Love Lines: deep emotions & island soundscapes in London Sinfonietta's programme of contemporary Scottish music at Kings Place

London Sinfonietta - Love Lines - Electra Perivolaris

Love Lines: Judith Weir, James MacMillan, Peter Maxwell Davies, Electra Perivolaris; London Sinfonietta; Kings Place
Reviewed 6 December 2024

Contemporary Scottish music in a programme centred on Peter Maxwell Davies' 2004 clarinet quintet exploring deep emotions arising from pregnancy, linked by a soundscape by Electra Perivolaris inspired by her home on Arran.

As part of Kings Place's Scotland Unwrapped season, London Sinfonietta presented Love Lines in Hall Two on Friday 6 December 2024, a programme of contemporary Scottish music centred around Peter Maxwell Davies' Hymn to Artemis Locheia alongside music by Judith Weir and James MacMillan, including the world public premiere of MacMillan's Love Bade Me Welcome and the world premiere of Electra Perivolaris' A Wave of Voices. The performers were Jennifer France (soprano), Mark van de Wiel (clarinet), Simon Haram (saxophone) and members of the London Sinfonietta.

The programme was linked by a series of surround sound recordings, using the hall's d&b SoundScape system, created by Electra Perivolaris. These used natural sounds that Perivolaris made around her home on the Scottish Isle of Arran. These moved from purely natural soundscape to sound art, not always restful, so that waves crashing around us morphed into something more disturbing. The way that Perivolaris used the system's surround capabilities gave the soundscapes a surprisingly directional feel.

György Kurtág, Dietrich Fischer Dieskau & Christmas in Regensburg: three very different, very personal recordings projects for baritone Benjamin Appl

Benjamin Appl in recital in 2020

Baritone Benjamin Appl has been having a busy time of it in the recording studio and has three contrasting albums out on Alpha Classics between now and May 2025, the first is The Christmas Album with the Regensburger Domspatzen, Munich Radio Orchestra, with conductor Florian Helgath, the second focuses on György Kurtág, released for the composer's 99th birthday, and the third is Benjamin's celebration of the centenary of his mentor Dietrich Fischer Dieskau.

The Christmas Album has several personal references. From the age of 9 to 18, Benjamin was a member of the Regensburger Domspatzen, and the disc also features Benjamin singing with his mother accompanying him on guitar. For Benjamin it was a personal project and a nice one, working with the boys for the first time since he left the choir. Also, he sees Christmas as a time for reflection, for looking at things with a sense of proportion and for thinking about family. These are important things for someone who travels so much; he sees it as important that he grounds himself in his thoughts, and reminds himself of a different time.

So the disc is a mix of pieces. Some are familiar from performances with his family where his mother plays the guitar for fun, including Alpine songs that they sang as children. Then there is music performed with the Regensburg boys, German traditional music, Bach and other motets. And of course, having lived in London for 15 years, he felt it was important to include music by John Rutter. The disc reflects things of importance to him at Christmas; things from when he was a child, looking back to his years in Regensburg but also now. 

The Christmas Album - Benjamin Appl, Regensburger Domspatzen,

When it comes to Christmas 2024, however, things are less clear. Benjamin is performing as Papageno in Mozart's Die Zauberflöte at Hamburg State Opera [further details]. He has a few days free which will either be spent with family in Bavaria, or in Hamburg. Christmas is the same every year, he is usually travelling and any decision has to be made at the last minute.

Engaging zest: Mike Leigh's production of Gilbert & Sullivan's The Pirates of Penzance returns to ENO with a cast mixing innocence & experience

Gilbert & Sulllivan: The Pirates of Penzance - The Pirates: William Morgan, Gaynor Keeble, Henry Neill, & chorus - English National Opera, 2024 (Photo: Craig Fuller)

Gilbert & Sullivan: The Pirates of Penzance; Isabelle Peters, William Morgan, Richard Suart, John Savournin, Gaynor Keeble, James Creswell, director: Mike Leigh/Sarah Tipple, conductor: Natalie Murray Beale; English National Opera at the London Coliseum
Reviewed 4 December 2024

A welcome opportunity to bask in the many delights of a full-scale performance of Gilbert & Sullivan's comic gem performed with engaging zest by a cast mixing innocence and experience

The Pirates of Penzance was Gilbert & Sullivan's fifth collaboration, though the first two were one-act operas (Thespis and Trial by Jury) and the third was the relatively unsuccessful The Sorcerer. The Pirates of Penzance was only the second major success, coming after HMS Pinafore and being followed by Patience and Iolanthe. The Gilbert's plot of the opera is particularly mad, drawing on ideas from from his shorter earlier pieces. It is, to an extent, an experimental piece, the two  collaborators were still seeing what could be made to work. It lacks the overall sense of atmosphere and place that their best works have, though it includes Gilbert's knack of putting together two or three contrasting ideas and, with ineffable logic, turning things completely on their head.

It is a relatively compact work, and what keeps it in the repertoire is the enormous zest of the whole thing combined with Sullivan's music. Sullivan wrote it working with remarkable speed, and flying in chunks of their first collaboration, Thespis, the results are a flow of melody, and a series of operatic parodies that make the work great fun. Sullivan's operatic parodies, and his use of dramatic recitative bring a wonderful sense of bathos to the work, and help send up the crazier elements in traditional grand opera. It is, perhaps, no surprise, that Verdi's Il Trovatore features heavily in the parodies, but the heroine's coloratura in Poor wand'ring one would clearly have chimed in with many opera lovers. It is a device Sullivan would use again, for instance in Ruddigore, Mad Margaret introduces herself with a parody of an operatic mad scene.

English National Opera has revived Mike Leigh's 2015 production of Gilbert & Sullivan's The Pirates of Penzance. We caught the second performance, on Wednesday 4 December 2024 at the London Coliseum. Sarah Tipple was the revival director and Natalie Murray Beale, conducted, designs are by Alison Chitty, with Richard Suart as the Major General, John Savournin as the Pirate King, William Morgan as Frederic, Isabelle Peters as Mabel, Gaynor Keeble as Ruth, James Creswell as the Sergeant of Police, Henry Neill as Samuel, Bethan Langford as Edith, and Anna Elizabeth Cooper as Kate.

Gilbert & Sulllivan: The Pirates of Penzance - Hymn to Poetry: end of Act I - English National Opera, 2024 (Photo: Craig Fuller)

The production places Alison Chitty's traditional, period costumes complete with pirates straight out of a children's book, against a series of vividly coloured, abstract yet highly dramatic sets that bring out the cartoonish quality of the whole. The production was originally shared with Luxembourg and Saarbrücken and you feel that the production was designed to work well in smaller theatres and sometimes the vast open spaces of the London Coliseum stage, emphasised by the flat blocks of colour in Chitty's designs, rather dwarf the singers. This, of course, leads back to the eternal problem of doing G&S in the London Coliseum and you can't help wishing that ENO would bite the bullet and develop a relationship with a medium sized theatre where operetta could be made to work.

English lyricism and dramatic power: the varied songs of Thomas Pitfield from James Gilchrist and Nathan Williamson

The Songs of Thomas Pitfield: James Gilchrist, Nathan Williamson; Divine Art
Reviewed 3 December 2024

Nearly 30 songs by a composer whose life almost spanned the 20th century. Full of lyrical impulse and often setting his own words, these are songs that sometimes are light and sometimes have remarkable emotional power, in masterly performances from James Gilchrist and Nathan Williamson

Largely self-taught, based firmly in the North-West at the Royal Manchester College of Music, and writing music very much for friends and colleagues, Thomas Pitfield (1903-1999) is a composer who is often overlooked. But if you do so, then you are missing great delights and thankfully there seems to be a resurgence of interest in his music. The Divine Art label is currently having something of a Thomas Pitfield moment, with Thomas Pitfield: String Chamber Music, Thomas Pitfield: His Friends & Contemporaries and The Songs of Thomas Pitfield. Time constraints mean that I have not been able to consider all three discs fully, but I have been listening to The Songs of Thomas Pitfield with great pleasure.

For The Songs of Thomas Pitfield, that great exponent of English song, tenor James Gilchrist is partnered by pianist Nathan Williamson and they perform a selection of 28 of Pitfield's songs, spanning the years 1934 to 1989. Many of the songs were published in an album in 1989 [still available from Forsyths], the songs chosen by Pitfield and with his own illustrations and calligraphy.

I have always been somewhat aware of Thomas Pitfield, he stopped teaching at the Royal Manchester College of Music (RMCM) just before it morphed into the Royal Northern College of Music in 1973, the year I started studying in Manchester. His roots were always in the area, he was born in Bolton to a working-class family, and worked in a drawing-office of an engineering firm till he had enough money to study at the Royal Manchester College of Music for a year. Further study at the Bolton School of Art led to teaching posts across the Midlands, but music remained his main focus and from 1947 to 1973 combined teaching at the RMCM with composition, his pupils included John Ogden, John McCabe and Ronald Stevenson.

A journey through layers and roots in the pursuit of a revelatory vision: Simon Thacker's Songs of the Roma

Described as "a journey through layers and roots in the pursuit of a revelatory vision", classical guitarist Simon Thacker's new disc, Songs of the Roma, (released this week on Slap the Moon Records) draws on his immersion in the rich musical legacy of the Balkan and Romanian Romany, their origins on the Indian subcontinent. The album features Simon Thacker on classical guitar and Justyna Jablonska on cello, alongside special guests from Poland and Hungary, Lublin based singer-violinist Masha Natanson, cimbalom virtuoso Gyula "Julius" Csik and double bassist Gyula Lázár, both from Budapest.

The album features new creative versions of songs that originated from Roma writers and also existed as folksongs before being transformed by the Roma (often best known in their Roma form). The album features eight tracks including two new pieces one of which, Phirado is the video featured above. Simon Thacker says of this, "I think that every album (of mine) should contain at least one track that opens a portal to another world for future exploration. Both Jolta and Phirado, especially, appear to offer this possibility."

Phirado is a Romani word of many meanings: nomad, vagrant, wanderer, provocative, the past participle of phirel 'walk', and courted or wooed. Multiple meanings, many layers.

Further details from Simon Thacker's website.

What are you waiting for: Guildhall School announces its Spring 2025 programme of evening courses

Guildhall School of Music & Drama
Introduction to Arts Evaluation (Photo: Dave Buttle)

The Guildhall School of Music and Drama has announced its Spring 2025 programme of evening courses in drama, writing, music, creative industry, and other art forms. Many are online, so there is no excuse.

These evening courses are for ages 18 and up and include six drama courses, two drama/writing courses, one course on The Secrets of Stagecraft, three music courses and two creative industry courses. 

There is a new music course,  Writing for an Orchestra: Intermediate which is online, led by composer, teacher, music copyist, conductor and cinephile Peter Longworth, and the course includes a one-to-one session with the tutor. The other two music courses are Writing for an Orchestra: Beginners being in-person and the third music course is Film Music Composition: Intermediate.

Also of interest, perhaps for those hoping to pivot their career are the two Skills for the Creative Industries  courses, both online - Introduction to Arts Evaluation and Introduction to Event and Production Management.

Full details from the Guildhall School website.

Nevill Holt Festival announces five-year partnership with Opera North beginning with a co-production of Mozart's Cosi fan tutte

The 17th century stables at Nevill Holt which now house the theatre

Following a sharp pivot after the abbreviated 2023 opera season, the Nevill Holt Festival was inaugurated this year under the direction of James Dacre. Dacre brought an impressive offering together in a relatively short time including opera, classical music, jazz and contemporary music, alongside visual arts, talks and literature, including Melly Still's new production of Mozart's The Magic Flute, with Finnegan Downie Dear conducting Britten Sinfonia, Shadwell Opera premiering The Devil's Den by British-Canadian composer Isabella Gellis; Shadwell Opera's first full-length commission [see my interview].

The results have been impressive, 12,000 people attend more than 60 events during the 2024 festival, 75% of them for the first time and the festival will return in 2025 from 30 May - 22 June.

2025 will also see the inauguration of a new five-year partnership between the festival and Opera North, beginning with a new co-production of Mozart's Cosi fan tutte which will run in the theatre at Nevill Holt from 6-8 and 10-12 June. The partnership with Opera North will continue in future editions of the festival.

General Director, Opera North, Laura Canning commented, "This mutually beneficial partnership will give Opera North the opportunity to deliver great opera in a new context, while also enabling more learning and engagement activity to be developed in the area, reaching out to, and connecting with, the wider community. We look forward to working with the organisers to build on the success of an event which is rapidly becoming a major fixture in the UK arts calendar."

Further details from the Nevill Holt website.

A sense of place, engagement & sheer enjoyment: In Copisteria del Conte exploring late 18th century chamber music from Genoa

In Copisteria del Conte: Michele Gallucci, Gasparo Arnaldi, Emanuele Barbella, Carlo Ferrari, Pietro Nardini, Luigi Boccherini; Jacopo Ristori, Sara de Vries, Antoinette Lohmann, Giorgos Samoilis, Viola de Hoog, Gied van Oorschot, Jesse Solway, Anna Pontz, Earl Christy; Snakewood Editions
Reviewed 2 December 2024

Focusing on a particular time and place, this disc explores music in the Genoese palazzos of the late 18th century through music copied by one firm. The result is not dry at all but has a wonderful sense of place, engagement and sheer enjoyment

Records often take rather an overview of repertoire, concentrating on global trends or focusing on composers whose reputations have stood the test of time. Research can focus on particular neglected composers, but a new disc from Italian cellist Jacopo Ristori.

In Copisteria del Conte: Il diletto musicale nei palazzi genovesi on Snakewood Editions takes us to a particular time and place. Genoa in the late 1700s and the music produced by the music copyist Count Taccioli. Jacopo Ristori (cello) is joined by colleagues from the Gut String Quartet, Sara de Vries (violin/viola) and Antoinette Lohmann (violin), plus Giorgos Samoilis (violin), Viola de Hoog (cello), Gied van Oorschot (cello), Jesse Solway (contrabass), Anna Pontz (psaltery) and Earl Christy (theorbo) for a programme of chamber music by Michele Gallucci, Gasparo Arnaldi, Emanuele Barbella, Carlo Ferrari, Pietro Nardini, and Luigi Boccherini. There are quartets, duets for two cellos, sonatas for cello, sonatas for two violins, and even sonatas for psaltery, violin and cello.

Most of the composers are unknown or lesser known, but what all the pieces have in common is that they were copied in Count Taccioli's bustling workshop for other aristocratic performers to play. That is where the title comes from, In the Count's workshop: music delights from the Genoese palazzi.

A memorable & touching portrait of an oft-misunderstood composer: words & music by Gustav Holst at the London Song Festival

Gustav Holst by Herbert Lambert, bromide print, 1921
NPG P109 © National Portrait Gallery, London

The songs of Gustav Holst: Katie Bray, Ruairi Bowen, Nigel Foster; London Song Festival at Hinde Street Methodist Church
Reviewed 29 November 2024

A portrait of Gustav Holst in words and music, interleaving his varied, fascinating and sometimes experimental songs with the his own words to create a vivid picture

The London Song Festival continued its exploration of the Class of 1874 at Hinde Street Methodist Church on Friday 29 November 2024 when the festival's artistic director, pianist Nigel Foster, was joined by mezzo-soprano Katie Bray, tenor Ruairi Bowen and speaker Martin Handley for a programme exploring Gustav Holst's life and songs. 25 of the composer's songs were interleaved with readings by Martin Handley, drawing on Holst's letter and lecture notes, and Imogen Holst's biography of her Father.

Holst was a fascinating and intriguing man, with strong views of the importance of music in society, and his own words were frequently punchy and trenchant, yet engaging. His description of one of his early Thaxted Festivals with the music making seeming to explode around the town for 14 hours a day, often spontaneously, demonstrated the way he was able to inspire those he taught to go beyond themselves. One of the memorable quotes from his own words 'Music has the power to bring people together'.

There was an experimental edge to some of his later music, and he was constantly questing, rarely writing the same thing twice. He does not seem to have had a 'habit of songs' in the way that his friend and Ralph Vaughan Williams had. Though the voice was important to Holst, there is a space of nearly 20 years when Holst virtually stopped writing for voice and piano at all; there is little major between his Hymns from the Rig Veda of 1908 and the Humbert Wolfe settings of 1929, though there are a group of songs for soprano or tenor and violin. 

Music for Holst was a serious business, and he never put humour in it, nor was he interested in sentimentality. Few of the songs we heard had the sort of emotional intensity that we get from his finest orchestral music.

An evening of compelling and involving theatre: Britten, Weill and Ravel triple bill at the Royal College of Music

Ravel: L'heure espagnole - Alexandria Moon, Edward Birchinall, Benedict Munden, Marcus Swietlicki (part) - Royal College of Music (Photo: Chris Christodoulou)

Britten: Les illuminations, Weill: Chansons des Quais; Ravel: L'heure espagnole; Georgia Melville, Cecilia Zhang, Alexandria Moon, Marcus Swietlicki, Benedict Munden, Sam Hird, Edward Birchinall, director: Ella Marchment, conductor: Michael Rosewell, Royal College of Music Opera Studio; Britten Theatre, Royal College of Music
Reviewed 27 November 2024

Three contrasting French texted pieces, drawn together in an evening of vibrant, thought-provoking performances which very much created an evening about the female gaze

The latest opera offering from the Royal College of Music is a triple bill presented by their Opera Studio which, in some ways, could be seen as an intriguingly imaginative answer to the question 'what do you programme with Ravel's L'heure espagnole?'. Director Ella Marchment has put together a triple bill of French-texted works, adding two works that are not strictly operatic and are not by French composers, Britten's Les illuminations and Chansons des Quais, a 2017 sequence of Kurt Weill's music created out of his incidental music for Jacques Deval's play, Marie Galante, originally written in 1934.

The evening was largely double cast, and we caught the performance on 27 November 2024 at the Britten Theatre, when the Royal College of Music Opera Studio presented Britten's Les illuminations with soprano Georgia Melville, Weill's Chansons des Quais with Cecilia Zhang, and Ravel's L'heure espagnole with Alexandria Moon as Concepcion, plus Marcus Swietlicki, Benedict Munden, Sam Hird and Edward Birchinall. Michael Rosewell conducted, Ella Marchment directed with designs by Cordelia Chisholm. Adam Haigh was the movement director and assistant director for Chansons de Quais.

Britten: Les illuminations - Georgia Melville - Royal College of Music (Photo: Chris Christodoulou)

Celebrating Reimann's Lear plus Janáček's Jenůfa, Cherubini's Medea: operatic highlights in Prague

Reimann: Lear
Dietrich Fischer Dieskau in the title role
in Munich

German composer Aribert Reimann died in March 2024 at the age of 88, leaving behind an amazing legacy including ten operas including Die Vogelscheuchen with a libretto by Günter Grass, the Kafka-based Das Schloß and of course Lear. Premiered in 1978, Lear was written at the suggestion of baritone Dietrich Fischer Dieskau who performed the work in Munich. 

Prague's 2024/25 opera season ends with a new production of Reimann's Lear in June 2025 at the State Opera. Not only is this the first production of the opera since Reimann's death, but it coincides with the centenary of Dietrich Fischer Dieskau who was born in May 1925. The new production of Lear is directed by Barbora Horáková Joly, who directed Verdi's Luisa Miller at English National Opera in 2020 [see my review], and whose production of Verdi's Un giorno di regno we caught in Heidenheim in 2017 [see my review]. The musical director for Lear is Hermann Bäumer with Tómas Tómasson in the title role.

Another highlight of the Prague opera season next year will be a new production of Janáček's Jenůfa at the National Theatre directed by Calixto Bieito who directed acclaimed production of Janáček’s Katya Kabanova at the National Theatre. Conducted by Norway’s Stefan Veselka, the production features Alžběta Poláčková as Jenůfa, Dana Burešová as Kostelnička Buryjovka, Aleš Briscein as Laca Klemeň and Martin Šrejma as Števa Buryja.

Also of interest and perhaps worth a weekend away, in January 2025, a new production Cherubini's Medea (in the Italian version) opens at the Estates Theatre, directed by Roland Schwab, conducted by Robert Jindra with Svetlana Aksenova and Evan LeRoy Johnson [whom we caught as Don Jose in Glyndebourne's new production of Bizet's Carmen at the BBC Proms, see my review].

Full details from the National Theatre's website.

Christmas with George Frideric and Jimi: the Handel Hendrix House celebrates the season

Handel Hendrix House (Photo: Christopher Ison)

We don't know how George Frideric Handel celebrated Christmas, but certainly Queen Charlotte brought the idea of the Christmas tree to England when she married King George III in 1761, decorated yew branches being traditional in her native Mecklenurg-Strelitz, and by 1800 she had set up a Christmas tree in Queen’s Lodge, Windsor.

So, we can perhaps forgive Handel Hendrix House for celebrating the season with a Christmas tree and much else besides. From now until 22 December 2024, the house is in decorated festival mode with both Handel’s 18th-century rooms and Hendrix’s 1960s flat, bedecked with decorations. There is live music on Fridays and Saturdays, with late openings on Thursdays Late featuring mulled cider or mulled apple juice and plus the Meyer Dancers offering lessons in go-go dancing in Jimi’s bedroom!

More immediately of interest perhaps is an immersive display about the composition of Handel’s Messiah, which was written in the house (in 1741), and Handel's newly restored kitchen will be laid out for a feast.

Full details from the Handel Hendrix House website.

From Don Juan to Persia and beyond: Emily Hazrati appointed Associate Composer at Oxford International Song Festival

Emily Hazrati (Photo: May Chi)

Oxford International Song Festival has announced that Emily Hazrati will be the Associate Composer for 2024/26, following on from previous Associate Composers, Cheryl Frances-Hoad and Alex Ho. 

At this year's festival soprano Ella Taylor and pianist Jocelyn Freeman gave the premiere of two of Hazrati's songs inspired by Byron's Don Juan with texts by Joseph Spence [see my review of Taylor and Freeman's performance of two more of Hazrati and Spence's Don Juan songs at Song Easel].

Established in 2019, the Associate Composer scheme is a multi-year role involving three commissions, increasing in scope each year, and showcasing the composer's other work at the Festival

In 2025, Hazrati will create a new song-cycle in collaboration with writer Nazli Tabatabai-Khatambakhsh inspired by stories and characters from Ferdowsi’s Shahnameh (Book of Kings), the national epic of ancient Persia. And a large-scale work will follow in 2026.

Oxford International Song Festival 2025 will take place 10 – 25 October 2025, full details from the festival website.

Sight and sound: Holst's The Planets superbly reimagined for the Father Willis organ at Salisbury Cathedral by John Challenger with a mesmerising film

The organ in Salisbury Cathedral was originally built in 1876-77 by Henry Willis ("Father" Willis), conservatively rebuilt by Henry Willis III in 1934 so that no tonal alterations were made and no pipes removed, the organ has been sensitively looked after since then and as a result, aside from small changes of layout, mechanics and specification, the organ remains as Willis left it in 1877. The tonal scheme has remained unaltered, with the majority of the pipework and soundboards dating from 1876. The instrument retains its historic pitch, and the majority of pipework remains cone-tuned, unique for a cathedral organ in England.

John Challenger at Salisbury Cathedral (Photo: Ben Tomlin)

As such, the organ gives us a glimpse of the sound world of the later 19th century English organ tradition which was moving the instrument toward symphonic dimensions. Transcriptions were popular; producing organ versions of the symphonic repertoire is something whose popularity has waxed and waned. On a new recording from Salisbury Cathedral, assistant director of music John Challenger demonstrates that the transcription is alive an well, with a version of Holst's The Planets created for and played on the Father Willis organ.

What makes the project just that little bit special is that the performance is accompanied by a superb film, by Ben Tomlin, which mixes footage of Challenger playing with hypnotic images of the cathedral at night. The film is available online, a terrifically generous gesture. If you do watch the film on YouTube, be sure to visit the cathedral's donation page too.

Challenger's transcription works because he does not try to make the 19th century Willis organ sound like Holst's large orchestra. Who could. Instead he reinvents Holst's brilliant orchestrations in organ terms and the result has its share of bravura moments as hands and feet rattle around the consoles and pedalboard, but has plenty of sonic magic. The transcription inevitably lacks some of the fleet dazzle, the ability to turn on the head of a pin, that characterises Holst's orchestra but instead there is a brooding majesty, and a philosophical profoundness to the music, with Challenger and the organ bringing out the essential melancholy and vein of darkness that there is in much of Holst's music.

It helps that this is accompanied by images of the cathedral which are anything but simple picturesque views, and which help deepen our perceptions.

Melodies without Borders: two Turkish musicians mixing lyric melancholy with 19th century bravura

Ferec Necef at St Nicholas Church, Chiswick

Melodies without Borders: Tchaikovsky, Saint-Saens, Faure, Weber, Dvorak, Sarasate, Rachmaninoff, Popper; Ferec Necef, Rasim Yagiz Ilhan; St Nicholas Church, Chiswick
15 November 2024

Two Turkish musicians come together for a wide-ranging recital of music for cello and piano with a bit of 19th-century flair

Cellist Ferec Necef was born in Turkey to a musical family who had immigrated from Baku in Azerbaijan. His training has included study in his native Turkey along with Goldsmiths College, and his experience includes performing with the Borusan Istanbul Philharmonic Orchestra, and more recently in London with Brent Opera and London City Orchestra, with this latter group he took part in the concert in London to celebrate the 100th anniversary of the Republic of Türkiye. 

With London-based Turkish pianist Rasim Yagiz Ilhan, Ferec Necef gave a lunchtime recital at St Nicholas Church in Chiswick on 15 November 2024. Beyond the well-known concert halls, there is a wide network of admirable smaller venues, often run by volunteers, which provide a wide net of performances that enable up and coming artists to make themselves known.

For this recital, Necef put together a programme of familiar and less familiar items by Tchaikovsky, Saint-Saens, Faure, Weber, Sarasate, Rachmininoff and Popper, mixing transcriptions with original items. There was quite a tradition, 19th-century feel to the programme yet also a willingness to show the cello as an instrument going beyond the usual.

Community, creativity, the power of music and the importance of brass banding: Martin Green's play KELI debuts in 2025

Martin Green at the National Mining Museum Scotland, in Newtongrange (Photo: Sandy Butler)

Marking 40 years since the miners' strikes and featuring a sharp, hilarious script and live brass score by Ivor Novello winner Martin Green, KELI is a gripping show about community, creativity, the power of music and the importance of brass banding. 

In 2022, having immersed himself in the world of the brass band, the communities, the competition and the legacy of coal and Martin Green created a documentary on BBC Radio 4, Love, Spit And Valve Oil, where he explored the world of brass bands, discovered why banding in Britain has outlasted the pits, the picket lines and the closures.  For generations, the self-contained world of the bands has been a refuge, a community-building practice and a source of healing.

Inspired by the conversations Green had with people during the creation of the Love, Spit and Valve Oil series on Radio 4 he created an audio drama, KELI which was released last December, along with an album, Split the Air.

This has now developed into a stage play, with Martin Green making his playwrighting debut. The play, KELI, will be performed by the National Theatre of Scotland and will be touring Scotland during 2025. KELI explores the world of Scottish brass bands and the ex-mining communities they serve, and explores this through the character of Keli, a teenage horn player - a fiery, sharp-witted teenager living in a former mining town. Coal means little to Keli, but the mines left music in the blood of the town. As the best player her brass band has ever had, music is easy. Everything else is a fight. Feeling trapped in small-town life, pressure mounts.

Martin Green is perhaps best known amongst lovers of folk-music as the virtuoso accordionist in the visionary folk trio Lau. He has also written the music for KELI, which will feature brass band music from his album Split the Air. Through collaboration with Whitburn Band, and other local brass bands around Scotland, this production continues to sustain ongoing relationships with Scottish brass bands and the communities they represent.

KELI will preview in Stirling before opening at the Lyceum Theatre, Edinburgh in May and tour to Dundee Rep Theatre, Perth Theatre and Tramway, Glasgow in 2025, 40 years after the miners’ strike of 1984-85 and will reach audiences across the country who belong to communities that were hugely affected by strike.  

Full details from the National Theatre of Scotland's website.

Sarasota Opera Concert Performance: The Music of Giuseppe Verdi

The Music of Giuseppe Verdi - Victor Starsky
Sarasota Opera (Photo: Sarasota Opera)

Verdi: excerpts from La forza del destino, Aida, Un ballo in maschera, Attila, La Traviata, Don Carlo, I Lombardi alla prima crociata, Rigoletto; Rochelle Bard, Young Bok Kim, Virginia Mims, Jean Carlos Rodriguez, Victor Starsky, Sarasota Orchestra, Victor DeRenzi; Sarasota Opera at Sarasota Opera House
Reviewed by Robert J Carreras, 15 November 2024

Having become the only opera company in the world to have presented every work by Verdi, Sarasota Opera continues its exploration of his music. In his latest Letter from Florida, Robert J Carreras reports on Sarasota's concert, The Music of Giuseppe Verdi

Maestro Victor DeRenzi has Giuseppe Verdi right where he wants him. The conductor's world is inching closer and closer to Verdi's world, creating an intimate bond across time and musical language. Some eight years after completing (2016) Sarasota Opera's endeavor to play every note Verdi wrote for opera, now DeRenzi manages to collect a set of complete-package singing-actors to further express the composer's intentions. With lots of space and the necessary tools to grow, each of these has the chops to one day be their generation's Verdians.

More and varied hearings of tenor Victor Starsky from Queens will bring to light whether he is on track to write his own ticket. In theater, Starsky's burnished, round, and ear-catching overtone series turns more compact into the passaggio, then blooms with enough brass to make things interesting in the higher reaches. It is a sizable tenor, the kind for which the more florid singing required in the bel canto repertoire is not ideally suited. Such roles hover with cantabile lines right at the break of the voice. No matter, Starsky will have wide access to a plethora of roles he is well-suited for, like Radames. After the finely sung passages of "Celeste Aida," the tenor took the last phrase (before repeating sans high note as Verdi wrote) "un trono vicino al sol" in one breath. Word has it he has a high C too. Victor Starsky will be returning to Sarasota Opera for the Winter season as Stiffelio, Verdi's opera of the same name.

The music is there, we only have to open our eyes: pianist Alexandra Dariescu on 100 Nutcrackers, advocating for women composers & a new direction at the Leeds International Piano Competition

Alexandra Dariescu (Photo: Nick Rutter)

Back in 2018, I met up with pianist Alexandra Dariescu [see my interview] to chat about The Nutcracker and I, her innovative stage performance blending live piano music and dance with digital animation, which she had debuted in 2017. Recently, I met up with Alexandra again to celebrate the fact that she reaches the 100th performance of The Nutcracker and I on 26 November 2024 at the Barbican's Milton Court and to talk about her continuing advocacy for music by women composers, along with developing a new string to her bow at this year's Leeds International Piano Competition.

Alexandra developed the Nutcracker project partly thanks to her participation in the Guildhall School of Music and Drama's Creative Entrepreneurs programme, and when we met up recently, it was in a gap during her coaching at the Guildhall School, where she was working with students who are 24 to 27. She feels that this is the right time for them to explore. She can help them open up their horizons to include contemporary music, music by women and artists of colour. She finds that the younger generation is more open to exploring, and she finds it rather different to her time at college. She feels, in a strange way, that the pandemic made people more curious.

She continues to have a thirst and curiosity as an artist, wanting to learn and develop constantly, and as time passes her interests change. Also, she finds people are now a lot more open-minded. She feels artists should reinvent themselves. She finds herself constantly learning from the orchestras that she plays with. Except for the UK, tours usually involve playing the same programme with an orchestra three times, and each one is different. She and the orchestral musicians get to know each other. Recently in Australia, she was playing Mozart and after three performances she and the orchestra reached a real chamber music feel.

Alexandra Dariescu: The Nutcracker and I

First public performance of Imogen Holst's Violin Concerto

Violinist Midori Komachi at Imogen Holst's house (Photo: Britten Pears Arts)
The bungalow designed and built specifically for the composer by modernist architect HT ‘Jim’ Cadbury-Brown in a corner of his garden, reflecting the architect’s own Japanese-influenced house opposite

On Sunday 24 November 2024, violinist Midori Komachi joins the Elgar Sinfonia, conductor Adrian Brown at St Andrew’s Church, Holborn for the first public performance of Imogen Holst's Concerto for Violin and String Orchestra, written in 1935. 

The work uses Irish traditional airs and melodies from The Petrie Collection (published in 1855 and regarded as one of the most important nineteenth-century collections of traditional Irish music), perhaps reflecting Imogen Holst's enthusiasm for Folk Dance and Song reflected in her work at the Folk Dance and Song Society. The concerto received its first performance privately with Elsie Avril as soloist and the composer herself conducting the London Symphony Orchestra at an RCM Patron’s Fund rehearsal. But this does not seem to have led anywhere.

Midori Komachi discovered the work via the composer's manuscript which is now in the Archive, Britten Pears Arts in Aldeburgh, near to the composer’s home in Aldeburgh. From 1952 Imogen Holst worked with Britten, as his assistant and later as joint artistic director of the Aldeburgh Festival. Thanks to Midori Komachi's championship, the work is being published by Faber Music. In 2022, I chatted to Midori about one of her earlier British music projects, RVW's music for violin and piano [see my interview]

The concert on 24 November will also feature Finzi's Eclogue for piano and strings with soloist Drew Steanson and music bv Elgar.

Further details from WeGotTickets.

A return to Manchester: ENO announces the first wave of its city-wide collaborations

Manchester Opera House - Photograph by Mike Peel (www.mikepeel.net)

Regional arts provision is a curious thing, with different countries opting for radically different models. In Germany, most decent sized cities have a theatre that produces a mix of spoken drama, dance and opera, this is the main access to music theatre for most people. In the UK, since the 19th century, opera has been presented by touring companies, tours often being achieved by having the orchestra supplemented by local musicians (a model now used by the London Opera Company). Both these models have limitations, in terms of efficiency and musical standards.

There is something essentially curious about touring opera, putting an entire production in a van and taking it around (along with all the performers). But it is a very old model. After the first Ring Cycles at Bayreuth in 1876, Wagner sold the production and the impresario put it all in a special train and toured Europe with it. This was how people came to know the Ring Cycle. The naming of the Opera House in Manchester dates from the 1920s when companies were presenting opera there, and Beecham conducted the Ring Cycle there.

This was still happing in my youth. When I was a student in Manchester during the 1970s there was no idea venue for full-scale opera performance but companies made do with the Opera House and the Palace Theatre. English National Opera, Welsh National Opera and Glyndebourne Opera made regular visits to the city, performing in these theatres. During the three years that I was there I saw Reginald Goodall conducting The Valkyrie and Twilight of the Gods, Britten's Gloriana, Donizetti's Maria Stuarda, Strauss' Der Rosenkavalier with ENO, Wagner's The Flying Dutchman and Mozart's Le nozze di Figaro with WNO and Strauss' Capriccio and Stravinsky's The Rake's Progress with Glyndebourne.

Plans were announced in 2008 for the Royal Ballet and the Royal Opera to be resident at the refurbished Palace Theatre, but by 2010 fundings cuts meant that the plan was shelved. In the current atmosphere of either/or in Arts Funding, touring to Manchester has been reduced to a UK single company, Opera North (worth seeing and certainly not negligible), with touring also from the impresario Ellen Kent presenting international companies. Though the theatrical provision is far better with the refurbishment of the Palace Theatre and the building of the Lowry. The focus on UK regional opera companies has meant ENO looking increasingly and unfairly London-centric, but has also lead to the farcical situation where with the reduction in WNO funding, Liverpool has lots its visiting company. 

Now ENO is planning to base itself in Manchester, creating projects in the city. The company has now announced its plans for a focus on Manchester, with the first wave of plans and collaborations in the city aiming to be fully established there by 2029. Not surprisingly, the announced plans avoid any suggesting of putting the Ring Cycle in a van or on a train and shipping it to Manchester, the announced projects are all far more community based.

• From this Autumn, there will be a city-wide expansion of the ENO Breathe programme, ENO’s award-winning creative health programme, originally created for people recovering from COVID.  This new iteration of the ENO Breathe programme will support people living with other respiratory conditions.
• September 2024: ENO Engage will expand their national free music-making programme Finish This…, designed for primary, secondary and SEND schools to the city-region, working with 30 schools across Greater Manchester with further expansion in 2025/26
• Spring 2025: a new collaboration with Factory International through its award-winning Factory Academy training programme, offering vocational training opportunities in opera for young people living in Greater Manchester from backgrounds underrepresented in the arts, including opportunities as part of the creative and technical teams delivering Glass’s Einstein on the Beach.
• Summer 2025: Perfect Pitch, a celebration of opera and community football in a co-creation between Salford-based outdoor arts specialists, Walk the Plank, ENO, community groups and local football teams in the city-region. 
• Summer 2025: A special performance will be presented for Manchester Classical festival at The Bridgewater Hall, a collaboration between the Chorus of English National Opera and The Hallé.
• July 2025: The University of Manchester and ENO will work together on Tuning into Opera. This invites the people of Greater Manchester to explore the opportunities for the artform and discuss what it means to have an opera company based in the city-region. The first public conversation event will take place at Manchester International Festival at Aviva Studios
• September 2025: the creation of a Greater Manchester Youth Opera Company in partnership with Greater Manchester and Blackburn with Darwen Music Hub, working with young people aged 13-19 from across the city-region from backgrounds underrepresented and underserved in the arts. ENO will work with Royal Northern College of Music and a range of other partners to pilot the project.
• October 2025: the beginning of a new partnership with the Lowry, with the opening ENO’s production of Benjamin Britten’s Albert Herring
• February 2026: a staged concert version of Mozart’s Così fan tutte with the Chorus and Orchestra of ENO, will be presented at The Bridgewater Hall 
• Spring 2026: of new work development programmes, designed to champion innovation in opera-making. The RNCM and ENO will launch a Creative Incubator, providing space, mentoring and performance platforms for artists and composers to develop new operatic work. Opera Factory GM will see ENO and Factory International co-create an ongoing series of cross-disciplinary research and development labs designed to explore new forms of opera. 
• May 2026: the UK premiere of Angel’s Bone by Chinese American composer Du Yun and librettist Royce Vavrek. This is a dark fable exploring modern-day slavery and human trafficking, produced by ENO in collaboration with Factory International, BBC Philharmonic Orchestra, and presented at Aviva Studios
• Spring 2027 will be the premiere of an immersive production of Philip Glass and Robert Wilson’s opera Einstein on the Beach. Following on from the success of his productions of Satyagraha and Akhnaten at ENO, this will be directed by Improbable Theatre’s Phelim McDermott. 

Further details from ENO's website.