Review of St. John Passion

Friday's performance of Bach's Johannes Passion at the Barbican was part of the Homeward Bound series, so that though the passion was conducted by Stephen Layton, tenor Ian Bostridge got top billing. Bostridge sang both the Evangelist and the tenor solos, James Rutherford sang Christus with Carolyn Sampson, Michael Chance and Roderick Williams doing the remaining solos. Layton conducted his own choir, Polyphony, and the Academy of Ancient Music.

Though played on period instruments, the performance fielded far more performances than ever Bach might have been able to; some 28 choristers and a similar number of instrumentalists.

The performance's profoundly serious intentions were signalled from the start by the fact that the passion was being played without an interval and that audience was asked not to applaud until the end. Layton placed significant pauses after each chorale and a long pause at the point where Christ dies. There was also a long pause at the end before the audience could applaud.

Now, unlike Handel's oratorios, Bach's passions are religious works, written for a particular church service. But in giving them in a concert hall, performers surely have to accept that the audience members are there for a musical experience, each brings to the performance a differing set of religious (or non religious) views. Layton's pauses and reverence for the work seemed to be verging on forcing us to consider the concert as a religious experience. In essence, Layton seemed to be saying to us that the best and only way to appreciate the passion was as a religious work. But it is part of Bach's genius that his music transcends this. Layton was apparently supported by Bostridge who, when not singing, mostly seemed to have his eyes closed.

BOstridge was placed at the front, next to Layton, James Rutherford as Christus sat on a high platform to one side. The other soloists sat out of the audience's view and performed their arias on a platform in the centre of the orchestra. In many ways a sensible idea, but it did necessitate some distracting coming and going.

Both Layton and Bostridge are, by temperament, interventionist, so that though the music making was of a very high order, it had a very distinctive character. This was apparent form the opening bars, with Polyphony articulating the words superbly, pointing the music to a degree that was almost mannered with the Academy of Ancient Music playing in a similar manner. In fact this left the AAM sounding uncharacteristically muddy and the choir, though vivid and wonderfully committed, sounded over loud.

This such numbers there was inevitably no attempt to recreate a Lutheran style performance, I did find it worrying that when the choir were singing it was difficult to hear the woodwind.

I have nothing but praise for the choral singers who articulated all of Layton's wishes often at very brisk speeds. But the overall effect was extremely mannered, choruses and turbae were highly articulated, often fast and seemed to be either loud or very soft.

Bostridge seemed to worry at every single word or phrase. The result was often highly dramatic, but by the time we reached the tearing of the veil of the temple, Bach's dramatic writing went for little, as Bostridge's delivery had been over-wrought for most of the evening. Perhaps this style of Evangelist will appeal to some people but for me less is more in this role. Bostridge's delivery of the tenor arias was similarly dramatic, but these would have told more if set off against a less over-wrought Evangelist.

Into this highly charged atmosphere, Carolyn Sampson appeared like a wonderfully cool breeze. Her tone pure and limpid, her technical control superb, you only regretted that she was singing just 2 arias. It is here that you realise having the soloists involved in the choral numbers makes sense as otherwise the soprano and alto are grossly under used.

Sampson's dress was also something of a delight; black, but slit to the thigh, naked flesh covered with an over dress of black voile.

On the other hand Michael Chance, who was standing in for Iestyn Davies, seemed to push the performance closer to the religiose, giving his 2 arias almost with his eyes closed. Chance's voice is not as supple as it once was, but his musicianship is very fine.

Roderick Williams, singing Pilate and the bass arias, performed like Sampson, with aplomb, cool control and enviable technical ability. Williams has a lovely warm voice and brought drama to the role of Pilate without indulging in the over-dramatic interventionist approach.

The Academy of Ancient Music contributed some fine solo playing in the arias. Their overall sound, vivid and highly articulated, matched Layton's vision for the choir.

Overall this was an enthralling and engrossing performance, lasting just 2 hours. The style might not have been ideal for me but the standard of musicianship was very high. And it made me think about what I really want out of a performance of Bach's Johannes Passion

Review of Anna Bolena

My review of ETO's performance of Anna Bolena is here, on Music and Vision.

Alun Hoddinott

Alun Hoddinott died this week, his death was rightly covered extensively in the press, my contribution can be found here on Music Web International.
Less well covered was the death of conductor Noel Davies. The English Touring Opera performance of Anna Bolena was dedicated to his memory, the conductor having worked with ETO a number of times.

Missing intervals

We're off to the Barbican tonight to see Bach's St. John Passion with Ian Bostridge as the Evangelist. They have the admirable facility of being able to view the pdf of the programme in advance. I was glancing at it and noticed that the Passion is being played without an interval - estimated running time 2 hours 15 minutes.

Now you can probably make a very good argument for performing the Passion without an interval. But the Barbican seems to have something of a record for making audiences work hard. In Baroque Opera Seria performances it seems to be norm to have only 1 interval, running the other 2 acts together. This seems very unfair on audiences. I know that one issue is running time. A 3 act baroque opera can have up to 3 hours of music before you include intervals. And the management at the Barbican must feel obliged to have a weather eye on the finishing time. But if you've been at work all day, no matter how uplifting the music, 2 hours without a break can be a bit taxing.

So we will no doubt enjoy the concert, but I think we'd have enjoyed it more if there had been an interval to allow us to return to the second half relaxed and refreshed.

First run through with Horn

Last night we had the first run through with the horn player for my new piece, Do not go gentle into that good night. London Concord Singers are premiering the piece on Saturday at Hampstead Town Hall in concert which features music by John Gardner, Philip Cranmer and Mary Jane Leach.

It is always slightly unnerving having the first run through of a piece. The choir, of course, had had the work in rehearsal since January but last night was might first chance to hear it with a real horn player. The result, I think, works very well and we are all looking forward to the premiere.

Anna Bolena in Hackney

Tonight we are off to Hackney to see Donizetti's Anna Bolena, the start of the spring tour by English Touring Opera. In a highly enterprising programme they are also doing Carlisle Floyd's Susannah and Don Giovanni.

Anna Bolena was Donizetti's first major hit and his earliest opera to keep a hold in the repertoire. Mind you, in the UK if opera companies want a change from Lucia di Lammermoor, they always seem to choose Maria Stuarda. The Royal Opera produced Anna Bolena for Joan Sutherland in the late 1980's, but I don't think it has been seen in the UK since.

Making it large with Handel

Ex Cathedra are celebrating their 40th anniversary with a 3 year project to celebrate Birmingham's musical heritage. The first concert, on Saturday 5th April is a re-creation of the 1784 Messiah performance which launched the Birmingham Triennial Festivals. Ex Cathedra will be assembling a choir of some 100 singers accompanied by an orchestra of 60 provided by the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment.

The Handel commemorative performances are important in the history of performance of Handel's music. The 1784 Birmingham performance used a choir of 100, the London centenary performances used a huge choir and this lead to the transformation of Handel's oratorios from relatively small scale works written for the theatre to large scale choral pieces. What's often forgotten about these early Handel commemorative performances is that the large choir was accompanied by an equally large orchestra.

Recent CD Reviews

My review of Ian Bostridge's disc of Handel arias is here.
Bostridge’s admirers will undoubtedly enjoy this but other listeners might be less convinced by his rather personal take ...

And my review of Rossini'sLa Donna del Lago is here. Both reviews on MusicWeb International.
At Naxos prices you can afford to experiment and this is a good set with which to experiment ...

Virgins and Whores

In much 19th century opera heroines are confined to 2 roles, the virgin and the tart. There are of course variants on these, virgins can be led astray but only by being deceived and tarts can have hearts. But, of course, if a virgin is led astray then the results almost certainly have to lead to tragedy and similarly for tarts with hearts. This is particularly true of 19th century French opera where complex roles for women are limited and strong roles barely exist.

This seems to have become codified in the early part of the 19th century when grand opera based on classical myth gradually made way for the French Grand Opera of the type written by Auber, Meyerbeer and Halevy. Halevy’s La Juive has just 2 major female roles, Princess Eudoxie is the coloratura soprano, she is worldly, flirty and not particularly germane to the plot, Rachel is virginal, led astray, pure but misguided in her love and ultimately sacrifices herself. These roles would almost become codified. The first Rachel, Cornelie Falcon, whose soprano voice had a dark mezzo-soprano quality, would become known for her playing of such soiled virgins such as Rachel or Valentine in Meyerbeer’s Les Huguenots.

One of the reasons that Bizet’s Carmen caused such a stir was the fact that Carmen failed to conform to the tart with a heart sort of role; Bizet and his soprano, Galli-Marie made Carmen a far more realistic, sympathetic and tragic figure.

Because of the stratified nature of the Paris Opera establishment, the French Grand Opera became almost codified, a librettist like Scribe could almost write librettos to a formula. In Italy there was less codification, but there is still a tendency for heroines to fit the virgin/whore mould.

A quick glance at the heroines of Bellini’s operas confirms this tendency. In La Sonnambula is only a comedy because the heroine is revealed to be sleepwalker and all stain removed, in I Puritani Elvira goes mad when she believes Arturo to be false. But frequently even falsely accused women usually end up in tragic circumstances, Beatrice di Tenda dies even though falsely accused, Romeo and Giulietta die, La Straniera does not die but has to abandon all hope of personal happiness.

A glance at Donizetti’s serious operas reveals a similar count. This is very much a 19th century development, one that seems to go hand in hand with the development of Romantic Opera. After all Rossini’s operas include strong women such as Semiramide, and even Elena (La Donna del Lago), Zelmira and Anna (Maometto II) are no pushover . And even Rosina is hardly a shrinking violet. Some of Rossini’s operatic heroines fit into the fainting violet role, but some don’t; considered as a whole Rossini’s operatic heroines are a pretty varied log.

In the later 19th century Massenet particularly seems to have bought into this view of women, perhaps it was endemic in men who worked in opera. After all, consider Degas images dancers, these seem to be completely realistic and give us a glimpse into the Parisian stage world, but behind these images consider that the many dancers would be expected to give favours to particular important men after the show. To be a woman on the stage in the 19th century was to be just one step from a whore.

Many Massenet’s best heroines seem to come into the tart with a heart category. Manon is considered by many to be his finest opera, but it only works if you are prepared to be charmed and teased by the heroine. If, like me, you find the heroine of the opera simply vapid and stupid then the charm is lost. What is fascinating is that in operas such as Manon, Thais and Sapho, the plot would not work in 19th century terms if the roles were reversed. It is here that we can see how much of 19th century opera is shaped by the attitudes to women of the male creators of the form. Imagine an opera where the plot is that of Manon or Thais but with the roles reversed. A male Manon figure, in love with pleasure, seducing a female Des Grieux figure; interestingly it is Massenet who comes closest to this. In Werther we have a plot where an upright female figure is tempted by the Romantic love of an impulsive man. Of course, Werther is an archetypal Romantic Young Man he is not a dissolute lover of pleasure. And Charlotte can still be seen as the transgressive virgin, she does love Werther but marries her boring husband because of her dying husband’s wishes.

It is only when we look at the operas of Verdi that these archetypes start to break down. There is nothing virginal or whore-ish about Abigaille and Odabella, Lady Macbeth is certainly transgressive but is neither virgin nor whore. These are strong roles, complex roles, in his treatment of women Verdi starts to hark back to the more rounded treatment of Mozart. Verdi does use the archetypes, after all Gilda and Leonora (La Forza del Destino) are examples of the transgressive virgin. Leonora shows enough strength of mind to go off on her own and try and expiate her ‘sin’. Violetta is a fascinating example of the tart with a heart, but Violetta is far stronger than we might expect her to be, she’s definitely stronger than Alfredo and the libretto has to make her ill in order for her to faint and expire in the requisite manner.

Of course, an opera us (usually) greater than the sum of its parts so that a piece like Manon can tell us a lot more than what Massenet’s attitude to women was. But this rather partial representation of women in 19th century opera helps you understand why modern directors such as David Alden have such extreme visions of these operas.

Review of The Adventures of Pinocchio

Jonathan Dove and Alasdair Middleton’s new opera, The Adventure of Pinocchio, is in many ways a follow up to their previous Christmas piece The Enchanted Pig. Like its predecessor, Pinocchio is aimed at a family audience but in such a way as to provide a piece to which both adults and children can respond. The Enchanted Pig was written for a mixed cast of actors and opera singers, but the new piece is a fully fledged opera written for Opera North. The premiered it in Leeds in December last year and are currently touring it, fetching up in London last week (we saw the opera on Friday 29^th Feb. at Sadlers Wells).

Dove and Middleton have gone back to Collodi’s original for the plot rather than the Disney re-working. This means that the piece has a great deal of plot to get through with a large number of characters. The only large role is Pinocchio himself (Victoria Simmonds) who is on stage virtually all the time. All the other characters are on stage a relatively short time. Pinnocchio’s father Geppetto (Jonathan Summers) and the Blue Fairy (Mary Plazas) have the largest supporting roles as their characters crop up in a number of scenes. The rest of the cast double and triple their appearances to cover the 25 named roles.

The opera has to be seen as Pinocchio’s gradual learning process; so that all the characters are really only seen in relation to him, they hardly develop a life of their own. But Dove’s music helps to flesh out the characters, dialogue blossoms out into small arias, so that by the end of the opera we feel we have come to know some of the smaller characters as well, such as Geppetto, the Blue Fair and Lampwick (Allan Clayton). This is also due to the strong playing from the singers, even when they’ve been away from the stage you don’t feel that they have been away, they bring some sort of emotional continuity.

But the whole structure, though it is true to Collodi’s book, is extremely dependent on the singer playing the title role, Victoria Simmonds. Here director Martin Duncan and his team have found a singer who brilliantly incarnates the wooden puppet whilst at the same time making us feel that he is a real person. In the same way that Massenet’s Manon only works if you find Manon charming, attractive and sexy, it is essential that the audience empathise with Pinocchio; the story depends on us finding him a loveable scamp rather than a tiresome child, we have to want him to become a real boy. I must confess that at first I found myself rather resistable to Pinocchio’s charms but well before the end of the opera I found that Simmonds had captured my emotional interest.

Dove’s music is tuneful, with one or two big tunes, though the economy of Middleton’s libretto means that there are not many occasions for Andrew Lloyd Webber moments. Dove has evidently gone to some trouble to produce musical characterisations for the different characters (the Blue Fairy has her own scale); whilst this may not be obvious to the general listener, it is something that their ears can pick up on and help them to differentiate the details of the plot.

For the more up tempo moments, Dove seems to have been channelling John Adams, with the dramatic impetus of his repeated chords and dynamically propelled melody lines. This meant that the big scenes were often exciting and had wonderful propulsion which helped keep the drama going.

Duncan’s production was based in a simple wooden box (designer Francis O’Connor) which was transformed for each of the short scenes (11 in act 1 and 9 in act 2). O’Connor came up with some simple but effective solutions to the transformations required of him. Pinocchio’s nose extending alarmingly when he tells lies to the Blue Fairy and the set was transformed simply but effectively from the sea to the belly of the whale.

One of the great strengths of the production and the opera was that the darker side of the story was not shirked, Pinocchio and his father) really do go through some difficult times. Though the violence and the villains are a little cartoonish, Dove takes the situations seriously and writes some dark music. All this helps make sense of Pinocchio’s final transformation and his becoming a helpful little boy is rendered all the more understandable.

The piece was slightly too long (each act lasted around 75 minutes) and I particularly felt that the ending could be pruned so that we reached the conclusion rather quicker. At a certain point it become obvious what the conclusion is going to be and I think Dove and Middleton do not really gain anything from delaying this.

Dove’s orchestration is, by and large, respecting of the singers and there was little sense of them having to strain over the orchestra. In this they were helped by David Parry, very much a singers conductor. That said, from where we were sitting in the front of the upper circle the diction was very unsatisfactory. The piece was rightly played without surtitles but I often had to strain to apprehend the words, perhaps it would have been different lower down in the theatre.

The Adventures of Pinocchio is a beautifully constructed opera, very much in the traditional mould which means that it fits very well into the schedule of a company like Opera North. The opera also seems to fulfil its roles as a family piece, the performance we went to was full of parents and children all of whom seemed to enjoy the piece and it kept their attention until the end.

If I came out, at the end, charmed rather than overwhelmed by a masterpiece, then that is not necessarily a bad thing. The Adventures of Pinocchio is very much a useful piece and I can forsee it having a long history of Christmas performances.

A little bit of history

Some months ago (and more) I was approached by The Pink Singers with an enquiry as to whether I had any information etc. relating to my time as Musical Director of the group (from 1983 to 1988!). Over Christmas we spent a lot of time re-organising the ever growing pile of files in our attic, sorting out the collection of concert programmes going back to 1976. I came across the Pink Singers box and decided to sort it out. The group now has a selection of archive photos etc.

But I also had a group of scrap books charting the group's history from '83 to '88 and felt that it might have interest to those interested in Gay History. One of the singers in the group at that time was also a volunteer with the Hall Carpenter Archives, these have come to rest at the Archives of the LSE. Yesterday I took my Pink Singers scrap books to the LSE archives where they will be accessioned and become part of the collection. A little bit of history

From this month's Opera

Gleanings from this month's Opera Magazine.

In an inteview with John Treleaven the tenor makes the interesting point that by Act 3 Tristan is meant to be dying, whereas in Act 3 of Siegfried the character is bright and fresh, which makes it harder for the tenor. Amazingly
he is the first British tenor to have tung Siegfried at Covent Garden since Alberto Remedios in 1982. (And I can testify that Remedios and Gwynneth Jones made a knock out combination, especially in Siegfried Act 3). Treleaven seems to be the only Cornish Tristan in operatic history.

Treleaven's musical start in life is slightly curious, he used to sing to himself when swimming in the harbour and was overheard by a teacher who invited him for lessons! Evidently for the last 10 years he's been studying with Jean Cox, a tenor whom I remember standing in for Alberto Remedios when ENO toured their Ring in the 70's. Treleaven is a prime example of the virtues of not starting out in the Wagner repertoire, I can remember him from his days with ENO doing Verdi and all sorts.

In Vienna, Franz Welser-Möst has been doing Die Walkure with the Staatsoper, Christopher Norton-Welsh describes it as 'one of the quietest performances I have heard'. Certainly a performance worth investigating.

Over in Lyon, Laurent Pelly has reached La Vie Parisienne, though the reviewer found the dialogue difficult to understand, despite a Francophone cast; quite a disappointment. Nadja Michael, Covent Garden's current Salome, was singing Marta (Tiefland) in Berlin but her voice was described as developing a wild vibrato, which is worrying; hopefully not a case of too much, too soon.

An interesting pair of viewpoints cropped up when Peter Mussbach's production of Don Giovanni cropped up in Berlin having first appeared at La Scala.
Giorgio Gualerzi dismissed the La Scala version (openly provocative), whereas Carlos Maria Solare simply found the Berlin incarnation boring. Still in Berlin, Dessau's Trial of Lukullus, a work that it would be interesting to hear over here.

In Dublin Opera Ireland gave Turandot in version set in Mao's China, with a chorus half of whom were from the Xinghai Convervatory of Music, and with a Chinese Calaf and a Japanese Turandot. In Amsterdam Strauss's Daphne received its first ever staging. In Madrid they performed Rossini's Tancredi, enterprisingly giving performances of both the endings. I must confess I've always preferred the jolly, upbeat Venice version as this, though less remarkable than the tragic Ferrara ending, seems to fit the rest of the opera better.

Having heard Barry Banks as Edgardo in London, I noted that he has been doing Tonio in La Fille du Regiment in Houston. How about getting the chance of hearing him in the role over here? In New York, another favourite of ours Alice Coote was doing Hansel, with Philip Langridge no less as the Witch. Hansel and Gretel was also on the menu in Hexham, where Opera North's Education Department alighted. Evidently their education is working as the show seems to have attracted mainly family groups. The opera will be returning to Covent Garden next season in a new production by Caurier and Leiser with Anja Silja and Felicity Palmer (as mother and the witch).

New Sussex Opera have been doing Idomeneo; we'd hoped to see it but dates and locations did not work out. It was conducted by the young conductor Nicholas Jenkins and the Idomeneo was his father, tenor Neil Jenkins. Rather appropriate for an opera which hinges on parental relationships. At 62 Neil Jenkins is evidently still 5 years short of Anton Raaff's age when he created the title role.

On DVD, Hartmann's Simpliciu Simplicissimus appears set in Harmann's Munich appartment. But most notable for me was the fact that Marcia Haydee appears in a spoken role. Haydee is forever associated in my mind with Kenneth Macmillan's ballet's, notably Requiem and Song of the Earth. And we have a fascinating book about Sullivan's Ivanhoe, but still no decent recording!

In We hear that.., Bryn Terfel is due do a new Dutchman at Covent Garden next season, directed by Tim Albery; don't hold your breath.

Alfie Boe is returning to La Boheme, this time in a new Jonathan Miller production at ENO (why another new production?).

Danielle de Niese is singing Galatea to Charles Workman's Acis at Covent Garden next season, and Natalie Dessay is doing her first Cleopatra in a new production in Paris of Giulio Cesare directed by Laurent Pelly (hmmm).

Gerald Finley is doing his first Hans Sachs for Glyndebourne in 2011, now that I really want to hear.

ENO is opening 2008/2009 with a new Cav and Pag directed by Richard Jones.

Over at Grange Park, Claire Rutter is doing Norma in 2009.

Saturday's concert

On Saturday we did our second concert at St. Peter's Church, Eaton Square. The programme (Hugill:Annunciation; Haydn:Music for musical clocks; Haydn:Little Organ Mass; Hugill:Choruses from Passion; Andriessen:Theme and Variations for organ; Hugill:Crossing) was very well received by the audience and much enjoyed by the choir as well. Annunciation, a new piece setting the biblical text for soprano, tenor and organ, proved very striking and was a notable success. It was lovely to hear Crossing performed with a large, bold organ as accompaniment. The concert was recorded and we look forward to hearing the results!

Review of "The Testament of Dr. Cranmer"

From the CHURCH MUSIC QUARTERLY:

Robert Hugill is a mainly self-taught composer who has written charming music which is easy on the ear. Much is linked to chant, something that the composer was brought up with during his time with catholic church choirs. This disc comprises 77 minutes of music for vocal octet, tenor and strings, as well as octet and organ. Much has been specifically re-arranged for this recording.

The tenor soloist in The Lord bless thee and What is Man? is Christopher Watson. His beauty of sound appears effortless, yet he brings the impassioned moments directly to our attention with style. The eight voices of the ‘eight:fifteen’ vocal ensemble produce a radiant sound that is full of potential. Octets are notoriously difficult for achieving balanced and blended results, but there are only occasional lapses, which do not come close to distracting us from the many superb things we hear. Brough capably directs the two very different groups of musicians with considerable aplomb.


This is a disc of initial unknowns, but the end result is delightful.
Will Dawes

Review of Tito Manlio

(A slightly late posting I'm afraid, we've been rather busy preparing tomorrow's concert at St. Peter's Eaton Square)

Considering his popularity in other areas, Vivaldi's operas have still not made it into the mainstream of baroque opera going. I can remember the Camden Festival staging one of his works, but that was the oratorio Juditha Triumphans. The Accademia Bizantina's visit to the Barbican on Tuesday 16th February bringing a concert performance of Vivaldi's opera seria Tito Manlio gave us Londoners a rare opportunity to hear one of his major opera serias live.

The Accademia Bizantina, under Ottavio Dantone, have recorded the opera as part of the impressive ongoing Vivaldi edition on the naive label. Tuesday's cast though had only 1 or 2 singers from the recording.

Though Vivaldi did write operas for Venice, he found himself at odds with his audience and accepted a post in Mantua where the Landgrave of Hesse was the Austrian Governor. Vivaldi wrote a series of operas for performance in Mantua under the Landgrave's patronage and Tito Manlio was the 2nd of these.

It was planned as part of the Landgrave's wedding celebrations but when these fell through, the planned staging was shelved. Though the opera might have been given in a simplified form. The libretto, by the Neapolitan writer Matteo Noris, was a pre-existing one which Vivaldi adapted. Based on an episode in Livy it describes the family struggles between the Roman consul Tito Manlio and his son, during the early days of the Roman Republic.

The opera was presented as part of the Barbican's 'Great Performers' series and as such programmes were free. They did contain an excellent article on Vivaldi and the circumstances of the opera's gestation. But there was not plot summary. This was a grave disadvantage in an unfamiliar opera. Luckily there were surtitles, admirably comprehensive; also the performers had taken the precaution of having the female singers who played male characters all wearing trousers.

The plot covers the struggle between Romans and Latins; the opera opens with consul Tito Manlio (Carlo Lepore) proclaiming that every Roman must vow to support Rome and not the Latins. This causes trouble in his own family as his son Manlio (Karina Gauvin) is in love with a Latin, Servilia (Ann Hallenberg), and Tito's daughter Vitellia is in love with another Latin, Servilia's brother Geminio (Mark Milhofer). Another Latin, Lucio (Roberta Invernizzi) is also in love with Vitellia.

For the first act and the opening of the Act 2, Vivaldi manages to fit in an enormous amount of plot, there are numerous familial comings and goings as some family members support the vow and others not. Tito sends his son to treat with the Latins; Manlio meets Servilia's brother Geminio who baits him. Act 2 opens with Manlio's return to Rome and his admission that he has slain Geminio. His sister Vitellia is furious as is his lover Servilia. His father too, insists that Manlio has broken the law, having been instructed not to fight or provoke the Latins.

Manlio is clapped in irons and put into jail. For the remainder of the opera (a further 90 minutes of music) the plot, such as it is, centres around the conflicted reactions of Manlio and his family to his imprisonment.

Writing for a celebratory occasion, Vivaldi uses a wide instrumental palate with trumpets, horns, oboes, recorders and a kettle drum. The arias are all richly and brilliantly orchestrated and many have substantial instrumental obbligatos. The Accademia Bizantina under Ottavio Dantone played the music brilliantly and were a constant pleasure to listen to.

Vivaldi seems to respond to voices in a similar instrumental fashion. His vocal lines are often brilliant, virtuosic and well nigh impossible to sing. Dantone was blessed with a cast who seemed to be able to make light of the virtuoso difficulties.

Karina Gauvin as Manlio was brilliant. In the first half of the opera she seemed under used, but in the 2nd half she had a series of brilliant arias. Gauvin coped superbly with Vivaldi's impossible writing as did Robert Invernizzi as Lucio. The remaining cast members were not quite as impressive but still pretty incredible. Ann Hallenberg, as Servilia, had quite a soft grained voice which came into its own in the long aria Servilia sang to the sleeping Manlio in his prison cell. As the majority of arias in the opera were short, up tempo numbers, it seemed strange for Vivaldi to choose to dwell at such length on an aria not at all germane to the plot.

Marina De Liso, standing in for Sonia Prina, sang Vitellia's arias well enough though she never made me care for the character's suffering. And in the second half Vivaldi seems to lose interest, Vitellia simply comes on periodically and stomps about raging at Manlio, the killer of her lover, but she rages to no effect.

Vitellia's servant, Lindo (Christian Senn) has no significant plot function but gets a series of almost buffo arias which comment wryly on the activities going on around him; rather an old fashioned device by the time Vivaldi wrote the opera. The role was well delivered, in dead pan manner, by Christian Senn.

Carlo Lepore made an impressive tyrant of Tito Manlio, though Vivaldi gave him some remarkably jolly music; Tito Manlio is a character who seems to find great joy in his role in life!

By the end of the opera, some three hours, we had heard some stunning music, and stupendous singing. Many items could be taken out and stand well on their own. The combination of Vivaldi's instrumental vocal writing with his own orchestration was irresistible.

But frankly, I am not sure it quite added up to drama. There were slightly too many jolly up tempo numbers. And the prison scenes, though attractively pathetic, never quite moved me. I kept thinking of what a composer like Handel or Mozart might have made of the situation. By concentrating the 2nd half of the opera on Manlio's imprisonment and the plight of him and his family, Vivaldi would have needed to deliver music of profoundly moving depth and pathos. This he didn't do, seemingly content to charm and please.

Ottavio Dantone, the Accademia Bizantina and his singers coped brilliantly with Vivaldi's taxing music, creating a wonderfully enjoyable evening. Any faults were Vivaldi's, not theirs.

Recent CD Review

My review of Jan Lundgren's disc Magnum Mysterium is here, on MusicWeb International.
A little too constrained for jazz enthusiasts and too free with source material for classical folk ...

Review of Lucia di Lamermoor

My review of Saturday's premiere of Lucia di Lamermoor at the London Coliseum is here, on Music and Vision.

Recent CD Reviews

My review of a disc of choral music by David Ashley White is here.
For those interested in contemporary sacred music then this disc would be excellent to dip into ...
And my review of Alfie Boe's new disc is here. Both reviews are on MusicWeb International.
Well performed and well produced, but ultimately I tired of his aping of the Italian manner ...

Recent CD Review

My review of a disc of Schumann's music for Male chorus interspersed with modern responses to it is here, on MusicWeb International.
This is a fascinating disc and if you are open to experiment then you are sure to find much here, especially with such confident performances ...

Susan Graham - concert review

There is a sense that, with an artist of the stature of Susan Graham, they can perform whatever and wherever they want and still get an audience. Judging by Saturday February 9th's performance at the Wigmore Hall, close communication with her audience is important to Graham. So it was not surprise that she was performing in the Wigmore Hall rather than a bigger venue such as the Barbican, which she could undoubtedly have filled.

Accompanied by Malcolm Martineau, she presented a programme which took few prisoners - an extended peregrination through French song from Gounod (Ou voulez-vous aller?, 1839) to Poulenc (La Dame de Montecarlo, 1961). In one sense the programme was unchallenging, the material was all attractive, well written and melodic. But there were few undoubted masterpieces and many excursions into the by ways of the repertoire. Much depended on the quality of the performance and the audience's willingness to follow Graham and Martineau, to make connections and pick up the threads between the works suggested by Gerald Larner's excellent programme notes.

There were eccentricities, neither Faure (2 songs, one a vocalise), nor Debussy (2 songs) nor Ravel (one song) were represented by examples of their greatest works.
Poulenc completed the journey with his scena La Dame do Montecarlo.

The programme was presented roughly chronologically. This meant that in the first half, a generous 12 songs from the 19th century, there were slightly too many attractive encore type pieces, such as Paladilhe's Psyche (popularised by Maggie Teyte and Grace Moore) or Bachelet's Chere nuit (written for Melba and popular with singers such as Nan Merriman). But Graham was on excellent form, caressing each item with her lovely voice, giving each song its own distinctive dramatic presentation. And in items like Debussy's Harmonie du Soir, giving much more.

For the 20th century group a welcome element of wit and cleverness crept into the songs. Few songs were quite as comfortable as their 19th century counterparts, even Ravel's La Paon, with its vivid depiction of the Peacock. Perhaps Graham tried a little to hard with Satie's Le Chapelier, where he combines of Rene Chalupt's poem about the Mad Hatter with a melody from Gounod's Mireille - surely the joke should be in understated here rather than over-done. But Honegger's Trois Chansons de la Petite Sirene were perfect.

For the 2nd half Graham and Martineau gave us 11 songs, quite a respectable content and I'm sure that everyone would have been happy if the concert finished there, many distinguished divas have got away with performing few songs in a recital. But Graham and Martineau gave us Poulenc's substantial La Dame de Montecarlo, a brilliant tour de force in conclusion.

But it was in pieces such as the Poulenc where Graham's glorious voice could almost be said to be something of a limitation, there were times when I wanted less voice and more word.

Having sung Hahn's Tyndaris during part 2, Graham and Martineau gave us his A Chloris as a further treat as an encore. Graham followed this with Noel Coward's song about the 'filthy' French. Here, as in the Poulenc, I wanted more word and less voice.

Graham was well supported by Malcolm Martineau, surely becoming one of our finest contemporary accompanists. Their recital was generously programmed, some 24 songs, and by exploring the byways of the French melodie, they enabled us to get to knwo some lesser known gems in stunning performances.

Concert press release

The press release for our Feb 23rd Concert is on-line here, at PressBox.

Recent CD review

My review of a fascinating disc which mixes Schumann's music for male voice chorus with contemporary works is here, on MusicWeb International.
This is a fascinating disc and if you are open to experiment then you are sure to find much here, especially with such confident performances ...

Approaching the Sublime

On Saturday February 23rd 2008 at 7.30pm at St. Peter’s Church, 119 Eaton Square, London SW1W 9AL, FifteenB, conductor Paul Ayres and organist Malcolm Cottle will be performing a programme which explores different approaches to the sublime. Haydn’s Little Organ Mass, with its sublime soprano in the Benedictus, will be contrasted with Rabindranath Tagore’s evocative religious imagery in Robert Hugill’s cantata Crossing setting 2 of Tagore’s poems. A different approach is taken in the poetry of Black American poet Carl Cook, whose contemporary religious imagery suffuses Robert Hugill’s Choruses from “Passion”. The concert also includes the premiere of Robert Hugill’s Annunciation for solo soprano, solo tenor and organ.

Tickets for the concert, price £10 (concessions £6) are available on the door or in advance from Islington Music, tel. 020 7354 3195. Online booking available at:-
http://www.sphericaleditions.co.uk/celebration.html

Singing actors?

Should actors in musicals be able to sing? Is it necessary for them to be able to sing well, or are untrained voices acceptable? These thoughts occurred to me whilst reading reviews of the new film of Sondheim’s Sweeny Todd. I have yet to see the film but find myself disturbed by the comments on how unused to singing the leading actors were.

For me, I must admit, the answer to the question is a resounding yes, an actor should be able to sing, and sing well if they are to appear in a musical. I realise that not everyone will agree with this and find it acceptable it the performers can get by in a reasonably expressive manner.

But it is this little word expressive which is a big sticking point. An interesting example of my problem is the National Theatre production of Sondheim’s A Little Night Music with Judi Dench. Now Dench is a superb actress and an adequate singer, she was after all the first London Sally Bowles. But I felt it noticeable in the musical that she was less flexible, less expressive in her musical numbers. Her lack of (regular) musical experience meant that she was a little constrained; she could not be as expressive musically as she could with words.

And musicals are meant to be sung. I can still remember a revival of one of the great American musicals in the West End where virtually none of the cast could properly hold a tune. Very few actors are the equal of Rex Harrison who could be very expressive in musical numbers even though he just talked his way through the songs in My Fair Lady. Of course, with the advent of microphones and improved recording technology, it is possible to make a poor or inadequate singer seem fascinating on film. Of course, this requires the performer to be in some way charismatic so that, in the Rex Harrison mould, other qualities come to the fore and replace the musical ones.

Music is a language and if a performer is unused to it, then they simply will not be able to express themselves as well as they can in words. And when ballet dancers turn actors or singers, they have a double hurdle to leap as they are unused to expressing themselves with their voice at all. I saw Irek Mukhamedov in The King and I and though his acting and singing were creditable, it was noticeable that he was at his most relaxed and most expressive when dancing.

Live performance suffers in a similar manner because of the use of microphones, meaning that a singer who would be expected to be able to project their speaking voice in an auditorium does not have to do this when singing. I have seen a few musicals over the years where amplification was not used. Carousel at the National Theatre was done without, I believe, and it revealed an entirely different set of strengths and weaknesses in the cast. The big advantage was that you were hearing the performers for real and this forced them to consider how to be expressive musically. My abiding musical memory of that performance was Patricia Routledge singing You’ll never walk alone. But then I heard Routledge upstage June Anderson and a clutch of other opera singers in a concert performance (unamplified) of Bernstein’s Candide.

Grange Park Opera have a tradition of doing the occasional musical and, given the smallness of the theatre, doing them unamplified. They mix young opera singers and actors. Listening to these performances, it makes you realise that the performers in the early musical must have been fine, musical actors with decent, if not strong voices.

But you can take things to the opposite extreme, and a musical cast entirely from opera singers is not necessarily a lovely thing either!

Recent CD Review

My review of a disc of songs by Janos Fusz is here, on MusicWeb International.
By no means masterpieces but charming and the best are fascinating A glimpse into the world of the Kleinmeister ...

Recent CD Review

My review of a disc of Easter Chant is here, on MusicWeb International.
Chant as sung in a real Benedictine community ...

From this month's Opera

Gleanings from this months Opera magazine.

A couple of snippets from the profile of Gianandrea Noseda. He was the first foreigner since Albert Coates to be a regular conductor at the Kirov, and Coates worked there before the Revolution. He makes an interesting comment about the sort of conductors he is interested in encouraging in TurinI don't want singers to have an easy life with conductors who will simply follow them not matter what they do. It was Noseda's Beethoven cycle for the BBC in Manchester which had the remarkable download success, attracting 1.4 million downloads in 3 weeks. (Something the BBC have never repeated).

Over in Scotland there is an interview with Alex Reedijk, Scottish Opera's new head. Another fascinating fact, Scottish Opera's educational arm was the first to be established by a UK company. It is heartening to hear that in the 2008/09 season all of the company's 4 productions will be new ones, rather than rentals. But still a little depressing that they are only doing 4 productions, no matter how necessary this is economically. Still, their forthcoming evening of 5 1-act operas, all brand new and commissioned by Scottish Opera, is exciting. They plan to develop these further, let us hope that they have some success. But the workshop method, much beloved of opera companies, does not often seem to pay major dividends when it comes to operas; somehow the process often squeezes the life out of pieces.

An article on Balfe prompts much interest, but you'll have to go down to Haslemere if you want to hear his work, Opera South are staging The Bohemian Girl. Balfe's musical connections were remarkable. He sang at La Scala with Maria Malibran (in Rossini's Otello) and at La Fenice with her in La Sonnambul. He was in Milan when both Norma and La Sonnambula had their premieres.

An interesting conflation of obituaries - Karlheinz Stockhausen and Gudrun Wagner.

In Rio de Janeiro, Lithuanian mezzo Liora Grodnikaite gets fine reviews; I'm looking forward to seeing her in Massenet's Cendrillon when Chelsea Opera Group do it later this year.

Chicago has staged a new Die Frau ohne Schatten. I'd love to have heard it, with Christine Brewer as the Dyers Wife and Deborah Voight as the Empress. In NY the Met did its first Iphigenie en Tauride since 1917!

Back in Europe, Anger Nantes Opera gave the premiere of Susumu Yoshida's Sumidagawa, based on the same Noh play that Britten used for Curlew River. Remarkably the singers (one Canadian, Argentinian) sang the piece in Japanese, quite a feat. And in Frankfurt Richard Jones's new production of Billy Bud is set in a 1940's Naval College. Still in a Britten kind of mood, Turn of the Screw cropped up in Cremona sung in English by a mostly Italian cast. It is always heartening when this happens as too often you read about unusual repertoire cropping up in places with largely imported casts.

Over in Milan, Tristan und Isolde in a new production by Patrice Chereau, with Ian Storey as Tristan; he's a British singer who I've not really heard, he seems neglected over here. His Isolde was Waltraut Meier, and Michelle de Young was Brangaene, so no Italian speakers here. The role sounds as if it might be stretch of Meier (after all she is technically a mezzo) and I'd be interested to hear her doing it with a period band at a slightly lower 19th century pitch (assuming I'm right about the pitch being slightly lower).

It seems scarcely believable that Dennis O'Neill is 60 but there was a gala to celebrate this at the Wales Millennium Centre. And, having been cataloguing my old programmes, I must admit that his name crops up rather a lot in the operas I saw in Scotland in the late 1970's.

Stephen Petitt, in his thoughtful review of The Magic Flute performed by the South African Isango/Portobello Company makes an comment that there was not a single black face in the audience the night he was there. It would be interesting to know whether this changed over the course of the run or whether opera is just as problematic in London when performed by a black South African company.

We hear that... notes that Jeanne Michele Charbonnet will be Kundry in ENO's 2010 revival of Parsifal. I'm not sure about this one, I was less than thrilled with the concrete bunker production when new and Charbonnet failed to delight when heard in John Foulds World Requiem. Fascinatingly, John Copley has replaced Jude Kelly as the director of the new Merry Widow; definitely a sea change in the sort of production we might expect. We can anticipate that Copley will turn in a well made, very revivable production (unlike some recent ENO outings). Sarah Connolly is going to be doing Dido (Purcell) at Covent Garden. The big question being, what else are they putting on the bill? And Joyce DiDonato and Juan Diego Florez will be appearing in a new Donna del Lago, another of these travelling productions (Paris, London, NY, Milan). Still, I can hardly wait, definitely a mouthwatering cast. Amanda Roocroft is doing the Countess (Capriccio)for the first time with Opera North in 2010, now we'll have to find time to go and see that.

The Great Herbert

An article by Norman Lebrecht (published in the London Evening Standard, but available on the web at La Scena Musicale raises the spectre of Herbert von Karajan's centenary.

It was when I was a student in Manchester (from 1976 to 1981) that I first really came across Karajan's work. When we could afford it we were buying LP's and inevitably Karajan's name came to our attention. This was before I came to know his stunning records of the 1950's. This was the era when he was increasingly prizing glossy perfection in his orchestra, sometimes at the expense of his singers. Further into the 1980's I came to notice the way he was pushing some singers into roles which would seem to heavy for them (Katia Ricciarelli as Aida for instance).

I heard comments about the eerie perfection of his stage productions and the stories that he would not countenance long runs as the staging started to fail to meet his exacting standards.

All this conspired against my liking for his style of music making. To this day, I have few of Karajan's recordings and only admire his early ones. For this reason we coined a name for him, The Great Herbert. To understand this you have to understand our local (Northern English) idiom, in which the phrase you daft herbert, refers to someone who has done something stupid.

Recent CD Review

My review of a disc of Clemence de Grandval's works for oboe is here, on MusicWeb International.
Charming pieces and anyway well worth searching out if you are interested in the musical life in 19th century Paris ...

Interview with David Hill

My interview with David Hill is now live, here, on Music and Vision; we covered the Bach choir's forthcoming première of Carl Rütti's Requiem and the choir's return to the Royal Festival Hall for their annual performance of Bach's St. Matthew Passion

Concert Review - Handel La Resurrezione

On Tuesday we went off to Christ Church, Spitalfields for a performance of Handel's La Resurrezione given by Paul McCreesh and the Gabrieli Consort and Players. It was the first time that I had visited the church since the 1980's, when I saw Arleen Auger and Della Jones in Handel's Alcina (quite superb) and Monteverdi's L'Incoronazione di Poppea (less so). Since then the interior has been gloriously restored, making it one of the wonders of London, but rather less suitable for a concert venue.

Seats were rather crammed into the nave (no rake of course) and the singers and players were on a high platform, so that sightlines (from Row R) were decent but leg room and general personal space was at a premium. At the interval complimentary drinks were served (included in the ticket price) which meant that a remarkably speedy bar service could be provided.

The cast for the performance was remarkably starry. Rosemary Joshua was the Angel, Gillian Webster was the Magdalene, Sonia Prina was Mary Cleophas, Topi Lehtipuu was St. John and Jonathan Lemalu was Lucifer. There was, of course, no chorus but each half finished with an operatic style coro in which all the singers participated.

Though the work is an oratorio it was written to get round the Roman ban on opera and performed in static settings in Prince Ruspoli's Palazzo. Ruspoli engaged a huge orchestra (21 violins, 5 double basses), McCreesh's was smaller but still on a generous scale (16 violins, 2 double basses). The plot, such as it is, interleaves Christ's Harrowing of Hell with the activities on earth between his Crucifiction and Resurrection. Christ himself never appears, neither does his mother, though both are referred to in the libretto (by the court poet of ex-Queen Christina of Sweden, then living in Rome).

The opera opens with a spectacular aria for the Angel, with a descending phrase almost describing his/her descent into Hell. From then on Christ's Harrowing of Hell and his triumph over Death are described in a series of duologues between the Angel and Lucifer. Rosemary Joshua's Angel was technically quite brilliant and rather charming, but her habit of keeping her nose in her score for much of the time was rather annoying. Especially as there was no sense of her being unprepared, her performance was dazzling. Jonathan Lemalu made a charming villain as Lucifer and it is not his fault that we are never allowed to see him DO anything, it is all reportage.

Back on earth, Mary Magdalene (Gillian Webster) and Mary Cleophas (Sonia Prina) are both lamenting Christ's loss and have various degrees of trust in his return. Magdalene was written for Margerita Durastantini, one of Handel's long time supporters, but she could only sing one performance; the Pope objected and she was replaced by a castrato (no women allowed). Magdalene gets most of the show's hit numbers and is probably the most fully rounded character, beautifully realised by Webster. Mary Cleophas was sung by the wonderfully dark voiced Sonia Prina, though in her fast numbers her tight vibrato tended to occlude her passage work somewhat.

The two women are comforted by St. John (Topi Lehtipuu) whose great confidence in Christ's forthcoming resurrection is indicated by his series of trusting, pastoral arias (no trouble and questing here); beautiful but I came to want a little more edge, though some of Handel's orchestration was ravishing, and ravishingly realised by McCreesh and his performers.

The problem is that nothing actually happens, the 3 simply lament and recount. We don't even get St. John's encounter with the Virgin, he simply reports it. The language is a little over-heated at times which does not help the drama.

The piece is a relatively concise work and received a fine performance from McCreesh and his ensemble. If I seem a little reserved it is because though I enjoyed the performance it did not hold me the way the best Handel performances can. This might be because of a lack of sympathy with the work itself. I have a sneaking regard for Handel's other Italian oratorio, but only because much of it is familiar from other works. As this was the first time I had ever heard La Resurrezione live, I have few other performances to compare against. So the critic in me is only left to puzzle, was it them or was it me?

Recent CD Review

My review of a disc of Plainchant for Pentecost is here on MusicWeb International.
Chant as sung in a real Benedictine community ...

Recent CD Review

My review of Handel's Il Trionfo del Tempo e del Disinganno is here, on Music Web International.
You will not be disappointed by this lively and vivid account ...

Saturday's concert went superbly well, it was lovely to hear Lucis Creator Optime and my new Evening Service sung and played so well, and with a fine, strong organ to accompany it. There was an enthusiastic response from the audience. I now look forward to hearing the recording.

This lunchtime I was lucky enough to be able to interview David Hill, the director of the Bach Choir and chief conductor of the BBC Singers. The Bach choir will be premièring Carl Rütti's Requiem in February, further details in the forthcoming a forthcoming article.

Total immersion (again)

As a final comment on my previous post I note that the BBC have announced that their Judith Weir weekend will be the last such event. Instead they will be producing series of single composer days. It is probably not a popular decision but for myself I could see it making me go more often rather than less.

Tonight

So, tonight we have the first concert in our 2 concert festival at St. Peter's Church, Eaton Square. I'm looking forward to the première of my Evening Service and re-acquaintance with the motet Lucis Creator Optime. It will be good to hear them both with accompaniment on a fine organ. When we recorded the ATB version of the Magnificat on our new disc, the organ was an electronic stand and Lucis was premièred at St. Mary's Church Cadogan Street where the organ is relatively small scale. We'll also be varying the programme with a pair of solo pieces, one of which The Prayer of Humble Access will be especially welcome as it hasn't had an outing since its première in 1998.

And another review

This time on Music and Vision, the CD is reviewed by Patric Stanford. I've never been described as gently inoffensive before. Read the full review here.

Another Review

We've had another review for the CD, this time on the website MidwestRecord.com, based in Illinois.

PAUL BROUGH/Testament of Dr. Cranmer: A celebratory church music recording marking the 450th anniversary of the death of the doctor in the title. Us Yanks might not get it so much, but this is a high end Church event across the pond. A well played performance, anyone with a hankering for getting deeper into some church oriented programs is well advised to open an ear in this direction.

Preparations

Having 2 concerts within a month (on Sat 26th Jan and Sat 23rd Feb) means that preparations for both concerts are rather overlapping. Whilst we have rehearsed for Saturday's concert and are now in the midst of last minute admin. and production of programmes etc., last night we had the first rehearsal for the Sat. 23rd Feb concert. This has meant that at home I have had competing piles of music and paperwork for both concerts. Still I have disposed of nearly 2 dozen sets of music for my choir FifteenB which makes the space situation rather better.

Contrary to our practice in the last few FifteenB concerts, the concert on Feb 23rd will have the choir singing just 3 larger works, a Haydn Mass, my cantata Crossing and my Choruses from Passion. This latter work is the only piece the choir have never sung before. The concert will also include 2 pieces for smaller groups, one of which is a premiere and I've not heard it yet so that is something to look forward to!

Review of Judith Weir weekend - Friday evening

My review of Friday's Judith Weir concerts at the Barbican is here, on Music and Vision.

Recent CD Review

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Lacks the spark of genius but this should not stop us enjoying this fascinating disc ...

A review of Friday's concert will appear soon, but whilst at the concerts a couple of further points occurred to me on the subject of Friday's post. The first was as a result of overhearing a couple talking. Metropolitan concert goer that I am, an advantage of the weekend binge format which I had overlooked is that out of town people can come in an get a substantial amount of music in a short time. I suppose that this is one of the biggest advantages of the format and one that I can't argue with.

But, I was surprised as the sparseness of the audience at the Friday evening concert in the Barbican Hall. Only the stalls level was open and that was not full, though there were quite a lot of musical luminaries there. By contrast the late evening choral concert was completely full, though of course this venue is far smaller. But the relative disparity of audience levels was not really something that I would have predicted.

Total Immersion

Tonight we are going to one (or maybe two) concerts in the BBC's weekend celebration of the music of Judith Weir at the Barbican. For a devoted music lover, prepared to give the whole weekend over to attending events at the Barbican, there is a brilliant mix of concerts, films and events.

The BBC's annual single composer jamboree is a fine example of a particular type of promotional event, one that allows the interested parties to undergo total immersion in the music of choice. Of course, this is not for everyone but the advantage of such events is that those interested can cherry pick.

For me the problem with such total immersion festivals is that I want to hear/see everything, but not in such close proximity. I need time to digest and recover. Tonight is a good case in point. There is a concert in the Barbican Hall at 7pm is followed by a BBC Singers concert at 9.30pm in St. Giles Cripplegate.

At the BBC's James MacMillan jamboree this format was also followed on the Friday evening and that time, I did attend both concerts. By the time it came to the late evening concert, I was feeling a little jaded having done a full day's work and attended a complete concert already. As it was the combination of the BBC Singers fabulous performances with MacMillan's haunting choral music made a big impression. I only hope the same can happen this year, as I am sure it will.

One of the advantages from the BBC's point of view is that single composer choral concerts (such as the all MacMillan concert or the all Weir concert) are perhaps not quite as 'sexy' as the bigger events. So it might be easier to attract an audience when they are performed in such a festival circumstances. This is of course an interesting moot point. Would the BBC Singers get a good audience if they simply turned up and did an all Weir or all MacMillan concert at 7.30pm one Friday during the year?

Such jamborees are, of course, tiring for the performers. The BBC forces are appearing at a number of events throughout the weekend and so the singers and musicians have quite a heavy load of rehearsal and performance. This is not necessarily all bad as, for a difficult composer, it gives the performers time to accustom themselves to the style. Another interesting point, is it easier to perform the music of, say, Gubaidulina, if you are giving a sequence of 3 or 4 concerts rather than just a single one?

My own preference would be for a festival spread over a greater period of time, say three weekends. Close enough so that the marketing people could still create the buzz of a festival, but with enough distance between the events so that old fogies like myself could recover!

Park Lane Group - Friday 11/1/2008

Apologies for this late posting, but I've been busy promoting my CD with radio stations.

On Friday 11/1/2008 we attended the last of the Park Lane Group's 2008 season at the Purcell Room and the Southbank. The recital was shared between the duo of Eulalie Charland (violin) and Maiko Mori (piano) and the duo of Peter Sparks (clarinet) and Matthew Schellhorn (piano),

Charland and Mori opened with Judith Weir's Music for 247 Strings, the title referring to the combined no. of strings on the piano and the violin. The intention of these 10 short pieces was to make the violin almost the 3rd hand of the piano. They featured much contrary motion and Mori's hands were frequently at the opposite extremes of the piano. In contrast to Weir's epigrammatic and concise piece, Philip Cashian's Wynter Music for violin and piano was passionate, technically demanding and delighted with frequent references to jazz rhythms. Both pieces drew fine playing from Charland and Mori.

The stage was then taken by Sparks and Schellhorn. They first premiered Nicola Lefanu's Sea Sketches, 10 little fantasy pieces which were written for Peter Sparks. They start from quiet, atmospheric music with the piano offering sustained echoes, then gradually storms develop in wonderful unspoken narrative. As someone born beside the North Sea, I could empathise completely with this wonderful piece especially in Schellhorn and Sparks's performance. At times Sparks seemed to be trying to get the utmost quiet out of his instrument and was beautifully matched by Schellhorn.

They followed with Harrison Birtwistle's Linoi, written originally for Alan Hacker in 1968. Birtwistle explores the extremes of range of the bassett clarinet and accompanies the instrument with lyre like music created by getting the pianist to play inside the piano. Shellhorn showed remarkable dexterity in this, giving a fine pairing to Sparks's brilliant clarinet playing.

A further Judith Weir piece Sketches from a Bagpiper's Album was played in Weir's original version which requires each of the 3 movements to be played on a different clarinet. The results help to articulate the implicit story of the life of James Reid, a bagpiper in Bonnie Prince Charlie's army. The music was always Weir, economic and brilliant, but she embedded in it many references to the music of the bagpipes, notably the pibroch like references in the final Lament.

Sparks and Schellhorn concluded their set with the premiere Peter Wiegold's Aulos. In this, fast and furious passages inspired by Bacchanalian dance, alternate with quieter moments reflecting the stillness and coldness of the night. The result is almost a rondo and concludes with a puzzling coda where the clarinettist has to wander off the stage.

Finally Charland and Mori returned with Hugh Wood's Poem and Graham Fitkin's Bolt. Poem was a remarkably lyrical piece, its spiky romanticism felt as if a Big Romantic Tune was struggling to get out, but just failing.

The Fitkin, by contrast, was rhythmic and mostly very insistent. It came at the end of quite a long programme and seemed to outstay its welcome, though that might have been my fatigue and I would welcome hearing it again.

All 4 performers produced some brilliant playing in some very challenging music. The earliest piece in the programme was in some ways the most challenging - the Birtwistle written in 1968. Thus neatly encapsulating the way that music has become more diverse in the last 40 years.

Charland, Mori, Sparks and Schellhorn are definitely players to watch. Schellhorn has a number of projects underway for this year including a Wigmore Hall recital in May. Watch this space.

Tonight's concert

Tonight we plan to visit the Purcell Room for the first time in ages. The Park Lane group are putting on one of their estimable concerts, with music by Judith Weir, Graham Fitkin, Philip Cashian, Nicola LeFanu, Harrison Birtwistle and Hugh Wood! Played by a quartet of up and coming young musicians, Eulalie Charland - violin, Maiko Mori - piano, Peter Sparks - clarinet and Matthew Schellhorn - piano.

This year's Park Lane Group concert series showcases some 33 artists in 50 works written between 1934 and 2007

Reviewer's Log

After a long gap, I've somewhat caught up on my reviewer's log for Music Web, so if you wonder what I think about when reviewing discs, you might care to look here.

And off we go

Monday saw the re-starting of rehearsals for London Concord Singers working towards the next concert on Saturday March 15th at Hampstead Town Hall. The programme will include John Gardner's Five Partsongs to Poems by Wallace Stevens, Philip Cranmer's Three Parodies on "Lloyd George knew my Father" and my new setting of Do not go gentle into that good night for choir and French Horn. The programme also includes part-songs by Elgar and Song of Sorrows by Mary Jane Leach.

My piece is a world première, the 3rd such this year. As usual, the first run-through is always a little nerve-wracking but the piece seemed to go down well with the choir.

Recent CD Reviews

My review of A Sei Voci's Allegri disc is here.

As a fine exploration of Allegri’s talents this disc is highly recommendable. ...

My review of Penderecki's Te Deum on Naxos is here.
Both reviews are on MusicWeb International.
In many ways an admirable disc … If Penderecki’s challenging music appeals then do try this disc. ...

CD on Music and Vision

News of my CD, The Testament of Dr. Cranmer, has made it to the Music and Vision web-site, here.

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My review of the new disc of motets by Nicolas Gombert is here.
Fine musicianship and commendable curiosity. Ideal listening ...

And my review of Gerard Lesne's Purcell disc is here. Both reviews on MusicWeb International.
In many ways, Gerard Lesne has the perfect voice for Purcell … up to a point ...

Gleanings from this month's Opera magazine

Gleanings from this Month's Opera Magazine.

David Grant writes in the Letters page that he is producing a new, Urtext, edition of Wallace's Maritana. Evidently the original, some 150 minutes of music, has not been heard for over 150 years. It will be interesting to compare this version (due to be published in time for the bicentenary in 2012) with that which has been recorded on Marco Polo (with Majella Cullagh in the title role), where the entire set lasts some 110 minutes or so.

Susan Bullock, having successfully stood in for Lisa Gasteen in the Covent Garden Ring, has 3 further Ring Cycles (not in London!), her first Kundry and is recording Salome (for Chandos in English I believe). So, when do we get to hear her Brunnhilde in London?

Jake Heggie's Dead Man Walking has made it to Vienna. Christopher Norton Welsh is very sympathetic to the opera, though a Viennese critic has dismissed it as well-crafted film music. I have my own prejudices about the piece, but until we get to hear a fully staged production in London then it will be a bit difficult to tell. But Martin Bernheimer has come out against Barber's Vanessa. I must confess to have missed the concert performances of this opera in London so can't comment. But loved Bernheimer's comment that 'the music seems redolent of cheap perfume, wrong-note harmonies and orchestral busy-music supporting vocal indulgence amid knowing nods to Puccini and Strauss'. At the New York performances Rosalind Elias (Erika 48 years ago) was the Baroness, quite a lineage.

Over in Prague, they have just heard their first Norma in 70 years, rather amazingly. Another amazing gap, the producer Nikolaus Lehnhoff hasn't worked at Bayreuth since being on of Wieland Wagner's assistants in the 1960's. Considering that Lehnhoff is one of the major Wagner producing talents of our day, this is rather striking.

Over in the Deutsche Oper, Berlin they have performed Richard Strauss's Elektra along with Vittorio Gnecchi's rather fascinating 1905 prequel, Cassandra. A fascinating idea.

In Munich, the ideas were less fascinating. A new production of Eugene Onegin where Onegin and Lensky are depicted as a homosexual couple. Nice idea, except that that music just does not seem to go there. Evidently the Act 3 Polonaise was danced by a corps de ballet of bar-chested gay cowboys (inspired by Brokeback Mountain.) Eh?

Hugh Canning, in Amsterdam for Pierre Audi's cycle of the 3 Monteverdi Operas was suitably impressed. He refers to the 1978 Zurich Opera performances of the 3 in Ponnelle's productions, I think implying that it was the last time he heard all 3 in a cycle in strong productions. I saw the 1978 productions, and the Orfeo has stayed in my memory ever since.

Andrew Porter mused about adding music to a major dramatic text, and whether you need to do major surgery to the text before musick-ing it. This was in the context of Boesman's Miss Julie, which doesn't do violence to the text. But Porter's review gives the impression that the result is not quite an opera. I have always had a feeling of the unsatisfactoriness of operas where the text is set verbatim.

George Loomis, in his review of Max Emmanuel Cenci's aria disc, that Rossini wrote only 1 role for a castrato. In fact, it is curious to associate Rossini with castrati at all, making you realise how long his career is and how long they lasted on the opera scene. Loomis also comments on the casting of counter-tenors in roles in Baroque operas where the original was written for a woman. I have often wondered about this and have hankerings to buy yet another recording of Solomon so that I can have a woman singing the role rather than a counter-tenor.

Finally, in the We hear that.. column. Martin Duncan is directing the first British production of Martinu's Mirandolina at Garsington in 2009. Then in 2010 Angela Gheorghui is doing Adriana Lecouvreur, I can't wait. Della Jones is returning to ENO as Auntie in 2009, she has been woefully underused there in recent years. I wish she was doing something more than Auntie. Richard Jones is doing The Gambler at Covent Garden in 2010. Having seen it at Grange Park then I look forward to seeing John Tomlinson as the General. Tomlinson is also doing Sir Morosus in Schweigsame Frau with Toby Spence as Henry, but you'll have to go to Munich to enjoy it.

Recent CD Reviews

My review of Maria Bayo's Handel recital is here.
Lovely recital displaying Bayo’s talents in this tricky repertoire ...

And my review of Emma Kirkby's Vivaldi recital is here. Both reviews on MusicWeb International.
Kirkby’s light vocal timbre works extremely well … most enjoyable ... a vivid, lively and well structured programme ...

Recent Book review

My review of Erik Chisholm's 1971 introduction to the operas of Janacek is here, on MusicWeb International.
This volume remains a fine introduction to the music-drama of Janáček’s operas, illuminated by Chisholm’s intelligence and graced by his lucid prose ...

CD's I'm listening to

Over the holiday period our principal listening has been Granville Bantock's Omar Khayam and Thomas Tallis's complete oeuvre, recorded by Alistair Dixon and La Chapelle du Roi.

Omar Khayam is a 3 CD set from Chandos as part of their on-going series of discs of Bantock's music. So far the Chandos discs have generally been compilations of smaller items, though they have included the very striking Sappho song cycle and a couple of movements from the Song of Songs. But Bantock was notable for his large scale works and his complete setting of Fitzgerald's translation of the Rubaiyat of Omar Khayam is a case in point.

Using chorus, orchestra and 3 soloists Bantock expansively sets the text, creating gorgeous textures and hinting at the music by other contemporaries such as Rimsky Korsakov and Richard Strauss. This is wonderful music, but it is in no sense advanced. The work was written in pieces between 1908 and 1910, but rarely gets beyond, say, Elgar. Vernon Handley, the BBC Symphony Orchestra and Chorus and soloists Catherin Wyn-Rogers, Toby Spence and Roderick Williams do the work complete justice. This is wonderful music to listen to, gorgeous, luscious and full of textures. But it is relatively undramatic, perhaps Bantock intended this but in a work this long (171 minutes in total), I think that a little more dramatic structure might have helped.

My other complaint is that the work sounds very firmly as if it comes from Edwardian England, it is unmistakeably Bantock. Despite some nice touches of local colour in the orchestration, it does not really conjure up the gorgeous east.

Again, that might be deliberate as Bantock was interested in the poem's main theme, the transience of existence, the underlying message being Waste not the hour.

I think, perhaps, that we need to get to know the work more. That its richness rather hides its subtlety. But though reviewers have generally been very positive, Andrew Clements in the Guardian (here) is far more temperate, describing it as a sumptuously brocaded if rather staid score.

The Tallis set is entirely different. For a start, the majority of the 9 discs are performed by just the singers of La Chapelle du Roi. The group varies in size according to need but there are generally 16 to 24 singers (expanding to fit the 40 part motet). The music is organised chronologically so that we start with the early stuff and the amazing late Henry VII period. This is followed by the beautiful but austere Edward VI period, when Tallis was concerned to suit his music to the predominating taste of the reformers, where words were paramount. Just think of If ye love me to get a feel for what he could do.

Then Mary Tudor re-appears and we have the late flowering of Latin complexity, including the mass, Missa Puer Natus est Nobis. Finally the full panolply of the Elizabethan works, including of course his 40-part motet. The set (10 discs in all) is a remarkable achievement and whilst you could pick individual items which could be different. Overall I find the performances beautiful and convincing, definitely a set to be played over and over.

Chapelle du Roi

On Friday we went to one St. John's Smith Square to hear Alistair Dixon and La Chapelle du Roi performing their programme, Christmas at the Chapel Royal. They were performing two movements from Tallis's Missa Puer Natus est Nobis which was probably written for Christmas 1554 for Queen Mary, when it was thought she was pregnant by Philip of Spain. Similarly the superb, and v. grand, motet Suscipe Quaeso was probably written for an earlier state occasion and may well have been performed by choir which included the members of Philip's chapel as the range of the piece is less than the standard range. Besides Tallis, the group also included a couple of Sheppard's Latin Responds, lovely pieces which were also written at this time. Plus a pair of carols.

The group numbered just 9 singers (3 sopranos, 2 male altos, 2 tenors, 2 basses) so for much of the time many of them were singing just 1 to a part. Dixon does not seem to go for a superbly blended sound as in some other English groups, instead we get fine musicianship, a lovely sense of line and a feeling that each voice/line is distinctive. That is not to say that the group don't blend, they do, but sensibly Dixon seems to value the distinctiveness of each of his talented voices.

The other large Tallis piece in the programme was his Te Deum for Meanes, a work which was probably written under Edward VI as it uses an earlier translation of the text. A superb work, given a stirring performance, it made a strong end to the programme.

This was a fine programme, beautifully performed, a good example of intelligent Christmas programming.

On a personal note, I should add that one of the Altos also appears in the eight:fifteen vocal ensemble and is featured on my new disc.

Recent CD Review

My review of a disc of Paderewski songs is here, on Music Web International.

A lovely recital and should be of interest to everyone with a fondness for songs ...

Review of "The Testament of Dr. Cranmer"

John Quinn's review of my new CD, has just appeared on Music Web International, here.

This well produced disc features committed performances from musicians who serve Robert Hugill well ... John Quinn

Poster

The poster for our Celebration mini-festival at St. Peter's Church, Eaton Square, when we'll be celebrating the release of the new CD.

The new folk song

On Sunday we caught part of the European Broadcasting Union's advent music jamboree, broadcast live on Radio 3. At one point we heard a couple of Christmas carols sung by an English cathedral choir. Afterwards the announcer gave full details of on carol, but the other was not explained. The carol in question was the arrangement of We wish you a merry Christmas from the Carols for Choirs book. This book has become so ubiquitous that perhaps the announcer did not think it necessary to explain. Certainly I recognised the arrangement immediately and could easily sing along, having performed it myself countless number of times.

With amateur choirs the use of the Carols for Choirs books is such that the arrangements of the popular carols from Books 1 and 2 are pretty well ingrained into folk memory. Proof of this came last night when we attended the annual Chelsea Green carols service. Whilst drinking mulled wine and eating food provided by the local shops, people sang carols accompanied by a choir from St. Luke's Church, Chelsea and a brass group. When it came to Hark the Herald Angels Sing and a couple of other carols, a group of young women launched quite unprompted into the Carols for Choirs descants for these carols. So natural do these feel that I am sure for many people, the carols without the Carols for Choirs descants feel rather odd.

So for a whole class of people, these versions of the carols are the dominant ones.

Through a glass darkly

When the composer Handel is mentioned, what image comes into your head - a large, overweight, elderly man wearing a full-bottomed wig, prone to gluttony and attacks on recalcitrant singers and rather a-sexual? Of course, this owes something to reality, but even in his later years Handel was also a good raconteur, had a coterie of extremely loyal and devoted friends and was a keen connoisseur of art (the inventory taken at the time of his death is quite mouth-watering.)

But, of course, it is the lively anecdote and highly coloured images of the elderly man which stay in our mind. As there is an absence of personal material, it makes the real man difficult to re-create.

There is all the more problem when it comes to the young Handel. During his period in Italy he was in his early 20’s. Handel as Orpheus, Ellen Harris’s book about Handel’s Italian Cantatas includes a portrait of him done at the time. We see, not the overweight philosopher of the late portraits, but a young, vibrant, slender and attractive man. No wonder Handel was popular with his patrons, his improvising was dazzling, and his music was brilliant. Combine this with his entertaining personality and attractive person and you can imagine that some of his patrons were rather smitten. Harris detects something of a whiff of the homo-erotic about the texts of Handel’s cantatas and the general atmosphere in the salons where he was employed.

This all adds up to a very different picture to our standard one of Handel. But the composer suffers from the problem common to elderly and productive composers; we tend to view their output and their personalities through the distorting glass of their later persona.

A similar thing happens to Ralph Vaughan Williams. He lived to his late 80’s and remained productive until the end. RVW was 63 when his ground-breaking 4th symphony was premiered. His 3 major symphonies (nos. 4, 5 and 6) span the years 1935 to 1946, so that he was 74 when the last of these was premiered. With its remarkably pianissimo final movement, it was regarded as his swan-song. But the composer went on to write 3 more!

In the face of all this public acclaim, the composer created a gruff persona for himself, prone to startling announcements “I don’t know if I like it, but it’s what I meant”, and hiding his sophisticated talent in a miasma of apparent amateurism.

So we tend to view the early RVW through this smoke screen. It means that we miss out on the passionate young man, one whose musical voice was late in coming. But just look at the pictures where you see a slimmer figured RVW with dashing dark wavy hair. This is a young student who was briefly considered as a trainee Apostle whilst at Cambridge and who had links with a number of Apostles at a time when the group had a very homosexual cast to it. RVW also had strong links to the Bloomsbury group (his first wife Adeline was a cousin of Virginia Woolf’s), he and Adeline did a great deal of entertaining and participating in the social whirl and demi-monde whilst they lived in Cheyne Walk.

This is the man who wrote the passionate piano concerto (for Bax’s mistress, Harriet Cohen) and the remarkable ballet Job, works which lead to the 4th symphony. It is this personality which can be glimpsed in the letters which RVW exchanged with his contemporary Gustav Holst (collected in the book Heirs and Rebels). Holst died when the composer was in his early 60’s so had little influence on the late, Grand Old Man of Music image.

For both these composers, RVW and Handel, we have to take a step back and make an effort to discard their later persona and view their younger passionate selves. It is interesting to consider how this sort of view might easily apply to others. One obvious candidate is Elgar, whose passionate music is so at odds with the persona of the crusty old colonel which he constructed.

Conversely it is fascinating to play what if and consider what might have happened to composers who died young? What would our view of early and middle Mozart be if the composer had lived to a productive and ripe old age, similarly with Beethoven?

Review of Last night's Barbican Concert

Emmanuelle Haim and Les Concerts d’Astree have a new CD to promote so they are doing a tour, performing the repertoire on the CD. They arrived at the Barbican Centre yesterday to perform Handel’s Dixit Dominus and Bach’s Magnificat (the 2nd, D major version).

This is all well and good. After all, any concert directed by Haim is never less than interesting and with her own group there is the good possibility that sparks will fly. Add to this the temptation of hearing Natalie Dessay singing the Soprano 1 solos and you had a delectable package; even though the total amount of music being performed totalled around 65 minutes.

I know that one should count quality not quantity, but even so the concert seemed a little under nourished as regards content. Surely the group could have added another overture or two, just to make the proceeding seem less like an exact re-run of the CD.

Though as regards cast, this was not a re-run of the CD. Only Dessay was common to CD and concert and she dropped out due to ill health. In fact Haim managed to lose both her 1st soprano and her tenor, but replaced them admirably with Amy Freston and Paul Agnew.

In fact, when you look at the solo roles in the two works, having such a stellar cast seemed rather over the top. In Handel’s Dixit Dominus the soloists have a tendency to interject into the choral textures. Handel uses a 5-part choir and the 5 solo roles match this. So much so that you can’t help feeling that he intended to have the solos sung by the choir leaders.

If this had happened it would have removed the rather annoying amount of walking about that the soloists had to do, getting up to sing a small interjection and then sitting down again.

That said the performance was certainly up to standard. Haim used a large-ish choir (25 strong); both they and the instrumental ensemble gave a good crisp performance. Haim seems to aim for dramatic textures when it comes to her choruses, no pale English reticence here. This means that some sophistication of texture and line is lost but the result is undeniably vivid and exciting. The soloists (Amy Freston, Salome Haller, Tim Mead, Paul Agner and Robert Gleadow) followed suit and contributed some fine, involving solo singing.

After the interval the band grew bigger as Bach adds wind and brass to Handel’s string band. Also he allots each soloist an aria apiece so that all the singers get the chance to show off properly. As they did, in fine style; Amy Freston was beautifully accompanied in her first aria by the oboe do’amore of Patrick Beaugiraud. Another highlight for me was the duetting of Tim Mead and Paul Agnew in Et misericorida.

Is it me, is it the Barbican or is it something else. But our concert tonight at the Barbican has a new pair of soloists, Natalie Dessay and Lothar Odinius are both ill and are replaced by Amy Freston and Paul Agnew. The last time this happened (in Handel's Ariodante) the replacement singer proved quite a find. But I remember another concert with Le Concert D'Astree when one of the singers was ill and the concert went ahead in reduced form.

The problem is that our concert going outside the Barbican is rather random, the Barbican is the only place where we actually have a subscription (to their excellent Great Performers series). So I cannot work out whether this run of cancellation and ill health is simply bad luck or something. Still, I look forward to hearing Miss Freston again. We have caught her a couple of times in smaller roles (Miss Wordsworth in Albert Herring for Glyndebourne on Tour), so it will be interesting to hear her in full Baroque Mode (Handel:Dixit Dominus and Bach:Magnificat)