Preparations

Last night we had the last rehearsal in London for the Oxford Cranmer memorial concert on Saturday. Logistics meant that I had to rehearse some of my own pieces, which was a great novelty. I have not conducted much recently, and on reflection I think I still prefer sitting listening to someone else shaping my music. I have never really had a strong urge to go out and conduct/perform my pieces, I much prefer the role of arranging/fixing performances.

Tomorrow, the baritone soloist for the Salomon concert on Thursday flies in and we start rehearsals with him.

The dining room table at home is starting to acquire a series of piles of paper; music to take, lists of things to remember, instructions from the on-line box offices we're using (TicketsOxford in Oxford and TicketWeb in London). There are still some last minute details to sort out and the vexed question of locating a set of stands for the singers to use. Not to mention the rather nail-biting issue of watching the progress of ticket sales on-line!

Irreverent thoughts

The disc I'm reviewing at the moment includes a performance of Gorecki's lovely motet Totus Tuus. I performed in last year with London Concord Singers and its a piece that calls for discipline and control. But whilst rehearsing the endlessly repeated Maria, Maria, I had the irreverent desire to do an arrangement of it which, at the most unsuitable moments, broke into snatches of Maria from West Side Story and How do you solve a problem like Maria? from The Sound of Music. Impossible of course, you'd never solve the copyright issues, but somehow each time I hear Totus Tuus now, I hear these other songs bouncing away in the background.

Review of Attila

My review of Saturday's Attila, performed by the Chelsea Opera Group is now on-line here, at Music and Vision.

Thais (again)

Massenet's opera Thais seems to be rather in the air at the moment; Grange Park Opera are doing it in June (yes, we're going). Now the Chatelet Theatre in Paris have sent out details of their 2006/2007 season and it includes a series of performances of the opera, with Renee Fleming in the title role and Gerald Finley in the rather intractable role of Athanael (he has to spend rather a lot of time being good, which is always rather difficult in opera and can end up coming over as unsufferably priggish).

Now I've just been reading obituaries for the soprano Anna Moffo who, in my mind, is associated with the opera. This is because in the late '70s when we saw performances of Thais at the Royal Northern College of music, the only available recording had Moffo in the title role. It wasn't ideal (she sang the part using a rather annoying sexy vibrato). But then when Beverley Sills recorded the role, one critic commented that Sills sounded like a barmaid!

Recent CD Reviews

Two more reviews on MusicWeb-International.

My review of Portsmouth Cathedral's recording of music from Nelson's funeral is here

Not a disc to be dipped into, but listened to carefully it will transport you to
an earlier era. ...

And my review of songs by English Women composers is here

Will appeal to many simply by the composers represented and that
song-cycle by Ivor Gurney. Wonderfully communicative performances but
listen first to see how you feel about Colwell’s voice. ...

Yesterday was rather schizophrenic as I was simultaneously working on arrangements for 3 different concerts. For next Saturday's Cranmer concert, in Oxford, this involved making lists and printing the programmes. We've had one rehearsal for this and there's another one next week, so things are progressing nicely. For the orchestral concert, at St. James's Piccadilly on March 23rd, I have been finding Studio space for the baritone soloist, David Greiner, to rehearse. He's flying in on Friday, having spent the week rehearsing an operatic triple bill in Germany.

Then at the same time, I'm finalising the music for the concert at the Chelsea Festival in June, so the dining table is currently covered with the necessary scores so that I can get a set to Paul Ayres, the conductor. Of course, with my own pieces, especially the new one, I keep tinkering with them and must come to a cut off point and decide that no more work can be done before the concert.

One feature of the concert, which is themed on music dedicated to the virgin mary, is a sequence which I hope will alternate plainchant and organ music based on chant; I've currently got some organ volumes out of the Library, some lovely 17th century organ Magnificats by Titelouze; all I need now are the plainchant magnificats and tracking those down seems to be rather a trial.

Last night we went see Chelsea Opera Group at the Cadogan Hall in Chelsea, the first time we've been to the hall since the opening celebrations. It is a fine venue, though the forces needed for Verdi's Attila stretched the platform to its limits. As ever with concert halls, the anciliary spaces are not always ideal; the access to the stairs leading up to the auditorium are a bit cramped when the hall is full, as are the toilets. These are areas it is difficult to get right, after all the Coliseum rebuild has left it with brand new Gents toilets which are larger than the old ones but are remarkably awkwardly designed with a built in bottle neck.

My review of the opera performance will appear in Music and Vision in due course.

Recent CD Review

My review of Elisabeth Speiser's Carissimi disc (including the Mary Stuart Lament) is here on MusicWeb-International.

Much to admire ... wonderfully vivid. If you can live with Speiser’s vibrato
then I can recommend the disc. ...

I heard today that my song, The Sleep was premiered on Saturday 4th March. David Robertson organised and evening at the King's School in Worcester which explored the life of the poet Elizabeth Barrett Browning in words and music. My song sets Barrett Browning's poem of that name.

It was written when I was having one of my periodic trawls of out-of-copyright poets; this was the only poem of Barrett Browning's that appealed to me, I'm afraid to say. The remainder were either too famous or a little too Victorian. The song was written as a present for a singer with whom I was working in 2001.

Last night we had the first rehearsal for the Cranmer concert on March 18th; the first run through of the music with the choir and conductor Paul Brough. It was the first time I'd worked with Paul so it was all very exciting.

Opera Review - Sir John in Love

My review of Sir John in Love is now online at Music and Vision, here.

First Sunday in Lent today, so we stop using the organ at church and change from plainchant Credo III to plainchant Credo I. I particularly love Credo I, it dates from the 11th century whereas Credo III is 17th century.

Last night's Sir John in Love at the Coliseum was wonderfully entertaining and a review will appear in due course. Mistress Page was played by Marie McLaughlin who I remember first singing Musetta (in La Boheme) in Scottish Opera in the late 70's .

Xenakis

The Ancient Monuments Society Newsletter has just arrived; not the most obvious of music-related things. But one of the things they note is the arrival of a new biography of Xenakis, but Nouritza Matossian(from www.centralbooks.co.uk). Xenakis trained as an engineer and worked with Le Courbusier; the mathematics he used on Le Corbusier's Le Tourette fed into Xenakis's first orchestral work Metastaseis. It would be rather fun to try and link up performances of Xenakis's music with Le Corbusier buildings. A fascinatingly different take on gesamkunstwerk.

I'm continuing to make progress with my series of motets, Tempus per Annum; the motets for Easter Sunday and the Sunday after Easter came off the press with remarkable ease. Surprisingly they've both turned out rather contemplative rather then shouting with joy, which is rather fun. The current motet, for the 2nd Sunday after Easter is another Jubilate Deo ominis terra, for the English version I'm ringing the changes and using the text Shout with joy to God, a little happy-clappy perhaps but it makes a change.

The Psalm in the middle is rather curious, I still don't quite know what to make of the text Say unto God, How terrible are thy works, O Lord! in the multitude of thy strength thy enemies shall lie to thee. . There's a lovely irony about the phrase, 'Say unto God, How terrible are thy works', because terrible, like awful, has rather changed its meaning in current parlance; so nowadays the phrase makes you think of Kevin McCloud on Grand Designs excoriating the shoddy work of a builder. But as for 'in the multitude of thy strength thy enemies shall lie to thee.', why do we (or God for that matter) need to worry about God's enemies lying to him. Its moments like that that I wish my Latin were better (but as the Latin is a translation anyway we're not much closer, perhaps I should learn Hebrew).

Recent CD Review

My review of the Oxford Camerata's disc of choral music by Gombert is here on MusicWeb.

A fine programme, beautifully performed and I hope that it enables us to
hear much more of the music of this underrated composer....

MusicWebLog

I keep a separate WebLog of the discs I review and it is published from time to time on MusicWeb International, the latest version is here. So if you've every wondered what I think about when reviewing....

Watch my Lips

We finally caught up last night with Stephen Poliakoff's latest offering on BBC1 Gideon's Daughter. Nothing much of note musically except for one scene. Gideon (Bill Nighy) and Stella (Miranda Richardson) are watching a rehearsal of a choir in an otherwise empty church. The choristers are all very ordinary and chatter amongst themselves, eat food messily etc. and then they start singing, gloriously. In fact they start somewhere in the middle of Tallis's Spem in Alium. I think that Poliakoff's point is something about the transforming nature of music, but the point was blunted (if not wasted) because the choristers hardly looked as if they were singing at all and certainly were not working hard enough to produce sounds as ravishing as came out of the speakers of our TV.

This is a point that directors frequently neglect; singing is hard work and if an actor is to look successful miming then they must be working hard. Glenn Close took singing lessons before recording her film in which she played an opera singer; I've not seen it so I can't comment about how successful she was. In an Inspector Morse episode, Frances Barber played an opera singer and made a complete hash of trying to pretend she was singing an aria (from Tosca I think). Whereas in the TV adaption of one of Jilly Cooper's novels, they employed Rosalind Plowright to play an opera singer with spectacularly successful results (the series also had Alison Moyet playing a pop diva).

I know this seems a small point, but each time I see someone on Film or TV purportedly singing, but actually completely failing, I get annoyed; given the amounts of money these things cost, surely they can get a little thing like singing right.

Recent CD Review

My review of Dennis O'Neill's recital of Verdi songs is here on MusicWeb International.

The Ring again

Thoughts of spending an entire day listening to the Ring on the radio started me thinking about my ideal way to hear the Ring in the opera house. The last few times that I've heard a complete cycle (the most recent a few years ago at the Hungarian State Opera in Budapest) its been spread over a week and each opera is scheduled to finish at 10.30/11.00 pm, with the later ones starting at around 4.30pm/5.30pm/ Now that's all well and good, but I'd like something a little more relaxed. How about doing the operas split over the whole day, starting late morning with generously long intervals, with the whole thing over by mid to late evening so you could follow it with a decent dinner! I know it makes me sound old, but I'd like to enjoy the Ring in relaxed comfort and not squashed hugger-mugger into the operatic timetable. This is something a festival could do, though I'm not aware of anyone currently trying to present the Ring this way. And another thing, could we please have a short interval after the Prologue to Götterdämmerung, I can't be the only one for whom the heavenly length of the Prologue and Act 1 combined is just a little too much for my bladder, my knees and my concentration.

Ring in a Day

Do BBC Radio 3 is to play the whole of Wagner's Ring in a single day (reported here on the BBC Website). They are going to devote their Easter Monday schedule to broadcasting Daniel Barenboim's Bayreuth recording made in the 1990's. It will be a remarkable challenge, to listen to the whole of the Ring at once sitting, but it makes a great deal of sense of the medium of Radio. We lack the stamina to listen to the entire Ring in the theatre in one day (to say nothing of the stamina that would be required from the musicians), but listening at home we stand something of a chance. And the ability to hear the whole music drama build continuously is not to be sneezed at.

The recording being used is the one that I reviewed for Music and Vision and it stood up rather well to being listened to continuously by me on my headphones. Besides Barenboim's wonderful way with the Bayreuth Orchestra it includes a remarkable collection of Anglophone singers; John Tomlinson, Graham Clark (in 2 roles), Linda Finnie, Anne Evans. My review is here.

Recent CD Reviews

A whole clutch of reviews to report. An interesting selection of Dunstable's music from Tonus Pelegrinus here,
a CD of Clytus Gottwald's stunning choral arrangements here and a rather disappointing disc of music by Jack Gottlieb from the Milken Archive here. All on Music-Web International.

Tickets, Tickets, Tickets

Yet more tickets have arrived (my credit card will be groaning). We're going to the 35 degrees East performance; its part of the season to celebrate the 75th Anniversary of the Royal Ballet. This performance celebrates Dame Ninette de Valois' links with ballet in Turkey. She was involved in the founding of the Turkish State Ballet and its associated school. It should be fascinating to see their new work.

We've also got our latest clutch of ENO tickets. There's the new production of Makropoulos Case with Cheryl Barker (a production which has all the hall-marks of being recorded for Chandos's Opera in English series); a delectable revival of Ariodante with Alice Coote (someone whose career we've followed with fascination ever since seeing her in her early days in Radamisto at Opera North); Nixon in China, which we were cheated of when the re-opening of the Coliseum was delayed; and Mark Morris's staging of Purcell's King Arthur, a curiosity that we could not miss.

Concert progress

Well our Cranmer Concert is in the March edition of the BBC Music Magazine. It took some finding, as the concert is not included in the Events listings at the back of the mag. (neither of our March concerts is listed), but early on in Magazine they have a This week in numbers column and of course the concert celebrates the 450th anniversary of Cranmer's execution, so it fits.

Its been a week for organising details for both March concerts. What with sourcing music for the Salomon Orchestra (they're playing Haydn and Elgar in addition to my pieces) and digging out the choir copies we used for the July 2005 Cranmer concert. There have also been rehearsal details to sort out; I'm sure that with 2 concerts within a week, there is something that I've missed but I hope not.

For the Cranmer concert in Oxford on March 18th, I'm having posters and leaflets distributed by a firm there who specialise in that sort of thing. For the Salomon concert at St. James's Piccadilly on March 23rd I'm trying a different tack. I'm distributing leaflets to the venue and important places like Westminster Music library but in addition I'm having someone do some email and fax marketing. They use one of these lists that people sign up for, so I'm hoping we'll be preaching to the converted. We'll see.

I've also started to sort out the music for the FifteenB concert at the Chelsea Festival. At the moment the concert seems miles away but it will soon be time to send the music to Paul Ayres, the conductor for marking up before sending it out. It's alarming the way things creep up on you, one minute a concert's 6 months away and the next deadlines are closing in and you're scrabbling to get things organised. I've now got to set-to and transpose the Byrd Regina Coeli motet down a tone so that we can do it with the whole choir (currently its for SAT, but down a tone we think we can manage to split the whole choir and to it S+A1/A2+T1/T2+B).

Review of Macbeth

My review of Macbeth at Covent Garden is on-line at Mvdaily.com here.

Also in this month's Opera magazine, a review of San Francisco Opera's new Norma, using a production borrowed from the Canadian Opera Company. The review refers to Druid's falling to the floor during Casta Diva and Oroveso's warriors, in semi-darkness, painting each other's buttocks during the Guerra chorus. Now the latter I would just love to have seen.

Regarding the amazing falling Druids, its not as stupid as it might seem. In his production for Scottish Opera with Jane Eaglen, Ian Judge had the chorus falling down flat during Casta Diva, the result was effective in that it gave Judge a credible way of highlighting Eaglen, who is not the tallest of people. Incidentally, having a large Norma at least gives credibility to her having had 2 babies without detection. Over-weight women often can be pregnant without detection.

The last Covent Garden Norma was a semi-concert performance, but the last full production included some wonderfully kinky leather costumes for Oroveso's warriors with lots and lots of bare flesh showing through the cut outs. Very entertaining indeed!

RVW's Operas

In the latest issue of Opera that Michael Kennedy in his article about Vaughan Williams's Sir John in Love (soon to be given a new production by Ian Judge at the Coliseum) looks forward to the 50th anniversary of RVW's death in the hope that his other operas might be performed. I had 2 reactions to this, the first was surprise at it only being 50 years since RVW died; musical life is so radically different to what it was in his lifetime it is difficult not to imagine far more time has passed.

Regarding RVW's other operas, I'm not going to hold my breath. I have still not seen a professional production of Riders to the Sea and have never seen Hugh the Drover. I'm not sure about the latter, it has some lovely music but I have a horrifying feeling that it will seem rather dated in that curious English way. We happily put up with opera companies dredging up items from the fringes of consciousness and we don't get too worked up that the libretto is rather lacking. But perform a rarely done opera with an English libretto and everyone gets highly critical.

We desperately need someone to bring Riders to the Sea back into regular performance. It is RVW's undisputed masterpiece, but at a bare 45 minutes long it is rather difficult to programme especially it is rather dark in subject matter (it sets a Synge play about a family in the West of Ireland where the men tend to work on the sea and die there. RVW was working on another Synge opera when he died (based on The Tinker's Wedding, I think). If he'd finished it, it would have made an ideal pairing. As it is we're casting around for a balance programme.

The other operas are less likely to appear. The Pilgrims Progress requires a large cast and resources. It was given a fine semi-staged production at the Barbican when the Royal Opera House was in exile, so I can't see there being a stampede to stage it. It has also been troubled by accusations of lack of drama and being an oratorio in disguise. But having seen it twice (once in the ROH staging and once in a tremendous full staging by the Royal Northern College of Music) I can't agree and would love to see it again.

Over the Poisoned Kiss we'll draw a veil and solace ourselves with Richard Hickox's disc of highlights which hides the work's terrible libretto. (Not just English embarassing, but really awful).

Macbeth and the missing version

Saturday's performance of Macbeth at Covent Garden was superb except for one small point; we heard the ordinary 1865 version. Quite a disappointment but mitigated by the superb quality of the cast. A full review will appear in time.

Rather interestingly, even though opera companies insist on adhering to Verdi's final, 1865, wishes they usually miss out the 1865 ballet music for the Witches (as do Covent Garden). So its a case of adhering to the composers final thoughts, except when it is inconvenient to our preconceptions.

Opera Tickets

Yesterday was one of those days when all our advanced bookings seemed to arrive. Our tickets for the next batch of the Royal Opera House season include a revival of their Duke Bluebeard and Erwartung double bill. We've not seen it before so we're going along, just in case....

Also at the ROH, we're going to see the new production of Sleeping Beauty which is going to use Oliver Messel's designs for the production of the ballet which re-opened the Opera House after the war. This production is iconic in the history of the Royal Ballet but is also iconic in my own history as my mother saw the production with Moira Shearer in the early 1950's and it had a profound effect on her. She never failed to enjoy recounting her delight both at the dancing and at the spectacular staging. Her stories helped inculcate my interest in ballet. So I will be fascinated to see a recreation of the production, but such returns to memory lane rarely work.

Also in the post, tickets to Grange Park Opera. Wasfi Kani's company never fails to offer an interesting mix of the familiar and unfamiliar. This year the unfamiliar is Massenet's Thais, an opera that I saw as a student in Manchester in a lovely production at the Royal Northern College of Music in 1977. Both the staging and the singing had a profound effect on me and help fuel my love of opera. Of the singers in that production the Thais was outstanding but I am not aware of ever hearing her again. The Nicias was a talented young tenor called Robin Leggate whose career has proved rather more enduring.

Since then I've come across the opera on record, but missed the ENO concert performance. So I'm looking forward to the performance immensely. The title role is being sung by Anne-Sophie Duprels who was Teresa in Benvenuto Cellin in Strasbourg recently.

Also on the Grange Park agenda is a revival of their 1950's L'Elisir d'Amore. Nemorino is Colin Lee who has done some rather good things at ENO recently. We are also going to the recital being given by Bruce Ford; a singer who I've heard in opera but never in recital.

Macbeth at the Royal Opera House

We're off to Macbeth at the Royal Opera House tomorrow. Rather excitingly they're doing the first version of the opera. This was the version that I first got to know, thank's to a BBC broadcast from the Proms (now on Opera Rara) which we taped (mainly because Lady Macbeth was played by Rita Hunter, a great heroine of mine). I can still remember the thrill of hearing Hunter's voice resounding round the Royal Albert Hall, remarkably agile in the fioriture and undoubtedly thrilling. This earlier version has the advantage that it finishes with Macbeth's death (a wonderful aria which is often grafted onto the later version) and omits the rather trivial chorus that Verdi wrote to finish the later incarnation of the opera.

I see that the Met. has announced it's forthcoming seasons at a press conference (reported here in the Gramophone). In fact it was the first time in 9 years that they've done this sort of press conference. And after all the worrying over what effect Peter Gelb's taking of the help of the old lady of the Lincoln Center would have, the new seasons sound rather promising.

Granted, there are a clutch of cross genre collaborations but the intention seems to be to try and develop new musical theatre of all varieties. Their heart seems to be in the right place, lets hope the results aren't too cringe-making.

On the more regular opera scene, there are new productions of Strauss's Aegytische Helena which might be worth crossing the Atlantic for; plus Tan Dun's new opera, The First Emperor. Further ahead there is a new Attila and From the House of the Dead. Not earthshattering but interesting nonetheless.

Every new opera-house director seems to want to make their mark by scheduling the Ring. Gelb seems to be no different. He is planning a new Ring in 2010-2011 directed by Robert LePage, inspired by Viking myths and Icelandic landscapes. Might be interesting, but non-operatic directors do have a tendency to fall by the wayside when it comes to the Ring. Lets see what happens here.

Gelb seems to be continuing the Met's recent forays into contemporary opera. Besides the Tan Dun, they are reviving John Corigliano's The Ghosts of Versailles. This latter I saw some years ago and it seemed rather a sprawling mess, redeemed only by Marilyn Horne's superb turn as a houri! Adams's Dr. Atomic is coming as is a new opera from Osvaldo Golijov, who seems to be turning into the current flavour of the month.

I can't say that there is anything in this list which has me desperate to return to New York, but you never know.

The Grumlins are coming

Well, having managed to miss the Month off a whole pile of concert leaflets, you think I'd learn! But we were visiting friends on Saturday and I learned that I'd managed to introduce a spelling mistake into the leaflets for the Salomon Orchestra concert on March 23rd. Instead of In the Barbarian's Camp it had come out as In the Barbican's Camp, the spellchecker being helpful again. Luckily its not disastrous and I've not yet printed the hundreds of leaflets for distribution in London, thank goodness!

To sing joyfulLY or to sing JOYfully

I've been working on the English version of the 11th motet in my Lent and Passiontide sequence from Tempus Per Annum an ongoing collection of motets for the whole church's year. This is the motet for the Easter Saturday evening mass; its not actually an introit as the mass is structured slightly differently but instead I'm setting an antiphon text, Jubilate deo with an English version of sing joyfully to God all ye Lands. This works perfectly in the opening phrase (which was written to fit the English), but later on in the motet I've been havering over exactly how to set the word joyfully. Having a long note on the final syllable, even an unstressed on, seems to be clumsy some-how. So just before finishing this morning I went through the motet and changed all the phrases where I had stretched sing joyfully out and uses sing joyfully to God instead. I'll probably haver some more and change things again.

Domus - part 2

I did some more searching, and the title of Luc arbogast's disc Fjall d'Yr Vinur produced some results, there is a review here on the www.musique-chroniques.ch site.

According to Luc Arbogast's posting on this page, the instrument that he most commonly plays is a bouzouki, but an Irish rather than Greek model (if I read his French correctly). And evidently they have another disc in the offing - more power to their elbow.

Domus - Luc Arbogast

We've been listening to the disc Domus from Luc Arbogast, the singer/lutenist who we came across busking in Strasbourg. Having read the CD's booklet, I must confess that I am not much the wiser; the song texts are printed but I'm not sure what language it is! Though composition is credited to Luc Arbogast they sound very like troubadour songs. But there are no explanations of the inspiration behind the songs; a shame, as I'd love to know more.

Live, he sang to his own accompaniment but on the disc Melusine Arbogast contributes flute and voice; Luc plays a variety of lute/guitar like instruments and sings. His voice is a high counter-tenor (generally F above middle C to the F an octave above that), a voice type which is very tricky to record. The disc manages very well, the results are highly affecting and do reflect what Luc sounded like live, but there are hints of acidity which weren't there live - almost certainly the result of a tricky recording process. Still, the resulting songs are highly attractive and make superb late night listening. I can highly recommend the disc but have no idea where you'd get it from, so I quote the contact details from the disc.

DOMUS: 06 21 24 06 88

domus.atelier@laposte.net

I've just spent a busy 2 days doing all sorts of odds and ends related to my 2 March concerts. We now have a piano rehearsal booked so I was just checking the vocal score of my Elegy for Baritone and piano when I discovered a rather fun mistake, I'd entered part of the 2nd clarinet part into the score with transposing switched on, so the part was a tone out, consistently a 7th above the voice - a rather interesting effect that I think we can do without. So anyway, a tidied up version is off to the pianist for the rehearsal. David Greiner, the singer, is performing in Milhaud triple bill in Munster so has to try and fit his Munster and London schedules together, not an easy task.

I was in Oxford on Thursday delivering leaflets for the Cranmer concert, including a large batch for distribution (reprinted after correcting the date). I've also done most of my publicity mailing as well, so the living room is looking a lot tidier.

I have only just noticed that I have passed the 200 mark in my posts to this blog (this is post number 202) and the first anniversary is not far off.

I'm still busy doing the publicity for my 2 March concerts (18th in Oxford and 23rd in London). Tomorrow I'm delivering the posters and leaflets for distribution in Oxford. I happened to slip one of them into some music that I was sending out and luckily the recipient had sharper eyes than we do. I'd managed to omit the month from the leaflet and unfortunately both March 18th and February 18th are Saturdays. This means that I've had to pay to have the flyers re-done and will have to scrap around 1700. Just shows you that you never can be too careful in your proof-reading.

Salomon Orchestra concert

Last night we went to St. John's Smith Square to hear the Salomon Orchestra, conducted by Tom Seligman. The programme consisted of Bartok's Two Pictures, Mahler's Rückert Lieder and Rachmaninov's Symphonic Dances. The orchestra were on their usual superb form and the conclusion to the Rachmaninov was shattering. The soloist in the Mahler was Damian Thantrey, who sang the title role in the premiere of my opera Garrett. He was brilliant in the Mahler songs and my two favourites, Ich bin der Welt abhanden gekommon and Um Mitternacht were stunning. The interesting point was how little I knew the other 3 songs in the cycle.

This element of familiarity and unfamiliarity applied to the Rachmaninov as well as I found that I knew the first 2 movements quite well, but seemed to have forgotten the third; so the concert gave me a good opportunity to get re-acquainted.

They had a near capacity audience who were very enthusiastic. In case you don't know, the orchestra's next gig is on March 23rd when they are doing a concert at St. James's Church, Piccadilly in which Adrian Brown conducts them in a programme which includes 2 of my pieces.

Recent CD Review

My review of Akathistos Fragments, a fascinating re-working of traditional Byzantine chant is here on MusicWeb.

Anyone who loves chant should be interested in this disc, though it should come with a health warning for purists.

More Rodelinda

Nico comments on my Rodelinda review that I omitted to say anything about the orchestra, for which I must apologise. I suppose that my comments wonderfully crisp, rhythmic and sprightly apply as much to the orchestra as to the conductor. For the reviewer there is always that danger to concentrate on one aspect of a performance (in my case the singers) and omit to properly comment on the rest, unless something goes wrong; this was a trap that I fell into in the review. Next time I'll try to be more balanced.

Recent CD Review

My review of the Monks of Beuron Abbey singing the plainchant Requiem mass is here, on MusicWeb. Besides buying discs, Pristine Audio also allow you to buy and download mp3 files, very neat.

I can highly recommend this atmospheric disc and Pristine Audio’s
distinctive delivery mechanism means that it comes at a highly affordable
price.

Recent CD Review

My review of the new Mozart Requiem on Naxos is here on Music Web.

Opera Review - Rodelinda

I imagine Alan Curtis and Il Complesso Barocco’s performance of Handel’s Rodelinda at the Barbican on Wednesday was planned partly as a celebration/promotion of their new recording of the opera, though as it turns out 3 of the planned cast did not sing. So instead of Simone Kermes (a Curtis regular) we had Emma Bell and Grimoaldo was played by Filippo Adamo, a very last minute replacement – his name wasn’t even in the printed programme.

Curtis is another American harpsichordist who works extensively in Europe. Whereas with William Christie I always get the feeling that even in Handel, the notes inegals of the French Baroque are never far away, Curtis’s Handel has a more traditional feel to it; wonderfully crisp, rhythmic and sprightly, even if there was the odd hint of untidiness in the orchestra.

The advantage of the cast we actually heard was that 4 of the 6 singers were native Italian speakers. (Sonia Prina as Bertarido, Filippo Adami as Grimoaldo, Romina Basso as Eduige and Vito Priante as Garibaldo) This had two effects, firstly the recitatives were particularly vivid and cantered along in a very lively manner without ever seeming gabbled. They also felt as if they really meant something, you could almost follow the opera without ever looking at the surtitles. The second advantage was in the sheer vividness of the performances. There was no hint of Northern coolness which can often beset concert performances. All the singers, including the 2 English ones (Hilary Summers as Unolfo and Emma Bell as Rodelinda), emoted in a very dramatic fashion and reacted to each other. Though a concert performance, with the singers using scores, this was no static spectacle, all projected the drama in a very credible fashion. You hardly missed a stage presentation, especially one like Glyndebourne’s which often seems to get in the way of the drama.

Emma Bell was superb in the title role; her voice has developed more richness and depth but she has preserved her virtuosity in Handel’s fioriture and she used the music in a superbly expressive way. Rodelinda is a role which has accompanied Bell since her sensational debut at Glyndebourne whilst still at college. You sometimes wonder whether she might be getting bored with it, but on this showing she certainly isn’t. Being so close to the singers we were able to appreciate that she has a very nice line in sneering.

But Bell is quite a known quantity; as her husband Sonia Prina was a revelation. A lively and dramatic singer, it was almost as if she couldn’t keep still whilst singing. I am used to the slightly cool interpretation of Bertarido in Glyndebourne’s production, developed with the counter-tenor Andreas Scholl in mind; Prina’s Bertarido was a complete contrast, her delivery more lively and vivid, she projected Bertarido’s emotions on a larger scale, this was a man who lived on the edge of his nerves. She and Bell developed a credible and touching relationship.

As Bertarido’s sister Eduige, Romina Basso was no less vivid and she managed to make the character’s twists and turns believable; her was a passionate woman who acted before she thought. Though both Prina and Basso have strong, rich mezzo/alto voices, they were remarkably differentiated. One of the nice things about the casting (with 3 low female voices) was the way that each woman had a rich voice but all 3 voices were strikingly different. The third of the trio was Hilary Summers as Unolfo. Unolfo’s arias can often seem superfluous to the drama, but in Summer’s hands they were as gripping as the rest of the opera.

With such a strong female cast, the 2 men had their work cut out. Vito Priante in the role of the evil Garibaldo, managed to combine the necessary Handelian virtuosity with a nice line in sneering and sheer evil. No mean feat indeed. As his weak cohort Grimoaldo, Filippo Adami created a believably weak character and projected the drama well. I will not comment on his musical performance as he was such a last minute replacement. He is a very young tenor (born 1980) so I suspect he will not be singing Handel for long as his voice develops.

The performance included a final duet for Rodelinda and Bertarido which has been less often done. Curtis’s direction was perhaps a little stiff at times, but the performances were so entrancing that it hardly mattered.

Coming to a CD player near you

On Wednesday we went to see Alan Curtis and Il Complesso Barocco performing Handel's Rodelina (a review of which I plan to post soon). In the Barbican shop they were selling the group's recent recording of the opera, so I realised that the concert was not a one-off event but the concert of the recording. This sort of tie-in is inevitable I suppose and we must be thankful that such linkages at least enable us to hear some fine performances. And no, though I considered it I did not buy the recording, partly because cast on the disc was substantially different to that at the concert. In particular, at the Barbican we heard the divine Emma Bell whereas on the recording it was Simone Kermes who had dropped out of the concert.

Besides concerts given to promote recordings, there are other areas where tie-ins occur. Sometimes performances are set up with a view to doing a live recording (Opera Rara do this rather creatively) and then some performances happen simply so that the performers can perform the work prior to recording. At other times the linkage is less obvious until the recording appears. A number of recent ENO performances (a revival of Verdi's Ernani, the new Madame Butterfly) have had the finger print of the Chandos Opera in English in the casting and the conductor so it came as no surprise when it was confirmed that recordings would indeed be made. As long as this is transparent, then this is enterprising; the recent revival of Lulu at the Coliseum gave rise to a recording for Chandos. But if it means that the opera company has to compromise on cast and conductor, then I'm not so sure.

Sometimes you go to a performance and enjoy it so much that you hope that it pressages a recording. A year or so ago we heard the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment doing the Verdi Requiem with Christine Brewer as the soprano solo. A fabulous performance I kept hoping a recording was in the offing; sadly it wasn't.

For New Year's eve 2004 we went to the Wigmore Hall to hear Robert King and the King's Consort doing Rossini's Petite Messe Solonnelle with just 8 singers; a performance far closer to Rossini's intentions than the larger scale choral performances that are common. One of the singers in this lovely performance was Hilary Summers. She was Unolfo in Rodelinda at Wednesday's Barbican performance and her biography in the programme referred to the King's Consort's forthcoming recording of the Rossini; so at least this time I have a recording to look forward to besides memories of that New Year's eve concert. I can't wait!

Recent CD Review

My review of Water Settings, a disc of new percussion music played by the Australian percussion duo Match is here on MusicWeb.

A percussion duo to watch. They display admirable virtuosity. The
selected works say much of their musicianship ... they do not try to
dazzle us just for virtuosity's sake

Review of Benvenuto Cellini

My review of Benvenuto Cellini is now on-line here, at Music and Vision. The article includes 5 handsome photos from the production.

Strasbourg diary

We were in Strasbourg for the weekend, mainly so that we could go to see Berlioz's Benvenuto Cellini performed by L'Opera National du Rhin in Strasbourg's lovely 19th century opera house. A full review of the performance will appear in the next few days.

Strasbourg's opera house is a lovely little traditional 19th century one. The only drawback of the charming interior is the insufficiently raked stalls, so the view from your seat was a little variable.

It never fails to amaze me, when wandering around smaller French towns, that you so often come across branches of French Harmonia Mundi shops. They all stock a lovely mix of world music, jazz and classical music featuring the record labels own highly distinctive recordings. They provide a classical music browsing experience which has no parallels in England, where the record shop seems in terminal decline. How do they do it! We took advantage of an offer on their Musique d'Abord series and bought Charpentier's David and Jonathan in William Christie's recording (with Veronique Gens and Charles Daniel in the choir, Marc Minkowski playing bassoon, Christoph Rousset on harpsichord and Gerard Lesne a prime soloist).

We visited the lovely Palais de Rohan, opposite the Cathedral; this is a heartwarming success story as, despite many vicissitudes, the 18th century state appartments have much of their original decor and many of their original furnishing. In the annexe, nestling amongst the bewildering array of local ceramics, we were surprised to come across a portait of Silberman the organ builder. Quite why he was here, I do not know?

On leaving the Palace we were drawn across to the front of the Cathedral by the distant count of a haunting voice. This turned out to be a counter-tenor called Luc Arbogast, busking outside the cathedral, singing to his own lute accompaniment. In the cold, cold, cold weather his performance was to be applauded, especially with a voice as hauntingly meliflous as this. The songs seemed to be mid-way between folk and medieval troubadour songs; Arbogast's appearance reflected this with his tattoos, silver jewellery, striking shaved head. We bought one of his CD's but have not had a chance to listen to it yet, I'll report back.

This month's Opera magazine seems to be the beefcake issue. Not only do we have a full page colour picture of a shirtless Simon Keenlyside in ENO's new Billy Budd, but there is also shirtless Nathan Gunn in Tobias Picker's disappointing (I gather) new opera for the Met, American Tradgedy.

Whilst on the subject of Billy Budd, it was interesting to read in Rodney Milnes's review that ENO trashed the previous production by Tim Albery because it was prohibitively expensive both to stage and to store.

Max Loppert's obituary/appreciation of the late Ronal Crichton made a rather interesting point about the craft of reviewing, "He (Crichton) had few equals in the difficult art of finding the just reviewer's approach toward that tricky area of worthwhile concert-hall or opera-house event located in the middle ground - neither 'disastrous' nor 'great'". Something that I've not got quite sussed in my own reviews, I suspect.

This month's issue is also a rather fun on to play spot the significant other in interviews, profiles and obituaries. The lack of a mention of a significant other being an indication that there isn't one, the person likes to keep their personal life private or the significant other is a person of the same sex; its always rather fun to try and read between the lines even if you are completely wrong!

I was shocked to learn that Elizabeth Harwood was only 52 when she died 15 years ago. She was such a figure of my student-hood and later that I had always assumed that she was far older.

Opera that speaks your language?

Norman Lebrecht's recent article in the London Evening Standard was ostensibly about the Mozart Centenary, but referred to Chandos's folorn Opera in English series. This seems a rather an unfair description of a rather interesting project.

Granted the casting and the conducting of the operas in the set have sometimes had a rather one size fits all sort of feeling. This is particularly true, I'm afraid, of David Parry's conducting. But Parry is not the only conductor to be involved, Sir Charles Mackerras has contributed world class versions of The Magic Flute, The Bartered Bride, Jenufa and Osud plus his older recordings of La Traviata and Julius Caesar. These last 2 are part of a rather neat aspect of this series; besides the current phase of recording, a number of older operas have been included. This means that not only do we have Mackerras's contribution, but such delights as Janet Baker's Charlotte in Werther and the Goodall Ring.

The opera in English series has another interesting aspect, the ability to hear performances by a wide range of contemporary Anglophone singers. Recent recordings include such delights as Andrew Shore's Dulcanamara and Don Pasquale. Without these recordings, this fine singer would be woefully under recorded. The same goes for many of the other fine singers such as Anne Howells, Dennis O'Neill, Yvonne Kenny, Diana Montague.... These latter 3 have contributed not only fine opera recordings but recitals as well. This is one of the delights of the series, the ability to hear these singers in a wide variety of roles.

I come from a generation where the talented singers who performed with ENO were woefully underused by the recording industry. This means that we have precious few complete recordings from people like Valerie Masterson, Pauline Tinsley, Josephine Barstow, Kenneth Collins, the list is endless. So even if individual recordings are less than ideal, it is wonderful to think that so many talented people are being involved in the series.

So variable yes, but never less than interesting and certainly not forlorn

Salomon Concert Press Release

The press release for the Salomon Concert at St. James's Church, Piccadilly, has been published. It is here.

Recent CD Review

My review of the Hogwood/Hadyn and Handel Society recordings of Handel's concerti grossi is here, on MusicWeb.

I enjoyed these performances immensely ... they provide a nice contrast
to my existing favourites. It is enterprising of Avie to rescue them from
Decca’s vaults. ...

In Search of Mozart

I had not planned to watch or listen to any of the plethora of programmes which have been engendered by the Mozart Centenary. Mozart is a composer that I admire, but I love only a small handful of his works. Over-exposure to his piano concertos as a student seems to have had a disastrous effect on my view of the composer.

But three weeks ago, we happened to catch the first episode of Channel 5's programme In search of Mozart. Broadcast at the slightly odd time of 7.15pm on a Tuesday, it was just at the right time for us to watch whilst eating our tea!

All too often, Classical music on television tends to talk down to its audience. Programme makers seems to be so frightened of alienating their target audience that they make programmes which seem alarmingly simplistic to anyone with a little knowledge of classical music.This offering was remarkably free from this failing. We were so taken with the first episode that we made sure that we watched the suceeding two. Cramming Mozart's life into three 45 minute episodes it quite tricky but Channel 5 made a very good stab at it.

It helped that they eschewed dramatic reconstructions. Instead we were given extracts of Mozart's letters (and those of his father) read by actors with useful images on the screen (portraits, footage of the places referred to etc.) These were intercut with selections from the music he was composing at the time, some apparently in specially filmed studio performances; plus various historians and musicians talking about Mozart and about the music. All this was imaginatively intercut into a seamless collage that managed to allow artists like Imogen Cooper to talk about the piano music in a way which related to Mozart's life at the time.

From a historical point of view, the latest information that we have about Mozart was included. Episode one did not shy from the scatalogical issues, but made the point that it was common to families other than the Mozarts. In the discussions about his final years, the programme made some very useful points about Mozart's income. He died in the midst of a cash-flow crisis brought on partly by the war that the Austrians were conducting at the time; he was by no means a pauper.

This was a satisfy set of programmes and I do hope that their success emboldens Channel 5 to go on to make more such programmes.

Except for me

We we are now 2 weeks into the new term and London Concord Singers are busy rehearsing for their next concert. The programme is quite fund, Duarte Lobo's Requiem, Sven David Sandstrom's reworking of Purcell's Hear my Prayer in which the Purcell original is heard almost complete but evaporates just before the end, Sandstrom then re-works the material into new and magical forms; plus motets by the Roseingraves (a Father and Son who worked at both Cathedrals in Dublin in the 17th century) and Gabriel Jackson (a young English composer).

I am currently attending rehearsals, but will unfortunately have to fade out eventually as the concert (on Thursday April 6th at St. Michael's Church, Chester Square) clashes with the launch of the 2006 Chelsea Festival and I have some music being performed in the festival (on June 24th at St. Mary's Roman Catholic Church). It is so frustrating when such events clash, but that's life I suppose.

We are busy trying to put together a summer trip for the choir. We hope to go to Tallinn and things are looking quite positive at the moment.

Singing cowboys

We went to see Brokeback Mountain yesterday and when conversation afterwards turned to the subject of opera, we considered whether the film would make a good subject for an opera. The answer was no, I could not imagine making the cowboy's sing convincingly and the others pointed out that the film was so dependent on the stunning scenery that we could not see it being confined to the stage.

Opera is on my mind at the moment as Coni has sent me a bunch of ideas which I need to read through and comment on. I've also got some other irons in the fire, so you never know what might happen!

Recent CD Review

My review of Tchaikovsky's Eugene Onegin in the version conducted by Bychkov with Dmitri Hvorostovsky in the title role is here on MusicWeb.

The Curate's Egg

On Sunday we went to All Saints Church, Margaret Street for a concert by The Curate's Egg. They are an all female choral choral group directed by Adey Grummet. They sang a group of unaccompanied choral items including Gustav Holst's stunning Ave Maria and then, along with harpist Gabriella dall'Olio, they performed Britten's Ceremony of Carols. It was a stunning performance with some lovely solo contributions and fine harp playing from dall'Olio. It is many years since I have heard the work and it was good to make its acquaintance again. The concert was in aid of the All Saints restoration fund and I only wish that more people had been there.

Not the Mozart Festival

With emphasis switching to Mozart for his centenary this year, I thought it might be fun to organise a Not Mozart festival. You could include such work's as Gazzaniga's Don Giovanni, Gluck's La Clemenza di Tito and Rossini's Barber of Seville.

The Gazzaniga is a short 2 act opera, with a libretto by Da Ponte, which preceeded Mozart and Da Ponte's version. I saw it many years ago at Wexford in a double bill with Busoni's Turandot.

Gluck's opera is one of a few to set the same Metastasio libretto. Mozart's opera sets the same libretto, but it was extensively revised for Mozart. The revisions brought it closer to contemporary sensibilities about opera, but it is still recognisably an opera seria. Rossini's opera, of course, came after Mozart's Marriage of Figaro, a sort of later prequel, both being based on Beaumarchais plays.

Recent CD Review

My review of Naxos's Italian Dramatic Lament disc is here.

Press Release

The press release for the March 18th Cranmer in Oxford concert has now been released to an unsuspecting world. The full press release is on-line here and should be entirely self explanatory.

Recent CD Review

My review of John Mark Ainsley and Ian Burnside's disc of Tippett, Britten and Purcell (a must for all lovers of English song) is here on MusicWeb International.

Review of The Barber of Seville

My review of Saturday's performance of The Barber of Seville is now online here, at Music and Vision.

Ring feedback

A reader of Music and Vision, provided some feedback about my review of Barenboim's complete Ring and sent a link to a rather good summary of the plot. Its difficult to produce a plot summary of the Ring without it sounding stupid (just think of Anna Russell!), but Jonathan Eaton of Long Beach Opera has managed it here.

The Barber of Seville

We went to see the new production of Rossini's The Barber of Seville at the Royal Opera House on Saturday. A review will appear shortly, but it set me thinking of past productions of the opera that I've seen (not many in fact). The new ROH production is not naturalistic, but very stylised, which is a first for me; all previous productions I've seen have been securely in the 18th century.

I first saw the opera at the Edinburgh Festival in 1976 in a production from Germany, Cologne opera I think (I really must dig out my old programmes!). It must have been by Michael Hampe because many years later when the Royal Opera acquired a 'new' production, it was virtually the same as this German one. I also saw the old ENO production at the Coliseum when I was down in London on a course in the early 1980's. This production was notable for being from their Sadlers Wells days and the sets were not really big enough for the Coliseum stage. But the performance marked the debut of Anne Marie Owens in the role of Rosina and she was certainly not a Rosina to mess with! I think this was the performance that had John Brecknock in the role of Almaviva; unfortunately he was not really capable of singing the fioriture in Almaviva's first aria.

I caught up with the current ENO production only relatively recently and rather enjoyed it, but Barber is not an opera I feel the need to see regularly. Somehow it always overstays its welcome; for my taste the opera is just a little bit too long for the comedy.

I've returned to writing motets for my Tempus per Annum cycle for the church's year. I am way behind with these, but I enjoy returning to them and find writing the motets rather therapeutic. Perhaps they are a little like writing string quartets. Anyway, you have to find endless variations on the same themes to keep variety and I enjoy being inventive. In quick succession I have done the Latin version of the Maundy Thursday motet and produced both the Latin and English versions of the Good Friday motet (quite speed record). I am now about to embark on the motet for the Easter Saturday evening mass (in fact the Easter Sunday vigil mass). The first motet in this sequence of Lent and Passiontide motets which is actually joyful (it starts with the words Jubilate Deo).

One of the reasons for choosing the 4 Advent motets for performance in the Cranmer concert in July 2005 (to be repeated in Oxford in March 2006) was that the 4 motets form a neat group and are quite varied in their texts.

I am now starting the publicity machine for the March concerts (the Eight:Fifteen Vocal Ensemble doing their Cranmer concert in Oxford and the Salomon Orchestra, under Adrian Brown, doing a concert in St. James's Church, Piccadilly). This means producing leaflets, posters, press releases etc. The press release for Oxford goes out next week and I am currently working on the leaflets so they can go to the ticket agency we're using in Oxford (Tickets Oxford). The London concert is just using an on-line ticket agency (TicketWeb) so all I have had to supply them with is electronic marketing information, the leaflets can wait until I need to put them in the venue, which is a relief.

Recent CD Review

My review of Elgar's sacred music performed by the choir of St. Paul's Church, Rock Creek, is here on MusicWeb.

Groundhog Day goes to the opera

I am currently reviewing a recording of Tchaikovsky's Eugene Onegin (review will appear on MusicWeb in due course) and that set me to thinking about the productions of the opera that I had seen.

We recently went to see a revival of Julia Hollander's ENO production, this was created to replace a previous production by, I think, Graham Vick, which was not particularly old. The same thing is happening at The Royal Opera House where the old production (designed by Julia Trevelyan Oman, so it was gloriously realistic in its detail) was replaced by a striking, stylish new one directed by John Cox. Now this production is in the wastebasket and being replaced by a new one, or at least that is what has been announced. The list could go on; the recent ENO Billy Budd replaced an existing one that seem, to some critics, perfectly satisfactory.

It is a curious fact of life that opera companies seem to constantly visit the same operas, re-doing productions when there are so many other operas crying out to be produced.Some of this, I suppose, is the desire to get things right and the constant feeling that the key parts of the repertoire could be done better. Another factor, which is often hidden from the public, is that some productions are not designed to last. I believe that this was the case with the John Cox Onegin at the Royal Opera.

This latter reflects a style of developing a production which came rather to prominence when Elijah Moshinsky did his productions of Peter Grimes and Lohengrin. Moshinsky started as a staff producer at the Royal Opera and the stripped down style of these 2 iconic productions reflects his attempt to develop new productions for the ROH at little more than the cost of re-furbishing and re-producing the existing ones. This of course is something that us ordinary punters forget, that bringing back a production can cost nearly as much as starting again from scratch.

The other area where companies develop disposable productions is in the co-production and borrowed production. This latter is a particular case in point where the company might rent an existing production from elsewhere and might never use it again. The advantage is cost-based; the disadvantages are that the borrower has little control over the production style and content. So something that works in one place, might not work in another. When the Royal Opera borrowed John Dew's production of Meyerbeer's Les Huguenots there were howls from most of the critics, despite the fact that the production had been relatively well received in Germany. Some of this could be attributed to snobbery, but much can be related to differences in house style and the way opera is perceived in different countries.

The Royal Opera also came something of a cropper when it borrowed an Italian production of Rossini's Mose in Egitto. Though handsome and moderately well produced, it came in for some critical flack owing to the static handling of the chorus; a production style common in Italy but not in favour here where chorus are expected to be highly emotive and highly mobile.

So opera companies may have some excuse for their endless re-visiting of familiar opers, but I can't help wishing that they'd step off the tread-mill more often and give us some of the rarer items.

Edward Scissorhands

Well, we finally got to see Matthew Bourne's new ballet/dance piece Edward Scissorhands on Sunday, at a matinee at Sadler's Wells Theatre. It is a handsome piece, in attractive imaginative sets by Les Brotherston and is a remarkably effective translation of the film into a stage work. Moving film onto the stage is not always an easy task and Bourne managed it beautifully. The only moments when you really needed to have seen the film was the closing, where the an old lady is being showered with snow and revels in it; Bourne gives you clues but I am not convinced that people who have not seen then film will make the connection with the showers of snow from Edward's ice sculptures.

As a dance work, I was a little less convinced. It does not help that the score still sounds very much like a film score rather than a dance drama; the music is, after all, based on the music for the film adapted and arranged by Terry Davis. It is very effective, as far as it goes, but does not provide the depth and coherence really necessary for a proper dance drama.

Bourne creates some wonderful 1950's style moves for the people who live on the 1950's suburban estate where Edward's adopted homes. These were some of the best parts of the show, unfortunately I think that Bourne became a little to in love with the 50's background at the expense of Edward himself. There were quite a few times when I longed for the exciting ensemble to stop and for Bourne to concentrate on Edward himself. An extra solo, or two, for Edward would help to deepen his character and help him come more into the foreground. As it is, the character had to rely on the pathos generated by his general demeanour and acting; though this was effective I wanted more.

A further problem came to a head in the final pas de deux, though it had been signalled at various points in the show; because of the scissors on his hands, Edward was unable to lift his partner properly. Bourne had removed this obstacle in their Act 1 pas de deux, by making it a dream sequence so Edward appeared sans scissors on his hands. But for the end of the show, Edward was hampered and though Bourne came up with some effective solutions the final result was clumsier, more lumpenm less cathartic and uplifting than I would have liked.

It reminded me of the problems that David Bintley had in his choreography for Edward II and Piers Gaveston in his Edward II; their pas de deux lacked any really lifts and consequently lacked uplift. To see how such things could be done, go and see Les Ballets Trockadero de Montecarlo, though technically a spoof of ballet moeurs they come up with some remarkably effective solutions to to men dancing a pas de deux together. Perhaps Bourne should have asked them how to arrange a dance for a man with scissors instead of hands?

The Bartered Bride

Friday night’s performance of Smetana’s The Bartered Bride at the Royal Opera House was the first night of this revival. It might only have been a revival, but with Sir Charles Mackerras in charge, we were guaranteed a sparkling evening. His opening speed for the overture sounded dangerously fast, but the orchestra responded well producing playing which was crisp and made the music sound new minted.

This was a good indicator for how the evening was going to go; no startling revelations, just a wonderful return to basics. Nothing was musically hackneyed and they played Smetana’s score without ever making it seem routine. Quite magical.

It helped that Mackerras was supported by a fine cast. Susan Gritton was returning to the role of Marenka and is as enchanting as ever. She has developed as an artist and this shows in the way she helps the character of Marenka to develop. From the opening, there is something dynamic and capable about her Marenka, she even wears trousers. Gritton’s voice has a lovely focussed quality to it and Smetana’s lyrical music responds to the shapely line of her voice. In Act 3, when things get problematical for Marenka, Gritton was profoundly touching. Because Gritton’s Marenka has been so capable and dynamic, she renders the rather unsatisfactory ending almost acceptable; you feel less annoyed than usual that Jenik has put her through so much pain for his schemes.

As Jenik Simon O’Neill was a large, lovably rogue rather than someone really duplicitous. Thoughtless and charming, he helped make relationship between the two work. O’Neill’s voice does not quite have the easy facility at the top that would be ideal in the role, he tended to go a little steely under pressure; but this was an impressive debut and I hope to hear more of him. It perhaps helps to understand O’Neill’s voice when you learn from his website (http://www.simononeill.com) that he is singing his first Parsifal in concert in New Zealand this year.

Both O’Neill and Gritton seem to have a gift for comedy and developed a believable relationship in Act 1, I especially liked their duet where which took place whilst they were supposedly painting a barn door. Much horseplay with (non existent) paint was mimed with a naturalness and convincingness that made it amusing and characterful rather than embarrassing.

The Royal Opera supported the 2 principals with a fine cast. Timothy Robinson repeated his amusing but touching Vasek; managing to be funny but making you feel sorry for him at the same time. This sense of comedy through believable characterisation rather than sending the character up was a feature of Peter Rose’s wonderful Kecal. Here was a singer who could really sing the role, not just make buffo noises, and developed Kecal’s overweening character with a degree of subtlety. I always love Peter Rose’s work and this was no exception.

Marenka’s parents were played by Donald Maxwell and Susan Bickley; luxury casting which paid of was the two singers made much of the little that Smetana gives them. The same can be said for the evening smaller roles of Jenik’s parents, played by Mark Richardson and Carole Wilson. The septet was a joy.

Though the musical side was entrancing throughout, I remain unconvinced by Francesca Zamballo’s production. Everything takes place in a pale wood barn, with a brightly lit yellow cyclorama as backdrop. The result looks very New England. There is much coming and going to little purpose, assembling and deconstructing ladders, tables etc. This purposeless action extends to the large choral dance numbers which are one of the joys of this opera. Rather than giving us something convincingly folk-like, helping to build the character of the chorus, we get a series of too clever, over choreographed movements where all sorts of harvest festival iconography is brought on. I just longed for Zamballo to have the courage to simply let the entire chorus dance a polka properly for any length of time. What you lose is the sense of the type of community that the opera takes place in, which weakens things when the going gets tough in Act 3.

The opera was sung in Kit Hesketh-Harvey’s rhyming translation. Diction was quite adequate but the opera house displayed sur-titles as well; though their usefulness was compromised as it was difficult to read them because of the glare from the bright yellow light of the cyclorama.

As ever the circus episode was highly entertaining and I must commend both the circus performers and the singers for their fine integration into a single ensemble. It can’t be easy mixing singers, even acrobatic ones, with real acrobats.

This was an immensely enjoyable evening and a wonderful way to help celebrate Sir Charles Mackerras’s 80th birthday.

Christmas Presents

One of the things that my partner, David, bought me for Christmas was the LSO Live recording of Shostakovitch's 8th Symphony with Colin Davies. We'd got the idea after attending the Dream of Gerontius performancein December, when they had been giving out leaflets. I rather fancied both the 5th and 8th Symphonies. David attempted to get them from one of the big high street chains only to find them charging over £12 rather than the £4.99 indicated in the LSO leaflets. In fact it took a bit of finding for him to be able to get a copy of the 8th Symphony at a reasonable price. We're still lacking the 5th.

But, of course, this is much to be expected as neither of us buy records from shops very often, using the web instead. I have even found a lovely site Classical CD Exchange which sells 2nd hand CD's; I can highly recommend it. So we can't really complain when CD's are difficult to come by in the shops.

Last time we were wandering around the St. Martin's Lane/Strand area we were shocked to discover that the Music Discount Centre in the Strand had closed. This was where I bought all my CD's in the early days, but I can't really remember when I last used it.

Weekend Plans

Tonight we're off to Covent Garden to see their revival of The Bartered Bride; the main draw being Sir Charles Mackerras in the pit. The Bartered Bride is one of those curious character comedies which have a vein of cruelty running through them. Francesca Zamballo's production for the Royal Opera is one of those which take the work at its entertaining face value. I think the more interesting productions of the opera are the ones that manage to combine this entertaining quality with some feeling of quite how cruel Jenik is to Marenka; hiding the facts of his upbringing from her and forcing her to believe that she is going to be married almost against her will. The ending is apparently happy, but part of you should question whether Marenka will ever trust Jenik again. Zamballo is content to just give us sparkling entertainment, but besides Mackerras in the pit we have Susan Gritton as Marenka and Timothy Robinson returning to the role of Vasek hot on the heels of his debut as Captain Vere.

On Sunday we're off to a matinee of Edward Scissorhands at Sadlers Wells. Matthew Bourne's new dance work based on the eponymous film has not garnered completely uncritical reviews but we were curious. I have a sort of love-hate relationship with his work, finding the comic/jokey rather unsatisfactory; so the only parts of Swan Lake that I really enjoyed were the bits with the Swans (plus parts of the Act 3 ball scene); the first Act scenes sending up the Royal Family were almost too much for me, especially the bit in the disco. But the Swans somehow transcended this and made up for it all. Though I could not help wishing that his choreography was a bit more expressive and more interesting

Anyway, Sunday's performance should be interesting, at least. I'll report back.

Endings and Beginnings

Well, in the days between Christmas and New Year I managed to finish the task of generating and checking all the orchestral parts for my 2 pieces (Elegy for Baritone and Orchestra and In the Barbarians' Camp) which will be premiered by The Salomon Orchestra and Adrian Brown, at St. James's Piccadilly in March. The task of checking the parts was particularly tedious as my proof-reading skills are pretty pitiful. Still, its all over now and the parts are with the conductor for marking up.

I have also nearly reached the end of the first draft of my piece Crossing, setting 2 Rabindranath Tagore poems for choir and organ, which will be premiered at this year's Chelsea Festival. The piece has been going slowly of late, partly because of the work on other projects, so I am relieved to see the end in sight; all I have to do now is actually finish it and then start the revisions.

Now that Christmas and New Year are over, I have also got to start thinking about other administrative tasks, such as publicising the concerts in March and ensuring sufficient singers for the FifteenB concert at the Chelsea Festival.

Having returned from our Christmas break, we went to see Billy Wilder's film Fedora at the National Film Theatre. We'd started talking about the film some months ago, speculating about whether the plot owed anything to Giordano's opera of the same name (it doesn't!). Still, the film was most enjoyable and gave me ideas for yet another film-based opera (I've already had ideas about making the film Chronos into an opera and have The Weekend as a work in progress). All I really need is a librettist !

Tomorrow is New Year's day so the trick is to avoid the Strauss waltzes (and the Radetzky march with its terrible audience clapping) on TV and Radio.

Never say never

After singing carols with my choir earlier on in the month, I fondly imagined that I was done with carol singing for this year. Never my favourite of activities, I generally try and avoid them where possible. But...

On Tuesday it was the Chelsea Green carol concert; organised by the local businesses the choir of St. Luke's Church, Chelsea and Enterprise Brass braved the cold to sing carols and generally try and us in a Christmas mood, even old humbugs like me. And yes, I did actually hum along to some of the carols (fortified by smoked salmon, sausages and mulled wine!).

Then the choir from the local school came to sing under the Christmas tree at work. I imagined that I could avoid them but their singing permeated the entire building in a rather attractive manner. A relatively small group of children produced a surprisingly confident, well focussed and enjoyable sound. But now, I'm happy to forego carols for another year (or two!).

Recent CD review

My review of the new disc of Bo Holten's choral music is here, on MusicWeb.

The latest issue of Opera magazine came flying through the letter box on Monday and has, as usual, been essential reading ever since.

I was interested to read that the National Theatre in Prague has only just staged the original version of Janacek's Jenufa for the first time; previously they had only ever staged the adaption made by the theatre's then director at the time the opera was first performed in Prague. Janacek had to agree to the changes as a condition of the opera being performed. Its a good thing that such unnecessary adaptions (correcting perceived faults in orchestration etc.) are being consigned to the dustbin.

Another review that caught my eye was Magdala Opera's production of Cavalleria Rusticana in Nottingham. Roderic Dunnett gave it a very positive review, which is very heart warming as the opera company is based on a chorus, many of whose members started adult life with no musical training, even no sense of pitch or no idea how to sing. Their aim is to bring more people to opera through their performances. More power to their elbow.

According to Opera's 'We hear that...' column, the Royal Opera House are having yet another go at Salome, with David McVicar scheduled to do a new production in 2008. I think this will be their 3rd new production since they ditched their old one which I saw starting in the late 70's/early 80's, with Hildegarde Behrens, Josphine Barstow, Gwynneth Jones and Grace Bumbry (at various times). I often wonder whether companies sometimes regret ditching old standard productions when they have so much trouble getting a new one right. But I suppose in an age of shared productions it is probably almost cost effective to bring a new co-production in as to re-furbish substantial and expensive sets.

Covent Garden seem to be investing quite heavily in David McVicar, I hope that he continues to deliver.

Hear today ....

After hearing Elgar's Dream of Gerontius at the Barbican last week, I'd been going on about the surviving recordings of Elgar himself conducting the work (well extracts of it). There's a complete prelude (recorded live at the Royal Albert Hall) and sundry excerpts from a couple of attempts to record the work live.

These were all assembled on CD but frustratingly neither the Opal nor the EMI CD's are available at the moment. Isn't it about time the bigger companies had some sort of press to order arrangement for out of print CD's. I know it would be expensive but it would certainly be useful

London Concord Singers Concert

Well, last night was the London Concord Singers concert at the Grosvenor Chapel, in Mayfair. Besides singing in the concert I had another interest in the programme as my motet I Vespri di Santa Cecilia was being performed. The concert went well and we got a pretty good audience; its always tricky at Christmas as there are so many other things going on, concerts, parties etc.

My motet went very well and there were quite a few approving comments at the interval and afterwards. We recorded the concert so I look forward to hearing the results. The trickier items in the programme went well and I think we did justice to Gabriel Jackson's 12-part motet, Cecilia Virgo.

About my own performance I was less than completely happy; I made a stupid mistake in a short solo and by the middle of the 2nd half was getting tired. The busy Christmas season was getting to me. So now its onward and upward, next term we start rehearsing Duarte Lobo's Requiem, Gabriel Jackson's Sacrum Convivium, another volume from Vagn Holmboe's Liber Canticorum and the amazing Purcell/Sandstrom Hear my prayer, along with a couple of pieces by the 18th century Roseingraves - a father and son who worked in the Cathedrals in Dublin.

Recent CD Review

My review of Yehudi Menuhin playing the Mendelssohn and Bruch concertos is here on MusicWeb

Well we are gearing up for our concert on Thursday (London Concord Singers are performing at The Grosvenor Chapel in Mayfair). Monday evening was our last rehearsal in our usual venue and tomorrow we have the final rehearsal at the Chapel. This time of year is not ideal for rehearsing in Churches; even if they are heated they are rarely warm enough. If you had dropped in at the end of our rehearsal yesterday you'd have encountered 24 people bundled up in a remarkably wide variety of clothes to counter the cold.

The concert includes one of my pieces, I Vespri di Santa Cecilia, which should be rather fun. This time I'm not doing the tenor solo; the first time Concord did the piece I had the dubious pleasure of singing solo in my own piece. The work calls for 6 soloists and double choir so that we have a 14-part work. All great fun.

One of the pieces we're doing is Britten's Hymn to St. Cecilia and for some reason I've been wandering around all week humming the lovely tune that he gives the soprano soloist to the words dear white children casual as birds

Recent CD Review

And my review of the East-West Continuo's imaginative disc of contemporary chamber music for Flute and strings is here on MusicWeb. If you are interested in the byways of contemporary chamber music, do search the disc out.

Concert Review: Dream of Gerontius

My review of Sunday's Dream of Gerontius is now on-line here at Music and Vision

Sunday morning was my last appearance at church until after Christmas. As it was Sunday we were able to use the organ (traditionally we don't use the organ in Advent, or Lent, but are allowed to on Gaudete Sunday). The name comes from the Latin text of the Introit which starts with the word Gaudete (Rejoice). We did Schubert in G; a mass to which I am supremely indifferent except for the sublime soprano solos in the Benedictus and the Agnus Dei. We also performed Emmanuel Fisher's Ave Maria; Fisher was a distinguished Jewish composer who wrote us this motet not long before he died. He had never written for the Christian church before and the result is very striking and quite a favourite with the choir.

In the evening we returned to the Barbican for the LSO's concert of Elgar's Dream of Gerontius. Unfortunately the illness bug was still around and Ben Heppner was ill and was replaced by David Rendall. Rendall's performance was a little careful but very enjoyable, but I had been looking forward to seeing what Heppner made of the role. A full review will appear in due course.

Emmannuelle Haim at the Barbican

I am unsure what the exact programme was supposed to be for Saturday’s concert by Le Concert d’Astree, conducted by Emmanuelle Haim, but the printed programme came with a note saying the programme had been changed. So we expected Bach’s Double Violin Concerto, the Oboe d’Amore concerto (reconstructed from the later Harpsichord concerto which was based on it), 2 arias from the Mass in B Minor sung by Alice Coote and a cantata sung by Barbara Bonney. In the event conductor Emmanuelle Haim had injured her arm and the 1st half was reduced. Each singer sang only 1 aria, but the concertos were left untouched. I suspect that the many admirers of Alice Coote and Barbara Bonney in the audience would rather have lost the concertos and kept the vocal contributions.

The double violin concerto was played by the leaders of the 1st and 2nd violins. Haim’s tempi in the outer movements were swift and the violins favoured articulation over line so that there were times when the solo parts sounded preciously like pecking. I longed for a little more space and sense of pure line. Though the performance was creditable it seemed to trivialise the work somehow. The oboist played his concerto confidently and fluently, producing a lovely deep modulated sound. But it was only in the slower middle movement that he had time to pause, dwell and consider; in the outer movements things seemed to just dash past. The singers’ two arias were moving, leaving me longing for more.

After the interval the 2 singers blended beautifully in the duets in Pergolesi’s Stabat Mater. But somehow I wanted more. The text is so over-wrought that Pergolesi’s lovely melodies can easily seem to skate over the subject matter. Singers and Ensemble, particularly the ensemble, needed to find more depth, more suffering in the work.

One curiosity is that Bach produced a version of the work adapted to fit Psalm 51 with a more elaborate accompaniment (a fully independent viola part, for instance). Given the Bachian nature of the programme it would have been interesting to hear it. But perhaps the work would not have had such cachet with the paying public.

The hall was full and the theatre was busy with its Xmas show, Tintin, so that the facilities were stretched to breaking point.

Yesterday morning I finally finished producing all of the orchestral parts from my pieces, The Barbarians are Coming and Elegy for Baritone and Orchestra, which are being performed by the Salomon Orchestra in March 2006. I use Finale to write music and produce scores, so supposedly I should be able to generate parts at the touch of a button. Of course the reality is more complicated; how you enter the notes and markings in the first place affects the final part so I have to spend time giving each part a final tidy up and laying it out so that the turns are in satisfactory places. I've now printed everything out and will compare them to the score,as a final check; tedious but necessary

I've also started producing marketing copy and graphics for the concert as these are needed by the firm who are doing the ticketing. Its the first time I've used a ticketing firm and it will be interesting to see how this affects sales. I'm hoping to have the web page for the concert up later today; I'll keep you posted

Last night we went to the Barbican to see Emmanuelle Haim conducting her group Les Concerts d'Astree with Barbara Bonney and Alice Coote. I'll discuss the concert in detail in a follow up posting.

Recent CD Review

My review of Travellin' Light, Guild's 2nd disc of American light music is here, on MusicWeb.

Carol Singing

For the first time in many years I was carol singing last night. One of the choirs that I sing in had been asked to provide carols outside a hotel as guests arrived for a function, so a group of about 15 of us gathered in the cold and sang our hearts out for an hour. The reward? A handsome fee for choir funds. Most guests simply wandered past us smiling as they entered or left the hotel, but some stayed to listen for a while and a small group of Japanese tourists spent quite a time listening to us – they even had their photos taken next to the choir.

It is some years since I have sung carols; I try to avoid them in general unless we can include a number of seriously interesting or unusual ones. But for once it was fun re-visiting all the old favourites in Carols for Choirs.

Recent Book Review

My review of the Cambridge Companion to Grand Opera is here, on MusicWeb.

Review of Billy Budd

My review of Billy Budd is now on-line here, at Music and Vision along with some arresting images of the production.

To ENO on Saturday for the first night of their new production of Billy Budd; the production itself is not that new having been seen previously in Wales and Australia. The production seemed to have been created with 2 thoughts in mind; first it was not to be a traditional depiction of ship-board life, but something more abstract; secondly, the production had to tour. The result uses a flexible hydraulic platform which features as a constant and moves constantly. I understand that in the productions previous incarnations, the platform dominated the stage but at the London Coliseum it looked simply marooned and extremely unlovely. My full review will appear in the next day or two on Music and Vision, but reading the existing reviews what is fascinating is how tolerant the critics have been of the look of the production.

On Sunday I was singing at St. Mary’s Roman Catholic Church, as usual. It was one of those days where the cycle of the Christian year clashed with the vagaries of singers’ timetabling; we were a little low on numbers but the time of the year rendered Bruckner’s Virga Jesse suitable. So sing it we did, with the lower 3 parts just 1 or 2 singers per part – not the ideal forces for such a big work, but it went very well.

Recent CD Review

My review of Chanticleer's foray into the world of Gospel and Spirituals is here, on Music and Vision.

Recent CD review - La Traviata

My review of the 1953 Callas recording of La Traviata, is here, on MusicWeb. This was her only studio recording of the opera, but its not all that we could have hoped for.

More Meyerbeer

Having just finished reviewing a book about French grand opera I thought that it was about time that I reacquainted myself with some of the prime examples of the genre. Like many people, I suspect, I am more familiar with operas written for the Paris Opera by Italian composers (Rossini’s Guillaume Tell, Verdi’s Les Vepres Sicilenne and Don Carlos), than I am with the works of Meyerbeer, Halevy and Auber.

This quest is trickier than it sounds and has the potential for great expense. After all, 5 Act operas in this genre are not short so the CD’s do not always come cheap. Trawling through the internet, I discovered that the strongest available recording of Meyerbeer’s Les Huguenots is still the one with Joan Sutherland. The later Erato recording with a French cast including Francoise Pollet has dropped out of the catalogue, though Malibran has a couple of fascinating early recordings. Even stranger, there is no studio recording for Le Prophete available, the main recording I could find was a live one from Toronto in 1970. The only CD of L’Africaine is an historic German one from 1952.

The situation is similar with Auber; apart from Fra Diavolo his operas are heavily under represented in the catalogue. It seems strange that such an influential operatic form could have dropped so out of favour. What you can get, of course, are the estimable Opera Rara recordings of Meyerbeer’s Italian operas; oh, that they would start exploring early 19^th century French opera. Still, I have their set of the BBC Les Vepres Siciliennes on my Christmas List and I am waiting with baited breath for the issue of the BBC Don Carlos. This latter is the only recording of Verdi’s first thoughts; the true grand opera Don Carlos, rather than the later Modena version with the odd patch. I used to have a cassette of the original BBC broadcast but somehow Act 1 went walkies, so getting the CD’s is essential.

Anyway, I managed to get the Erato recording of Les Huguenots out of the record library and we started listening to it last night. (1^st Act and part of 2^nd Act). What struck me was how light (for want of a better word) the music sounded. Given that this was a 5 act opera on a seriously serious subject, I had thought the sound world would be darker. But of course, I am falling into the same trap as everyone else and wearing my post-Wagnerian ears. So next time I listen, I promise to do better.

David commented that parts of it sounded, to him, like Offenbach and of course it is that composer’s parodies of grand opera that are often our only regular access to the genre. After all, in Spring this year we were in Paris for Offenbach’s La Grande Duchesse de Gerolstein and that includes a scene parodying the blessing of the swords from Les Huguenots.

Mona's Law

In one of Armistead Maupin's Tales in the City books, Mona expounds Mona's Law, 'You can have a hot lover, a hot job and a hot apartment, but you can't have all three at the same time'. Well London has its own version of the law which states that the Royal Opera and English National Opera can't both be operating at an artistic peak at the same time.

For years it was ENO (particularly the powerhouse years under Pountney, Jonas and Elder) who rode the crest of the wave where the Royal Opera struggled to define what it was for in a poor enconomic climate. This culminated in the embarassing arguments over the years in exile whilst the Royal Opera House was being re-built.

But all this has changed and the Royal Opera is on something of a roll (though the Pappano regime is still having trouble coming up with an effective production style). But post-powerhouse ENO are continuing to have the same sort of troubles that the post-Thatcher Conservative party have.

Ironically the rebuilding of the London Coliseum does not seem to have had such a revitalising effect on ENO. So far we have had 3 artistic directors (Nicholas Payne, Denis Marks and Sean Doran), none of whom has really had long enough to make his mark. Now we have the news that Doran has resigned, effective immediately. So ENO must go looking again. I only hope that they find someone soon.

Work is progressing on my Rabindranath Tagore settings, now provisionally titled Crossing. I’ve reached the 4 minute mark and am still managing to stick to my original decision to use passacaglia as the form and stay in the same key. I have cheated a little and there is at least one interlude passage where the passacaglia is suspended and the choir sings over a held organ pedal. Regarding the key, I have used the fact that when repeating the passacaglia melody I have the option of modulating down a semi-tone at the repeat. Mind you, this caused some problems as we moved from A minor (with added G sharp) to G sharp minor (with added F double sharp). I decided that the F double sharp was a bit dodgy for extended choral singing, so engineered another key change double quick, so currently we’re in G minor (with added F sharp).

I am slightly worried about the general sound world of the piece and whether the vocal parts are easy enough and grateful enough to sing, I don’t want the piece to sound like a struggle. I can see I’m going to have to bash away on the piano for a bit to check that it lies right. I’ll keep you posted.

Recent CD reviews on MusicWeb

My review of Decca's fine re-issue of Emma Kirkby singing Handel cantatas is here, and the BBC Proms performance of Bartok's Bluebeard's Castle, with John Tomlinson in the title role, is here.