Olawale Olayinka: Songs My Mother Taught Me

Olawale Olayinka is a young Nigerian classically trained violinist, currently based in London. If you have seen Brixton Chamber Orchestra or Chineke! then you may well have seen him. His performances with Chineke! include appearances last Summer performing Beethoven, Holst, Vaughan Williams' and Coleridge-Taylor, conducted by Kellen Gray, as well as with the orchestra at the 2023 Brit Awards at the O2 performing with Stormzy.

Olayinka has just released a self-produced EP entitled Songs My Mother Taught Me, six tracks in which he plays traditional songs in modern versions with a mix of his solo violin and electronics. We begin with Oluronbi, just violin melody over ambient electronics, intriguing and engaging. The irregular phrase lengths in the music make it distinctive, whilst Olayinka's decision to not dress up the material pays dividends. The same approach applies to Labe igi orombo, with rather touching results and to the haunting Iwe Kiko. There is something intriguingly Celtic about both Iwe Kiko and Iya ni wura, perhaps because the ambient treatment reminds me of artists like Enya, and it would certainly be intriguing to hear the Nigerian originals. Babalawo mo wa bebe and Igba Napin exist in the same sound-world, but display an interest in perhaps taking the ambient aspects of the music a bit further.

The music on the EP is both intriguing and surprising. Olayinka describes them as 'folk songs my mother taught me are songs and tales that we heard at night times just before going to bed, they are used to pass moral lessons of life to us'.  Whilst you definitely leave an idea of Dvorak behind, the disc seems to encapsulate Olayinka's heritage, his mixture of Nigerian background, classical Western training and other influences. Songs My Mother Taught Me makes a great beginning and I cannot wait to hear what he does next.

The EP is available on Apple and on Spotify.

Perhaps it is unsurprising to find Olayinka exploring this mix of violin and electronics in other ways, including collaborating with the sound artist Ibukun Sunday (who performed at NonClassical's link up with the African Concert Series in 2022) with a pair of tracks that combine Olayinka's violin with Sunday's synthesizer to rather haunting and atmospheric results. Here there is less sense of the electronics providing a setting for the violin and more the two interweaving and creating complex sounds. There are two tracks on SoundCloud, do give them a listen - Nostalgia and Freedom.

with his pupils performing at Hackney Town Hall at a concert with East London School of Music & HACS Philharmonic (Photo via Instagram)

Olawale Olayinka is also active in his native Nigeria, performing there with cello and kora virtuoso Tunde Jegede and the NOK Orchestra, as well as taking part in performances such as the Music Society of Nigeria Symphony Orchestra. And he runs his own school, too, teaching children both in the UK and Nigeria, and you can get an idea of the school's work from their Instagram feed, 

70th birthday celebrations for composer Richard Blackford continue with performances, publications & recordings

Richard Blackford

Composer Richard Blackford celebrated his 70th birthday last month, and the celebrations are spreading out across the year with performances, publications and recordings.

His new cantata, Babel, based on the Biblical stories of Noah's flood and the tower of Babel for choir, organ, piano duet and percussion has just been published and is being released on disc on Lyrita in March, with David Hill conducting the Ikon Singers, on a disc that also includes Blackford's La Sagrada Familia, his symphony inspired by Gaudi's masterpiece in Barcelona, with the composer conducting the BBC National Orchestra of Wales. Also recently published is Clarissa's Tango for violin and piano, which Clarissa Bevilacqua, violin [to whom I chatted last year, see my interview] and Thomas Hoppe, piano have released as a digital single.

Also in March, Nimbus Records is releasing Blackford's Songs of Nadia Anjuman with soprano Elizabeth Watts and the Britten Sinfonia, which set English translations of poems by the Afghan poet Nadja Anjuman (1980-2005) who was 15 when the Taliban captured Herat, and who at 25 was beaten to death by her husband. The cycle was premiered by Elizabeth Watts and the Britten Sinfonia in 2023.

His cello concerto, commissioned by the Czech Philharmonic, will be premiered in the Rudolfinum, Prague, by Alisa Weilerstein in 2024. The orchestra gave the premiere of Blackford's violin concerto, Niobe in 2017 with violinist Tamsin Waley-Cohen, a work that they recorded in 2018 [see my reivew]

Performances planned include 

• Mirror of Perfection: Wimbledon Choral Society, Cadogan Hall (16 March)
• Pietá: Dorchester Choral Society (16 March), a work that we heard the London premiere of in 2019 [see my review]
• Mirror of Perfection: Worcester Cathedral (16 March)
• Mirror of Perfection, Three Rossetti Songs and Songs of Nadia Anjuman: Presteigne Festival (24 & 25 August)
• Babel: Bournemouth Symphony Chorus at Christchurch Priory (14 September)

A Lionel Tertis Celebration: Timothy Ridout, Frank Dupree, James Baillieu; Harmonia Mundi

A Lionel Tertis Celebration - York Bowen,  Rebecca Clarke, Vaughan Williams, Lionel Tertis, Frank Bridge, Brahms, Schumann, Faure, William Wolstenholme, Kreisler, W.H. Reed, Eric Coates, Cecil Forsyth, John Ireland, and Mendelssohn; Timothy Ridout, Frank Dupree, James Baillieu; Harmonia Mundi
12 February 2024

Timothy Ridout's warm tribute to Lionel Tertis moves between powerful dramatic utterance and more domesticated, salon pieces, with every piece in a finely judged performance

Inspired by the supple violin playing of Fritz Kreisler, though entirely self-taught, Lionel Tertis (1876-1975) made it his mission to bring the viola back to the foreground in classical music. In order to create a repertoire, Tertis adapted existing material (famously creating a viola concerto from Elgar's Cello Concerto, see my review of Ridout's 2023 recording of this), as well as badgering composers for pieces. Like other such figures (his friend the cellist Pablo Casals, and the guitarist Segovia), Tertis' taste in music was relatively conservative and famously he would not give the premiere of Walton's Viola Concerto, though he later relented.

This disc from viola player Timothy Ridout and pianist Frank Dupree and James Baillieu on harmonia mundi is a celebration of Tertis' influence. There are two major sonatas, by York Bowen and Rebecca Clarke, along with Vaughan Williams' Six Studies in English Folk Song, plus occasional pieces by Tertis himself, Frank Bridge, Brahms, Schumann, Faure, William Wolstenholme, Kreisler, W.H. Reed, Eric Coates, Cecil Forsyth, John Ireland, and Mendelssohn. And expansive set across two discs, the first has Timothy Ridout accompanied by Frank Dupree, the second by James Baillieu. Ridout and Dupree gave a live selection from the disc at their recent Wigmore Hall recital [see my review]

Lente Verelst and Hull Urban Opera invite you to The End of the World Party

The young Belgian composer Lente Verelst came to attention with her opera, Crocodile, which took ideas from Samuel Beckett and turned them into a short animated film produced by Hull Urban Opera. Originally shown on Sky Arts, the piece is available from Now TV. Now Verelst is back with Hull Urban Opera with her first full length opera, The End of the World Party with a libretto by Russell Plows, artistic director of Hull Urban Opera.

Running from 18 to 20 April 2024 at Princes Quay Event Space in Hull, the production is directed by Plows, conducted by Anita Datta and features soprano Madeline Robinson, mezzo Joanna Gamble, countertenor Ralph Thomas Williams, tenor Michael Jones and bass-baritone Neil Balfour. 

It promises to be an intriguing, interactive piece; playing out in real time, and including local people as performers and storytellers, the opera uses tasks, audience-choice and a “mystery” narrative to explore how we behave under pressure.

Having bought tickets to an End of the World themed party, the audience discovers that the host has failed to arrive. Games are devised to fill the five places available in the VIP Room, but who is really pulling the strings and why?

Full details from Hull Urban Opera's website.

Young Composers 5: the latest iteration of the National Youth Choir's Young Composers scheme challenge & stimulate

Young Composers 5: Millicent B James, Will Harmer, Emily Hazrati, Alex Tay; National Youth Choir, NYC Fellowship Ensemble, Emily Dickens, Ben Parry
Reviewed 5 February 2024

Vivid use of texture, imaginative subject matter and challenging writing clearly stimulate the young singers who give wonderfully engaged performances

Each year the the National Youth Choir's Young Composers scheme offers a programme to support a group of young composers including residential courses, workshops, peer and professional mentoring, digital releases and performance showcases. And for the fifth year running, NMC has captured the results on disc. The result is a selection of engaging and thoughtful new choral music by Millicent B James, Will Harmer, Emily Hazrati, and Alex Tay performed by the National Youth Choir, conducted by Emily Dickens, and the NYC Fellowship Ensemble, conducted by Ben Parry.

Direct, determined, and loud: Welsh composer David John Roche introduces his new electric guitar concerto for Sean Shibe

Welsh composer David John Roche describes his music as 'direct, determined, and loud', and it is strongly influenced by heavy metal, lush orchestral music, and his working-class Welsh background. Currently David is working on a new concerto for guitarist Sean Shibe, for electric guitar. 

The work is being premiered by Sinfonia Cymru on 23 February 2024 as part of the Time Machine programme in Aberystwyth, Criccieth and the Royal Welsh College of Music and Drama [see Sinfonia Cymru website], then the work will also be performed by Britten Sinfonia at St Giles' Cripplegate on 2 March [see Barbican website] as part of their Magnum Opus showcase [see Tony's recent article]. 

Here, David introduces some ideas behind the work.

I learned to perform and write music by playing electric guitar in rock and metal bands. When I was a teenager, South Wales had such an amazing music scene (it still does!) - the standard of musicianship was unreasonably high, I was really lucky to be able to experience it, and it really altered the trajectory of my life. I'm proud of this musical heritage and I want it to be part of what I write - I want people to be able to hear the things that made me fall in love with making music. I hope this comes across in my new concerto.

I think writing an electric guitar concerto carries a lot of responsibility. There are stereotypes about the instrument that make it complicated - shred guitar is extremely fun, but you probably wouldn't have Yngwie Malmsteen play at your wedding. I think it would be literally impossible for me to write an electric guitar concerto that didn't have intense, rhythmic writing - so, I haven't shied away from the riffy, big, and energetic side of the instrument. I also haven't shied away from things like guitar pedals and effects. I have, however, been careful to make sure that you hear the softer, more expressive side of the instrument too. There are large passages of soloistic, expressive, nostalgic music - really inspired by the guitarist Yvette Young. The electric guitar can do so much, it was important to me that I showed this in my work... but I also make sure that I let it rip.  

Sean Shibe is changing the way we engage with the electric guitar - his performances reflect the diverse developmental space the instrument finds itself in and I can't imagine writing this concerto for another player. My composition caters super strongly to Sean's technical range and, perhaps more importantly, his exceptional sense of musical style and expression. This is - absolutely - a concerto for Sean, a specific player, rather than all electric guitarists... but it's always seen through the lens of my musical tropes and language. It's a fun, exciting, dramatic, riffy, and expressive work for one of the most outstanding electric guitarists working today.

Equally important to this work are Sinfonia Cymru and Britten Sinfonia. An electric guitar concerto carries risks and I am grateful to both ensembles' open-mindedness, stratospheric support, and wonderful musical abilities. It's also brilliant l that this concerto receives its premiere in Wales. Sinfonia Cymru represent some of the best of Welsh music making and embody some of the most excellent aspects of Welsh music making - I am massively grateful to them, and this concerto wouldn't be happening without them.

Workshops, Welsh song for families, Cleveland Watkiss, Mark Padmore, Hera Hyesang Park - the Manchester Song Festival 2024

Manchester Song Festival

The 2024 Manchester Song Festival is at Stoller Hall from 1 to 3 March 2024 with a lively weekend of concerts, workshops and family events. Performances begin with jazz singer Cleveland Watkiss, with his distinctive blend of improvisation/counterpoint harmony, electronics, breakbeat loops and basslines (all live and from his mouth), in VocalSuite, described as 'elusive acapella vocal improvisation performance that uses the atmosphere of venue, mood and interactivity of audience to present a performance of the moment'.

The following evening, tenor Mark Padmore will be performing Schumann, Frank Bridge, Michael Tippett, Rebecca Clarke and Tansy Davies, and the festival ends with a recital from Korean opera singer Hera Hyesang Park and pianist Bretton Brown in a mixture of Korean art songs and music by Samuel Barber, Alma Mahler, Respighi, Rossini, Schubert, Caplet, Cecilia Livingston, Thomas Dunhill and Errollyn Wallen.

There is also a chance to catch vocal students from Chetham's School of Music in a free lunchtime concert, whilst families can enjoy Terra Musica, where Awen Blandford, and students from Chetham’s School of Music invite the audience to dance, sing and play along with folk music and stories from the beautiful Welsh Valleys.

There is a full programme of workshops on the Saturday, including yoga, songwriting, vocal health, vocal anxiety, musical theatre and acting through singing, an introduction to folk, synaesthesia and an operatic workshop, plus performance from the RNCM Songsters.

Full details from the Stoller Hall website.

Pierre Loti's writings inspired Léo Delibes' opera Lakmé and a whole genre of Orientalist operas

Loti (right) with Chrysanthème and Pierre le Cor in Japan, 1885.

Pierre Loti has a lot to answer for. Whilst he certainly did not invent Orientalisme, his exotic novels and short stories, inspired by his travels as a French naval office, fed into the Western European fascinating for the perceived exoticism of life in the East, and gave rise to a whole operatic genre. 

His 1880 book, Le Mariage de Loti (about his romantic liaison with an exotic Tahitian girl), inspired both the 1883 opera Lakmé by Léo Delibes,  and an 1898 opera by Reynaldo Hahn, L'île du rêve.

His 1887 novel Madame Chrysanthème (about a naval officer temporarily married to a Japanese woman while he was stationed in Nagasaki, Japan) would be one of the inspirations behind  André Messager's 1893 opera of the same name, Mascagni's Iris (1898) and Puccini's Madama Butterfly (1904).  

The fashion for things Japanese, Japonisme, had developed from the mid-1850s with opening up of Japan, and Saint-Saens' La princesse jaune (1872) is an early example of satirising the fad for all things Eastern.  Loti's books, with their deceptive element of reportage thanks to his travels as a naval officer, broadened the audience.

This fascination for all things exotic would come to a logical (and horrifying) conclusion when the exotic was brought back to the West in the form of live people. And the musical influences continued as well. The Japanese Village in Knightsbridge (which ran from 1885 to 1887) and involved 100 Japanese men and women living in a specially constructed village, may have influenced Gilbert & Sullivan's The Mikado. Whilst in 1889, at the Paris Exposition Universelle, colonised people had their daily lives displayed for visitors, giving Debussy his first experience of the Balinese Gamelan.

Léo Delibes' Lakmé, however, has another layer of exoticism too in the form of the the novelty of exotically colonial English people and it is hero Gérald's desire to put country and duty above love that give the opera one of its engines.

Whilst the music from the opera remains well known, with the Bell Song being a popular coloratura showcase and the Flower Duet being virtually ubiquitous, performances are still rare. The opera reached Covent Garden in 1910, but the present company (formed after World War Two) has never staged the opera and its last major London outing seems to have been at Opera Holland Park in 2015 [see my review].

Delibes had quite a varied career, though he remains best known for his ballets, Coppelia and Sylvia. As a boy he sang in the première of Meyerbeer's Le prophète at the Paris Opéra in 1849. He wrote comic operas including for Offenbach's Bouffes-Parisiens, was a music critic, an accompanist and inspector of schools. It was his appointment as chorus master at the Paris Opera that brought about his two well-known ballets. His attempts at writing a serious opera were more mixed, but Lakmé, which premiered at the Opéra-Comique in 1883 soon had international success.

The good news is that Chelsea Opera Group is giving a concert performance of Lakmé at Cadogan Hall on Sunday 25 February 2024. Matthew Scott Rogers conducts with Haegee Lee as Lakmé, Elgan Llŷr Thomas as Gérald, James Platt as Nilakantha and Julien Van Mellaerts as Frédéric. Full details from the Cadogan Hall website.

Celebrating 75 years: London Mozart Players in wonderful form for all-Mozart programme at Fairfield Halls plus the launch of 100 Faces of Croydon

Mozart: The Mixtape - Imogen Cooper, Jonathan Bloxham, London Mozart Players - Fairfield Halls (Photo: William Vann via Twitter)

Mozart: The Mixtape; Anna Prohaska, Imogen Cooper, Martin James Bartlett, London Mozart Players, Jonathan Bloxham; Fairfield Halls, Croydon

Wonderfully vital performances with a strong presence and sense of engagement in London Mozart Player's celebratory all-Mozart programme recreating the composer's own 1783 concert in Vienna

The London Mozart Players is 75 and the centrepiece of the celebratory 2023/24 season was on Saturday 10 February 2024 at Fairfield Halls, Croydon when the orchestra's artistic associate and conductor in residence, Jonathan Bloxham directed the orchestra in a programme billed as Mozart: The Mixtape with a programme based on a celebratory concert that Mozart gave in Vienna in 1783 with Symphony No. 35 'Haffner', Piano Concerto No.13, with Imogen Cooper, Piano Concerto No. 5, with Martin James Bartlett, movements from Serenade No. 9 'Posthorn'  and arias from soprano Anna Prohaska. The evening was presented by Petroc Trelawney and will be on BBC Radio 3 on 23 February. 

But the concert also launched the orchestra's 100 Faces of Croydon. The brainchild of Jonathan Bloxham and photographer Kaupo Kikkas, 100 people from Croydon were photographed by 30 local photographers, each picked a different place in Croydon for the photograph's location. The project is available on a devoted website, but on Saturday the evening opened with the 100 faces being projected in the hall whilst the 100 people there photographed performed Ligeti's Poème symphonique for 100 metronomes. It was my first live encounter with Ligeti's piece, and the way the sound built up into an almost orgasmic moment before dying away was truly intriguing when combined with the images flashing up.

images from 100 Faces of Croydon

Mozart's programme from 1783 was definitely mix and match rather than the sort of programme we are used to. So, we opened with the first three movements of the Haffner Symphony, then the aria 'Se il padre perdei' from Idomeneo, then the third and fourth movements from the Posthorn Serenade, then the concert aria Misera, dove son! then Piano Concerto no. 13, then the aria 'Come scoglio' from Cosi fan tutte (actually written in 1789 and replacing Mozart's choice of an aria from Lucio Silla), then Piano Concerto No. 5 (for which Mozart wrote a new rondo finale specially for the occasion), then the closing movement of the Haffner Symphony. And for the concert, Mozart had written new clarinet parts for the outer movement of the symphony, too.

Magnum Opus: Britten Sinfonia's composer development scheme showcases work from 2023 composers David John Roche, Daniel Soley and Crystalla Serghiou

Magnum Opus Composers 2023: David John Roche, Daniel Soley and Crystalla Serghiou

Norwich-based music writer, Tony Cooper, reports on Britten Sinfonia’s enterprising Magnum Opus development programme for composers.

Each year three composers ready to take a significant leap forward in their blossoming careers are selected for Britten Sinfonia’s headline development programme entitled Magnum Opus made possible by the generous support of the PRS Foundation Talent Development Partner Fund. Applications are submitted in response to an open call viewed anonymously by the scheme’s programme directors.  

The featured composers comprise David John Roche, Crystalla Serghiou and Daniel Soley who have been embedded with the orchestra over the past year. They wrote wind quintets which were premièred as part of a successful and well-received Britten Sinfonia tour in April last year.  

Personal choice: Love's Lasting Power, debut disc of Schubert lieder from duo Harriet Burns and Ian Tindale on Delphian

Schubert Lieder: Love's Lasting Power; Harriet Burns, Ian Tindale; Delphian
Reviewed 5 February 2024

With a youthful flexibility, emotionalism and sense of urgency to the performances, this is a finely engaging and thoughtful debut recital for the duo

On their first joint recording, on Delphian, long-term performing partners Harriet Burns and Ian Tindale have made a personal choice of Schubert’s lieder, exploring the theme of love, but also the friendships and relationships between poets and the composer out of which he crafted songs of astonishing empathy.

Whilst Schubert's emotional life remains somewhat obscure, with it being unclear which, if any, of his personal relationships were more than close friendships, what cannot be gainsaid is that in his music he displays a remarkable ability to respond to a range of emotional turmoil. When discussing Schubert's setting of poetry by August von Platen (whom we know to be gay from his diaries), Graham Johnson comments that 'We cannot know the exact nature, platonic or romantic, of relationships in Schubert’s circle, but his ability to empathise with Platen’s plight is profoundly moving.'

Burns and Tindale's selection involves not only songs exploring emotions arising from loving someone, but also songs setting poetry which relates to intimate friendships. At the centre of the recital is the long setting of Viola by Schubert's close friend Franz von Schober; a slightly curious poem about a tender flower who is over-eager and subsequently blighted, dying alone and ashamed. The subject must have been painfully close to the bone for Schubert in 1823 when he was suffering the first symptoms of syphilis.

Something a little bit special: David Butt Philip & friends gala for St Paul's Opera in Clapham

Rainelle Krause, David Butt Philip, Alison Langer, St Paul's Opera chorus - St Paul's Church (Photo: Craig Fuller Photography)

David Butt Philip & Friends Gala; Rainelle Krause, Alison Langer, David Butt Philip, David Stout, Jo Ramadan, George Ireland; St Paul's Opera at St Paul's Church, Clapham

David Butt Philip as Florestan, David Stout as Posa, Rainelle Krause as the Queen of the Night, Alison Langer as Mozart's Countess in vivid gala evening for St Paul's Opera in Clapham

Tenor David Butt Philip has been singing Apollo in Richard Strauss' Daphne at the Staatsoper in Berlin and in March he will be singing Florestan in a production of Beethoven's Fidelio at the Bavarian State Opera. Opera goers in the UK will have to wait until the Summer, however, when he will be singing Canio in Leoncavallo's Pagliacci at Opera Holland Park. But on Friday 9 February 2023, opera lovers in Clapham got a real treat as David Butt Philip joined sopranos Alison Langer and Rainelle Krause, and baritone David Stout for a gala at St Paul's Church, Clapham in aid of St Paul's Opera.

David Butt Philip is the patron of St Paul's Opera and this was the third such gala for them that he had organised. Accompanied by pianists George Ireland and Jo Ramadan, we were treated to a programme of arias, duets and scenes from Bizet's Carmen, Gounod's Faust, Mozart's Le nozze di Figaro and Die Zauberflöte, Verdi's Don Carlo, Rigoletto and La traviata, Beethoven's Fidelio, Korngold's Die tote Stadt and Puccini's Turandot, along with items from Bernstein's West Side Story and Candide. All was sung from memory, and many of the excerpts were dramatic scenes rather than solo arias, thus making the evening a rather vivid one in the relatively intimate confines of St. Paul's Church.

Rainelle Krause - St Paul's Church (Photo: Craig Fuller Photography)

A Star Next to the Moon: Stephen McNeff on his new opera, based on Juan Rulfo's Pedro Páramo, a seminal novel of magic realism

On 26 February 2024, the Guildhall School of Music and Drama gives the premiere of Stephen McNeff's new opera, A Star Next to the Moon, in a production directed by Martin Lloyd Evans and conducted by Dominic Wheeler. The opera is based on the iconic novel, Pedro Páramo by the Mexican writer Juan Rulfo, with a libretto by Aoife Mannix.

Whilst the A Star Next to the Moon is new, it has a long and somewhat complex journey to fruition. Around 15 years ago, Stephen wrote some pieces for a festival in Mexico. The festival invited him there and he met the pianist Ana Cervantes who introduced him to pieces that she had commissioned and recorded based on the work of Juan Rulfo. Stephen became fascinated by Rulfo's work, particularly his only novel, Pedro Páramo. Pedro Páramo is an iconic novel in the Spanish-speaking world where people know of it from school, but outside of the Hispanic world, the novel remains unknown. 

Royal Welsh College of Music and Drama celebrates its 75th anniversary with plans to restore and revitalise Cardiff's historic Old Library

Cardiff Free Library - photo by Bettia's puppet - Own work, Public Domain

The Royal Welsh College of Music & Drama will be celebrating its 75th birthday throughout this year. A year long programme of events will highlight its transformational journey since it started at Cardiff Castle in 1949 and draw attention to the work it does to innovate, champion collaboration, work with communities and empower excellence in all its many forms.

This week there was an added sense of celebration as the college had a public engagement day (on 7 February 2024) to present the reimagining of the latest addition to the college's campus, Cardiff’s historic Old Library, originally the Cardiff Free Arts School and Library.  

The college has successfully bid for a 99-year lease on the building which opened in 1882 to house Cardiff Free Library and has had a variety off uses since then. The plans, produced in partnership with architects Flanagan Lawrence, will fully restore the building and provide a second centre for the college including providing public access to the building.

Full details of the college's 75th anniversary celebrations from its website. 

Easter Festival at St John's Smith Square

St John's Smith Square

2024 marks the 300th anniversary of the first performance of Bach's St John Passion, and St John's Smith Square will be marking this with a performance from Stephen Layton, Polyphony and the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment with James Gilchrist as the Evangelist on Friday 29 March 2024 as the culmination of this year's Easter Festival at St John's Smith Square.

The festival, which runs through Holy Week, also includes the National Youth Choir in Fauré's Requiem, whilst the Southbank Sinfonia is joining forces with the Purcell Singers and conductors Mark Ford and Jonathan Schranz for a concert that pairs Mozart's Requiem with Eric Whitacre's When David Heard, Knut Nystedt's Immortal Bach and Kerry Andrew's O Nata Lux.

Lunchtime concerts include organist Roger Sayer in Marcel Dupré's Symphonie-Passion plus music by Bach and Alfred Hollins, and the Civil Service Choir, conductor Stephen Hall, in masses by Schubert and Haydn.

Full details from the St John's Smith Square website.

Horns galore: incandescent playing from Ben Goldscheider in the London premiere of Gavin Higgins' terrific new concerto

Gavin Higgins: Horn Concerto - Ben Goldscheider, Gavin Higgins, Christopher Warren Green, London Chamber Orchestra (Photo: Jerome Weatherald)

Elizabeth Maconchy: Music for Strings, Mozart: Horn Concerto No. 4, Gavin Higgins: Horn Concerto, Sibelius: Symphony No. 5; Ben Goldscheider, London Chamber Orchestra, Christopher Warren Green; Cadogan Hall

The London premiere of Gavin Higgins' new concerto reveals an imaginative sound-world and satisfyingly structured work allied to incandescent playing from Ben Goldscheider

Horn player Ben Goldscheider premiered Gavin Higgins' Horn Concerto last month with Jaime Martin and BBC National Orchestra of Wales [see Ben's article on the work], but the work got a further outing on Wednesday 7 February 2024 at Cadogan Hall when Ben Goldscheider was joined by a different orchestra and conductor, the London Chamber Orchestra and Christopher Warren Green to give the work's London premiere. In what was a packed and eclectic programme, Goldscheider also was the soloist in Mozart's Horn Concerto No. 4, and the orchestra played Elizabeth Maconchy's Music for Strings and Sibelius' Symphony No. 5.

Gavin Higgins' Horn Concerto opened the second half, but frankly it was the work around which the programme centred. It is a substantial piece, lasting around 30 minutes and for an orchestra that includes four horns (in addition to the soloist) as well as tuned percussion.  

Sitting in a concert hall is not a great place to have a musical experience: Frederick Waxman introduces Our Mother, Figure's dramatic staging of Pergolesi's Stabat Mater

This is my body Buxtehude's Membra Jesu Nostri from Figure at the Swiss Church in 2023

The ensemble Figure, co-artistic directors Frederick Waxman and Philip Barrett, has had some considerable success with its stagings at Opera Holland Park of Handel's Serse (in 2022) and Shakespeare/Mendelssohn's A Midsummer Night's Dream (in 2023), but last year the company also created a remarkable immersive staging Buxtehude's sacred cantata sequence Membra Jesu Nostri [see my review].

From 20 to 23 March 2024 they will be presenting Our Mother at Stone Nest. This will be a dramatised staging of Pergolesi's Stabat Mater with additional music by Alex Mills. Directed by Sophie Daneman, the staging will be performed by women of multiple generations, Dame Emma Kirkby, Catherine Carby, Rowan Pierce and Katie MacDonald.

When I chatted to Frederick Waxman about the production he commented that whilst everyone knows the first 20 seconds or so of Pergolesi's music, they wanted to bring a contemporary resonance to the piece. Alex Mills' new music will not be a stand-alone piece, but rather Mills takes material from the Pergolesi and treats it in an organic way, developing it in new ways so that the new music wraps around the old like an exoskeleton.

Frederick sees the Stabat Mater as an interesting text, as unnamed observers describe what is happening off stage, and then ask the audience to feel and be redeemed by it. On the one hand, this is an extremely Marian Catholic concept, but on the other, there is an immortal secular aspect, the unimaginably awful idea of a mother watching her son being murdered.

And this is something which has a horrible contemporary resonance; Frederick comments that too often we can see social media postings about such happenings without contemplating what the event really means to those involved. We tend to gloss over such things, and he quotes George Eliot's Middlemarch, "If we had a keen vision and feeling of all ordinary human life, it would be like hearing the grass grow and the squirrel’s heart beat, and we should die of that roar which lies on the other side of silence. As it is, the quickest of us walk about well wadded with stupidity". There is a huge weight of human experience that we try and avoid but which we have a duty to face.

The production will not be a dramatisation and will certainly not be a pantomime crucifixion. Too often, Frederick feels, music becomes a spectator sport and he thinks that sitting in a concert hall is not a great place to have a musical experience. Instead, they want to make the audience feel they are participating, making them feel compassion.

Sophie Daneman, herself a singer, is directing and she is trying to draw out the universality of the female experience in the piece. Losing a child is universal and motherhood is an essential part of the female experience, whether a mother or not. In order to highlight this, the solos are split between four women of different generations, giving a sense of the four sharing the pain.

Figure's Our Mother is at Stone Nest from 20 to 23 March, full details from Figure's website.

Diagrams & sonatas: discs of solo piano music Arvo Pärt and Ivor Gurney, neither composer well-known for writing in the genre

Ivor Gurney: Piano Sonatas 1 & 3, Adagio from Piano Sonata 2, Five Preludes; George Rowley; Naxos
Arvo Pärt: Diagrams, complete music for piano; Tähe-Lee Liiv; ERP
Reviewed 29 January 2024

Two contrasting discs of piano music by 20th century composers who are not known for their work in the genre, highlighting our partiality when it comes to looking at repertoire

It is fascinating how fixated on a particular genre we can be with some composers. Sometimes this has to do with availability, until some brave editor makes the music available in a viable edition then with the best will in the world, the composer's recorded output might be a bit partial. But also, it seems that we do rather like pigeon-holing. 

Two discs from last year rather emphasised this, and both proved admirable showcases for a pair of talented young pianists. British pianist George Rowley recorded of Ivor Gurney's three Piano Sonatas and Five Preludes for Naxos, and Estonian pianist Tähe-Lee Liiv recorded of Arvo Pärt's complete music for piano, Diagrams, for ERP.

Music of our Time: JAM's exploration of new music for choir, brass quintet and organ returns to St Bridge's Church

Onyx Brass at JAM's Music of our Time at St Bride's Church, Fleet Street

JAM's Music of our Time returns to St Bride's Church, Fleet Street on Wednesday 20 March 2024, with a programme of new works for choir, brass quintet and organ. The Chapel Choir of Selwyn College, Cambridge, Onyx Brass and Simon Hogan (organ), conducted by Michael Bawtree will be performing nine works, three world premieres and six London premieres.

The concert revisits JAM’s 2010 commission by Tarik O’Regan, The Night’s Untruth which explores the use of sleep as a metaphor via excerpts from poems written in the 17th to 20th centuries. There is also the world premiere of a JAM commission by Isabelle Ryder, participant of the Composers’ Residency 2023. Illumination, for organ and two trumpets, pays homage to St Brigid (St Bride) of Kildare, patron saint of St Bride’s Church.

Having received over 200 entries to its 2023 Call for Music, JAM has programmed eight submitted pieces, including works by Toh Yan Ee, Steve Richer, Donald Wetherick, Marisse Cato, George W. Parris, Anselm McDonnell, Christopher Churcher and Jonathan Woolgar.

Full details from JAM's website.

Opera Emerging: a Documentary with Scottish Opera Emerging Artists 2023/24

A lovely documentary from Scottish Opera that follows emerging artists Ross Cumming (baritone), Inna Husieva (soprano), Monwabisi Lindi (tenor), costume trainee Lovisa Litsgard, associate artist Lea Shaw (mezzo-soprano) and emerging artist repetiteur José Javier Ucendo, in their journey to create a performance of Rossini's The Barber of Seville in October 2023. 

[We caught both Inna Husieva and Monwabisi Lindi in opera scenes during their time at the National Opera Studio in January 2022, see my review, whilst Ross Cumming was Pilgrim in British Youth Opera's production of Vaughan Williams' The Pilgrim's Progress at the Three Choirs Festival in 2023, see my review]

Ross Cumming, Inna Husieva and Lea Shaw will be performing around Scotland in Scottish Opera's Spring 2024 Opera Highlights tour. See the website for details.

The documentary was filmed at Scottish Opera's Production Studios, Edington Street and Elmbank Crescent, and Theatre Royal Glasgow during October 2023. Filmed and edited by Antonia Bain. See the video on YouTube.