I spent a large chunk of yesterday evening, braving the rain and travelling to All Saints Church, East Finchley. We're planning to do the recording there for the forthcoming Divine Art disc of my choral and vocal music. The venue has already been seen by the recording team but I'd never visited it and travelled out to see the churchand head its organ. (Interestingly, the organ is not tuned to concert pitch, but has always been high.) The director of music at the church is the composer Geoffrey Hanson.

I was doubly interested, therefore, to read Norman Lebrecht's piece in today's Evening Standard, (visible one the web here at La Scena Musicale) about a young violinist who, despairing of getting any major notice, decided to make her own disc. She recorded the Shostakovitch violin concerto and managed to raise the £30,000 necessary for the orchestra. I was very impressed. But of course the realities of classical music CD production slip out during the article, Lebrecht tells us that the disc has sold 600 copies, but is still doing well. You do the math, as the Americans say - a bit scary really.

Technorati tag:classical music, CD Recording

Recent CD review

My review of Cho-Liang Lin's recording of The Four Seasons is here.

Efficient, well played virtuoso performances … looking for love, warmth and a feeling of friendly communal music-making, then look elsewhere. ...

And my review of the Ensemble Armacord's disc Here the Voice is here.

The programme is well chosen, mixing the familiar and unfamiliar. So if you would like to hear some fine singing in a remarkable range of pieces, then do try this disc....

Both reviews are on MusicWeb International.

Technorati tag:classical music, CD Review

From this month's Opera Magazine

Gleaning's from the February edition of Opera

Futures

Nicholas Payne points out that in the 50 years that he has been listening to opera the repertoire has double in time scale (200 years to 400 years) so what’s going to happen in the next 50 years we wonder. Much of the expansion has been helped by the link between the theatre and the recording industry; Payne points out the contemporary opera production is no where near as intimately linked to video and dvd. Perhaps this harnessing of 21st century technology is the way forward, somehow.

Gerard Mortier, however, believes that the repertoire is closed and will not expand. Instead opera performance is being exported (to America, to China etc).

Gioacchino Lanza Tomasi (Sovintendente, Teatro San Carlo, Naples) feels that the audience’s problem with contemporary opera performances arises from lack of attention given to musical training and to lack of research on the theatrical side. More creative investment is needed to renew the catalogue.

Aviel Cahn (Opera Director, Stadttheatre Bern) comments that people are becoming progressively less culturally educated, which means that education is becoming increasingly important in theatres. Menno Feenstra (Opera Director, Royal Theatre, Stockholm) suggests that the vibrancy of European opera theatre is because each opera house does its own thing.

In Seville the young conductor Pedro Halffter is both the music director and the artistic director, which means that he has a remarkable control of the direction of the theatre. But in Valencia the new Palau de les Arts, designed by Caltrava, has had a set back – a mobile stage collapsed. There are also acoustic problems and almost 80% of its (large) budget comes from public money – everyone will be watching their future with interest.

I see that Nicholas Joel is going to take over from Gerard Mortier at the Paris Opera, now that should be an interesting change. Also the David McVicar production of Der Rosenkavalier which ha been gaining plaudits at Scottish Opera is transposing itself to the London Coliseum next season. Thank goodness, this means we’re seeing the back of the Jonathan Miller updated production.

Also at ENO next season, David Alden is doing a new Peter Grimes with Stuart Skelton, Amanda Roocroft and Gerard Finley – good cast, not sure about the production though. Christopher Hogwood and Angelika Kirschlager are touring Handel’s Arianna in Creta in May 2009, something to look (very far) forward to.

There has been much talk of Domingo doing the baritone role in Simon Boccanegra but I note that he’s appearing, with Susan Graham, in a new production of Iphigenie en Tauride in November at the Met. I presume he’s singing the baritone part as I can hardly imagine him singing the high-lying tenor part.

And the Simon Rattle/Magdalena Kozena road show goes one, they are doing Chabrier’s Etoile in Berlin in 2008. Almost worth a trip.

Texts

Mortier comments that Wagner has too many word and that you could easily cut the Ring and it would be even better; brave words, I wish more people would consider it. He praises Amin Malhouf’s librettos for Saariaho, which leave space for the music; something that many contemporary librettists forget.

In London, the Royal Academy Opera did Lully’s Dardanus in a sort of French – better to have done it in superb French or comprehensible English. But these are both tricky options with a polyglot cast. But evidently Geraldine Farrar prided herself on being able to perform Gounod’s Faust in the language of the host country, be it French, German or Italian – now who can do that nowadays.

Over at the Royal College they did Monteverdi’s L’Incoronazione di Poppea updated to the 1930’s, not the most obvious. It worked, evidently because Paul Curran’s direction of the young singers was so good. Wish that were the case with all clever stagings. But there were solecisms. Both Nerone and Ottone were sung by men, an octave below. With Nerone, tenor Nathan Vale had to snog Lurcanio (to show his polysexuality presumably) and having a woman in the role just would not have given that frisson I presume. Hugh Canning felt that having a tenor Nerone was acceptable but a baritone Ottone not; I have to disagree, I hate the final duet being sung by soprano and tenor, it needs 2 equal voices. Again the issue of language came up, this time the poor diction. And again Canning wished that it was in the vernacular.

No wonder that singers diction is poor if their student performances omit the vernacular and teach poor French and Italian. Ho hum. Still, there are good signs, RNCM did a Cunning Little Vixen in comprehensible English.

Still on the subject of diction, the Russian performances of The Ring in Wales seem to have been very vague as to language, Michael Kennedy wondered whether they were singing some of it in Welsh!

Performance

Mortier is dubious about stadium opera, not believing that anyone would make the jump from this to real performances of opera – a pop music enthusiast of his wanted to try an opera, ‘the one with the fat soprano and the elephants’.

Hugh Canning was in Paris and caught Les Troyens at the Opera, where Mortier had imported Wernicke’s Salzburg production. Its worrying that Canning comments that Sylvain Cambreling’s conducting was such that he could understand why French critics find Les Troyens boring. Les Troyens was also on show in Strasbourg, where they opted for a mainly Franco-phone cast.

Still in France, Canning caught Patrice Cherau’s oddly low-key and humourless Cosi and commented getting Marie McLaughlin’s usually irrepressible Despina to keep a straight face throughout is an achievement of sorts.

Over in the Chatelet, Pedro Almodovar’s favourite actress Rossy de Palma was appearing in an operetta, despite not singing or speaking French!

Canning, lucky soul, also saw the new Giulio Cesare at the Theatre des Champs Elysees, directed by Irina Brook. Heavily cut, but with Rosemary Joshua, Alice Coote and Andreas Scholl; Canning comments that compared to this one David McVicar’s Glyndebourne production seemed a model of hair shirted austerity. Perhaps Canning was not so lucky after all. He points out that Handel’s current ubiquity (popularity?) means that there is a shortage of directors sympathetic to opera seria.

Handel, of a sort was on show at the Neukollner Oper in Berlin. Here the piece was cut down to 2 hours (with no interval). Barry Emslie thought that some of the performance even sound like Handel – oh joy! Evidently the Staatsoper in Stuttgart has offered Purcell, Handel, Keiser and Gluck in recent seasons but Horst Koegler is dubious about the vocal standards.

Over in Greece, the Opera North production of Falla’s La Vida Breve re-surfaced with Anne Sophie Duprels (Grange Park’s Thais) in the lead.

Calixto Bieto has surfaced in Italy, in Bologna. Max Loppert finds his work insensitive to the text (words and music), which I think is pretty true no matter how exciting his productions. Evidently the new production of Stravinsky’s Rakes Progress took place on a set like a bouncy castle, which collapsed as all their air was let out of it during the grave yard seen. Something I’d like to have seen, even if it had little to do with Stravinsky, Auden and Kallman’s opera.

The infamous La Scala Aida, the one Alagna walked out of, turns out to be a Zeffirelli spectacular; one of the grandest spectacles that Andrew Clark has seen with iconography reminiscent of 1960’s Hollywood. Clark felt that Zeffirelli’s show was ’no more than a reflection on stage of the money seated in the stalls, an operatic tradition with a 300 year pedigree’

In Rekyavik there was a new opera by Karolina Eiriksdottir, which sounds fascinating. In it, tenor Eyolfur Eyolfsson is called upon to sing counter-tenor as well, something he does well. I’m not sure how well this bodes for the opera’s future life but it’s a piece I’d like to see.

Another new opera, this time in Thailand, caused a stir in the press as it was supposed to depict the death of a king on stage, albeit a mythological one. Robert Markow postulates that it is the only work to be written which includes Wagner tubas and a harpsichord.

James C. Taylor mentions an unintended queerness in Posa’s death scene in the Los Angeles Don Carlos. I’m not sure about the unintended bit as, despite the resolutely heterosexual plot, the relationship between the two men has always seemed rather homo-erotic. Over in New York, Johan Botha garnered plaudits for his account of the title role in the opera, even projecting romantic urgency - something that does not always come easily to large tenors.

Technorati tag:classical music, opera

Re-organisation

I've been busy sending out press releases for our March 18th gig (see previous post). A normally tedious task made worse because I moved PC in December and have decided to rationalise my contacts lists; so everything is taking twice as long as usual, but the theory is that next time the process should be a lot easier. (I've heard that one before).

The Art of the Verse Anthem

All Saints Church, Margaret Street, London: Sunday March 18th 3.00pm - Music by Orlando Gibbons and Robert Hugill


For their 2007 concert, the FifteenB Consort, with Paul Ayres (organ), are presenting a programme of verse anthems, centred on the works of Orlando Gibbons. In addition to "This is the Record of John" we are performing "If ye be risen again in Christ" and "Almighty God, who by thy Son", as well as his unaccompanied anthem "Almighty and Everlasting God".
The concert is at 3.00pm on Sunday March 18th at All Saints Church, Margaret Street, London, W1W, 8JG. Tickets price £10 are available on the door. All proceeds go to the All Saints Restoration Fund

The verse anthem, with its mixture of solos and choruses was a common form in 17th century Anglican church. We will be singing an attractive selection by composers as diverse as Elizabethans Thomas Tomkins and Thomas Weelkes, and Pelham Humphrey who was a contemporary of Purcell's.

The group will also be performing 2 works by their artistic director, Robert Hugill; his solo motet, "Faith Hope and Charity" and a new anthem, "My eyes are ever turned towards the Lord", directly inspired by 17th century verse anthems.

All Saints Margaret Street will be celebrating its 150th anniversary in 2009. Over 2 million pounds are needed to restore this magnificent building to its Victorian splendour in time for the anniversary celebrations.

All Saints Church

FifteenB

Poster

Technorati tag:classical music, orlando gibbons

Aggripina

I checked the ENO website, so find out what time their new production of Handel's Agrippina finishes, as we are going on Saturday. Turns out that Saturday's performance starts at 5.30pm and is due to last 3 hours 40 minutes. (Other performances start at 6.30pm). So I thought, Oh good they are doing it uncut; when they did it at the Brixton Festival they cut it heavily so the whole running time was 3 hours.

I checked the on-line synopsis and found that they are doing the opera with only 1 interval. I have a serious problem with this in 3-act operas. Especially ones as carefully constructed as Handel's. Either it means running 2 acts together or you put the interval in an unsuitable place. There's not denying that the opera is long; when I saw the Kent Opera production at Sadlers Wells I had to miss the last bit as there was a danger of me missing my train home.

Still, Fiona Maddocks in her Evening Standard review seemed to like the production and commended the cast and the singing. She was a little less convinced by David McVicar's direction, but the basis for comparison seemed to be Glyndebourne's Giulio Cesare which she described as perfect. As I found it to be rather less than perfect and rather too concerned with entertaining the audience, I'm a bit in two minds as to what we'll find on the Coliseum stage on Saturday.

Technorati tag:classical music, opera

Recent CD Reviews

My review of Catherine Bott's new disc on the Fred Label is here.
A disc which wears its scholarship lightly; infectious performances shine new light on old songs and make new connections...

And my review of Anne Sophie von Otter's recital, a re-issue of her first, is here. Both reviews are on Music Web International.
Essential listening for those who have followed von Otter’s career. If you’ve got her later recordings then you’ll definitely want this her first disc ...

Recording latest

I've set up a web-page which give details of what works our forthcoming recording will include and details of the artists etc. The page also has links to some archive recordings of some of the pieces taken from live performances at the Chelsea Festival and other places. The link is here.

Tchaikovsky on TV

Finally managed to catch up on episode 1 of Charles Hazelwood's docu-drama about Tchaikovsky which was broadcast on BBC last Saturday, with the 2nd and final part tomorrow.

Ed Stoppard did a pretty good job of re-creating the composer, but I found the mix of Charles Hazelwood's talking head, contemporary Russian musicians playing the composer's music (cue lots of brooding shots of Hazelwood conducting) and the dramatised sections all made for an uneasy whole.

Why could they not have made a pair of programmes, one a proper documentary and the other a proper drama. The dramatised bits were rather confusing as they kept returning to the image of Tchaikovsky dying, which was rather melodramatic and unhelpful. The remainder seemed to rather dwell on the composer's homosexuality. Goodness knows how accurate these re-constructions were, but they seemed a little over the top to me. Surely we'd have been better off with someone reading the composer's letters and someone describing the milieu. It was almost as if the dramatised bits were put in to restrict the amount of screen time that Hazelwood had to discuss the composer's putative sex life. And it always annoys me when people use the word gay to describe someone in the past, for me the word gay describes a modern milieu and is unhelpful when referring to past centuries.

The musical performance sections included dancing from the ballets. I did have the unworthy thought that, given that they had gone to the trouble of reconstructing aspects of Tchaikovsky's life, they should have found a dumpy Italian ballerina to dance Petipa's choreography. After all, the long-limbed lithe ballerina is a 20th century invention. The reason why tutus replace the longer skirts that French ballet dancers had worn was because the Milanese school, which dominated early 19th century ballet, mainly produced rather short legged, dumpy dancer (who were technically very brilliant).

Still, we plan to watch/record the 2nd episode.

Recent CD Review

My review of the new Naxos recording of Cavalli's Gli Amori d'Apollo e di Dafne is here, on MusicWeb International.

A welcome opportunity to hear one of Cavalli’s earliest operas but don’t listen if you dislike the idea of Cavalli filtered through 19th century sensibility. ...

More John Adams

An comment on my review of Sunday's John Adams concert points out that that Proms performance by the work's original dedicatee, Tracy Silverman, was outstanding. So it looks as if I'm going to have to look out for further performances by Silverman.

Technorati tag:classical music

Its now official

My forthcoming disc is now official, contracts have been signed etc. and the disc is mentioned on their forthcoming discs page. We're not recording until April, so there will be all sorts of alarums and excursions before the disc goes live, but this is step 1.

LSO and John Adams at the Barbican

At the interval of Sunday's LSO concert at the Barbican D. and I had divergent opinions of the music. It was the first of 2 John Adams concerts that the LSO are doing as part of a mini-season. Adams had just conducted Slonimsky's Ear Box and Dharma at Big Sur, this latter with Leila Josefowicz playing the electric violin.

D. had found the works attractive and entertaining, whereas I had wanted something more. They had undeniable surface brilliance and attractiveness of construction and Josefowicz's playing had been nothing short of brilliant. But the solo part is designed to sound free and improvised whilst actually being highly notated, and I felt that Adams should have trusted his soloists more. This might have led to the missing ingredients, depth and passion. Though the music was played with passion I did not feel that it expressed it, though they were full of brilliant surfaces the very construction techniques that Adams uses means that he does not allow you underneath and the very tightness of the orchestration does not allow for much additional expression from the players.

I had been hoping that this depth might come from On the Transmigration of Souls, the work in the 2nd half. But having the faintly embarrassing texts projected on screens, having the audience 'surrounded' by a sound installation of which we could only hear half and the naive nature of the texts themselves, all these contributed to the rather ephemeral nature of the piece. It was slightly moving and undoubtedly well performed, but it was too highly manicured. The work commemorates a perfectly gut-wrenching event and Adams failed to produce a work which matches that, it was too well-behaved, to neatly manicured and failed to take risks. Give me Nixon or Klinghoffer any day.

On the subject of trusting performers, Adams made an interesting comment in the programme notes. The Big Sur piece was originally written using just intonation, but at the first rehearsals Adams discovered that it is impossible for 80+ musicians to agree on the exact intervals used in the just intonation. The results could perhaps have been creative chaos, but instead Adams reverted to standard mean-tone intonation for most of the parts.

Technorati tag:classical music

La Fille du Regiment - again

Saturday we went to see La Fille du Regiment at Covent Garden, for the 2nd time. We were quite surprised at how well the production held up, seeing it twice in just over a week. There was still much to enjoy and the jokes did not seem stale.

The main reason for going was to see/hear Colin Lee as Tonio. It must take a great deal of gumption to replace Juan-Diego Florez for one performance in a role like Tonio. Lee's presence was no last-minute emergency, but had been planned from the start. Though, judging by the comments around us, a significant no. of the audience had thought they were going to see Juan-Diego Florez.

As it turns out Lee was almost as impressive as Florez. There were one or two moments of slight uncertainty, but his performance was notable for its confidence. Tonio's shorts suit Lee, a rather bulkier figure, than Florez, and Lee's was a slightly less naive, more knowing presence than Florez. Perhaps because Lee cuts a far less boy-ish figure on stage.

As far as the singing went, Lee was superb and received a well deserved ovation for his performance of his Act 1 showpiece, complete with the high C'.s His voice is less suave than Florez's and will perhaps develop rather more dramatically. Lee also has a rather more pronounced, but attractive vibrato which he uses expressively. If this were a competition then I think that Florez would win, but it isn't. There is plenty of room for both of them and those in the audience who came to see Florez were not disappointed in Lee. Next time, the Royal Opera ought to give him more than a single, measly performance. With adequate rehearsal time, I'm sure he could do wonders.


Technorati tag:classical music, opera

Recent CD reviews

My review of Emmanuelle Haim's new recording of Monteverdi's Il Combattimento di Tancredi e Clorinda with Rolando Villazon is here.

You get to hear how one of the 21st century’s loveliest voices sounds in this music, providing you can get beyond the vexed issue of performance style. ...

And my review of Andrea Gullickson's oboe concerto disc is here.

Out of the way repertoire and musical performances, a highly recommendable disc. ...

Both reviews are on on Music Web International.

Recent CD Review

My review of the compilation, Sacred Treasures IV, is here on Music and Vision.

Plans

Well we're off to see La Fille du Regiment at the Royal Opera House tomorrow. Yes, I know we saw it last Saturday, but tomorrow has Colin Lee as Tonio instead of Juan Diego Florez. We saw Lee at Grange Park last summer and have seen him in the past at ENO, so look forward to hearing his take on this killer role.

Then on Sunday its all change as the LSO do an all John Adams concert, with Adams conducting. The programme includes his 9/11 piece, On the Transmigration of Souls, should be amazing.

Recent CD Review

My review of Windsor Castle Chapel Choir's disc of music by Sir Henry Harris is here on Music Web International.

They perform their old master's music with passion, commitment and a remarkable degree of accuracy. What more could you want? ...

CD Review

My review of Nigel North's 2nd volume of Dowland's lute music (Naxos) is here on MusicWeb International.

There is only one thing to say about this wonderful recital: buy it! ...

Soli Deo Gloria

A comment on one of my previous posts has brought the American organisation Soli Deo Gloria to my attention. They organise and promote performances and recordings of sacred music. Their activities include an admirable contemporary stream. Composer James MacMillan has just joined the Honorary Board of Directors and Paul Ayres has been commissioned by them to write a new piece.

Book review - A Concise History of Western Music

It is a brave person who attempts to summarise the history of Western classical music in just over 300 pages, but Paul Griffiths has done just that in his new book, A Concise History of Western Music, published by Cambridge University Press http://www.cambridge.org/uk/catalogue/catalogue.asp?isbn=9780521842945 ) It is this conciseness which is the problem, of course, how to give shape and coherence to a tradition that is multifarious and varied. But condensing this sprawling narrative into one slim volume has great advantages as it enables the writer (and the reader) to keep control of themes and enable the entirety of Western Classical Music to be considered in one sweep. Larger volumes might have the advantage of comprehensiveness. But small volumes such should have shape and elegance.

Running through Griffiths’s narrative is the concept of how time was considered. To a certain extent this is a conceit which enables him to give his sections some elegant titles, but beyond this you can sense that he is straining to express the way the different periods of music had very different relationships to musical time and pulse.

Griffiths divides his book into 8 sections as follows:-
Part 1: Time whole (14 pages)
Part 2: Time measured 1100-1400 (24 pages)
Part 3: Time sensed 1400-1630 (52 pages)
Part 4: Time known 1630-1770 (40 pages)
Part 5: Time embraced 1770-1815 (28 pages)
Part 6: Time escaping 1815-1907 (64 pages)
Part 7: Time tangled 1908-1975 (72 pages)
Part 8: Time lost 1975- (18 pages)

I have included the page counts to give an idea as to how Griffiths divides his time. This is a book that gives due weight to early music and to contemporary music; Griffiths’s narrative is so structured that Beethoven occurs almost at the centre of the book.

At first I found his language a bit too flowery, e.g. "Music, so intimately engaged with percetion, lights up the mind. Music, being immaterial, touches on the immaterial – on the drift of thought and feeling, on divinity and death". But once we move from the speculation on music’s sources to concrete history then things settle down and Griffiths’s language is generally admirably direct and clear.

There are a number of themes running through the narrative, which help to lift it from being a simple list of names and places. Firstly, Griffiths includes elements of musical analysis so that we understand the musical forms about which he is talking. One of the strands in the piece is the way musical form (and its use of time) has metamorphosed and changed, it is only when the narrative is well under way that we even get the first glimpse of the major and minor keys. His analyses are always apposite and straightforward to understand, he never seems to talk down to the reader. In the early part of the book, this sense of analysis is expanded to include bits of science in easily absorbed forms.

This first section also parallels the development of music with the development of musical notation and Griffiths helps us to understand how rooted in notation our music really is. The various elements of this strand run throughout the book, giving a clear idea of how music works and why it works the way it does.

Another strand of the book is how the present views the music of the past. This is important in a culture such as ours which seems to record everything. Initially this view of the past simply has a bearing on how we perceive the music; Griffiths makes it clear that music is not an absolute but is affected by how it is perceived and how we perform it. He reinforces this with an illuminating discussion on a piece of plainchant which can be heard nowadays but is apparently very old; Griffiths elucidates how modern perceptions and performance issues constantly re-create the music of the past.

This re-creation is made all the more apparent when we come to the music of the 20th century when Stravinsky starts creating works which are affected by past musics but as Griffiths points out "neoclassicism … owed its cool and strict rhythm not so much to the eighteenth century as to how the eighteenth century was being presented to the modern age by such performers as Landowska".

But besides seeing threads of continuity running through music history, an overview such as this is able to elucidate comparisons between contemporaries to help illuminate their musical world. Handel and Bach lived separate yet parallel existences in the same musical world. They never met and their music is apparently distinct, but Griffiths points out some helpful parallels between works written around the same time. Bach’s St. John Passion and Handel’s operas Giulio Cesare and Rodelinda come from the same period and would normally be seen as vastly different, but Handel and Bach were breathing the same musical air and Griffiths is able to detect this and help us see the commonalities between the works.

This crops up repeatedly in the book, the way the different musics of particular time have bearing on each other. Griffiths is admirable in the way he finds a similarity of purpose in late Rameau and late Handel: "Like Rameau at the same time, and very much the same age, Handel produced a series of works in which characterful action cascades into creative enjoyment, his choruses corresponding to Rameau’s dances."

I had never really thought about the parallel developments of music in the Soviet Union and in the USA in the 1930’s but Griffiths points out that in both countries composers moved away from modernistic developments - the Soviet composers under instruction from the government, but the American composers doing so apparently spontaneously. As with many other parallels, Griffiths offers no theories but simply records and allows the reader to develop ideas for themselves.

Finally, the last major strand that runs through the book is the role of composer in society along with how we perform music. How music was performed when written, along with sociological influences, is an important way of perceiving musical history. Other artistic and historical developments are touched on so that the can see modernism in the context of abstraction in the arts or come to feel the major effect that the French revolution had on the music and the arts in general.

Griffiths displays admirable clarity when picking his way through the many developments in music during the 19th century. He seems to be able to write about the era without obvious axe-grinding. And these are virtues which he needs in spades when approaching music in the decades after the 2nd world war. If he quotes Adorno a little to much and a little to abstrusely, he manages to make sense of the developments in music that happened during these challenging decades.

His treatment of atonality, serialism and modernism is scrupulously fair and Griffiths seems to be able to pick his way through the maze. But there is one area that he does not quite address fully. Whereas his discussions of music in the past includes information about performance practice and audience, for modernism he does not really address the central problem with post-War music making, that of the alienation of the audience. This is an area of music history which, I think, needs to be fully addressed in any major work.

Griffiths does enliven his narrative with brief biographical sketches of some composers. He does not always do this, perhaps because biography is not relevant for all composers. But there are moments when we seem to have lists of composers flashing past our eyes as we traverse the page; a problem in any work of this sort, but one that Griffiths seems to have minimised.

You can always play spot the bits missed out in this type of work. Griffiths seems to omit 19th century British composers pre-Elgar neither Stanford nor Parry gets a mention, though Ethel Smyth does.

The main narrative is followed by a 12 page glossary detailing all the specialist terms that you might need to know. Even more helpfully, this is followed by a list of further reading and listening, Griffiths suggests books and recordings which can be explored at leisure.

We have a tendency to view musical history as one of constant development. This is something that seems to be quite valid until we come to recent musical history. But perhaps even when dealing with the past, we should be wary of this model. In his closing sections on the musics of today, Griffiths introduces another, helpful, analogy – that of the labyrinth. We are no longer on a path but finding our way through a constantly expanding labyrinth and books like this help is to put ourselves in proper context.

Technorati tag:classical music, book review

First Night nerves

Well, I've sent of the contracts (duly signed) so that the recording is almost signed and sealed - it won't be delivered, of course, until the recording sessions in April.

Usually I obsess about minor details rather than the big picture - in this case, the pitch of the organ (a bit higher than concert pitch), how much rehearsal the strings will need, logistics of getting the singers together.

But sending off the contract rather gave me some pangs. Primarily of course, whether anyone was going to buy the recording. I go through a similar crisis of confidence when writing longer works, I get part of the way through and start to feel that its all rubbish and why bother to continue. When dealing with writing music, the only way is forward and the solution is to press on and eventually I rediscover my bounce. If and when a piece is finished it gets put in the draw before being brought out again and I'm usually pleasantly surprised and rather like the piece.

Its going to have to be the same with the recording, onwards and upwards ignoring worries. Its not that I don't feel my music is worth recording, just that I tend to go through crises of confidence and am not the best promoter of my own work. Also, of course, its rather a long process from conception to delivery of the final recorded item. At the moment we are in the middle of the waiting period, looking forward to the actual sessions and hoping that arrangements work. More in due course!

Technorati tag:classical music

Reviewer's log

I've been a bit intermittent with it of late, but I try and write a reviewer's log for Music Web, giving thoughts on the discs I've been reviewing. The latest instalment is here.

Review of La Fille du Regiment

My review of La Fille du Regiment is here on Music and Vision.


Technorati tag:classical music, opera

La Fille du Regiment

To the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden on Saturday for Donizetti's La Fille du Regiment with Natalie Dessay and Juan Diego Florez. Quite Wonderful. A review will appear in due course.

The programme included various informative articles, including one about women appearing on stage in the guise of soldiers. But there is one aspect that neither the production nor the programme book addressed. As the opera opens, Marie has become a Vivandiere (translated as mess-girl). Now, these women were not noted for their morals and in the opera Marie has sworn to marry a member of the regiment, one of here 'Fathers'. This sexual aspect would, surely, have occurred to the French listeners, well the male ones as well, so that the entire performance would have had an underlying feel of the incest taboo, even if the stage events did not emphasise this. Thankfully Laurent Pelly chose to ignore this as well in his production.

Another area which he ignored was language. The troups, and Marie, are French, Tonio is Tyrolean and the Marquise is not French either, she's local. So there would have been a great deal of scope for mixing of accent and language in the dialogue. Something that was missed

Technorati tag:classical music, opera

Publicity

I've been drafting the posters for the London Concord Singers concert on March 29th (Rachmaninov Vespers) and the FifteenB Consort concert at All Saints Margaret Street on March 18th. The results for this latter concert can be seen here. The poster includes the full programme for the concert, a mixture of 17th century Verse Anthems and my pieces.

Technorati tag:classical music

Radio Silence

Sorry for the radio silence, its been one of those weeks requiring planning and organisation for two of the big projects that I have on the go.

First off, our concert on March 18th at All Saints, Margaret Street. Its tricky enough getting a rehearsal schedule together which allows all 6 of us to be present, but we've had to fix up rehearsal venues and an organist. This latter has been a bit challenging regarding schedules, but luckily we've managed to get Paul Ayres to play for us, so we'll be in safe hands. Mind you, we have had to be a bit creative with the rehearsal scheduling. All I have to do now is get the music in a fit state for Paul to play from!

Then things also started moving on the recording front. I've been finalising contracts with the record company, via email luckily. Also, rehearsal schedules had to be addressed here and venues, both fixed now for the string orchestra which is one less thing to worry about. Another item on the worry list is the pitch of the organ at the recording venue, its a bit above concert pitch (not as much as a semi-tone). I think we'll be able to work round this, but its one more thing on the list.

In a couple of weeks time I'm off to visit the recording venue and see the organ. Also on the cards is a meeting with the record company's PR person. It almost feels as if we might be doing a recording! I've finally sent the conductor all the scores we'll be doing and have to address myself to the vexed question of producing the string parts - always a tedious business.

We're rehearsing for the March 18th concert tonight, and then we are off to the Royal Opera House tomorrow for the new production of La Fille du Regiment, can't wait!

The same, only different

We recently were listening to The Scissor Sisters first album, it was on top of the display in my local library so I thought, what the hell! They are a group about which I've seen and heard a lot but never really sat down to listen to their music, except for the odd track.

What struck us, when listening was how much we'd heard it before. The sound world of the disc is very reminiscent of the original gay disco boom, which of course was when D. and I paid a lot of attention to popular music. It is fascinating the way pop culture constantly needs to re-invent itself, re-using elements of the past. Its not just music, but fashion does something similar.

Whereas Western art culture is heavily based on the unchanging artefact (a score or work of art), the idea being that things develop towards the perfect artefact, in pop culture there is no such development, the moment is all. It matters not that the artefact might have been used before, what matters is what you are doing with it at the moment.

This, of course, has had a big influence on some of the major names in modernism, where the move away from the fully notated score and the concept of an artefact, is quite important.

But there is another fascinating parallelism, the world of the baroque. Where composers were constantly pressured for something new, it was newness that mattered. Everyone recycled and re-used pre-existing material, whether it was your own or someone else's. If you read about the constant pressures on Handel, you can see parallels with our own pop culture. Not only the expectation from the audience to produce something new, but the constant striving to make each revival of a work new and different, no matter what the total effect on the work's artistic integrity.

What is fascinating is that nowadays we decry some of Handel's revivals of his works, where he cut and pasted all manner of music to create new versions which were weaker than the original. But to contemporaries do not seem to have worried about this in the same way, they were concerned for the ephemera of the moment, whether the singers were good and whether the songs were knew.

Reading biographies of baroque composers you often feel that their lives were closer to key figures in pop culture than contemporary composers. Handel as George Michael!!!

Technorati tag:classical music, Handel

News season Great Performers at the Barbican

The 2007/2008 Great Performers season has started booking at the Barbican. As usual, ridiculously early but how can one resist such a good selection of concerts. It seems to be a feature of concert life in London that the big institutions are opening booking earlier and earlier (at least it seems that way, I've not kept a proper record of it).

But the 2007/08 season at the Barbican includes Les Arts Florissants doing Landi's Il Sant Alessio (no, I hadn't heart of it either). Magdalena Kozena doing Handel arias, Emmanuelle Haim and Le Concert d'Astree doing Handel's Dixit Dominus and Bach's Magnificat, the Sixteen doing Messiah, Natalie Dessay doing Italian operatic arias, Vivaldi's opera Tito Manlio, Handel's Flavio, Ian Bostridge singing in Bach's St. John Passion, Mozart's Idomeneo and Britten's Billy Budd (this latter with the LSO), Thomas Quasthoff and Bernada Fink in Bach cantatas and Andreas Scholl doing Handel cantatas. Plus of course various more modern musics, including another Golijov premiere, Saariaho's Adriana Mater, recitals by Juan Diego Florez, Roberto Alagna, Cecilia Bartoli (no programme for this one, which is a bit naughty) and Gergiev and the Vienna Philharmonic much much more.


As a member you get 20% discount, which certainly makes a big difference to ticket prices. It means that we can just about afford to sit in half decent seats in the stalls instead of way back in the circle.

Technorati tag:classical music

30th London Handel Festival

The brochure for the 30th London Handel Festival has dropped through my letter box and we have sent off our application for tickets. As ever, the selection of works is mouthwatering.

The main oratorio performance is Solomon with a cast including Iestyn Davies. And the opera performances this year are of Poro in a production which is co-produced with the Benjamin Britten International Opera School and directed by Christopher Cowell.

There are an attractive selection of lunchtime concerts, the annual St. Matthew Passion performance on Good Fridy and of course the Handel Singing Competition. This year, at one of the lunchtime concerts Paul Ayres will be giving a programme of Handel's organ music together with news works for chamber organ inspired by Handel's music. The new works will chosen from those submitted to a Handel-inspired composition competition.

Most of the concerts take place at St. George's Church, Hanover Square, though Adrian Butterfield is giving a concert of English violin sonatas at the Foundling Museum. The advantage of St. George's Church is that it was Handel's parish church. This disadvantage is that sight lines are mixed and the comfort poor, the seats become very hard after 3 hours of Handel oratorio!

Full detail's at the Festival's website.

Technorati tag:classical music

SPAV Concert

On Sunday we went to see the all women Schola Pietatis Antonio Vivaldi in their concert at St. George's Church, Bloomsbury. The group are attempting to re-construct the sound of Vivaldi's choir at the Pieta by using an all female group (including women basses). My review is here on Music and Vision.

You might also care to visit the group's Website where you can hear a recording the group made in 2005.

The further good news is that there are plans afoot for further performances in London.

Technorati tag:concert review, classical music

Recent CD Reviews

My review of Pergolesi's Stabat Mater from David Daniels and Fabio Biondi is here
A fine new version, perhaps mainly for David Daniels lovers, but if you don’t have a recording then consider this one.

The review of Danzas Tuba is here .
Might not be very high on everyone’s wants list but I urge you to try it, you will discover some interesting repertoire and some very fine playing. ...

And a disc of Bach transcriptions for saxophone ensemble here.

All the review are on Music Web International

Opera Review - The Enchanted Pig

The Young Vic's 2006 Christmas Show was The Enchanted Pig, a musical tale by Jonathan Dove and Alasdair Middleton. In some ways, a rather daring enterprise as the theatre had re-opened with Dove's community opera Tobias and the Angel. Dove and Middleton do not bill their new piece as an opera, but it is through composed – not spoken dialogue, and half the cast are opera singers.

It is written to be accessible to family audiences. Dove's musical style is essentially tuneful and lyrical but he is not content with just finding a tune, the many melodies in the piece are combined in various ways to produce wonderful ensembles. Whilst the musical style might not be entirely to the taste of the many children that were there when we saw the piece on Friday, it certainly did not put them off and they enjoyed it immensely.

Dove's music is reminiscent of Sondheim, Into the Woods is obviously an influence as regards plot and music. But Dove creates more melodic melodies and modifies the sharpness of Sondheim's music.

The plot concerns the young Princess Flora (Caryl Hughes) and her two sisters (Kate Chapman and Akiya Henry). When their father King Hildebrand (veteran opera singer John Rawnsley) goes to war they disobey his orders and read the book of Fate, played by another veteran opera singer Nuala Willis. What they read must come to pass so the 2 elder sisters marry kings (Joshua Dallas and Delroy Atkinson) and Flora must marry a pig (Byron Watson). When the pig takes her home, Flora warms towards him and this partially breaks the spell that is on him so that at night he turns back into a handsome man. The pig says that Flora must have patience and trust him but she is impatient and with the help of an old lady (Nuala Willis again) she tries to cure the pig. But the old lady is the witch that enslaved the pig and Flora's impatience has meant that he is now fully enslaved and is taken away to marry the old lady's daughter (Kate Chapman).

To win her pig/husband back Flora must travel the world and wear out 3 pairs of iron shoes. This she does, on the way meeting various people who teach her the different meanings of love. First Mr and Mrs North Wind (John Rawnsley and Nuala Willis) hilariously played as gruff Northerners who explain, in an infectiously to-tapping number, that despite their manner they still love each other. Then the Moon (Joshua Dallas) for whom love is mysterious and he never meets the one he loves (presumably the Earth). And finally the Sun and his girlfriend Day (Delroy Anderson, wearing only a pair of sparkly swimming trunks, and Akiya Henry) who are carefree young lovers.

With these people's help she finds her pig/husband and breaks the spell. This part was perhaps the weakest as Flora has 3 days to do it in, before the wedding. And she has 3 gifts (from the North Winds, the Moon and the Sun) to help her. So basically we get the same material 3 times, each repeat shortened and varied, enlivened by the wedding preparations.

By the end of the opera Flora and her husband have learned the virtues of patience and endurance and learned about the many varieties of love. All told within the context of a story which was accessible and enjoyable to both adults and children. A considerable achievement for Dove, Middleton and their hard working cast.

It was lovely to see Rawnsley and Willis again, they both contributed a considerable amount of theatrical experience to the production and also seemed to be having a good time. In fact, the whole cast did.

As can be seen from the above, apart from Caryl Hughes and Byron Watson all the cast played multiple roles and when not playing a role, sang in the chorus. Hughes and Watson coped brilliantly with their long, taxing parts and there wasn't a weak link. No amplification was used, but both actors and opera singers balanced each other very well and conveyed the drama very well. Diction was pretty good and with the help of James Fulljames's imaginative production, I don't think that anyone could have difficulty understanding what was going on.

Dick Bird had designed basic set which used the whole theatre, meaning that the production (including Flora's flying through the air) happened in and around the audience a truly magical thing for everyone, but especially the children.

Dove had imaginatively scored the piece for a 5-piece band accordian (occasionally doubling piano), harp, percussion, trombone, cello and double bass. The results were magical and enchanting and at no point did the musical accompaniment feel undernourished; in fact I was amazed at the ravishing sounds that Dove had conjured. The band was directed from the accordian (now that's a first) by either Ian Watson or Edward Hessian.

This was a magical evening for us and for the many, many children in the audience. It is the sort of piece that more people should be doing, something that is not just children's theatre but enables the whole family to appreciate real, unamplified, sophisticated musical theatre.

The show is only on till the end of January but then it goes on tour.


Technorati tag:opera review, classical music, musical theatre

Plans

A couple of slightly out of the way events this weekend. First off, we're going to The Young Vic theatre tonight to see their show, The Enchanted Pig. Its a sort of opera by the ever wonderful Jonathan Dove. The cast includes the veteran opera singers John Rawnsley and Nuala Willis. As it is their family Christmas show, it is a modern take on the fairy tale theme. Its a co-production with The Opera Group, so it is going on tour later this year.

Then on Sunday we are going to a concert called Vivaldi's Women at St. George's Church, Bloomsbury. This is presented by SPAV (Schola Pietatis Antonio Vivaldi), a group dedicated to presenting the music that Vivaldi wrote for the girls of the Pieta in a form that he would have recognised, viz. with an all female choir. The group uses women tenors and basses, quite a feat. Their work is supported by researcher Micky White, who lives at La Pieta and researches Vivaldi's life and work. She will be speaking at Sunday's concert. It promises to be a fascinating afternoon.

Technorati tag: classical music, opera, Vivaldi

Stylistic Challenges

When the period practice movement started going, the performers were generally all specialists; this was particularly true of the singers. It was rare for a well-known singer from the standard repertoire to cross over and record with a period group. This did happen, Ileana Cotrubas made a striking contribution to Handel’s Rinaldo, showing that she could keep her vibrato under control and blend with singers well versed in period practice. And when Joan Sutherland recorded Athalia with Christopher Hogwood, though she did not really blend, the nature of the drama was such that Sutherland did not stand out too much.

But gradually things changed and younger performers became comfortable crossing between the 2 worlds. ENO’s early performances of Handel’s Julius Caesar were cast with singers who had a long Handel pedigree (Janet Baker, Valerie Masterson, Sarah Walker); not strictly period practice performers, but singers who had worked extensively singing this style of music with the most advanced of the modern instrument groups such as the English Chamber Orchestra.

When ENO re-mounted the production many years later it was cast from singers from their roster. Listening to it on the radio, I was struck by how much of the period performance practice had made its way into the opera house. The ENO Orchestra at this time was streets ahead of the Royal Opera House in terms of introducing period practice to their modern instruments. This has continued, whereas the Royal Opera tends to employ outside period bands ENO uses its own orchestra. The recent Orfeo successfully blended their own musicians with key period practice personnel. This does not always work, the Bach Passion performances were an uneasy mixture of old and new with the gambas rather standing out. After listening to one of these performances, I came to understand Vaughan Williams’s antipathy to using the viola da gamba and the harpsichord in his large scale, modern instrument performances of the St. Matthew Passion at the Leith Hill Festival.

But since then, things have moved on even further and there is a whole generation of singers who move effortlessly between the two worlds. This involves an element of compromise. Anyone who listens to Ian Bostridge’s recording of Monteverdi’s Orfeo under Emmanuelle Haim cannot help but be impressed with his performance but notice how is style and technique is very individual and not completely in harmony with period practice.

I must here confess a prejudice and state that for me, the idea Monteverdi tenor is someone like Nigel Rogers who sings with an edge to his voice, not too much vibrato and wonderful line and crystal clear ornaments. The issue of line and of ornaments bothers me.

On a couple of recent recordings of Monteverdi and of Cavalli I was impressed by the way singers who specialise mainly in 19th century Italian opera, fitted their voices to the 17th century vocal line. But I was disturbed by the use of vibrato, the singing of the high tenor line in a very open throated tone, the concentration on beauty of vocal sound rather than a good line and a distinctly 19th century attitude to the shape of ornaments. On one recording, the tenor was impressive but consistently too loud, probably because of the tessitura of the part.

Half of me gets annoyed by these compromises. But the other half appreciates being able to hear this music sung by some of the best voices of our generation. And there’s the nub. Monteverdi, Cavalli, Handel, Vivaldi et al wrote for some of the finest voices of their generation. Their music needs style, technique and fine vocal quality. To hear the finest voices of today in this repertoire would be quite something and is desirable, even if we have to impose compromises.

For some voices, the stylistic gap is too wide; I’m not sure that Pavarotti would have ever have been quite suitable for Bajazet in Tamerlano. But Tom Randle has made quite a career flitting between later opera and Handel’s meaty tenor part. When I heard him there was a stylistic gap between him and his fellow singers, but it was not too disturbing and worth it for hearing such a fine voice in this music.

And there’s the rub. Vocal technique has moved on so much that it is almost impossible for a singer to cross boundaries without some sort of compromise. But it’s worth it to hear great voices in great music.

Technorati tag: classical music

Candide, Can-do, Can-don't

Last night we finished catching up on the BBC4 transmission of Bernstein's Candide in the new Robert Carsen production from the Chatelet Theatre. Well, it still had Bernstein's music but what we saw and the dialogue that the singers spoke was a long way from the original.

There have been various attempts to solve the riddle of Candide but a number of relatively recent productions have seemed to do so. Harold Prince produced a version which ran well on Broadway and a number of UK companies have expanded on that, notably the thrilling version at the National Theatre with Simon Russell Beale. As a counterpoint to this, the LSO have continued to build on their Bernstein relationship, he conducted the work with them and they have done concert performances of it since. Though these tended to present the work in a rather inflated version, the lack of amplification and the presence of opera singers meant that the aural experience was vastly improved.

At the Chatelet we had, mainly, opera singers but also amplification; I gathered this from reading reviews, it was not really possible to tell from the TV. But most problematically, Carsen has chosen to re-work the plot as a modern satire moving from JFK's White House to the present day. This means that, though there are a number of dazzling individual moments, the whole adds up to even less of a collective event than did Bernstein's original.

Also Carsen's version aggravates a weakness of the original, the songs don't always (well, hardly ever) originate with the plot they seem grafted on. This was made most obvious with the Old Lady's Tango, I am easily assimilated. As sung by the ever wonderful Kim Criswell, this was some of the best performing of the evening, but it seemed perverse that the musical no. took place on the deck of an Ocean liner, why a tango, why the gay waiters.

By the middle of part 2, we had ceased to care about these characters. In fact, they were hardly characters at all; a problem in the original that Carsen made worse.

Lambert Wilson gave a dazzling performance as Voltaire, Pangloss and Martin, playing Voltaire in French and the other 2 in English; quite brilliant, but Voltaire's part seems to have been expanded. This is quite understandable when presented with a French speaking audience, but particularly in act 1 this lead to a serious feeling of alienation as Voltaire carried the plot and the singers just popped up to sing.

William Burden was fine as Candide, but he lacked youthful charm. Anna Christie was unimpressive as Cunegonde, though some of the shrillness may have been due to the amplification. John Daszak was wasted in his multiple roles, even when called to sing; he just does not have the sort of voice for this music. He should stick to Peter Grimes.

Mind you, I am willing to admit that I am pretty resistent to opera on TV. There are too many distractions and it is too easy to wander off and make pot of tea or something. So I'm not going to pass final judgement on the piece. After all, it is a co-production with ENO and La Scala. So in theory I should be able to see it live at the Coliseum. But La Scala have already announced that they are not taking the production; the management deny it has anything to do with the scene where an actor dressed only in underpants dances round wearing a Silvio Berlusconi mask! So we'll see whether the show makes it to the UK and what it will be like then. After all, Laurent Pelly's La Belle Helene seemed to undergo a sea change (for the worse) when it crossed the channel.

Technorati tag:opera review

In this month's Opera magazine

This month’s opera seems to have a mini-theme running through it. There are three different mentions of Almaviva’s Act 2 aria from The Barber of Seville, the one that is usually cut and which Rossini re-cycled for Cenerentola’s final aria. Philip Gossett, in his new book, evidently refute the defence of the traditional cutting of the aria, which is good news. But Julian Budden, in his review of the opera performed in Florence, is virulent in his dislike of the aria, describing it as ‘a shameless concession to a star singer’ and he describes Rossini as being happy to see the aria dropped. Though of course, that might be because of its difficulty. At the New York Met Juan Diego Florez impressed Martin Bernheimer when the aria was included in performances there.


In the editorial, the editor looks forward to possible performances of a group of operas which were all premiered in 1907: Rimsky-Korsakov’s The Legend of the Invisible City of Kitezh, Delius’s A Village Romeo and Juliet, Messager’s Fortunio and Dukas’s Ariane et Barbe-Bleu. I’ve seen Fortunio (Grange Park Opera did it a few years ago), but would welcome the chance to see any in this list, but I’m not holding my breath.

There is a profile of Elaine Padmore, to mark the Royal Opera’s 60th birthday. It is heartening to learn that she’ll stay ‘until I’m too old to work’ After all the problems and changes of the 90’s it is good that there is now a stable regime in place. I could only wish that the same could be said of the ENO.

Covent Garden is going to be getting the new Robert Carsen production of Gluck’s Iphigenie in Tauride which debuted in Chicago. I can’t wait; I’ve still got vivid memories of hearing Eiddwenn Harrhy in the Kent Opera production at the Edinburgh Festival in the late 70’s.

One interesting little snippet though, in 1951 Sir Thomas Beecham conducted performances of Balfe’s Bohemian Girl at the Royal Opera House, little chance of that coming back I suspect. The list of operas with the most performances at the Royal Opera House over the last 60 years offers no surprises, with Puccini coming out top.

Vlaamse Opera in Ghent have recently completed a complete cycle of Puccini operas (over 15 years) with Robert Carson as producer, quite something.

Back on the subject of Covent Garden, Anne Williams-King made her debut as Katerina in Lady of Macbeth of Mtsensk when Eva Maria Westbroek was ill. Warwick Thompson was impressed and I hope that we see more of Miss Williams-King at the Garden.

Richard Law reviewed Philip Gossett’s new book (see above) and it sounds fascinating, one of our leading scholars discussing Italian opera and how it is performed, even commenting on the personalities involved; castigating such well known singers as Caballe and Sills. Mind you, Law gets off to a slightly poor start by comparing Gossett to Wilamowitx-Moellendorf, I’m not sure that many people have heard of him (I hadn’t).

It is interesting that Gossett subscribes to the view that a definitive Ur-text version of Italian Romantic opera is impossible, the form was too flexible and the composers tended to treat the performers as collaborators. Evidently the Ricordi publishing house are very co-operative when it comes to opening their archives to scholars but Verdi’s heirs are not.

As is evident from my discussion of the cut aria in Rossini’s Barber, Gossett is pretty anti cutting, but more particularly he is against traditional cuts – the blind acceptance of a cut because it has always been done. We need to get beyond this and be more careful with such things. This sort of thing is still news, after all the apparent disagreement between John Eliot Gardiner and Christoph Loy at the beginning of rehearsals for the new production of Mozart’s La Finta Giadinera meant that Loy departed the production. He’d wanted to use existing cuts whereas Gardiner wanted to examine things and choose the cuts specifically for the production – an entirely sensible attitude it seems to me.

One are where I part company from the reviewer, Richard Law, is on the subject of Verdi’s Don Carlos. Law proclaims himself a lover of the opera in Italian whereas I prefer the original French version, perhaps because of my fascination with French Grand Opera.

The gradual internationalisation of opera performances means that odd things crop up in odd places. Krenek’s Johnny Spielt Auf received a new performance in Argentina. The Faroe Islands (population 50,000) saw their first performance of an opera by a native composer, Sunleif Rasmussen. Hilary Finch’s review was complimentary and I must look out for the forthcoming CD. The Berlin Staatsoper saw a new production of Maria Stuarda. Not in itself unusual, but when set as a re-run of Whatever Happened to Baby Jane the results are certain to rouse curiosity at least.

Wexford has a new artistic director. Under the previous one, creeping internationalisation meant the critics worried that the festival was losing its distinctive Irish feel. Under Canadian David Agler things look set to improve. The festival has its own orchestra now, employing Irish musicians rather than an Eastern European orchestra and the number of Irish singers seems to have increased. And of course, they are building a new opera house. I can’t wait.

Graham Vick’s new production of The Makropoulos Case in Copenhagen seems to have had what the recent ENO production lacked, a superb diva in the title role. In this case it was Gitta-Maria Sjoberg; a name new to me, but she looks superb in the picture.

Scottish Opera’s new production of Handel’s Tamerlano does not seem to have gone down well, which is a shame. It was a daring/imaginative/foolish piece of programming and would have been quite a coup to bring off, but the opera is tricky. I’ve never yet seen an entirely satisfactory production, though the Cambridge Handel Society came pretty damn close. Independent Opera did better with their production of Orlando at the Lilian Baylis Theatre, though Hugh Canning was luke-warm about William Towers’s acting. We saw the production and I was impressed with Towers. Canning also moaned about cutting an hour’s worth of music. This is something that I used to worry about a lot but as I’ve got older I must confess that I do rather like getting home at a reasonable hour, so welcome discreet cuts. Though Independent Opera’s were rather more indiscreet I suspect.

Opera North’s Peter Grimes got mixed reviews from Michael Kennedy, though he says it was very powerful. Friends who saw the production loved it. The company's production of La Voix Humaine seems to have suffered from an occasionally over dominant orchestra. I have found this before in this work, a proms performance with Felicity Lott a few years ago could have done with a far stronger hand from the podium. I suspect that conductors relish Poulenc’s luxuriance a little too much and forget the type of soprano voice for which the role was written.

Duchy Opera performed Ethel Smyth’s The Wreckers in Truro. Now I do wish I’d been there. I love The Wreckers. I saw a superb performance at Warwick University in the 1980’s (one that knocked the later Proms performance into a cocked hat). Sensibly Duchy Opera have reduced the orchestration to make the piece more viable, but even more sensibly they have commissioned a new translation from Amanda Holden. It is appalling that the work has never been performed in its original French; the librettist Harry Brewster was a poet who wrote prose in English but poetry in French so his libretto was in French. The original English version was a thrown together stop-gap when performances in French fell through (there was a slight possibility of Messager bringing a French company to Covent Garden and producing it, now that would have been something). I’d like to thing that this might lead to more performances, but I won’t hold my breath.

Plans

Of course, now that Christmas is passing and New Year will soon be a memory, I have to get cracking on all the plans for next year. This has been noticeable over the past week as the dining room table has gradually been overcome with piles of music by Tomkins, Weelkes, Pelham Humfreys and Orlando Gibbons. We are doing a programme of Verse Anthems at All Saints Church, Margaret Street, London on 18th March as part of their fund raising campaign for the church's restoration. So I have been busy acquiring music, thanks to the ever wonderful Stainer and Bell, much of it has been bought in the form of PDF's from the publisher's web site. Much of our repertoire is embedded in learned tomes such as Musica Britannica and Early English Church Music and Stainer and Bell have a scheme whereby you can buy PDF's of the lesser known pieces, copied directly from the relevant volume. A wonderful, economic way to enable people like our little group of 6 to be able to perform this music.

Christmas Presents

The combination of a Roberto Alagna recital disc to be reviewed and a concert performance of Halevy's La Juive, both of which included the well known aria Rachel, quand au Seigneur, meant that I went scurrying off to try to get a complete performance of the opera for D.'s Christmas present. Not surprisingly, the best recording, with June Anderson, Jose Carreras and Julia Varady, did not seem to be available. This sent me scurrying toThe Clasical CD Exchange, one of the sites which sell second hand CD's. There, by virtue of the vagaries of search engines, I managed to acquire not only the relevant recording of La Juive but also Ben Heppner's recital of French opera arias (which includes Rachel, quand au Seigneur). Both are wonderful; the complete opera is notable for the fact that Carreras over-dubbed his part after the recording, because of his problems with Leukemia, but you would never notice.

The Heppner is a marvel because so few tenors nowadays can sing the French parts with such a feeling of focus in the voice and a fine sense of line. Heppner is, perhaps, not the most interesting singer in the world, but his tone and line are incomparable when compared to many contemporaries. He is not Georges Thill, but in this barren modern age, he comes decently close.

Recent CD Review

My review of Palestrina's Missa Tu Es Petrus is here on Music Web International.
Unusual though the repertoire is the disc is not one that I will be returning to. ...
Technorati tag:cd review,
classical music

Christmas Revels

Tonight is the London Concord Singers' Christmas Concert at the Grosvenor Chapel in Mayfair. The programme includes the Poulenc Quatre Motets pour le Temps de Noel, 2 Advent motets by Brahms, Bruckner's Christus Factus Est and Virga Jesse, Naylor's Vox Clama, Dicentes and Britten's early Hymn to the Virgin, plus various carols. Not exactly my beau ideal of a concert, but there is sufficient I think to keep everyone interested.

Too little time, too many operas

Having booked a couple of operas in the ENO's short summer season, submitted a booking for Grange Park Opera's June 2007 programme and having already booked for the LSO's performances of Benvenuto Cellini in June 2007, I opened the new booking info. from the Royal Opera with some trepidation.

Quite rightly, as it seems. Everything is happening in June, so we won't be able to go to see the concert performance of Thais with Renee Fleming, it clashes with Benvenuto Cellini. Well, the Royal Opera are doing 2 performances but the first is on the Wednesday and following Benvenuto Cellini we have a heavy weekend (Chelsea Opera Group on Saturday and Semele at Grange Park on Sunday), so I'm afraid that we have reached our going out limit that week. This also means that we'll miss out on the ROH Katya Kabanova which is on at the same time. Also, ROH are staging Sondheim's Into the Woods, one of my favourite musicals, directed by choreographer William Trevitt. The only way we'll manage to see this is to go to a preview.

What is it about theatrical/musical scheduling that leaves you will wall to wall La Boheme or Carmen (no, we're not seeing the latest Francesca Zamballo extravaganza at Covent Garden) one moment, and then lots of exciting things all at once.

Other things we are going to miss out on includes Delius's Koanga, at Sadlers Wells, it clashes with again. And also at Sadlers Wells, we'll have to do without their choreographed staging of Dido and Aeneas its the same time as my FifteenB Consort are going back on the road. In March 20027 we're doing a programme of 16th/17th century verse anthems (Tomkins, Weelkes, Pelham Humfrey and Gibbons) as part of the fund raising Campaign at All Saints Church, Margaret Street, London. Guess what, its the same week as Dido and Aeneas, wouldn't you know it.

Review of Christmas Oratorio

On Friday we went to hear Bach’s Christmas Oratorio performed by William Christie and Les Arts Florissants at the Barbican. Christie worked with an ensemble about 2/3 that used by Colin Davis for his Messiah with the LSO; which was still quite large for a Bach oratorio. Given what we know about Bach’s performance practices, using a choir of 24 was probably on the large size for a period performance. Of course, Christie makes no particular claims about his performance, you simply go along for the Arts Florissants experience.

Christie’s Bach, like his Handel, is very French influenced. Throughout the whole piece, all the movements with dance based rhythmical formats had an underlying bounce and lilt, this was a very dancing sort of performance. Speeds were generally geared to the dance-like file, so that the opening chorus was rather too fast for my liking. Though Christie obviously relished the array of instrumental colour that Bach uses in the work, Christie never quite solved the problem of the flutes in this movement. I have always found that on period instruments the flute interjections sound far too underpowered compared to the oboes and brass, as if something was missing.

Still, the performance got off to a lively and attractive start, with fine contributions from chorus and orchestra. The chorus provided a well modulated, rather blended sound; they seemed to go for blend and overall timbre rather than line. This in contrast to Tenebrae who sang Messiah for Colin Davis with a great attention to the line of the music.

As Christie’s speeds were on the fast side, this meant that he was able to bring the first 3 cantatas in at 1 hour 20 minutes. Despite music making of a high order, I rather felt that things had skipped past at a little too fast a rate. Christie’s light, dancing touch could have done with a bit of the German angst that a previous generation brought to these works. That said, Christie’s soloists responded magnificently.

Top of the list must be counter-tenor Tim Mead, displaying a lovely, smooth tone and wonderful breath control he impressed in all his numbers. Perhaps his stage demeanour needs a little work, he came over as a trifle smug, but such was his musicality that you forgave him. Similarly impressive, albeit in a more dramatic way, was bass Markus Werba. It helped, of course, that Werba was singing in his native German. He seems to be a naturally dramatic performer and brought a welcome whiff of the opera house to the performance.

Nicholas Watts sang the Evangelist; always an expressive performer, Watts made you wish that the part was meatier. The tenor arias were allocated to Marcel Beekman who threw off the tricky passage-work with ease; passage work made trickier by Christie’s lively speeds. In the first half, soprano Marie Arnet was under used but she came into her expressive own in the final 3 cantatas.

As I have said, orchestra and choir performed brilliantly but there were moments, particularly in the final movement when I felt sorry for the trumpet players and wished that Christie had eased up on the speeds to make their lives a little easier.

Whilst this performance dazzled with its musicality I did not feel that it plumbed the emotional heart of the piece. Christie’s approach seemed to present us with a series of attractive moments rather than an emotional narrative of the nativity.

New folksongs

I've just been writing the programme notes for London Concord Singers concert on Thursday Dec 21st (at the Grosvenor Chapel). Besides the real music we are doing a selection of Christmas carols so I had to find something to say about them.

It was easy for Silent Night because the carol's history is so fascinating. Existing just on the cusp of awareness of intellectual copyright it was spread widely in manuscript owing to the carol's popularity and when first published was simply credited as a Tirol song. But an early copyright investigation in the 1850's enabled the composer's son to write a deposition which established his father as the writer of the music.

This sort of modern, created folk-song came to mind again last night when we singing carols at a hotel in central London as part of the entertainment for arriving guests. Naturally we used Carols for Choirs, books 1 and 2, the books that virtually every amateur choral singer possesses. We'd not rehearsed, because everyone knew the arrangements of the well known pieces, as they'd sung them so many times before. In fact, if you gather choral singers together to sing from carol word sheets most of them can sing the arrangements from memory. And David Willcocks's descants to Hark the Herald and other carols have effectively passed from being composed music into folk memory. Virtually every choral soprano knows them and can sing them from memory.

This is one of the few modern occasions where the symbiosis between oral and written musical culture is still in existence. We know understand that the old folk music culture did not exist in vacuo but had a symbiotic relationship with the printed examples produced on broad sheets etc. This only broke down with the change in society in the late 19th century. But its nice to feel that aspects of this relationship continue in the use of those humble books Carols for Choirs.

Have I missed it?

I have just booked tickets for operas in the ENO's short 2nd season. We're going to see the new production of Death in Venice with Ian Bostridge and the repeat of La Clemenza di Tito with Alice Coote (and Emma Bell). We can't manage Satyagraha, its on over the Easter period when we are away, which is profoundly annoying.

One rather curious thing is that, despite being existing subscribers we don't seem to have had a mailing about the season. Instead we happened to see a leaflet sent to our house but addressed to some friends who were camping out here last year. Anyway, I consulted the ENO web-site about subscriptions (the leaflet said that to get a subscription discount you must book before January 10th). The subscriptions page (here, still refers to the old booking period so how do you buy a subscription for the new season?

It all seems rather irrelevant as the operas are open for single booking as well, so you can bet that buying a subscription means that you won't get first chance at the good seats.

This raises 2 issues. What is happening to ENO marketing? Surely, as existing subscribers who have not renewed we should be being bombarded with information. Perhaps they are doing by email, but I usually discount such emails, I'm still a print boy at heart.

The second issue is, why can't ENO introduce subscription buying on line like Sadlers Wells do. The Sadlers Wells site allows you to select the shows you want and adds the relevant discounts. The Barbican's great performer scheme also allows you to do this.

So the total sum of this post seems to be, wake up ENO!

Recent CD Review

My review of the disc of Romanus Weichlein masses is here on MusicWeb International.
Attractive, vibrant performances, recorded live with considerable immediacy ...

Recent CD reviews

A batch of recent CD reviews seem to have slipped through my net, so here they are.

First of all 3 reviews of Handel oratorios recorded live at Maulbron Monastery in Germany.

My review of Jephtha is here on MusicWeb International.
f you are an admirer of Emma Kirkby’s, then you might care to have this on your shelves.

And my review of Saul is here.
Creditable enough, but unless you are interested in these particular performers, the lack of drama means that the essential core of the work is missing. ...

An Belshazzar is here
Perhaps an interesting record of a live occasion using Handel’s 1751 version, but not recommendable for the library.

My review of Mhairi Lawson and La Serenissima's Vivaldi disc is here, also on MusicWeb.
An appealing selection of rarely performed Vivaldi works, given in lively and vivid performances that bring out the works’ appeal...

A chamber version of the Brahms Requiem is here.

There are other versions of this arrangement and you might be well advised to try listening to some of them before deciding which you should buy. ...

Recent book review

My review of Roz Southey's book about music in the North-East of England in the 18th century is here

Adds enormously to our picture of music-making; more importantly it examines what was happening in ordinary places away from the glare of celebrity ...

Review of Messiah

My review of Sunday's performance of Messiah given by Sir Colin Davis and the London Symphony Orchestra is here on Music and Vision.

A friend was singing in a performance of Handel's Messiah on Saturday. A small amateur choir with a group of young professional soloists with the soloists singing in the choruses as well. Quite sensible and very much as Handel would have expected.

This set me to thinking about performances of Handel in his own day; we know so little about them. But most commentators agree that his soloists sang in the choruses with his choir. This is a little curious as the soloists, particularly the women, were beasts of the opera house and his choir was made up of boy trebles and male choristers. Just what sort of choral sound did he get when Galli or La Francesina sang along with the boys and men. Its an issue that we'll just never really know about. Unless someone comes up with a contemporary diary which goes into some detail. Or better yet, a memorandum from Handel on the subject!

Then on Sunday night it was our turn to do Messiah; Sir Colin Davis and the LSO. But one one aspect of this performance I was wrong. They did not use the London Symphony Chorus but the professional choir, Tenebrae; so there were just 34 choristers which was far closer to the thing. A full review follows.

New directions at the Royal Ballet

A couple of days ago the London Evening Standard had a leading article in the Arts section by Norman Lebrecht on how Monica Mason has appointed Wayne Macgregor (of Random Dance Company) as the Royal Ballet's principal choreographer. This is remarkable news as the company has not had a principal choreographer since the death of Kenneth MacMillan. And Macgregor will only be the 3rd such in the company's 75 year history (the first was founder Ninette de Valois, the second Frederick Ashton and MacMillan was the 3rd). David Bintley also had a post at the Royal Ballet but I'm not sure what that was.

But Macgregor is an experimental choreographer who works on abstract pieces and does not create the narrative ballets which have been a significant part of the Royal Ballet's life. Lebrecht's article was balanced and illuminating and you can read it here.

Hywel Williams writes about Benjamin Britten in an Article in The Guardian today. All well and good; part of the commemorations of the 30th anniversary of Britten's death.

But in discussing his years at the Royal College of Music, Williams says that 'Ralph Vaughan Williams, a professor at the Royal College of Music when Britten was a student there, was at the height of his influence during Britten's youth. The dead weight of Williams's ill-disciplined meanderings meant that a provincialising Victorian taste was having an artificially prolonged existence in English music.'

Anyone who has heard RVW's music from the 30's and 40's would hardly call it ill-disciplined meanderings. RVW hid himself behind a protective carapace of amateurism. His technique was anything but amateurish, but too many commentators take him at fact value rather than really looking at the music.

And as a teacher, RVW was pretty open. His pupils cover quite a wide range of the musical spectrum; he encouraged them to be themselves. Granted neither RVW nor the English establishment were as open to the wider Viennese school as they should have been. But Williams article is simply the usual lazy thinking which neither helps RVW nor Britten

The Goose is getting fat

Yesterday was the first Sunday in Advent which means that we start the liturgical run up to Christmas. (Technically it is the first Sunday in the church's year). At St. Mary's Church, Cadogan Street, musically this means that we lose the organ until Midnight mass (except for the 3rd Sunday in Advent) and change to a different version of the plainchant for the Credo. This latter has a couple of tricky traps for the unwary, which are apt to trip you up the first time you sing it after a significant break.

Of course, these musical changes are simply meant to reflect the nature of Advent as the church prepares for Christmas and reflects on the past year. Advent is not strictly a penitential season, but it certainly isn't a laugh a minute. Which of course, is all the more annoying when you consider how in secular life, the fripperies of Christmas are constantly advancing.

Our concert going life is starting to reflect the coming of Christmas as well. On Sunday we're going to see Messiah at the Barbican, performed by the London Symphony Orchestra. A bit of a risk, the cast has impeccable credentials (Susan Gritton, Sara Mingardo, Mark Padmore, Alistair Miles) but they are accompanied by the London Symphony Choir and Orchestra conducted by Sir Colin Davies. I have no problem with large scale Handel performances. In the past, Davies has proved himself a moving interpreter of baroque music. But balance is always an issue and modern conductors seem disinclined to increase the number of wind instruments to balance strings and choir in the way that a contemporary of Handel would.

Just to complete things, we're off to see Bach's Christmas Oratorio as well next week. This time its William Christie, to the performance style will be very different to that of Sir Colin Davies. Well, that's the snap judgement. It will be interesting to see how the 2 performances compare in reality.

New Directions

I was talking with friends about the premiere of my choral piece Ursi Carmina and it was generally agreed to have been a success, but what people commented on was the light-hearted nature of the text and the fact that they liked my response to it.

Typically I have difficulty writing non-trivial music to light-hearted English words (hence the use of Latin in Ursi Carmina) but think that this is something I should work on. So I've been down loading poems (not all light hearted) by people like Philip Larkin (that poem, the one with the f word), Dylan Thomas and Spike Milligan (!) with a view to trying settings. Not all will see the light of day, but you never know.

Onwards and upwards

We had a kick-off meeting last night for the next FifteenB Consort concert. The Consort is a small sub-group of my choir Fifteen. We work without a conductor and sing 1 or 2 to a part. We're doing a concert in March 2007 which is themed around Verse Anthems. Last night we met to sing through a variety of works by Gibbons, Tomkins, Weelkes and Pelham Humphrey and have the makings of a programme. The concert will also include the premiere of a new piece of mine, for voices and organ; its a piece which uses elements of the Verse anthem style. We'll also be reviving one of my solo motets for soprano and organ.

Besides works intended for the concert we also tried out others. We were rather taken with Casciolini's Requiem and that is definitely pencilled in for performance in another concert.

Review of Cosi van Tutte

On Saturday night we went to see Glyndebourne on Tour at Norwich Theatre Royal performing Cosi van Tutte in Samantha Potter's revival of Nicholas Hyntner's production from the summmer festival.

From the very first notes of the overture, conductor Rory Macdonald and the Glyndebourne on Tour Orchestra indicated that this would be a fleet, period inspired performance. Not that it was so fleet as to be trivial or so period inspired as to be mannered, but Macdonald and the orchestra brought a welcome lightness and crispness to the accompaniment.

Hyntner's production brought a similar modern take on the traditional. It was an essentially period production, but Hyntner takes the drama seriously and gave us real people with real problems. The 4 lovers all reacted with wonderful realism to the various alarums and excursion through which the plot puts them, leaving them at the end wiser and more unsettled.

It helped that the singing was of a universally high order. The palm must go to Aga Mikolay as Fiordiligi but she was simply the first amongst equals with Jenny Carlstedt (Dorabella), Jonas Gumundsson (Ferrando), Dodion Pogossov (Guglielmo) all singing to a high level. You ceased to worry about the technical aspects of the music (quite a compliment as this opera is not an easy sing) and simply enjoyed the way the singers put over their characters and interacted with each other. The interaction was of a high order of naturalism.

The two schemers, Don Alfonso ( Henry Waddington) and Despina (Claire Ormshaw) were of a similarly high level. Both created appealing characters and Waddington's Don Alfonso was not as forbiddingly off-putting as he can be. Ormshaw's Despina was charmingly earthy.

Vicki Mortimer's set was attractively flexible, depicting a neo-classical room with a terrace, but with flexible shutters and screens. This meant that the scenes were easily able to flow into each other.

Andrew Kennedy was billed as singing Ferrando but he was ill. Jonas Gumundsson was also ill, but bravely sang and did wonders with what was obviously not 100% of his voice. I look forward to hearing him again when he is fit.

Hyntner's view of the Albanian disguises was that the 2 men provide the women with something of a dangerous, over the top, slightly rough edge. Pogossov made the most of this and created a most dangerously attractive character. You could really see why the men both appealed to the women and appalled them. Gumondsson was a little understated, but as he was not 100% fit and had come on at the last minute, it is unfair to be too judgemental.

Cosi van Tutte is a long opera, but Hytner, Potter and their cast created a wonderfully involving show which mixed musicality of a high order with involving drama. What more could you want?

The audience at the Coliseum on Friday was numerous but the piece certainly was not a sell out. Also, the average age seemed to be pretty high, the production did not seem to be attracting a young crowd. And judging by the audience behaviour, there were a lot of people who did not come to the theatre regularly, which is to be encouraged. Though I did have the suspicion that they came for the G&S and this visit would not necessarily encourage them to explore other bits of the ENO canon - but you never know.