Quite a Summer: Tom Fetherstonhaugh and Fantasia Orchestra have three festival debuts including the BBC Proms

Jess Gillam, Tom Fetherstonhaugh & Fantasia Orchestra in rehearsal  (Photo: Fantasia Orchestra)

Tom Fetherstonhaugh and Fantasia Orchestra are having quite a Summer with debuts at the BBC Proms, Northern Aldborough Festival and Ryedale Festival, along with other appearances which will be keeping the orchestra busy. The orchestra describes itself as a community of friends and colleagues, many of whom trained together in their teens, who are now at the start of their professional careers. Tom founded the orchestra way back in 2016 when he was still at school and the first concert featured his friends from Junior Royal Academy of Music. Since then it has evolved into a professional ensemble yet still with the same core of players, people who have gone through school and university together and are now in the profession; friends and colleagues making the journey together.

In April, they performed at St Gabriel's Church, Pimlico with saxophonist Jess Gillam in a programme that included James MacMillan's Saxophone Concerto, the first concert in what promises to be their busiest season so far, making festival debuts as well as returning to  Proms at St Jude's and Guiting Music Festival. They hope to continue the momentum and will be launching their next season in the Summer.

Tom describes their repertoire, rather engagingly, as 'a whole host of things'. At the BBC Proms (on 4 August) they are performing multi-genre gems, from Bartok to Bob Marley, Burt Bacharach and Laura Mvula. Their Prom is on Sunday morning; it is being filmed and will be broadcast on TV. Then the next day they repeat the programme for a relaxed Prom.

The results were indeed glorious: Klaus Mäkelä and the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra in Bruckner in Dresden

Bruckner: Symphony No. 5 - Klaus Mäkelä, Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra - Dresdner Musikfestspiele at the Kulturpalast (Photo: Stephan Floss)

Bruckner: Symphony No. 5; Klaus Mäkelä, Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra; Dresdner Musikfestspiele at the Kulturpalast, Dresden
Reviewed 10 May 2024

The Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra and its chief conductor designate bring remarkably unanimity of intent and youthful vigour to Bruckner

Anton Bruckner wrote his Symphony No. 5 in 1875-76, around the time of the first Bayreuth Festival. Whilst Bruckner revered Wagner, there is little conventionally Wagnerian about the symphony, it comes in at 75 minutes and uses relatively compact orchestral forces. But far from conventionally backward-looking, Bruckner reworks the past in his own image. So much so, that the work had to wait until 1894 for its first orchestral performance and then it was in a now discredited revision by conductor Franz Schalk.

Having begun with a new, historically informed look at Wagner's Die Walküre [see my review], the 2024 Dresdner Musikfestspiele (Dresden Music Festival) continued on Friday 10 May 2024 with Bruckner's Symphony No. 5 with Klaus Mäkelä conducting the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra at the Kulturpalast in Dresden. A young conductor (Mäkelä is 28, born 1996) bringing a fresh look to Bruckner with a venerable orchestra of which he is chief conductor designate. The orchestra, founded in 1888, has a long tradition of the performance of music by Bruckner's friend and colleague, Gustav Mahler, dating back to Mahler's friendship with Willem Mengelberg who was the orchestra's chief conductor from 1895 to 1945.

Bruckner: Symphony No. 5 - Klaus Mäkelä, Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra - Dresdner Musikfestspiele at the Kulturpalast (Photo: Stephan Floss)

Finding her voice: Elisabetta Brusa on her compositional style and creating her foundation

Elisabetta Brusa

Elisabetta Brusa taught composition at the Milan Conservatoire for 39 years. Her latest choral album – Requiem and Stabat Mater - is now available on Naxos. She has established the Brusa Foundation Award to give opportunities to composers who recreate new, free and personal symphonic thought with a tonal basis. The deadline for entries from composers ages 18 to 30 is 31st May 2024. Here she explains the influences on her own composition style and how she found her voice.

My 5th Naxos CD, which has just come out, contains my two latest works: Requiem (based on the classical text used by Mozart, Verdi, Fauré, Dvorak and others) and Stabat Mater (based on the classical text used by Pergolesi and Rossini). Because of these ancient and religious texts which express spiritual and physical suffering, their composition gave me very different emotions than, for example, my two symphonies which were composed with abstract, purely musical ideas and form.

I always wanted to compose a Requiem, because it had always been a part of a classical composer's output. Because I believe that all the arts are interconnected, paintings, sculptures, architecture, archaeology and nature all seep into the creative process. For these two pieces, I took inspiration from Mozart, Verdi and Fauré’s Requiems and Rossini and Pergolesi’s Stabat Maters. You may now ask why I have only listed famous classical composers instead of new or original names. In answer to that, I feel I don't need novelties that don't give me any emotions. These composers all belonged to epochs during which all classical composers had the urge to express their inner feelings and each one had something beautiful, personal and spiritual to say.

While the traditional canon provided the starting point for these choral works, there have been broader inspirations from composers of the second half of the 20th Century including Shostakovich, Poulenc, Khachaturian, Britten and Walton who all composed with single voices anchored to harmony, counterpoint and orchestration of the past without belonging to a particular style like the previous periods of Impressionism, Expressionism or Neoclassicism. Instead, the general tendency of classical, western composers of the 1950's onwards was to develop and extend the avant-garde and electronic techniques, fashions and trends which I have no affinity to, nor the simplistic and repeated music of the minimalists. There are also those mainly found in the northern European countries who have created very diverse atmospheres and wide spacial auras with orchestral sound effects.

In the most recent decades, there have been so many styles and techniques created contemporarily of which I don't identify myself with anyone in particular, but there are some excellent composers such as Einojuhani Rautavara, Peteris Vasks and Esa Pekka Salonen, just to name a few. Others may not have reached world recognition for some reason or other, but very probably somewhere there are composers who are discursive, that is, their music follows not just a sequence of sonorous situations but ideas with a beginning, development, recapitulation and ending within symphonic thought and forms, more similar to the composers of the first half of the 20th century. I am one of them.

I have always composed my works totally naturally, instinctively and consequently without premeditation or sketches. I improvise at the piano and write bar after bar consecutively. My first composition was a short Baroque like piece when I was more or less five and later pieces in Classical, Romantic, early Atonal (Hindemith, Bartok, early Schoenberg-like, even serial) styles, naturally and independently, all by ear, without actually being conscious of what I was doing. All of this happened before I went to the Conservatoire of Milan where I consciously learnt what had always been intuition and how to expand harmony even more, counterpoint, orchestration etc.

Later, in my final year, I was told that music should not express emotions and that it was only to be intellectual, structural and experimental. After the Composition diploma I wrote my Belsize String Quartet which won 1st prize at the Washington International Competition, however it was with the commission of the Fables for children’s concerts to be performed with Prokofiev’s Peter and the Wolf, that I realized I also had a gift for orchestral colour.

If I had not met Hans Keller who liked my music, made me understand what was behind music, encouraged and taught me how to have faith in myself, I probably would not have continued to compose.

After that, stronger emotions gradually began to seep into my music and my base line started being independent from the harmony above it, making my works more dramatic. Though they are still tonally based, not everyone can understand my harmonies because of this, but hopefully they are full of sweeping and humane emotions which one can intuitively perceive. With my Requiem and Stabat Mater, being religious and spiritual works which needed more simple and direct impact, I made a little step backwards making my harmonies simpler and more easily communicative. Whilst I have had a few memorable concert experiences, I get the most satisfaction when recording my CDs. I don’t get particularly excited when I have a concert with my music. Actually, I feel very uncomfortable. However, a recording of a work gives me the time and concentration to follow and fully absorb the total components of the composition. Composing at the piano, I have an immediate concentrated result of the ideas and form and I can mentally imagine the sounds and colours of the instruments, but it’s only when I hear an orchestra playing my music that I feel the innermost fulfillment.

I am thrilled to have established the Brusa Foundation and Award and I hope it will incentivise young composers to continue composing with a tonal language and create their own new personal styles expressing human emotions. 

• Elisabetta Brusa on Naxos - discography
• Brusa Foundation - Award details 

The journey continues: Dresden's historically informed Ring returns with a revelatory Die Walküre

Wagner: Die Walküre - Åsa Jäger, Simon Bailey - Dresdner Musikfestspiele (Photo: Oliver Killig)

Wagner: Die Walküre; Maximilian Schmitt, Sarah Wegener, Tobias Kehr, Simon Bailey, Åsa Jäger, Claude Eichenberger, Dresdner Festspielorchester and Concerto Köln, Kent Nagano; Dresdner Musikfestspiele at the Kulturpalast, Dresden
Reviewed 9 May 2024

One of those evenings about which you can say 'I was there'. Revelations and riveting drama as the Dresden Music Festival unfolded the next installment of its historically informed Ring Cycle

Creating a Ring Cycle is a journey, few can come to the cycle with their thoughts and ideas perfectly formed. For the Dresdner Musikfestspiele (Dresden Music Festival) this is even more so. Not only is their Ring Cycle, which opened last year with Das Rheingold [see my review] and is planned to unfold annually, their biggest project to date, but it is taking an historically informed approach. So, for many of those involved, period instrument specialists whose performing lives centre on 18th and early 19th century music, this is a first approach to Wagner on this scale.

Wagner: Die Walküre - Dresdner Festspielorchester and Concerto Köln  - Dresdner Musikfestspiele (Photo: Oliver Killig)

When I chatted to the festival's Intendant, Jan Vogler, just before this year's installment of the Ring Cycle in Dresden, Die Walküre; he explained that the Wagner project came about through a combination of circumstances. Now the Dresdner Festspielorchester is over ten years old, Jan was looking for a project for them. He had been a friend and colleague of Kent Nagano for many years. Nagano and Concerto Köln were looking for ways to continue their Wagner project. Their initial research phase complete, the project became too big for Concerto Köln to continue alone.

But also there was Jan's feeling that festivals grow by creating their own productions. There was the added frisson of completing Wagner's Ring in Dresden, where Wagner went to school, and was later music director. But in the soap opera of the composer's life, he was also involved in revolutionary activities and forced to leave. Having seized the idea, to make it happen the festival had to up its game and raise around 10 million Euros to cover the complete Ring as well as expanding the festival team and finding musicologists to be involved in the project. At first the sheer scope was a shock, but the team came to fall in love with their own Wagner project.

The historically informed approach to the Ring is new territory and not standard, with the instrumentalists concentrating on music of earlier periods. So that the players, rather than coming to Wagner via later music, are more like Wagner's contemporaries having little prior experience of playing his music. Jan describes Kent Nagano as a perfectionist, with a sharp ear. Jan talked about the way many conductors simply take whatever an orchestra delivers and work with that, but Nagano searches for the performance he can hear, and lots of due diligence is done.

Wagner: Die Walküre -  The Valkyries - Dresdner Musikfestspiele (Photo: Oliver Killig)

The Ring Cycle is also a great chance for the festival as they slowly come to understand how large projects are created. The cycle is being recorded and will be issued on disc. There is talk of what next, after the final installment in 2026. The idea of a complete Ring Cycle has garnered some interest, and Jan admits that it is quite appealing, but as ever the issue remains one of money.

The performance of Die Walküre in Dresden was the final one of a short tour that included Amsterdam, Prague, Cologne and Hamburg's Elbphilharmonie. On Thursday 9 May 2024 at the Kulturpalast, Dresden, Kent Nagano conducted the combined forces of the Dresdner Festspielorchester and Concerto Köln in Wagner's Die Walküre with Maximilian Schmitt as Siegmund, Sarah Wegener as Sieglinde, Tobias Kehrer as Hunding, Simon Bailey as Wotan, Åsa Jäger as Brünnhilde and Claude Eichenberger as Fricka. The project is a collaboration with the Wagner Cycles and the academic aspect is important with a whole day of presentations at the Kulturpalast before the performance.

Evolving with the Orchestra: composer Robin Haigh on his recent orchestral works

The Irish/British composer Robin Haigh is having a busy year with performances of all four of his major orchestral works. Jessica Cottis conducts Luck, his trumpet concerto for Matilda Lloyd and Britten Sinfonia on the opening night of this year's Aldeburgh Festival on 15 June 2024 [full details], and Matthew Halls conducts the UK premiere of Robin Haigh's Concerto for Orchestra with the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra on 3 November [full details] In a guest article for Planet Hugill, Robin describes his continuing evolution in writing for orchestra.

Robin Haigh (Photo: Michael Carlo 2023)

This year, all four of my major pieces for orchestra are being performed - the Irish Premiere of SLEEPTALKER (2021) with Dublin's National Symphony Orchestra, the USA Premiere of Grin (2019) with the Lowell Chamber Orchestra, the UK Premiere of Concerto for Orchestra (2023) with the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra, and the world premiere of my trumpet concerto, LUCK (2024) with the Britten Sinfonia. Composing for orchestra is where I feel most at home, and in the past I've felt LUCKy to have just one orchestral performance in a year - to have four seems so momentous as to warrant a personal look at how my attitude to writing for orchestra has developed over time, with special attention being paid to the two largest works, LUCK and Concerto for Orchestra.

Grin was written for the Britten Sinfonia, in an unconducted figuration consisting of two horns, two oboes and a string group of about 20 players. As such, it's towards the smaller end of what we might consider an "orchestra" to be, though it turned out for me to be a piece of great import, introducing some musical gestures that have become a staple of my composing since. Principle among these is the sound of woodwind and brass instruments gradually bending pitches down by approximately a quarter-tone. I invented my own notation (a quarter-tone accidental on the end of a sloping line above the note) to try and make this idea as immediately comprehensible and sensible to read as possible, and it has found its way into practically every piece written with winds or brass since. But this is hardly an unusual musical gesture in the world of contemporary classical music, and it's the context I tend to use it in that has allowed this sound to prove so continually useful - it is when it is applied to recognisable tonal chords that this effect excites me most, a kind of distortion of the "safe" and "ordinary" that particularly works with what I want to achieve emotionally in my music.

A willingness to explore: Stéphane Fuguet on recording Monteverdi and Lully at Versailles with his ensemble, Les Épopées

Stéphane Fuguet & Les Épopées (Photo: Pascal Le Mée)

In June 2024, harpsichordist, conductor and director, Stéphane Fuguet and his ensemble, Les Épopées are releasing their recording of Monteverdi's L'Orfeo on the Château de Versailles Spectacles label with tenor Julian Prégardien in the title role. This is the second of the ensemble's survey of Monteverdi's operas on disc, they released Il ritorno d'Ulisse in Patria in June 2022, and L'Incoronazione di Poppea will follow in April 2025. In March 2024 the ensemble released, also on the Château de Versailles Spectacles label, the final volume of their survey of the complete Grands Motets by Jean-Baptiste Lully.

Stéphane comments that every conductor has their own ideas for L'Orfeo. He is intensely interested in the approach to declamation in this period of opera, the particular combination of melody and text in Monteverdi's recitar cantando (speaking through singing). He has heard this music done almost as if the singer were speaking, and this willingness to explore is something that characterised their recording of Il ritorno d'Ulisse in Patria and continues in the new release. But there are other areas too, where the surviving printed materials do not give us the whole picture, performers need to make decisions and choose their approach.

Stéphane points out that whilst the score indicates what instruments are to be used, the musical material is not fully written out; at the beginning of the score there is a list of instruments which does not tally with those present in the score. For example, at the beginning of the score, three violas da gamba are mentioned, but there is never any music for the three. What to do with them? It is this gap which gives performers the space to be creative. Stéphane adds that as the instrumental writing is usually in five parts so one could use a type of broken consort, having different line-ups.

The realisation of the continuo part also gives scope and Les Épopées realise it in different ways, making use of the structure of the piece, bringing out different textures according to context, so that there are moments when Monteverdi seems to have textures that get bigger, suddenly different to a simple realisation for lirone. Additionally, everything is improvised, Stéphane never writes the music down, keeping it moving and always changing.

Stéphane Fuguet (Photo: Ludek Brany)

Part of the attraction of the opera is the way that the character of Orfeo is touchingly human, he doubts himself and at the end turns back toward Euridice, showing a real human fragility. For the title role, Stéphane was looking for a singer who could do something fragile, at different moments murmuring and screaming. Stéphane has known Julian Prégardien for around a dozen years and admires him because whilst his voice can be very sunny, round and emotional, he is also willing to try things out, there are no limits.

Mozart in 1774: Samantha Clarke, Jane Gower, The Mozartists, and Ian Page on stylish form at Wigmore Hall

Samantha Clarke (Photo: Benjamin Ealovega)

Mozart in 1774 - Mozart: Symphonies Nos. 28 & 30, Bassoon Concerto, music from La finta giardiniera, music from Paisiello's Andromeda; Samantha Clarke, Jane Gower, The Mozartists, Ian Page; Wigmore Hall
Reviewed 2 May 2024

Ian Page and his ensemble explore the symphonic music Mozart wrote in 1774, along with a superb contribution from bassoonist Jane Gower and soprano Samantha Clarke in outstanding form

In 1773, Mozart returned from his long journey to Italy and for the next four years was based in Salzburg. The new Archbishop took the view that at 17, Mozart was old enough to pull his weight in the court music and not go gadding about. There were trips, however, to Vienna and to Munich, this latter for the premiere of his opera La finta giardiniera. Mozart would, in time, become discontent with the limitations of artistic life at the Salzburg court, but whilst he explored what avenues it could give him. This means that he wrote in a wide variety of genres, including writing concertos for friends. But much of 1774 seems to have been devoted to symphonies, then in 1775 it was violin concertos with piano concertos in 1776 (all rather Schumann-esque in a way).

Ian Page and The Mozartists' Mozart 250 project has, this year, reached 1774. They have already given us a survey of the music Mozart might have heard that year, and they returned to Wigmore Hall on Thursday 2 May 2024 for a concert centring on music that Mozart wrote that year including Symphonies Nos. 28 and 30, the Bassoon Concerto with soloist Jane Gower, and a scene from La finta giardiniera with soprano Samantha Clarke, who also sang a scene from Paisiello's Andromeda.

Bruckner’s Skull, Nordic Music Days, New Dimensions and Re:Connect: Scottish Chamber Orchestra's new season

Scottish Chamber Orchestra and Maxim Emelyanychev in Aberdeen (Photo: Christopher Bowen)

The 2024/25 season sees Maxim Emelyanychev returning for his sixth season as principal conductor of the Scottish Chamber Orchestra (SCO) with nine concerts, both as conductor and as soloist. Andrew Manze takes up a new role as SCO's principal guest conductor, directing three concerts during the season from Scandinavian contemporary music to Mozart to Faure's Requiem.

The SCO will be giving seven premieres during the season including Bruckner’s Skull by Jay Capperauld, the SCO's associate composer. Bruckner’s Skull delves into Bruckner’s macabre fascination with fellow composers Schubert and Mozart. SCO will also be premiering Capperauld's Carmina Gadelica, inspired by the wonders of Gaelic hymns, incantations and lore, whilst his The Great Grumpy Gaboon, a musical adventure written in collaboration with children's author Corrina Campbell, returns after sell-out performances throughout Scotland in 2023.

Mark Wigglesworth conducts the UK premiere of Péter Eötvös' Aurora with SCO’s principal double bass Nikita Naumov. Eötvös, who died in March aged 80, dreamt up the work while contemplating the Northern Lights aboard a plan high above Alaska. And there will be music from the SCO’s youngest-ever commissioned composer, Georgian teenager Tsontne Zédginidze. 

As part of Nordic Music Days, Andrew Manze conducts Scottish premiere of Anders Hillborg's Viola Concerto with Laurence Power is the soloist, alongside music by Madeleine Isaksson and Sir James MacMillan’s powerful Second Symphony, written for the SCO in 1999. This concert is also part of a new SCO concert series, New Dimensions, with a more informal concert format and programmes designed to encourage audiences to stretch musical imaginations. Other concerts in the series are Ad Absurdum, with Maxim Emelyanychev conducting Jörg Widmann’s Ad Absurdum, Sir James Macmillan’s Tryst and John Adams’ Chamber Concerto, and Parabola where violinist Pekka Kuusisto and pianist/conductor Simon Crawford-Phillips join the SCO for an eclectic programme of music by Thomas Adès, Timo Andres, Sally Beamish and Haydn.

The SCO's long-standing Re:Connect programme for people living with dementia will continue to be delivered at Royal Edinburgh Hospital. Building this, and developing the SCO's ongoing partnership with Alzheimer Scotland, the SCO presents four dementia-friendly concerts in the 2024-25 Season. The performances offer an afternoon of music and light refreshments designed especially for people living with dementia, their friends and carers. 

The SCO will enter the fourth year of its residency in Craigmillar in Edinburgh, continuing to deliver workshops, events and performances across the community through its regular schools’ programme, which sees the SCO working with one local nursery, four primary schools and the local high school throughout the academic year and a programme of community projects with different local partners across the Greater Craigmillar area. And the SCO will also offer a programme of open rehearsals for secondary school pupils so they can discover how a professional orchestra works, see a performance take shape and observe how the Orchestra prepares for a public performance

Full details from the SCO website.

Father Willis, European Union Chamber Orchestra, Goldberg Variations: King's Lynn Festival's Early Music Day

European Union Chamber Orchestra

King's Lynn Festival's annual celebration of all things Early Music, its Early Music Day will be returning to St Nicholas' Chapel on Saturday 20 July featuring a lunchtime organ recital with Harvey Stansfield, a concert with the European Union Chamber Orchestra and a late-night recital with harpsichordist Masumi Yamamoto.

The day begins with a recital by the organ scholar at Peterborough Cathedral, Harvey Stansfield. He will play the Henry Willis organ at St Nicholas' Chapel, the last instrument on which Father Willis worked on before his death in 1901.

The European Union Chamber Orchestra, directed by violinist Hans-Peter Hofmann, perform Bach's celebrated 4th Brandenburg Concerto alongside music by Handel, Vivaldi, Corelli and Telemann. They are joined by recorder player, Tabea Debus, and she also stars in an early evening recital, Ear Worm, on Friday 19 July at All Saints’ Church, King's Lynn, together with Robin Bigwood. They perform their personal selection of Renaissance and Baroque works, their favourites being melodies you just cannot get out of your head. Then for the late-night concert, Masumi Yamamoto performs Bach's Goldberg Variations.

The full King's Lynn Festival runs from 14 to 27 July 2024. Full details from the festival website.

The Ballad of the Nipple: Paul Alan Barker's seven melodramas for piano

Melodrama as a dramatic musical genre has a somewhat patchy history. Whilst Mozart would say of Georg Benda's melodramas 'I love these two works so much that I carry them with me', and indeed works like Benda's Medea [recorded in 2021 by Cappella Aquileia on Coviello Classics, see my review] influenced Mozart's use of speech with music. Melodrama as a tool in the opera composers armoury does pop up, but the exploration of simple speech with music is still relatively rare. The development of post-War music-theatre works has meant that contemporary composers shy away from it rather less. 

Paul Alan Barker is a composer of dance, theatre, musicals, opera and more with over 13 operas to his name. He is also a writer and his first novel, The Ferry Inn, was recently published. So it comes as no surprise to find him interested in the combination of speech and music. As far back as 1980 he wrote The Pied Piper of Hamelin for narrator and piano, and in 2015 came Of Zoe and the Woman I sing, described as 'A melodrama for actress Zoe Lister, her avatar and pianist'. 

Less overtly dramatic but rather intriguing is The Ballad of the Nipple 'Seven melodramas for Piano' which take Barker's own words and apply music to them, designed for a single pianist able to speak, they can also be performed as melodramas with an actor. The sequence begins with Lemon Scented Blues, 'A fairy tale with a moral' and ends with the title piece, The Ballad of the Nipple, originally written after a tabloid magazine published a clandestine photo of a Royal nipple!

The results are compact and amusing, with cabaret hints yet with claws. The good news is that Barker has recorded them himself, speaking and playing, and the results are available as a playlist on YouTube.

Vigour, energy and joy: A Choral Celebration of Queen Mary II from the choirs of the Royal Hospital Chelsea and Old Royal Naval College

Willem Wissing (1656-87) - Mary II (1662-94) when Princess of Orange c.1686-87 
(Photo: Royal Collection Trust RCIN 405643)

A Choral Celebration of Queen Mary II: Clarke, Blow, Purcell, Handel;  chapel choir of the Royal Hospital Chelsea, the Old Royal Naval College Trinity Laban Chapel Choir, Brandenburg Baroque Soloists, Ralph Allwood, William Vann; Chapel of St Peter and St Paul, Old Royal Naval College
Reviewed 30 April 2024

A celebration of Queen Mary II's birthday brings together the choirs of two institution she was instrumental in founding, mixing professionals with students to create a choral sound full of vigour, energy and joy

Queen Mary II was born on 30 April 1662 so what better way to celebrate her than to bring together the choirs of two institutions that she was instrumental in founding. So, on 30 April 2024, the Chapel Choir of the Royal Hospital Chelsea and the Old Royal Naval College Trinity Laban Chapel Choir under their conductors Ralph Allwood and William Vann came together with the Brandenburg Baroque Soloists in the chapel of St Peter and St Paul at the Old Royal Naval College for a programme of music celebrating Queen Mary II including John Blow's The Lord God is a sun and a shield, Purcell's Come, ye sons of art and music from the Queen's funeral, and Handel's Utrecht Te Deum.

The venue, the chapel in the Old Royall Naval College is part of Sir Christopher Wren's original buildings for what was then the Royal Hospital for Seamen but a fire in the later 18th century means that the interior is by James 'Athenian' Stuart, creating rather a different atmosphere with its spectacular altarpiece painted by Benjamin West.

BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra's 2024/25 season

BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra's 2024/25 season is its third with chief conductor Ryan Wigglesworth. Wigglesworth will be directing Elgar's The Dream of Gerontius and a new work by Helen Grime, along with playing the solo part in Mozart's Piano Concerto No. 17. There will be a further premiere from Ricardo Ferro, plus works by Donghoon Shin, Errollyn Wallen, Gabriela Montero and the orchestra’s Composer-in-Association Hans Abrahamsen.

Ilan Volkov conducts percussion concertos with Scottish virtuoso Colin Currie, including a UK premiere by Olga Neuwirth and a concerto by Andy Aiko. Other visitors include tabla player Zakir Hussain who performs his Triple Concerto with conductor Alpesh Chauhan, and the orchestra’s former Artist-in-Association Matthias Pintscher returns to conduct Rachmaninov’s less frequently performed Piano Concerto No.4 with Denis Kozhukhin plus his own work Neharot and a world premiere by his student Ricardo Ferro.

Young people are very much to the fore. The orchestra has announced that during its current season young audiences have hit new heights, with Under 26s and Students making up 1 in 4 audience members across the Thursday Night Series, reaching up to 34% of ticket sales. As part of Sir James MacMillan's first Scottish performance of his new Concerto for Orchestra ‘Ghosts’, he conducts a substantial spread of new music from six of his younger colleagues at the Cumnock Tryst festival - Matthew Grouse, Gillian Walker, Electra Perivolaris, Scott Lygate, Jay Capperauld and Michael Murray. And BBC Radio 3 New Generation Artists will be showcased in the orchestra's new Sunday concerts as part of Glasgow's Afternoon Performances season. 

As part of Nordic Music Days 2024 (hosted in Scotland for the first time since its inaugural festival in 1888), Emilia Hoving conducts the orchestra in music by Britta Byström, Eli Tausen á Lava and Maja Ratkje, plus Hildur Guðnadóttir’s The Fact of the Matter  with University of Glasgow Chapel Choir.

Full details from the BBC SSO's website.

14 premieres, music in iconic spaces, the Cries of London: Spitalfields Music Festival 2024

Spitalfields Music Festival returns with events in iconic spaces across East London from 27 June to 10 July 2024. The festival opens with soprano Nardus Williams and lutenist Elizabeth Kenny in In the Shadow of the Tower, exploring East London's cosmopolitan history in a recital at St Peter ad Vincula in the Tower of London. The concert features a new work by Roderick Williams, one of 14 premieres being presented at this year's festival. And we return to St Peter ad Vincula for Sing Joyfully: Tudor and Jacobean Music for the Chapel Royal performed by Choir of the Chapels Royal, HM Tower of London.

The Carice Singers explore another aspect of London history with Cries of London at St Botolph without Bishopsgate, featuring Berio's Cries of London alongside music by Alexander Papp, Mary Offer, Robert Crehan, Effy Efthymiou, Alice Beckwith, and Anibal Vidal. Whilst the Gentle Author will be talking about the cries of London at St Botolph without Bishopsgate hall, and one of the festival's Neighbourhood Schools projects also focuses on the subject. Students will be producing a sound installation inspired by the modern day Cries of London, which will be on display at St Botolph-without-Bishopsgate on Tuesday 2 July.

The Manchester Collective are returning to Village Underground for a programme including music by Missy Mazzoli, Edmund Finnis, Kaija Saariaho, Caroline Shaw, Errollyn Wallen, Dobrinka Tabakova and a new commission from Jocelyn Campbell. The National Youth Choir Fellowship Ensemble will be joining Zoe Martlew (cello), Roderick Williams (baritone), Andrew West (piano) and the trombone quartet Slide Action for a concert at the Dutch Church, Austin Friars, celebrating NMC Recordings' 35 anniversary with a wide range of music associated with the label from Ben Nobuto and Alex Paxton to Zoe Martlew and Roxanna Panufnik to Brian Elias and Howard Skempton to Imogen Holst and Richard Rodney Bennett.

Me Without You from composer Emily Levy and Writer-Director Mella Faye celebrates those we’ve lost and those of us who are still here, through music, dance and recorded interviews, at Metronome London.

The Academy of St Martin in the Fields makes its festival debut with a programme of Ruth Gipps, Britten, Walton, Elgar, Walton, Jonathan Woolgar and Philip Herbert' s Elegy: in memoriam Stephen Lawrence at St Anne's Church, Limehouse. Stephanie Lamprea (soprano) and Anna Kjær (choreographer / dancer) join the Hebrides Ensemble for Schoenberg's Pierrot Lunaire alongside an exhibition of new paintings by double bassist and artist Kirsty Matheson at St Mary at Hill.

Alongside these and other events there are walking tours, talks and much more.

Full details from the festival website.

The meaning of music in a terrifying world: BCMG to premiere Joe Cutler and Max Hoehn's Sonata for Broken Fingers

An urban myth tells of how, one evening, Stalin made a surprise phone call to Radio Moscow demanding the urgent delivery of a record: a Mozart piano concerto played by Maria Yudina. Unfortunately, radio companies at this time did not always preserve their broadcasts for a future release or even for their own archive. But rather than say 'no' to Stalin, Radio Moscow gathered together Yudina and their orchestra in the middle of the night and made the recording from scratch, ready to be delivered to the Kremlin the following morning. In the version of the myth as told by Shostakovich, it was this recording that was found on Stalin’s gramophone player when the dictator had his fatal stroke.

Now, the remarkable life of virtuoso pianist, Maria Yudina (1899-1970) is the inspiration for a new opera, Sonata for Broken Fingers, by composer Joe Cutler and librettist Max Hoehn to be premiered by Birmingham Contemporary Music Group (BCMG) on 14 July 2024 at the CBSO Centre in Birmingham. 

The project is a collaboration between BCMG, the Royal Birmingham Conservatoire, and Birmingham-based composer, Joe Cutler, who runs the Conservatoire’s composition department. The premiere is being presented in collaboration with Birmingham Record Company and Opera21. Sian Edwards conducts with a cast including Claire Booth, James Cleverton, Stephen Richardson, Lucy Schaufer and Christopher Lemmings. And the good news is that the work will be recorded for future release by Birmingham Record Company.

Sonata for Broken Fingers is Joe Cutler's first opera. An 80-minute claustrophobic thriller, it is conceived as an intimate sound experience, strongly influenced by the genre of radio drama and explores the meaning of music in a terrifying world.

Full details from BCMG's website.

A neglected gem revived: New Sussex Opera in Lampe's The Dragon of Wantley combining historic style and 1980s politics

Lampe: The Dragon of Wantley - Charlotte Badham - New Sussex Opera (Photo: Robert Knights)

Lampe & Carey: The Dragon of Wantley; Ana Beard Fernandez, Charlotte Badham, Magnus Walker, Robert Gildon, director: Paul Higgins, conductor: Toby Purser, Bellot Ensemble; New Sussex Opera at the Theatre Royal, Winchester
Reviewed 28 April 2024

Updated to the 1980s miners' strike, New Sussex Opera's production mixes political satire and period style along with a sense of enjoyment in the work's send-up of opera seria

British theatre always seems to have been fond of music, Purcell's semi-operas were the musical spectaculars of their day and regular plays often included music. The development of ballad opera (songs based on pre-existing melodies with spoken dialogue) was a logical extension with most ballad operas, from The Beggar's Opera (1728) onwards having a satirical edge to them, usually making fun of the Italian opera seria as well as political hot potatoes of the day.

What took far longer to develop was a tradition of lighter, comic English operas. One notable example, which has been consistently undervalued, is John Frederick Lampe and Henry Carey's The Dragon of Wantley. Originally written in 1737 this was a fully sung English comic opera with newly composed music, yet its dramatic thrust has a lot in common with ballad opera, satire on Italian opera seria and poking fun at politics.

In the case of The Dragon of Wantley, the composer John Frederick Lampe had a secret weapon. He was the bassoonist in Handel's orchestra and had actually written opera seria. The Dragon of Wantley is a fully-developed opera seria yet sung to an English libretto which makes fun of the whole thing, allied to a ludicrous plot taken from a broadside ballad about a Yorkshire dragon defeated via a kick up the backside by a beer-swilling local knight. In Lampe's day, audiences understood the dragon in the plot was satirising Robert Walpole's tax policies, so there is a political point to all the fun.

Lampe: The Dragon of Wantley - Ana Beard Fernandez, Rob Gildon, Charlotte Badham - New Sussex Opera (Photo: Robert Knights)

The Dragon of Wantley has come to attention again thanks to the excellent new recording on Resonus Classics [see my review], and now New Sussex Opera has taken up the gauntlet, staging the work and touring it around South East England. The tour opened in Lewes on 14 April, and we caught its stop at the Theatre Royal, Winchester on Sunday 28 April 2024. The production was by Paul Higgins with designs by Mollie Cheek. Toby Purser conducted the Bellot Ensemble, with Ana Beard Fernandez as Margery, Charlotte Badham as Mauxalinda, Robert Gildon as Gaffer Gubbins and the Dragon, and Magnus Walker as Moore of Moore Hall.

Lobesgesang: Mendelssohn's rarely performed symphony-cantata is a fine climax to Sir Andras Schiff and the OAE's exploration of the composer's symphonic music

Portrait of Mendelssohn by Wilhelm Hensel, 1847

Mendelssohn: Violin Concerto, Symphony No. 2 'Lobesgesang'; Lucy Crowe, Hilary Cronin, Nick Pritchard, Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment, Choir of the Enlightenment, Sir Andras Schiff; Queen Elizabeth Hall
Reviewed 26 April 2024

A near ideal performance of the violin concerto followed by an account of Mendelssohn's great symphony-cantata that never compromised the work's idiosyncrasy yet brought out its rich detail and emotionalism

Sir Andras Schiff and the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment (OAE) have been celebrating Mendelssohn. It is strange that the effort needs making, but we still have a tendency to downgrade the composer's symphonic output. Schiff and the OAE, however, have been putting it top dead centre with three concerts at the Southbank Centre's Queen Elizabeth Hall which featured all of the composer's symphonies, two piano concertos with Schiff directing from the keyboard and the Violin Concerto in E Minor with Alina Ibragimova. 

We caught the final concert, on Friday 26 April 2024 which featured Mendelssohn's Violin Concerto in E minor with Alina Ibragimova, and Symphony No. 2 'Lobesgesang' with the Choir of the Enlightenment and soloists Lucy Crowe, Hilary Cronin and Nick Pritchard (replacing Nicky Spence).

We began with Mendelssohn's Violin Concerto, his last major orchestral work. Conceived for the concertmaster of the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra, the work took Mendelssohn from 1828 to 1845 to write, belying its apparent effortlessness. Schiff used an orchestra based on 33 strings, double woodwind, two horns and two trumpets, quite a large group for a work which can sometimes be given chamber proportions. Alina Ibragimova began with a fine-grained tone, light and fluid playing allied to free phrasing. She never attempted to big-up her tone nor force her way into the spotlight, it all felt somehow effortless and natural, yet compelling and very stylish. In the first movement, there were moments that were daringly intimate, but for all the period manners, there was some very real drama. Schiff encouraged his players to bring out some beautifully vivid colours in the orchestral transition. When the second movement proper, began, it was all singing elegance and fine grained tone. Intimate and delicate, yet with an underlying strength. This delicate approach continued into the last movement, which was delightfully pointed and I loved the sound of Ibragimova's violin with the wind bubbling along beside her, and the excitement continued to the end. What this performance did was discover a work that was both stronger and more delicate than is often the case, and was notably lacking that sense of saccharine that an over-vibrato-laden violin solo can bring.

Fear no more: Brindley Sherratt on releasing his first recital disc

Brindley Sherratt (Photo: Gerard Collett)

I first chatted with bass Brindley Sherratt in early 2020 about a fundraising gala he was organising. Much happened afterwards, and the interview did not appear on the blog until 2022 [see my interview]. When we chatted then, Brindley was moving into singing larger, more dramatic roles including Wagner.

But when we met again recently it was to talk about a project on an entirely different scale, Brindley's first recital disc, with pianist Julius Drake, Fear No More on the Delphian label. A disc that features music by Schubert, Richard Strauss, John Ireland, Gerald Finzi, Ivor Gurney, Michael Head, Peter Warlock and Mussorgsky's Songs and Dances of Death.

Brindley suggests that, like most things in his career, his releasing of a debut disc is a bit topsy turvy as he is singing larger roles including Wagner and doing more recitals, both ends of the performing spectrum in other words. Some years ago, the mezzo-soprano Alice Coote told him that he needed to do some recitals and introduced Brindley to pianist Julius Drake. 

Julius Drake suggested that Brindley come round and they would go through some repertoire. At the time, Brindley admits that he didn't really know any songs. Lockdown intervened, but after a long time, they settled on a programme and performed it at the Oxford Lieder Festival and as part of Temple Song. Doing recitals had never been part of Brindley's big plan, but once he started he found that he loved the process. 

His first response, to having recital work suggested to him, was 'No'. He was afraid of the intimacy of the recital hall. Normally, his audience is in the dark, some 80 feet away with an orchestra between. But he found that the very thing he had been afraid of was something he loved. He found he enjoyed the flexibility of a recital, just the two of them. And Julius Drake can play firmly and strongly, which means he lets Brindley be.

David Pickard says farewell to the BBC Proms with 90 concerts across the UK including Bizet's Carmen, Julius Eastman's Symphony No. 2, Suk's Asrael Symphony and much more

So, the BBC Proms are on us again. The 2024 festival runs from 19 July to 14 September 2024 with 73 concerts at the Royal Albert Hall and 17 around the UK, with short seasons at Bristol Beacon and The Glasshouse, Gateshead, plus concerts in Nottingham, Newport, Aberdeen and Belfast. This season represents David Pickard's last as director and Hannah Donat has taken over as Director of Artistic Planning for the BBC Proms. She is former Concerts Director of Britten Sinfonia and has been Artistic Producer of the Proms for the last seven years, which has seen her bring orchestras and ensembles to the event and work closely with the BBC’s Orchestras and Choirs

Visiting ensembles this year include the Berlin Philharmonic and Kirill Petrenko, Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra and Sir Simon Rattle, Czech Philharmonic and Jakub Hrůša, and the West–Eastern Divan Orchestra and Daniel Barenboim. Another visitor on a smaller scale is Sir Andras Schiff who will be playing Bach's The Art of Fugue.

2024 also sees the 100th anniversary of the founding of the BBC Singers and this year's programme not only celebrates the ensemble, but the idea of choral music, with the BBC Singers in seven Proms including premiering a work written for them by Eric Whitacre, a three-concert Choral Day reflecting a wide range of styles with professional and amateur choirs including Voices of the River’s Edge, a community youth choir formed by the BBC Proms and the Glasshouse International Centre for Music during lockdown, and London LGBTQ+ chamber choir, the Fourth Choir. Further choral highlights across the summer include performances of Verdi’s Requiem, Britten’s War Requiem and Bach’s St John Passion.

Glyndebourne Opera is bringing its new production of Bizet's Carmen, with Rihab Chaieb and Evan LeRoy Johnson conducted by Anja Bihmaier, and for the first time Garsington Opera is bringing a production, so we get a chance to hear their new production of Britten's A Midsummer Night's Dream with Iestyn Davies and Lucy Crowe, conducted by Douglas Boyd.

This year, 23 premieres and BBC commissions/co-commissions will be performed. Composers Thomas Ades, Anna Clyne, Sarah Class, Francisco Coll, Sarah Gibson, Dani Howard, Sir Karl Jenkins, Cassandra Miller, Ben Nobuto, Laura Poe, Steve Reich, Carlos Simon, Asteryth Sloane, Laura Poe, Elizabeth Kelly and Eric Whitacre each have a premiere or UK premiere. Hans Abrahamsen's Horn Concerto, Julius Eastman’s Symphony No. 2 and Mary Lou Williams’s Zodiac Suite will be performed in the UK for the first time. Sir Mark Elder marks his retirement from the Hallé with a performance of Sir James MacMillan's Timotheus, Bacchus and Cecilia. Other music by contemporary composers featured includes Cheryl Frances-Hoad's Cello Concerto, and pieces by Heiner Goebbels, Missy Mazzoli, Erkki-Sven Tüür.

The First Night includes Clara Schumann's Piano Concerto, with Isata Kanneh-Mason, and later on Benjamin Grosvenor is the soloist in Busoni's gargantuan Piano Concerto and there is more Busoni with his Concert Overture. Other unusual works included Zemlinsky's The Mermaid, Grace William's Concert Overture, Louise Farrenc's Overture No. 1 and Symphony No. 3, a work by Samuel Coleridge-Taylor's daughter Avril, music by Grażyna Bacewicz and Augusta Holmes, Josef Suk's mammoth Asrael Symphony performed by the Czech Philharmonic, 

Column inches have already been expanded on this year's collaborations with non-classical performers. Frankly, they make an interesting mix.

• Florence Welch, of indie-rock band Florence + The Machine, makes her BBC Proms debut, and only UK appearance this year, to perform her lauded BRIT Award-winning 2009 album 
• Lungs, with Jules Buckley and his orchestra
• Jordan Rakei makes his BBC Proms debut with Robert Ames and the Royal Northern Sinfonia at the Glasshouse International Centre for Music. Academy Award-winning artist
• Sam Smith makes their BBC Proms debut at the Royal Albert Hall, their only live UK appearance this year, performing their own music in new orchestral arrangements. 
• After the success of the 2023 Northern Soul Prom, this year’s opening weekend will feature the first ever Disco Prom, celebrating disco music of the late 1970s during the era of New York’s Studio 54. 
• Three Proms pay tribute to the work and legacies of iconic musicians:  folk-rock artist Nick Drake, jazz singer Sarah Vaughan and film composer Henry Mancini, each of whom have significant anniversaries this year and whose Proms will feature exciting soloists.
• Tinariwen performs a Late Night Prom, featuring their pioneering mix of traditional Tuareg and African music with Western rock music

Booking opens on 18 May 2024, full details from the BBC website.  

Named for the 1996 Pride party on Clapham Common, Omnibus Theatre's 96 Festival is back for its ninth year and we're presenting 'Out of the Shadows' there

In 1996, the Pride festival took place on Clapham Common and attracted 250,000 to party on the Common. In celebration of this, Omnibus Theatre, Clapham created its 96 Festival, a celebration of queerness and theatre. The festival returns to Omnibus for June with a whole range of acts.

We are pleased to be presenting Out of the Shadows at 96 Festival on 16 June 2024, when Ben Vonberg-Clark (tenor), Jonathan Eyers (baritone) and Nigel Foster (piano) will be performing a programme of my music including the cantatas Out of the Shadows, inspired by reading a history of gay life in the 19th century, and Et expecto, about a desperate search for eternal life, plus love songs setting Black American poet Carl Cook and Michelangelo. 

You can get a taster of the programme with Ben Vonberg-Clark and Nigel Foster on YouTube.

Read all about 96 Festival in the online brochure.

A German in Venice - Schütz alongside music he could have heard in Venice, a wonderfully life-affirming disc

Schütz: A German in Venice - Schütz, Monteverdi, Rossi, Grandi, Cavalli, Sances; David de Winter, The Brook Street Band, FHR;
Reviewed 24 April 2024

A wonderfully engaging and life-affirming disc which mixed Schütz's music with pieces he might have heard whilst he was in Venice in the 1620s

Heinrich Schütz had a huge life, born in 1585, the year that Thomas Tallis died and with Palestrina, Victoria and Guerrero still at the peak of their powers, he died in 1672 not long before the births of Telemann, Bach and Handel. His life encompassed the Thirty Years' War (1618-1648), work in Dresden and Copenhagen including writing what might have been Germany's first opera, as well as years of study in Venice.

Schütz would spent two periods in Venice, 1609 to 1612 when he studied with Giovanni Gabrieli (the only person Schütz ever called his teacher) and secondly from 1628 (after Gabrieli's death) when Schütz was fleeing war-torn Dresden. It is this latter period that tantalises as there is no documentation for Schütz meeting Monteverdi yet one can see parallels and Schütz's music must have had an effect in Venice as his Symphoniae Sacrae I was first published there in 1629.

It is this Venetian Schütz that is the focus of Schütz: A German in Venice from tenor David de Winter and The Brook Street Band on FHR. On the disc, de Winter and the Brook Street Band perform motets by Schütz from Symphoniae Sacrae I (1629) and Symphoniae Sacrae II (1647) alongside music by Monteverdi, Salamone Rossi, Giovanni Felice Sances, Alessandro Grandi, and Francesco Cavalli.