann, Kaviraj Singh and Marco Woolf will each spend a week at Opera North's central Leeds base, developing new ideas in workshops and work-in-progress performances. 

2023 marks the scheme's sixth year and several alumni have gone on to major commissions for Opera North’s mainstage; sitarist Jasdeep Singh Degun is now the company’s artist in residence, with credits as composer, co-music director and soloist on last year’s cross-cultural opera Orpheus, whilst rapper and playwright Testament developed his acclaimed Orpheus in the Record Shop. 

• Rob Green is a singer-songwriter from Nottingham who has been writing, performing and touring his music for over 10 years. In his residency he will blend spoken word and music to flow between tracks, and work with Leeds-based filmmakers and videographers to create a single-take visual document of his performance of acoustic songs exploring identity, masculinity and mental wellbeing.
• Neo-jazz singer Ni Maxine will use Resonance to continue work on The Life Movement, her “space for expression and storytelling through music”. She will draw on her West African heritage, the legacy of Afrobeat legend Fela Kuti, and the power of storytelling in song.
• Babak Mirsalari is an Iranian composer, collaborator and performer, working in genres as varied as contemporary and nu-jazz, progressive electronica, world fusion, post-rock and spacey ambient. He plans to bring his experience as an Iranian immigrant to bear upon his Resonance residency, using south-western Iranian rhythms to reflect on his childhood; his transition from Iran to northern England’s music scene; his years spent in the “maze” of Home Office bureaucracy in the UK; and finally the beautiful Yorkshire landscapes surrounding his new home in Hebden Bridge.
• Madeline Shann works across music, dance, theatre, screen and live art, with a long cv of collaborations in each. "For the Resonance residency I will be returning to my collaboration with Xavier in a new project called Flood the Field”, says Madeline. “It’ll be an opportunity for me to branch out from my usual songwriting practice, and delve deep into the world of voice and sound, experimenting with layers, textures, structure and duration."
• Santoor (hammered dulcimer) player and singer Kaviraj Singh shone among a stellar ensemble as the ferryman Charon/Caronte in Opera North and SAA-uk’s Orpheus in 2022. The only professional practitioner in the UK to combine santoor and vocals, he is also a trained sound engineer, and for Resonance he plans to bring all these skills together in developing a narrative about migration and nature.
• Malawi-born, Manchester-based singer-songwriter, composer, and storyteller Marco Woolf grew up listening to his elders’ folk tales, and as a performer he weaves improvised stories and poetry into his sets. During his residency, Marco and collaborators will spend one day each concentrating on storytelling, music and dance, before two days with a dramaturg to help develop the narrative and creative language.

Full details from the Opera North website

Tectonics Glasgow 2023

Tectonics Glasgow, the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra's (BBC SSO) festival of new and experimental music returns on 29 and 30 April 2023, celebrating the festival's 10th anniversary. Conceived in 2013 by the orchestra’s Principal Guest Conductor, Ilan Volkov, and co-curated by Alasdair Campbell (Counterflows), the festival has premiered 51 new works for orchestra, many of them BBC commissions.

This year's festival, which takes place at City Halls and Old Fruitmarket, Glasgow, includes artists from around the globe. Colombia’s Lucrecia Dalt, who has wowed critics and audiences alike with her new album, closes the first night of the festival, whilst pianist Aki Takahashi gives the world premiere of a new work by one of Japan’s longstanding composers, Somei Satoh, along with works by Bunita Marcus and Peter Garland. Other visitors include Germany’s Limpe Fuchs, something of a legend in new music circles, and France’s Jérôme Noetinger whoe has been pushing boundaries for decades. Another pianist, Cory Smythe performs a solo set and also performs in Ingrid Laubrock’s Drilling, along with the composer and Adam Linson, a premiere delayed from 2020 due to the pandemic. And also from the States, ‘the king of sampling’ himself, the inimitable Carl Stone.

The BBC SSO gives the world premieres of compositions by Somei Satoh, Linda Buckley, Rufus Isabel Elliot, Ian Power, Scott McLaughlin and William Dougherty which were inspired by topics as varied as pagan rituals, Julia Kristeva, quantum physics, and an antique wax cylinder recording of Home Sweet Home. There’s also the UK premiere of works by Ingrid Laubrock and the late Dutch composer Margriet Hoenderdos.  

Scottish and UK-based artists at the festival include Inge Thomson and Calum MacIntyre, who open the festival, cellist Semay Wu, Lucy Duncombe, and Feronia Wennborg. And the Japanese-Korean artist Ryoko Akama takes up residence in the City Halls Recital Room for an installation created uniquely for that space.  

Ilan Volkov, said: "Tectonics isn’t big on nostalgia. We like to look forward rather than back, but it’s fair to say that in 2013 we didn’t think we’d still be here. That’s down to our audiences’ enthusiasm and loyalty, the outstanding artists we’ve been able to champion, and the ongoing support and commitment from the BBC. We’re certain this year’s festival will channel all the excitement and optimism of the very first one."

The majority of this year’s performances will be recorded for broadcast on BBC Radio 3 with some performances available to watch online. Full details from the Tectonics Glasgow website.

This year’s Aldeburgh Festival, the 74th edition, features a stellar line-up of international performers offering a wealth of music across a wholesome 17 days. Tony Cooper reports

City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra at Snape Maltings

The Aldeburgh Festival (Friday 9 to Sunday 25 June) opens with a Britten Pears Arts commission and the world première of Sarah Angliss’ opera Giant based on the true and gruesome tale of surgeon John Hunter and his obsession with the 18th-century ‘Irish giant’, Charles Byrne, a man he truly betrayed in one of the most disturbing, chilling and horrifying acts during the era of the grave robbers.  

Written for five voices, Giant uses 18th-century instruments, live electronic chemistry and bespoke music machines as it vividly recalls the events surrounding Byrne’s death whose corpse was, in fact, stolen to order and put on public display. An extraordinary story which resonates through the ages. 

And in celebration of the centenary of Hungarian composer, György Sándor Ligeti, his music is at the forefront of this year’s festival. And adding their musical prowess to the festivities are The King’s Singers who’ll perform the composer’s Six Nonsense Madrigals at St Peter’s-by-the-Waterfront, Ipswich (Thursday, 15 June, 2pm) while Pierre-Laurent Aimard (a former artistic director of the Aldeburgh Festival) returns to Snape Maltings (Monday, 19 June, 7.30pm) to perform Ligeti’s Etudes, one of the richest and most original collections of solo piano music of the late 20th century of which Aimard is one of the world’s leading interpreters.

The Golden Road to Samarkand: the Britten Sinfonia brings together two very different musical explorations of the Middle East

Britten Sinfonia, Joseph Tawadros (oud), conducted by Jamie Phillips at Milton Court Concert Hall - (Photo: Britten Sinfonia)

Joseph Tawadros: Constellation, Three Stages of Hindsight, Constantinople, Delius: Hassan; Joseph Tawadros, Britten Sinfonia, Britten Sinfonia Voices, Jamie Phillips, Zeb Soanes; Milton Court Concert Hall, Barbican Centre
Reviewed by Florence Anna Maunders, 10 February 2023

Awe-inspiring oud virtuosity and revived 1920s theatre cliché are uneasy companions in this musical exploration of the Middle East

A cliché, perhaps, but this was very much a concert of two very different halves. At the Barbican Centre's Milton Court on 10 February 2023, Britten Sinfonia and Britten Sinfonia Voices under conductor Jamie Phillips combined music for oud and orchestra with oud player and composer Joseph Tawadros and then performed Frederick Delius' complete incidental music for James Elroy Flecker's play Hassan, with Zeb Soanes as narrator.

The performance began with a set of pieces composed and performed by Australian-Egyptian oud virtuoso Joseph Tawadros. Starting the concert alone on the stage, Tawadros immediately plunged into the technical fireworks for which he is renowned, with incredibly rapid runs, dramatic flourishes of harmonics and complex changing metres abounding. Although rooted in the tradition of oud playing, and using many characteristics commonly found in the repertoire of this ancient instrument, this was clearly a contemporary piece with an outward-looking twenty-first-century aesthetic.

Delius: Hassan - Britten Sinfonia, conducted by Jamie Phillips at Milton Court Concert Hall - (Photo: Britten Sinfonia)

From Paderewski to Edmund Finnis, Le piano symphonique's daring double-concert in Lucerne

Paderewski: Piano Concerto - Yoav Levanon, Lucerne Symphony Orchestra - Le Piano Symphonique, KKL Luzern (Photo: Philipp Schmidli)

Paderewski: Piano Concerto, Glass, Galuppi, Cimarosa, Mozart, Edmund Finnis: Mirror Images; Yoav Levanon, Lucerne Symphony Orchestra, Michael Sanderling, Víkingur Ólafsson; Le piano symphonique at KKL Luzern
Reviewed 9 February 2023

A daring contrast, beginning with the young pianist Yoav Levanon in devastating form in Paderewski's Piano Concerto and ending with Víkingur Ólafsson in Edmund Finnis' seductive sequence, Mirror Images

For the evening concerto on Thursday 8 February in the Konzertsaal of KKL Luzern, the Lucerne Symphony Orchestra's festival, Le piano symphonique presented an intriguing double bill. For the first half, pianist Yoav Levanon joined the Lucerne Symphony Orchestra and conductor Michael Sanderling for Paderewski's Piano Concerto. After the interview, the stage had cleared and pianist Víkingur Ólafsson gave a solo piano recital mixing Philip Glass, Galuppi, Cimarosa and Mozart, ending with Edmund Finnis' Mirror Images.

The resulting evening was a daring experiment and the two halves were in complete contrast. The music chosen by Ólafsson, with its sense of control, subtle use of colour and gentle modulation of tone, contrasted brilliantly with the elaborations of Paderewski's writing where, if there was a melody, the composer would decorate it.

Víkingur Ólafsson - Le Piano Symphonique, KKL Luzern (Photo: Philipp Schmidli)

Paderewski has a strong Swiss connection. In the 1890s he bought a villa in Morges which from then on he used as a rest haven between tours, and in the 1920s and 1930s it became a political base as he involved himself in the politics of the independent Poland created after World War I.

New music should not be seen as extra-terrestrial, it should not generate fear: I chat to composer Ana Sokolović, artistic director of the Société de musique contemporaine du Québec

Ana Sokolovic (Photo: Jérome Bertrand)

In the third of my interviews devoted to exploring music in Canada [previously, I chatted to Alexander Shelley, music director of the NAC Orchestra, see article, and cellist/composer Margaret Maria and soprano Donna Brown, see article], I chat to Canadian-based, Serbian-born composer Ana Sokolović. Ana has been the artistic director of the Société de musique contemporaine du Québec (SMCQ) since early 2022. From 23 February to 5 March 2023, SMCQ will present the 11th edition of Montreal/New Musics (MNM), one of North America's largest new music festivals. SMCQ is in fact one of the oldest contemporary music societies in North America and the oldest in Canada. It is notable for being founded by composers, and the artistic director has always been a composer. Ana is perhaps best known in the UK for her opera Svadba (The Wedding), which was performed by Waterperry Opera Festival last year.  

SMCQ wasn't just created to produce concerts, the idea was that people could meet, think and talk about music and contribute to the musical world. Prior to that, in Canada, there were sporadic contemporary music events but nothing that was taking care of new music exclusively. This year will be SMCQ's 56th season. In fact, both Ana's predecessors were composers and conductors; Ana's predecessor, the Canadian composer Walter Boudreau, conducts a major premiere at this year's MNM. Though Ana hastens to add that she is not a conductor. 

Each year, SMCQ presents a concert season, and alternates between MNM and a Homages Series, a tribute to one composer's legacy. But there are many other activities beyond these, including a youth programme, SMCQ Jeunesse (SMCQ Youth) and many activities to promote new music. As Ana develops her own seasons with SMCQ (the current MNM is largely the work of her predecessor) she wants to involve not just musicians and composers, but musicologists and other artists, to bring out the idea that music is not alone and artistic expression can be correlated with other arts. 

Fluidity and intimacy: Martha Argerich in Schumann's Piano Concerto at Le Piano Symphonique festival in Lucerne

Schumann: Piano Concerto - Martha Argerich, Lucerne Symphony Orchestra - Le Piano Symphonique, KKL Luzern (Photo: Philipp Schmidli)

Brahms: Symphony No. 3, Schumann: Piano Concerto; Martha Argerich, Lucerne Symphony Orchestra, Michael Sanderling; Le Piano Symphonique at KKL Luzern

Argerich gives a remarkably intimate performance of Schumann's concerto in an evening notable for fluidity, flexibility and a chamber-like orchestral balance

After two cancelled TGVs and three cancelled flights, I finally made it to the Lucerne Symphony Orchestra's piano festival, Le Piano Symphonique at KKL Luzern (Culture and Congress Centre, Lucerne). The festival had opened on 7 February 2023 with pianist Rudolph Buchbinder in Mozart, Beethoven and Schumann, followed by what was reportedly a remarkable concert when Jean Rondeau gave a harpsichord recital, playing Rameau, Couperin and Pancrace Royer in a swimming pool (emptied of water).

I caught up with the festival on 8 February 2023, when pianist Martha Argerich joined the Lucerne Symphony Orchestra under its music director Michael Sanderling for Schumann's Piano Concerto and the programme began with Brahms' Symphony no. 3.

Brahms: Symphony No. 3 - Lucerne Symphony Orchestra, Michael Sanderling - Le Piano Symphonique, KKL Luzern (Photo: Philipp Schmidli

The Konzertsaal at KKL is a handsome modern auditorium, traditional rectangle in shape with three shallow balconies and the stage lined with wood. The acoustic seemed warm and true, certainly the subtleties of balance that Sanderling brought to the Brahms were highlighted as were the moments when Martha Argerich's performance of the Schumann became an intimate recital.

London Philharmonic Orchestra's inaugural Fellow Conductors

LPO Fellow Conductors: Charlotte Politi and Luis Castillo-Briceño 

The London Philharmonic Orchestra (LPO) has announced its inaugural Fellow Conductors. Luis Castillo-Briceño and Charlotte Politi will be Fellow Conductors for the 2023/24 season and be guided by the LPO’s Principal Conductor, Edward Gardner. They will become fully immersed in the life of the LPO, working intensively with the Orchestra over a period of 6-8 non-consecutive weeks.

Luis Castillo-Briceño has been an Equilibrium Young Artist since the 2020/21 season, mentored by Barbara Hannigan, whom he has assisted with orchestras such as the Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio France and Copenhagen Philharmonic Orchestra. As well, he served as artistic director and chief conductor of the Junges Kammerorchester Zürich from 2019-21

Charlotte Politi is currently the Constant Lambert Conducting Fellow with The Royal Ballet and the Birmingham Royal Ballet. For the 2022/23 season, she is one of the assistant conductors of the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra where she made her debut in March 2022 when she stepped in for Mirga Gražinytė-Tyla.

Further information from the LPO website.

Sir George Benjamin and Alex Paxton amongst award winners at this year Ernst von Siemens Musikstiftung 2023 prizes

George Benjamin (Photo: Rui Camilo © EvS Musikstiftung)

In a ceremony in the Hercules Room of the Residenz in Munich on 26 May 2023, the 2023 international Ernst von Siemens Music Prize and Composer Prizes will be awarded. The Music Prize is going to Sir George Benjamin, and the Composer Prizes go to Sara Glojnarić from Croatia, Alex Paxton from the United Kingdom and Eric Wubbels from the USA. Additionally, the Ernst von Siemens Music Foundation is providing over €3.7 million in funding for new music projects worldwide.

Sir George Benjamin will receive a prize of €250,000 in recognition of a lifetime service to music both as composer and conductor. The three Composer Prizes each come with €35,000, and these go to Sara Glojnarić from Croatia, Alex Paxton from the United Kingdom, and Eric Wubbels from the USA.

At the awards ceremony, Ensemble Modern will perform Benjamin's At First Light (1982) for small orchestra and his chamber opera Into the little Hill (2006) under the composer's direction. The winners of the Composer Prizes, Sara Glojnarić, Alex Paxton and Eric Wubbels as well as the winners of the two Ensemble Prizes, the vocal ensemble Ekmeles from New York and NAMES - New Art and Music Ensemble Salzburg, will be presented in short film portraits by Johannes List and will receive their prizes from the chairman of the foundation's Board of Trustees and former artistic director of the Vienna Musikverein, Thomas Angyan.

Further details from Ernst von Siemens Stiftung website.

Northern Ireland Opera: a new opera for teen audiences, The Salon Series and Puccini's Tosca

Northern Ireland Opera is having a busy time of it under its artistic director Cameron Menzies. Later this month, NI Opera is launching The Salon Series, small-scale events staged in historic venues in Northern Ireland, then in March they premiere Nobody/Somebody, a new opera for teen and young adult audiences, and in September they are presenting a new production of Puccini's Tosca.

On 11 Feb 2023, NI Opera launches The Salon Series, performances staged in the round in spectacular venues in Northern Ireland. The first event, on 11 February, is Poulenc's La Voix Humaine performed by soprano Mary McCabe and pianist David Quigley in the Throne Room, Hillsborough Castle. Further events through February and March include song cycles by Mussorgsky, Mahler and Berlioz, cabaret and music theatre performed in venues including C Wing of Crumlin Road Gaol, St Columb’s Hall in Derry/Londonderry and the Courtyard Theatre in Newtownabbey. [further information]

On 3 March 2023, NI Opera premieres, Nobody/Somebody, a new opera for teen and young adult audiences by playwright Fionnuala Kennedy and composer Neil Martin at the Belfast Children’s Festival The production brings together NI Opera emerging artists and the young musicians of Ulster Youth Orchestra. The creative team includes director Andrea Ferran and music director Matthew Quinn, both of whom are alumni of NI Opera’s Studio Programme, and Youth Counterparts will be working alongside each key creative role. To select these young people, NI Opera is working with Belfast-based charity Springboard to find young adults interested in creative careers who may have experienced challenges and disadvantages which have excluded them from exploring their skills and options in the arts.

The opera was inspired by the youth activists of the Participation and the Practice of Rights (PPR) organisation who have been campaigning and raising awareness about homelessness, housing stress and the lack of available social housing for young people in Belfast. [further information]

Then in September, the company's new production of Puccini's Tosca debuts at Belfast's Grand Opera House. Directed by Cameron Menzies, with the Ulster Orchestra in the pit, the production opens on 9 September 2023.

Full information from NI Opera website.

Winchester Chamber Music Festival 2023: Huw Watkins as composer-in-residence, plus a new Robin Holloway piece

Huw Watkins (Photo Benjamin Ealovega)

The Winchester Chamber Music Festival, artistic director Kate Gould, returns to St Paul's Church, Winchester for a weekend of chamber music and song from 28 April to 1 May 2023. This year, the festival will feature a resident string quartet consisting of David Adams violin, Lucy Gould violin, Rosalind Ventris viola, and Kate Gould cello, as well as visiting artists James Gilchrist tenor, Maia Cabeza  violin, Donald Grant folk violin, James Toll violin/viola, Elliot Kempton viola, Tim Posner cello, Huw Watkins piano/composer-in-residence, and Lumas Winds.

The opening concert features music by Suk, Barber and Beethoven along with the premiere of Huw Watkins' Elegy for violin and piano. Huw Watkins' Piano Quartet is also featured during the weekend and there is a chance to hear Watkins as pianist when he joins with tenor James Gilchrist to perform Schubert's Winterreise. Gilchrist is also the soloist in Vaughan Williams' On Wenlock Edge which is being programmed with Watkins' Piano Quartet and Schubert's Auf dem Strom, for tenor, horn and piano, along with Poulenc's Sextet for piano and winds.

The Saturday evening concert takes things into a different realm, with a session led by folk-fiddler Donald Grant. On the Sunday, there will be Bach's Goldberg Variations in a version for string trio, plus a gala concert at the lovely chapel of St Cross featuring string octets by Shostakovich and Mendelssohn. The festival finale on Monday features the premiere of Robin Holloway's Piano Quintet alongside Mendelssohn's String Quintet.

Before the festival proper, there is a schools' performance, the culmination of the festival's education project led by the Sam Glazer involving local schoolchildren who will devise from scratch and perform their own original songs alongside the festival musicians.

Full details from the festival website.

By the sea: Michele Deiana's new work for saxophone quartet

Michele Deiana is an Italian composer based in London. His By the Sea is a new work for saxophone quartet, recorded by the Perpetuo Saxophone Quartet (Gabriella Petruzzi, Luca Boscolo, Martino Luxich, Samuele Molinari) and issued by the Birmingham Record Company

Born in Cagliari, Michele Deiana studied at the conservatoires of Cagliari, Venice and Birmingham, and he took part in the 2021 Cheltenham Music Festival's Composers Academy. The Perpetuo Saxophone Quartet was formed in 2018, within the saxophone school of the Venice Conservatoire. 

In three movements, By the Sea aims to capture something of the different elements of the sea. 'Body' is grave and thoughtful, with individual phrases placed in space, the music developing in intensity and building slowly towards 'Motion' which at first seems fast flowing, till you realise that different lines are moving at different speeds, to intriguing effect. Even as the music slows, towards something sombre and spare, this multi-layered approach continues. 'Home' starts out with a sense of gentle undulation and seems to slow down towards the end but there is a sudden surprise, a code which consists of voice and electronics (both performed by the composer), a sort of pop-synth version of the music. Perhaps intended to intrigue or to give a sense of the home-world of the music.

Perpetuo Saxophone Quartet

The work has been issued on its own, as an EP, and Delania's voice certainly intrigues and raises interest. It would have been nice to hear more of his music, perhaps for the same group? Something to look forward to    

Michele Deiania (born 1992) - By the Sea
Perpetuo Saxophone Quartet
Birmingham Record Company BRC019

Down in The Forest, something stirs: The Opera Makers reviving Ethel Smyth's rarely performed second opera, Der Wald

Interest in the music of Ethel Smyth has developed significantly over the last decade, and companies are starting to understand that her output is greater than just her opera The Wreckers and the Mass. In particular, she wrote six operas and these are slowly being explored with recordings and performances. The Boatswains Mate has had a few outings in recent years whilst Retrospect Opera recorded Fete Galante in 2019 and this opera was recently performed at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama.

Now it seems to be the turn of Der Wald, Smyth's second opera. In September 2022, conductor John Andrews talked about his plans to record Der Wald [see my interview], and now the work is to receive a performance in London, giving us chance to explore this important yet rarely heard work.

Ethel Smyth's Der Wald is being presented in concert at Holy Sepulchre Church, EC1A 2DQ on 10 March 2023 by a relatively new company, The Opera Makers, music director Panaretos Kyriatzidis, artistic director Becca Marriott. 

The work is a fairy tale, with a libretto in German that was a collaboration between Smyth and Harry Brewster (her friend and sometime lover who would write the libretto for The Wreckers). It was written in German partly because all of Smyth's musical contacts at the time were in Germany.

Written between 1899 and 1902 and premiered in 1902 at Königliches Opernhaus in Berlin (now known as the Staatsoper Unter den Linden), this is a one-act work that John Andrews described as 65 minutes of emotional turmoil. Unlike The Wreckers, which is in three acts and long, Der Wald is far more compact, but it has the same style of fabulous music. Critics at the time described Der Wald as Wagnerian, but this simply is not completely true. There are a lot of late 19th-century influences in the music and Wagner is just one of them.  

In 1903, Der Wald would become the first work by any woman to be staged at the Metropolitan Opera in New York, and it would be 100 years before the company staged another opera by a woman! Smyth had mixed feelings about the American performances, commenting in her autobiography What Happened Next, "Though the press, except for certain rather unfriendly German-owned papers, was excellent, I felt in my bones that Der Wald was as out of place in America as one of the Muses would be at a football match" There were performances at the Royal Opera House in London and in Strasbourg, but then there was nothing. 

Further details and tickets for the Opera Makers production of Ethel Smyth's Der Wald from TicketTailor.

Unexpected creativity: cellist Margaret Maria and soprano Donna Brown talk about the joys of collaboration on the words and music of their album Between Worlds

Donna Brown and Margaret Maria

Cellist and composer Margaret Maria and soprano Donna Brown, both Canadian, have been collaborating on an album, Between Worlds, which has recently been released on the Canadian Music Centre's Centrediscs label. Consisting of eight songs which feature Donna's voice and her words, plus Margaret's music and her cello, the album is very much a joint venture. 

As a soprano, Donna began her opera career with Peter Brook's production of La Tragédie de Carmen, a work which involved two months of intensive workshops with Peter Brook, learning his method of acting based on Stanislavsky, followed by three months of performing La Tragédie de Carmen in Paris, and then touring it throughout Europe for a year with his troupe. Since then she has performed all over the world and had special collaborations for over 15 years with Helmuth Rilling and John Eliot Gardiner, doing numerous recordings with both of them. 

Margaret trained as a classical cellist as a graduate of the Curtis Institute of Music and was a professional cellist with the Vancouver Symphony Orchestra and the National Arts Centre (NAC) Orchestra, she has since developed a career as a composer very much focusing on her own instrument. Her most recent solo album was Where Words Fail - Music For Healing from 2021, with music is born 'in the hope that it can be helpful to others…it can offer some healing, some understanding, some comfort, some strength when we feel weak or when words fail us'.

They see their new album as very much a creative outflow from two people, and the moods and emotions of the music they hope will elicit a reaction from listeners, and they comment that it is almost a mini-opera in the sense of journey, the music takes you there and back. They want the album to be a piece that makes people react. 

It's Today! A Out of the Shadows - 3 February 2023

As you are probably aware, our concert Out of the Shadows takes place today, Friday, 3 February 2023 at Hinde Street Methodist Church, London W1U 2QJ, not far from Oxford Street Tube. We have a programme that explores the lives of gay men in the 19th century, from the earliest tentative admissions of same-sex attraction to cruising in a bathhouse in Imperial Russia, alongside a search for eternal life from cryogenics and the body-snatching of Burke and Hare (see the period illustration above) to Frankenstein and Walt Whitman. 

There will also be love songs, setting texts by Michelangelo and the Black American poet Carl Cook, along with one of my cabaret songs and selections from my early song cycle, Songs of Love and Loss including a description of an early AIDS candlelight memorial.

The performers are Ben Vonberg-Clark (tenor) and James Atkinson (tenor) with Nigel Foster (piano). Tickets and further details from EventBrite.

And looking further ahead, I am delighted that we have been invited to perform the programme in July 2024 at the Glasperlenspiel Festival in Tartu, Estonia. The festival's founder and artistic director is the distinguished Estonian composer Peeter Vähi, and during 2024 Tartu will be celebrating being European Capital of Culture.

We are all looking forward to next week's concert immensely, and do hope to see you there.

Galina Grigorjeva: Music for Male-Voice Choir

Galina Grigorjeva: Music for Male-Voice Choir; Estonian National Male Choir, Mikk Üleoja, Theodor Sink; Toccata Classics
Reviewed 27 January 2023 (★★★★★)

A simply stunning disc that brings together the rich and complex sound world of the Russian-trained Estonian composer Galina Grigorjeva with the terrific musicality of the Estonian National Male Choir

In 2017, I was in Tallinn at the Estonian Music Days when I heard Vox Clamantis, conductor Jaan-Eik Tulve in a performance of Galina Grigorjeva's Vespers [see my review] and I was very taken with her work. Since then, I have not had the opportunity to hear more. Now Toccata Classics has issued a disc of Galina Grigorjeva's music for male-voice choir, performed by the Estonian National Male Choir, conductor Mikk Üleoja, with Theodor Sink (cello).

The disc includes Nox vitae (2006-2008), Diptych (2011), God is the Lord (2014), Prayer (2005/2022), Agnus Dei (2022) and In Paradisum (2012). Nox Vitae sets poems by the Russian symbolist poet Innokenty Annensky (1856–1909), whilst all the other works take texts from Russian Orthodox and Roman liturgies.

Peter Grimes in Paris: a powerful performance from Allan Clayton as he leads the Paris revival of Deborah Warner's striking production

Britten: Peter Grimes - Simon Keenlyside, Allan Clayton - Paris Opera (Photo Vincent Pontet/OnP)

Benjamin Britten: Peter Grimes; Allan Clayton, Maria Bengtsson, Simon Keenlyside, director: Deborah Warner, conductor: Alexander Soddy; Paris Opera at Palais Garnier
Reviewed 29 January 2023

A profoundly beautiful and thoughtful account of the title role allied to Warner's remarkably rethought and disturbing contemporary production make for a Peter Grimes that is outstanding in all ways

We missed the new production of Benjamin Britten's Peter Grimes at Covent Garden last year owing to illness, but as the production is shared between Madrid, London, Paris and Rome, we were able to treat ourselves to a January trip to Paris to see it. Deborah Warner's production of Peter Grimes opened at the Palais Garnier on 26 January 2023, conducted by Alexander Soddy and we caught the second performance on 29 January 2023.

The cast was virtually unaltered from London, with Allan Clayton as Peter Grimes, Maria Bengtsson as Ellen Orford, Simon Keenlyside as Bulstrode, John Graham Hall as Bob Bowles, Jacques Imbrailo as Ned Keene, Catherine Wyn-Rogers as Auntie, Rose Aldridge as Mrs Sedley, Stephen Richardson as Hobson, John Gilchrist as Revd Horace Adams, Clive Bayley as Swallow and Anna-Sophie Neher and Ilanah Lobel-Torres as the nieces.

Britten: Peter Grimes - Paris Opera (Photo Vincent Pontet/OnP)

Over 3000 performers, Photos of August Manns and the chorus and orchestra at the 1897 Handel Festival at Crystal Palace

 

August Manns at the Handel Festival at Crystal Palace in 1897

In 1856, the idea arose of commemorating the centenary of the death of Handel with a series of concerts at Crystal Palace, such was the success of the idea that a preliminary festival was held at Crystal Palace in 1857. This led to the Triennial Handel Festival which continued until 1926. From 1855 to 1901, the director of music at Crystal Palace was the conductor August Manns (1825-1907). Included in the article are a selection of photographs of Manns and the Crystal Palace chorus and orchestra during the 1897 Handel Festival. 

The photographs belong to a client of our framers, Alec Drew Picture Frames Ltd, and we are very grateful to them for allowing the pictures to be shared. There are two further pictures after the break.