Review of The Cunning Little Vixen

It seems amazing that Covent Garden's production of Janacek's The Cunning Little Vixen is 20 year's old. Bill Bryden's production seemed fresh and charming when it was new and, remarkably, it has still preserved these qualities despite the fact that William Dudley's sets have rather a lot of moving parts.

Dudley's designs are highly mechanistic, but very evocative, and it can be argued that Bryden's production is a little too anthropomorphic (plus it relies a little too much on cute children). For me it contains one of the most memorable scenes in any staging of the opera, when the Spirit of the Vixen appears on a trapeze outlined against the moon and the starry sky.

The interest in this revival wasn't just that fact that it remains one of my all time favourite productions of the opera, but also that Sir Charles Mackerras was at the helm. His first time conducting the opera at Covent Garden. Despite apparent frailty (he stayed in the pit for the whole time and took his bow from there), his account of the opera was masterly, warm, transparent and vibrant.

The Forester was sung by Christopher Maltman with his characteristic charm and frankness. His final scene didn't quite reach the mystical element that I've experienced in other performances, but Maltman's warmth and directness were winning.

As the Vixen, Emma Matthew's displayed a spunky charm and worked very hard, but it cannot be denied that her voice was a size too small for the Covent Garden. There is always a tendency to cast the Vixen as a soprano with a slightly too small voice. But in this case, even Mackerras's sympathetic accompaniment couldn't disguise the problem.

Emma Bell was supposed to sing the Fox but she was ill so her place was gamely taken by Elisabeth Meister who turned in a fine performance, though her costume was hardly flattering. The remainder of the cast were all Covent Garden regulars with Jeremy White as the Badger and the Priest, Elizabeth Sikora as the Innkeeper's wife, Alasdair Elliot as the Innkeeper and Robin Leggate as the Mosquito and the Schoolmaster. Amazingly this was Leggate's 900th performance at Covent Garden. Matthew Rose made a welcome appearance as Harasta the Poacher.

The orchestra played finely under Mackerras's direction, making the orchestral interludes a delight to hear.

Review of Katya Kabanova

My review of Katya Kabanova at the London Coliseum is here, on Music and Vision (subscription site). We saw the opera on Saturday, which was its last night. As the production is a co-production with the Teatr Weikli in Poland, the rear of the London Coliseum Theatre was crowded not by the usual trucks, but by Polish ones waiting to whisk the production off there.

It is something of Janacek occasion at the moment, last night we attended The Cunning Little Vixen at Covent Garden with Sir Charles Mackerras in the pit. Monday's performance represented Robin Leggate's 900th performance at Covent Garden.

PayPal Pain again

We use PayPal on the Spherical Editions web site (which sells my music) to take payments for music. It is very convenient for on-line sales, but every so often there is a blip and the accompanying email either goes astray or gets eaten by my anti-virus software. This means that we get an embarrassing email from someone who has bought music but which has failed to arrive. Ah, the joys of technology!

Bach Arias at the Barbican

On Tuesday we were back at the Barbican for a concert by the Munich Chamber Orchestra under their conductor Alexander Liebreich with soprano Mojca Erdmann (replacing an ill Christine Schäfer), baritone Matthias Goerne and violinist Hilary Hahn. Their concert was based around performances of J.S. Bach's arias for voice with violin obligato, taken from the cantatas, the Mass in B minor and the St Matthew Passion. To these, the orchestra added orchestra movements from suites by J.S. Bach and by his son C.P.E Bach.

The first half started with a sinfonia by C.P.E. Bach, followed by 3 arias from J.S. Bach, then another C.P.E Bach sinfonia and a further 3 J.S. Bach arias. The second half was similar in construction, except that the orchestra items were by J.S. Bach and there were two duets. This probably looked good on paper. But, rather than simply sitting to the side, the soloists were absent from the platform during the orchestral items. This mean that a relatively short concert was padded out rather over much with a great deal of walking to and fro by the soloists (to applause by the audience).

Yet again I was frustrated that an intelligent concert programme was spoiled by the presentation. The whole evening had the aura of a small scale recital for the Wigmore Hall which had been expanded to fit the Barbican. This feeling was intensified by the fact that all the cantata arias, and the two duets, were accompanied by just Hilary Hahn's violin and the continuo group. So that excellent Munich Chamber Orchestra spent quite a lot of time sitting doing nothing.

That said, there was some lovely singing and playing. Goerne was wonderful in the bass ariaJa Ja, Ich Halte Jesum feste from Cantata BWV 157, but elsewhere he seemed restless on stage when not actually singing. His duet with Mojca Erdmann from Cantata BWV 140 was truly ravishing. The evening closed with another duet, from Cantata BWV 158, which meant that the orchestra didn't actually play in the last item!

One curiosity was the soprano version of Erbarme dich from the St. Matthew Passion in Mendelssohn's arrangement.

The orchestra brought on the oboist Claire Sirijacobs in the final duet and the flautist Henrik Wiese in two items including a movement from Bach's Suite No. 2. One fascinating curiosity was that Wiese played in a dog collar and so is, presumably, an ordained clergyman!

Recent CD Review

My review of Dido and Aeneas with Della Jones as Dido is here, on MusicWeb International.

A good, solidly intelligent and musical account ...

Plans

The latest issue of Opera magazine contains initial information about next season's plans from Opera North and Welsh National Opera, plus snippets of info about Covent Garden and ENO's plans.

Opera North are doing a season which includes the traditional favourites of Carmen, The Merry Widow and Fidelio, but also include Janacek's From the House of the Dead and Jonathan Dove's rather wonderful The Adventures of Pinocchio. They start their semi-staged Ring cycle with Das Rheingold. But the great rarity is The Portrait by Mieczyslaw Weinberg, the Polish born composer who spent much of his life in Moscow and was a friend of Shostakovich's. The Portrait was written in 1980 and is based on Gogol.

Over at WNO, the season includes plenty of old favourites: Fidelio, The Magic Flute, Cosi van Tutte, Die Fledermaus and Il Trovatora. But for novelties, we must be content with Ariadne auf Naxos (with Orla Boylan and Sarah Connolly in a production by Neil Armfeld) and Turandot (in a production by Christopher Alden).

Over at Covent Garden, it seems that Tim Albery will be directing a new Tannhäuser conducted by Semyon Bychkov. Its a long time since their last production of the opera so this outing is more than welcome. And Paul Curran will be doing a new production of Rimsky Korsakov's The Tsar's Bride.

More Wagner at the London Coliseum as ENO are reviving their production of Parsifal directed by Nikolaus Lehnhoff. Stuart Skelton (who sang in their recent Peter Grimes) will sing the title role with John Tomlinson as Gurnemanz, and Irene Theorin as Kundry, conducted by Mark Wrigglesworth. I must confess that the production did not much appeal to me last time I saw it, but the cast sounds very promising.

Choir of Trinity College at the Cadogan Hall

On Thursday we were at the Cadogan Hall for a concert by the choir of Trinity College, Cambridge conducted by their director Stephen Layton. The choir is a mixed one, with female sopranos, female and male altos, and numbers some 30 singers, mostly undergraduates at the college (some looking alarmingly young).

The group made a lovely clear, light transparent sound. I wanted a bit more weight in Bach's Komm, Jesu, komm where the light textures and Layton's speeds combined to make the work tell less than usual. But the group of early English motets from Tallis, Parsons and Bird seemed to suit the choir's style better. However, I thought that they seemed most at home in the final item in the first half, Stanford's three Latin motets (Justorum Animae, Beati quorum via and Coelos ascendit hodie). These were actually written for Trinity Choir (presumably when it had boys on the top line) and seemed to find the young singers most at home in Stanford's style.

In the second half we had an interesting and attractive group of 20th century pieces, concentrating on the Baltic and Poland. Arvo Pärt's Bogoroditse Djevo found him in rather lively mood. John Tavener's contemplative Mother of God here I stand comes from his mammoth Veil of the Temple which Layton premiered with the Temple Choir. Then Urmas Sisask's dynamic and lively Benedictio where the choir obviously enjoyed Sisask's jazzy rhythms and they made light of the trickiness of the piece. Pavel Lukaszewski's Ave Maria and Vytautas Miskinis's Angelis suis Deus completed the Baltic/Polish group.

Then followed two movements from Morten Lauridsen's Nocturnes. The choir obviously enjoyed performing the music and it is well crafted, but frankly it sounded just like quite a few other Lauridsen pieces. Gustav Holst's Nunc Dimittis was an austere relief. Finally we had Eric Whitacre's rather lovely Sleep.

Stainer Archive

For most people, if John Stainer's name means anything it is as the composer of the Victorian war-horse The Crucifixion, though that work has had its reputation improved in recent years. Now there is a Stainer Archive at Durham University, donated by his descendants.

If nowadays he is associated with a few hymns and cantatas, Stainer had an enormous influence on Anglican church music and was responsible for the improvement in standards and quality of the music. Durham are planning an exhibition timed to coincide with the 170th anniversary of Stainer's birth in June this year.

Recent CD Reviews

A whole clutch of my CD reviews has appeared this week. My review of Gaspard Corrette's Messe du 8e ton is here, a fascinating reconstruction of mass from an 18th century abbey.
Charm, vividness and vitality ...

And my review of Thomas Tallis's Secret Garden is here.
An interesting experiment, recording Tallis's pieces as if they were vocal chamber music ...

An a modern instrument account of Bach's Christmas Oratorio is here.
This intelligent modern instrument performance has much to recommend it …

And finally a disc of 17th century choral music from Poland, by a composer new to me, Mikolaj Zielinski; reviewed here. All the reviews are on MusicWeb International.
A disc that all lovers of 17th century choral music will want to have …

Review of Don Pasquale

My review of Donizetti's Don Pasquale from English Touring Opera is now on-line here, at Music and Vision Daily (subscription site).

Mahler 10 from the Salomon Orchestra

To St John's Smith Square last night for the Salomon Orchestra's performance of Mahler's 10th Symphony in the completion by Deryck Cooke. The orchestra were directed by Nicholas Collon.

I must confess that Mahler isn't central to my listening and going to hear Mahler symphonies live is quite a rare occurrence. But I find the 10th symphony a fascinating work. To a certain extent this represents interest in Cooke's restoration as much as the music itself. But there is a great deal of Mahler in the symphony (far more Mahler than Cooke thankfully) and it is also interesting to hear the way Mahler is pushing himself in other, harder directions. The symphony seems rather tauter than some of the earlier rather sprawling full evening works and you can't help but wonder where Mahler's genius would have taken him had he lived.

St. John's Smith Square was very full, both with a packed audience and a packed orchestra (quadruple woodwind for a start). Under Collon's apparently relaxed direction the orchestra turned in a strong, mature performance. Along the way there were moments when Mahler's exposed writing rather over exposed the orchestra. But they managed well in the Lewis Carroll moments ('two contradictory things before breakfast'), and in the final movement all came together memorably and movingly. There was some good solo playing and some sterling work from the first trumpet.

Collon directed the orchestra confidently but without over heating and in a space as small as St. John's, every gesture told.

On Wednesday we were privileged to hear a preview of Kathleen Broderick and Sergey Rybin's recital which they will be giving at St. John's Smith Square, on Tuesday 23rd March. The imaginative programme pairs Grieg's opus 48 songs (setting German texts), with a group of Tchaikovsky songs (including the well known 'In the midst of the ball'), and Mussorgsky's Songs and Dances of Death with Debussy's Proses Lyriques. Whilst Grieg and Tchaikovsky were friends and admired each other's music, the link between Debussy and Mussorgsky is less obvious. But Debussy was employed by Tchaikovsky's patron, Madame von Meck, to teach her daughters and whilst Debussy and Tchaikovsky never met at the time, it is now thought that Debussy was introduced to Russian music and the music of Mussorgsky and knew the Songs and Dances of Death. Broderick is an ex-Kathleen Ferrier Award winner and made a strong impression as Tatyana in Eugene Onegin with British Youth Opera 3 years ago. She is definitely a talent to watch.

MacMillan Passion again

On Sunday we went to the Barbican to hear James MacMillan's St. John Passion, which we first heard at its première 2 years ago. It was performed by the same forces; Christopher Maltman and the LSO conducted by Sir Colin Davis.

On second hearing the piece remains as powerful and as astonishing as on first hearing. What came over was the variety of textures that MacMillan uses in the piece. This variety arises partly because of the decisions MacMillan has taken about the allocation of the text. The Evangelist's part is sung by a semi-chorus, the Narrator choir, which sings unaccompanied or only lightly accompanied, in a generally homophonic style which is highly inflected by Gregorian chant. It is a style which you find in some of MacMillan's sacred music, one both very personal and highly evocative.

Christus is sung by the baritone solo, Christopher Maltman. For Christ's shorter, more gnomic pronouncements, MacMillan gives the baritone long, melismatic lines and uses the capabilities of a dramatic, operatic soloist to enable him to give the part with a strong orchestral accompaniment. MacMillan solves the problem of Christ disappearing from the narrative towards the end, by appending to the text the Good Friday Reproaches, so that the Christ has a satisfyingly substantial solo towards the end of the piece.

The remaining text from the Gospel is sung by the main choir, the LSO Chorus. The size of the choir means that MacMillan can write large scale, dramatic music with strong (loud) orchestral accompaniment in a way that would not be possible if he was using soloists. The result is highly dramatic, non-naturalistic and very loud; especially when as sung as thrillingly as it was here.

At the end of each section of the Gospel narrative, MacMillan appends a Latin text which relates to what has gone before and uses this text to give the large choir a motet which comments on and relates to the narrative. Here the large choir also sing in a style which relates to MacMillan's other sacred music.

Throughout the piece the orchestra are a large component of the action but at the end, in the final movement, they play alone to provide a moving summation to the action. All in all, a powerful and moving piece, one that is profoundly satisfying.

Recent CD Reviews

My review of Anne Schwanewilms recording of Messiaen's Peomes pour Mi is here.

Ideally placed to enable people to experiment and try the repertoire …

And that of Carol Farley singing Milhaud songs is here.

This disc is worth a try but you may long for a different type of performance ...

And my review of Rebel and Francouer's opera-ballet Zelindor is here; all reviews on MusicWeb International.

Successfully evokes the charm and shallowness of Louis XV's Versailles ...

London Handel Festival

On Friday we were at St. George's Hanover Square again for another concert with the London Handel Festival. This time it was Southbank Sinfonia Baroque. The Southbank Sinfonia are a training ensemble of young UK music graduates. The Sinfonia provides an intensive 32 week orchestral apprenticeship. They are based at St. John's Church, Waterloo and do regular rush-hour concerts there. The ensemble is a modern instrument one but the concert on Friday was the result of a week of workshops with Adrian Butterfield; the strings played using gut strings and with baroque bows. The results were creditable and rather stylish. The first half included Corelli's Concerto Grosso Opus 6, No. 11 and a suite from Rameau's Pygmalion, plus an overture by Arne and Vivaldi's Concerto con molti stromenti RV577 which gave many of the string and wind players chance to shine.

In the second half conductor Michael Berman took over. Berman directs the choir Vox Music and they provided the vocal resources for a lively performance of Handel's Dixit Dominus. The soprano solo was sung by Grace Davidson, with the remaining soloists coming from the choir. The choir sopranos seemed to find the upper ranges of the soprano line a little of a strain and the choir's attack wasn't as crisp as it could have been. But all in all it was an enjoyable performance.

A Different Drummer

I have recently finished reading Jann Parry's A Different Drummer, her biography of the choreographer Kenneth Macmillan. It is a mammoth book, perhaps too long, which goes into his career and life in full detail, with descriptions of all the ballets. I felt that in the life parts, Parry included rather too much detail, biography is after all the art of selection. But having summaries of all his ballets was useful as they are not all common currency nowadays and a reader cannot easily re-capture them in the way that you can find recordings of music or reproductions of pictures. Choreography is a fragile and dangerously transient art.

I first saw Macmillan's Romeo and Juliet around 1973, with Natalia Makarova making her debut as Juliet shortly after her defection and the late David Blair as Romeo. I went on to see Anastasia, with Lynn Seymour, Manon, with Anthony Dowell making his debut as Des Grieux, the premiere of Mayerling plus a variety of the one act ballets including such forgotten gems as The Four Seasons. The UK premieres of Requiem and Das Lied von der Erde were both highly anticipated events.

Parry's book helps to fill in the background to these events. Demonstrating how Macmillan's talent seemed to be fuelled by drugs and neuroses, and how the backdrop to the productions seems to have been one of almost constant in-fighting and back-biting at the Royal Opera.

Where I think Parry fails is in the treatment of Macmillan's troubled sexuality. Perhaps because many of the people mentioned in the book are still around, she seems to take what she has been told at face value and notably plays down any possible same-sex encounters that he had. I felt that there was far more going on under the surface which Parry didn't uncover. Though she does an excellent job in relating Macmillan's psychological troubles to the ballets he created.

Orpheus Down Under

Unexpected Opera are back with their production of Orpheus Down Under, an adaptation of Offenbach's Orpheus in the Underworld which debuted at Weatherspoon's The Opera House Pub at Tunbridge Wells last month. Lynn Binstock's production involves a couple on the verge of divorce who become entangled with the gods and goddesses of Greek mythology, who are themselves embroiled in competition as “Team Olympus”. You can see it on tour from March 6th, full dates here

Recent CD Reviews

My review of a re-issue of Pro Cantione Antiqua's recording of Palestrina including the Missa Papae Marcelli is here.
The performers wear their learning lightly and never has musical archaeology been produced with such intelligence ...

And another re-issue, the Harnoncourt/Dieskau recording of Handel's Saul is reviewed here.
For Harnoncourt and Fischer-Dieskau admirers only ...

Finally first recording of Carl Rutti's Requiem is reviewed here. All three reviews on MusicWeb International.

Approachable, beautiful contemporary sacred music ...

To St. George's Church, Hanover Square on Tuesday for the opening concert of this year's London Handel Festival. We were treated to Belshazzar with Andrew Kennedy in the title role. As usual sitting on the hard pews for the length of an entire oratorio was a strain, even though we had a brilliant view perched in front of the organ.

Length considerations meant that we were given a version of the oratorio based on what Handel planned to perform in 1745. It struck me that it was a shame that the festival doesn't seem to perform these big works at weekends. Then we could hear oratorios in a more leisurely fashion without either having to cut them or to worry about getting to the start of the concert straight after work. Festival conditions should surely be the ideal time to experiment with performing everything that Handel wrote for the première of Belshazzar

Review of The Gambler

My review of Prokofiev's The Gambler at the Royal Opera House is here, on Music and Vision.

Review of La Traviata

My review of La Traviata from Chelsea Opera Group, with Nelly Miriocioiu in the title role is here, on Music and Vision.

Review of the Elixir of Love

My review of ENO's American Mid-West production of Donizetti's L'Elisir d'Amore is here, on Music and Vision. (Note the site is now a subscription one).
Miller and Bywater seem to have been so keen on ensuring the verity of their 1950s American vision that they succeeded in removing something of the charm of Donizetti's original.

Robin Blaze in Bach

To the Wigmore Hall, again, on Wednesday to see the Retrospect Ensemble, again, but this time in Bach. The programme consisted of two cantatas for alto solo with Robin Blaze, plus orchestral movements from other cantatas. Given that Bach only wrote 3 cantatas for alto solo alone, it was a shame that we could not hear all three.

The ensemble consisted of 5 strings, 3 oboists (playing a variety of oboi) and bassoon. The continuo was played on a large chamber organ by director Matthew Halls. A big feature of the alto cantatas and the other instrumental movements played was that they featured a major organ part rather than just continuo. Matthew Halls, in his spoken introduction in part 2, pointed out that the organ was all wrong. Bach wrote his cantatas for his church in Leipzig and he would have played the bravura organ part on the large organ there. In his recording of the Easter Oratorio and Magnificat, Paul McCreesh used a Saxon church with an organ by a pupil of Silberman with the strings (3.3.2.1) played to the left of the organ and the wind to the right. It is this arrangement that we must keep in mind when hearing these chamber versions of Bach's pieces.

The concert opened with a lovely account of Vernügte Ruh, BWV 170. The scarcity of the strings meaning that the oboe parts received a lovely prominence. This was followed by an organ concerto constructed by Halls from cantata movements, in fact the work mirrors the Harpsichord Concerto in E major BWV1053, but stays in the original key of D major and uses 2 oboes d'amore and a taille. This was charming enough, but somehow lacked body. The organ tinkled away neatly enough, under Halls dexterous fingers, but the work seemed to lack body, simply turning into an array of delicious sounds. Perhaps we need to hear it on a real Silbermann organ!

The 2nd half opened with the sinfonia from Cantata BWV42, Am abend aber desselbigen Sabbats, a charming and lively piece which made a lot of the 3 oboes. Then finally we had a second cantata for alto Geist und Seele wird verwirret, BWV35. This is a big work and I wish that I could say that it had a profound effect on me. Bach writes it in two parts, each introduced by an orchestra sinfonia with big organ part (these two also became an organ concerto) and there are 3 arias and two big recitatives. Unfortunately Blaze did not seem to be quite on form and in the final joyful aria he did not reach his usual fine form and the passage-work was a little more untidy than we had been led to expect from this fine singer. That said, there was a lot to appreciate.

So, all in all, not quite a perfect evening but there was much to admire. Note to self, I want to hear these alto cantatas in a real church, not too big, with a fine 18th century style organ!

Recent CD Reviews

My review of the Mendelssohn and Bach Magnificats from Yale is here.
Buy it if you are interested in early Mendelssohn. His Magnificat is strongly performed ...

And my review of Handel operatic arias with oboe obbligato is here.
Successfully mixes familiar and unfamiliar and performed with style, charm and a nice poignancy. What more could you want? ...

And here is the review of Racines Sacrees, a fascinating modern take on Middle-eastern music.
Imaginatively mixes modern and ancient in a stylish synthesis ...

Finally my review of Bernstein's Mass is here. All the reviews are at MusicWeb International.
You can’t help but admire the commitment and intensity … a diverse but cohesive whole. … terrific value ...

The Kings Consort

I've had two separate emails informing me that the Kings Consort is alive and well. Their website gives full details. Forthcoming are performances of the Matthew Passion in Lucerne, Spain and the Netherlands. Their current diary page lists October as their next London gig, when they are bringing Bach's Lutheran Masses to the Wigmore Hall.

Toby Spence sings Jacques Brel

On Sunday we went to the Wigmore Hall to see Toby Spence and the Scottish Ensemble, director Jonathan Morton. The Scottish Ensemble is a small string group, numbering some dozen or so players and is currently celebrating their 40th anniversary.

The theme of this concert developed over casual discussions after Toby Spence last sang with the group. Discovering that Spence had a wish to sing the songs of Jacques Brel, Jonathan Morton put together a programmes centring on these. The first half consisted of two of Satie's Gnossienes, beautifully played on solo piano by Andy Massey. The strings played Morton's own arrangement of four movements from Debussy's Children's Corne. The results worked surprisingly well on strings, crisply played by the Scottish Ensemble. Then the group were joined by accordionist Ian Watson for Kurt Schwertsik. This was a striking suite for strings and accordion. Schwertsik was a sometime assistant to Stockhausen but Adieu Satie is most definitely tonal, and each movement is firmly in dance form. The results are engaging and lively, though I am not sure quite what the link to Satie might be.

In the second half, strings, piano, accordion and percussion came together to accompany Toby Spence in 9 songs by Jacques Brel. These worked surprisingly well. Spence sang, naturally, without a microphone so the projection of words suffered somewhat. But the gains were the way he shaped the songs with a full lyric voice. With 14 instrumentalists on stage, the noise was sometimes quite loud. But the results were striking and rather inspiring. Between each song, Spence talked about the songs, his delivery was a little stilted but it helped to create a more casual atmosphere, very unlike the traditional Wigmore Hall concert.

The concert was recorded for the hall's record label and I look forward immensely to the results.

Retrospect Ensemble - Rachmaninov Vespers

To the Cadogan Hall on Thursday to hear the choir of the Retrospect Ensemble, conducted by Matthew Halls, perform Rachmaninov's Vespers. The slightly dry acoustics of Cadogan Hall are not an obvious location for Rachmaninov's rich, dark orthodox inspired piece. But perhaps they formed a fitting backdrop to a performance which was in the lighter, brighter English tradition. There were basses who went down to the famous low notes, but their voices did not resonate with the dark brilliance of some Slav ones. The other singers were competent in their Russian but sang with a light, beautifully moulded sound which was some way from the sounds of Russian Orthodox Choirs. Halls brought out the Romantic feel of the music, pushing it and moulding it to show that this was music by the creator of the famous symphonies and piano concertos.

The choir numbered some 22 singers and was inevitably made up from London's pool of talented singers, I knew at least two, one of whom has recorded for me. But I felt that the singers had not quite sung enough together, there was a strong feeling of a group of individuals rather than an ensemble. There were too many moments when there was a lack of unanimity about when to come in on Halls beat; this was particularly noticeable in an unforgiving piece like P&aauml;rt's Totus Tuus. There was a great deal to admire in the concert and both singers and conductor treated Rachmaninov with utmost sincerity and great intelligence. There were fine solo performances from Ruth Massey and Mark Dobell.

Before the concert started Matthew Halls made a short speech asking people not to clap until the end of each half. But this effect was rather ruined by the very audible harmonica-like sound of his pitch pipe, as he re-tuned the choir between each movement. Also, he informed us that there was going to be a short break in the 2nd half, between parts 2 and 3 of the Rachmaninov. It would have been fine if he'd just said that, but it seemed odd to emphasise that the break was because he was concerned for the health of his singers voices. Each time I've sung in the Rachmaninov, we've sung it through without a break and included another work in the first half.

The biography of the Retrospect Ensemble in the programme now makes no mention of the Kings Consort which seems a great shame and gives me a feeling of history being airbrushed.

The hall was not full but the audience were rightly most enthusiastic about the performance.

Recent CD Reviews

My review of volume 1 of Veracini's Overtures and Concertos from L'Arte dell'Arco is here.

This disc makes a strong case for Veracini's music...

And my review of a recital of Baroque violin concertos from Concerto Italiano is here. Both reviews are at MusicWeb International.

Four 18th century Italians whose music is dazzling - buy it ...

Sun, Italian Lakes and Contemporary music

The 2010 SoundSCAPE festival takes place at Lake Maggiore in the Italian lakes from 14th to 24th July. The festival mixes young performers with up and coming composers to provide a rich mix of coaching and performance. They run courses for both composers and for performers, involving residences from established performers and composers. All taking place in beautiful surroundings, sounds the perfect mix.

Next year!

Booking has opened already for both the Barbican's Great Performers Season 2010/11 and the LSO's 2010/11 season at the Barbican. For the Great Performers the Barbican give up to 20% discount to members if you book early, so there is great incentive to plan your life away. Besides there are some fabulous concerts.

Handel's Alcina, with Anja Harteros Vessalina Kassarova, Veronica Cangemi, Caitlin Hulcup and Les Musiciens du Louvre under Mark Minkowski, and Ariodante with Joyce DiDonato, Karina Gauvin and Il Complesso Barocco under Alan Curtis. Cecilia Bartoli is doing a programme based on Handel and his Rivals with Il Giardino Harmonico. and the Sixteen are doing Messiah.

Andreas Scholl and Philippe Jaroussky are giving a joint recital with Ensemble Artaserse which should have many music lovers salivating at he combination. As it is Pergolesi's anniversary year the English Concert are doing the Stabat Mater with Anna Caterina Antonacci and Sara Mingardo, plus music by Vivaldi and Porpora. And Ian Bostridge is doing a programme with Fabio Biondi and Europa Galante performing Scarlatti, Vivaldi, Caldara, Handel and Boyce.

Further forward in time there is the Academy in Ancient Music under Richard Egarr doing Mozart's La Finta Giartiniera, Idomeneo performed by the Balthasar Neumann Ensemble under Thomas Hengelbrock with Steve Davislim, Camilla Tilling and Anna Caterina Antonnacci sand a performance of the Mass in C minor which includes Sally Matthews, Ann Hallenberg and Rainer Trost.

Then there are visits from the Houston Symphony under Hans Graf (Holst's The Planets), the LSO under Simon Rattle (Messiaen's Et Exspecto Resurrectionem Mortuorum and Bruckner 9) and the Los Angeles Philharmonic with Gustavo Dudamel (Mahler 9, Beethoven 7, Bernstein 1 and Adams's Slonimsky's Earbox).

Finally there is Debussy's Pelleas and Melisande with mainly French forces, Natalie Dessay, Simon Keenlyside, Laurent Naouri and the Orchestra de Paris under Louis Langree.

The LSO programme is not quite as interesting to us, partly because it concentrates on the late 19th and early 20th century symphonic repertoire. Though there is a performance of RVW's Oxford Elegy, a commission from Eric Whitacre, Elgar's The Kingdom, Prokofiev's Ivan the Terrible plus a terrific concert from the NYSO.

So, as you can see there is plenty to tempt you, especially if you get 20% off. But it seems an alarming tendency in concert going for booking dates to get earlier and earlier, so that we now know what we are doing in May next year.

When a Man knows

Plans are now well advanced for the first performance of my new opera When a man knows. The opera is based on a one-act play by Alan Richardson which has been extensively performed all over the world, including a run at the King's Head in Islington. With just 2 characters, a man and a woman (baritone and soprano), the opera expands the cast to 4 by adding two chorus (alto and tenor) with an instrumental ensemble of piano, violin, clarinet and cello.

We are doing a concert performance at St. John's Waterloo as a try out, and plan to do a short run of more studied semi-staged performances of the revised work late this year, early next. As it last around 75 minutes, we'll be providing drinks afterwards in the hope that people will stay and discuss the new piece.

Here's the full blurb:

When a man knows

An opera in one act
by Robert Hugill

Based on the play by Alan Richardson, Robert Hugill's gripping new opera uses just 4 singers and 4 instrumentalists to create a taut music drama.

A man is tied up on a deserted warehouse.
Why is he there?
The shocking truth is revealed in a powerful new opera

FifteenB Productions present in concert the world premiere of Robert Hugill's When a man knows with Deborah Stoddart as the Woman and Dario Dugandzic as the Man, conducted by David Roblou.

Dark, disturbing, imaginative,
and yet compelling and intriguing piece of writing"
review of the original play

Tickets include a glass of wine after the performance and we hope that audience members will stay and give us their thoughts on and reactions to this exciting new opera.

Tickets price £10/ concessions £5 are available on the door or in advance from Islington Music, telephone 020 7354 3195.

presented by FifteenB productions

Recent CD Review

My review of Moniuszko's final opera Paria is here, on MusicWeb International.

For interested parties only. You may wonder what all the fuss is about. …

Opera goes to Prison

From Feb 26th to March 6th Pimlico Opera are going back to prison to present another of their inestimable theatrical presentations using prisoners. This time it is Carmen the musical, performed in Wandsworth Prison. This year's programme was put in jeopardy late last year, but luckily the Prison Service saw the light and understood how valuable this sort of programme can be in rehabilitation. In fact last year's Grange Park Opera included an ex-prisoner in the chorus, a past participant in one of Pimlico Opera's prison projects. Usually they present a musical, so this year's Carmen is a bit more of a stretch, but its certainly a fascinating prospect.

Coming to a PC near you, Opera Live

Opera Houses are slowly waking up to the possibilities of modern technology, in a piecemeal and varied sort of way. You only have to look at the way internet booking was taking up quickly by some and very slowly by others to understand how live hook-ups and video-streaming are being implemented quite patchily. Besides the high profile, high definition Cinema showings from the Metropolitan Opera and the Royal Opera, there are a number of sites offering live opera streaming.

Now the Royal Opera Liege has joined the throng and the big advantage is that its free. So from the 2nd February for 5 days you can watch Bellini's Capuletti e Montecchi with Patrizia Ciofi and Laura Polveri directed by Claudia Muti (conductor Riccardo Muti's wife). With Rigoletto following in March.

Buxton Festival 2010

Besides the three main works in the Buxton programme (see this post), Luisa Miller (Verdi), The Barber of Baghdad (Cornelius) and Idomeneo (Mozart/R. Strauss), they will as usual be playing host to visiting opera companies.

The Opera Group will be reviving their production of George Benjamin's Into the Little Hill, which also comes to Covent Garden again. Psaphha will be doing Bernstein's magical little opera Trouble in Tahiti and the Opera Theatre Company will be bringing their production of Alcina. The Classical Opera Company will be performing Mozart's incomplete Singspiel Zaide, though plans for them to bring Arne's Artaxerxes (seen at Covent Garden's Linbury Theatre) seem to have foundered.

The Habit of Art

Off to the National Theatre last night to see Alan Bennett's new play, The Habit of Art with Richard Griffiths and Alex Jennings. The fact that it is a play within a play meant that Bennett managed to mix in some profoundly funny lines, involving Rent Boys and all sorts of things, but also consider the profundities of creating a work of art. This latter was also a duality because at the centre of act 2 is a discussion between Auden (Richard Griffiths) and Britten (Alex Jennings) about the creating of Death in Venice which Britten is nervous about and Auden feels that Myfanwy Piper's libretto misses the point. Auden(Griffiths) also made an interesting point, that no-one hears the libretto and that its function is not to be heard but to inspire and usher in the music, the libretto should challenge the composer.

The Auden character raises an interesting point, that for Britten the Dionysius figure should be a schoolboy figure in blazer and whites; perhaps someone should do a production with a young looking baritone so that the dialogue between Apollo and Dionysius could be between two school-boys, both candidates for Britten's desire.

But overlaying this discussion is the fact that we are witnessing a rehearsal of the play, complete with Stage Manager (Frances de la Tour) so we have two levels of discussion about the strains of creating a work of art.

I much enjoyed the play and found it very thought provoking. Perhaps more than usual as it rather fed into my anxieties about my own new opera which is going to go into rehearsal later this year. So a very apt time to see a play about the problems of creating an opera.

In the first half Britten/Jennings does not really have a function in the plot, so the actor playing Britten has various pieces of business and occasionally accompanies a choir boy singing bits of Britten (The Ash Grove, parts of Turn of the Screw); the idea being the Britten is auditioning a choir boy for his next work. The young man singing (one of three listed in the programme) performed nicely.
Certainly a recommended event, though I would have been interested in the dynamic if the actor playing Auden (originally scheduled to be Michael Gambon), had actually looked like Auden

Recent CD Review

My review of a disc of Polish composer Romuald Twardowski's music is here, on MusicWeb International. The disc includes thw wonderful Exegi Monumentum plus Three Frescoes and Ioannes Rex

For anyone interested in exploring dramatically interesting late 20th century tonal music

V&A says goodbye to music

Its seems that the V&A plans to disperse its musical instrument collection. One of the advantages of major museum like the V&A having a collection of instruments is the serendipity of it, people can wander in without having planned to see them. I can well remember my childhood visits to the museum and being delighted at being able to see and hear the instruments. Also, as a museum of decorative arts, the instruments themselves are often of decorative interest as well. Gems include Elizabeth I's Virginals, a recorder (of ivory and tortoiseshell) which belonged to Rossini and two pianos owned and decorated by Burne-Jones.

The gallery is in need of refurbishment and I imagine that the collection itself might require a bit of investment. Instead of doing this, they plan to move part of the collection to the Horniman Museum (which has an excellent collection already), with the rest either going into store or being placed with other museums. This is on a par with the other reference collections in the museum, which generally seem to be either being played down or put into storage. The V&A is frankly running out of space and their drive to modernise and include more contemporary decorative arts, whilst entirely worthy, is meaning that bits and pieces are being squeezed.

The Horniman Museum is an entirely loveable and admirable institution, but it already has an overflowing collection of musical instruments (including its own holdings as well as the Dolmetsch collection). Also, it is in South East London, hardly well placed to attract lots of tourists. We need a musical collection in one of the National Museums.

The problem is that, in a museum of Decorative Arts, the musical instrument gallery looks a little out of place. You can understand collections of lace, pottery or iron-work. But the interest in the musical gallery was never completely decorative. In stead of bemoaning the instruments removal from the V&A perhaps we should be campaigning for their home in another more suitable museum. How about the Theatre Museum, oh I forgot, the V & A canned that one as well and have an etiolated version at South Kensington. Perhaps the Tate should make space for the gallery in their latest carbuncle at Bankside.

Too Loud

On Saturday we went to a preview of the play, The Little Dog Laughed which is about to open at the Garrick Theatre. It was an enjoyable, if relatively slight, piece with a stand-out performance from Tamsin Greig.

In order to provide 'atmosphere' the producers have decided to play pop music in the auditorium before the play and during the interval. This seemed to be set one or two levels too loud, almost preventing conversation. Rather than providing atmosphere, it seemed to impose itself on you and made me rather restive. At the interval, it was a relief to get out into the foyer - perhaps that was the idea, to drive you to the bar. When the music stopped and the show started such was the difference (reduction) in volume that it was a bit of a shock and you had to concentrate to listen to the singers properly.

Stile Antico at King's Place

On Thursday we went along to King's Place, our first visit for a long, long time, to see Stile Antico (artistic director Matthew O'Donovan) perform their programme In Paradisum - Swansongs and Memorials by the Renaissance masters. Stile Antico are a group of 13 young singers who perform unaccompanied, without conductor. Of the singers, 3 of them were common to the Chapelle du Roi, at whose December concert my own motet Videte Miraculum was performed.

Hall 1 at King's Place is not ideal for this sort of music. Granted it has a lovely, warm acoustic which set the group's tone off nicely, but what I missed was the resonance and acoustical warmth that comes from performing this repertoire in a church of the period. But there were gains, we were far closer to the singers and the result was a far more intimate recital than it might have been in a church.

Singing without a conductor when you are performing large scale pieces like Sheppard's Media Vita and Gombert's Magnificat primi toni means that something of the large scale shaping of the piece is lost, but the gains are significant as the group listen to each other and watch each other intently. The performances were intensely vivid and vital, you felt that each gesture counted. Yes, there were occasional moments when the larger scale pieces seemed to go onto automatic pilot and need a stronger direction, but these were few and I was impressed by how much control of scale there was. Only in Josquin's O Bone Jesu did they seem to lose their way a little.

But however much I enjoyed the other pieces in the programme (Byrd's Retire my soul, Lobo's Versa est luctum, Schütz's Herr, weenn ich nur Dich habe and the final spiritual madrigal from Lassus' Lagrime di San Pietro) it was to Sheppard's astonishing epic Media vita to which I come back. The group have just released a disc of Sheppard's music, including this piece, and the concert was in celebration of this.

The motets were separated by short pieces of plainchant from the Requiem mass, a rather beautiful solution to the scheduling. The result would have made an intensely pleasing pair of sequences for the first and the second half. But instead of keeping their positions on stage, the singers re-grouped for every item with a great deal of moving around and going on and off stage. The audience were thus encouraged to applaud each piece. What could have been an intensely moving continuous sequence of plainchant and polyphony, became instead a series of items in a concert. I felt that an opportunity had been missed. Add to this that, after some items, one or two of the audience seemed a little too keen to applaud, coming in just at that wrong moment when the piece was finished but hasn't quite gone.

Recent CD Review

My review of Handel's Teseo from Stuttgart Opera is here on MusicWeb International. I can't help wishing that one of the UK record companies could have captured some of the UK's Handel centenary opera performances the way Carus have here in Stuttgart.
A fine record of a memorable occasion …

Towards a new opera - DATE!

My new opera When a man knows is moving towards its first performance. I now have a venue, a date, a conductor and singers for the two leads. This week I will be sending out scores to the singers, which is always rather unnerving. In fact, the whole period between now and the concert makes me nervous as the work is exposed first to the performers and then to the public.

We plan a simple concert performance on Sunday June 13th 2010, at St. John's Church, Waterloo. There will be drinks afterwards so I can get feedback from the audience. The conductor will be David Roblou who runs Midsummer Opera.

Review of Cambridge Handel Encyclopedia

My review of the Cambridge Handel Encyclopedia is now on-line here, at Music and Vision. (Note that the site is now subscription, see Music and Vision for details).
Magnificent Scholarship...

Twelfth Night

The Royal Shakespeare Company are currently presenting Gregory Doran's production of Twelfth Night at the Duke of York's Theatre in London. We caught the play on Friday 10th Jan. Perhaps the most talked about feature of the production is Richard Wilson playing his first Shakespeare play at the age of 73. Wilson plays Malvolio, but is best known for playing the character of Victor Meldrew in One Foot in The Grave.

Doran sets the play firmly in Illyria, which became the Balkans, in the early 19th Century (i.e. the period when Byron was visiting the area). The leading players wear early 19th century costume and the others all wear local, traditional costumes. These looked authentic, the sort of clothing and accoutrements that you could buy from Joss Graham. To increase the authentic feel of the locale, Paul Englishby's music had a strong ethnic feel to it. I am not sure that Englishby got the sound quite right, I rather suspect that the Clarino would have been used; at least the instrument is prevalent in Greek folk musik. But that is a minor point, Englishby's music both played live on stage and behind the scenes went a long way towards establishing the correct atmosphere. The Duke (Jo Stone-Fewings) had a band of musician's at his disposal on stage, all gorgeously clad and Ashley Taylor-Rhys (who played Curio) also doubled as an instrumentalist.

Of course the play is most famous for the songs, written for the jester Feste (Miltos Yerolemou). Here I was not quite as impressed. Yerolemou's voice seemed to have just two settings, either a West End Musical bark (which he used sparingly) or a rather weak, husky tone. It was this latter which he used for most of the songs and this came over as rather unfocussed. At least one of the songs seemed to have a vocal line which was too elaborate for Yerolemou's comfort, which rather marred the performance, especially as it was doubled by an instrument. Yerolemou was however performing the songs in the character of Feste, so there is also the element of whether Doran and Englishby wanted the sound to be casual and less than perfect.

What I really want is a counter-tenor or high tenor singing with just a lute accompaniment in these songs. But I suspect that few actors capable of playing Feste have the requisite voice and that few counter-tenors or high tenor's would be interested in playing Feste in a long run of a play. It has to be said that Yerolemou made a strong and touching Feste, part of a brilliant ensemble cast.

Reviews rather tended to concentrate on Richard Wilson, but in fact it was the ensemble nature of the playing which impressed and the way Wilson did not really dominate. Though he did bring elements of Victor Meldrew with him. The comic sections with Sir Toby Belch (Richard McCabe) and Sir Andrew Aguecheek (James Fleet) were rather less annoying than usual.

Column on the Salisbury Review

My column from the Winter edition of the Salisbury Review is now on-line here. It covers the issues surrounding James MacMillan's St John Passion and the issues of possible anti-semitism that the text raises.

Latest Press release - Spherical Editions

Latest publications of music by Robert Hugill

We are pleased to announce the latest additions to our catalogue of music by Robert Hugill. Included in the list are motets, anthems, an award winning song along music for piano and for chamber orchestra.

Awards
In March 2008 Robert's song He looked at me , setting a text by A.E. Houseman, came 3rd in the English Poetry and Song Society's A.E. Housman Competition. He looked at me is available in versions for tenor or baritone and piano, and is part of the Four Songs to Texts by A.E. Housman for tenor and piano.

Motets

Robert's motet Videte Miraculum was premiered by the Chapelle du Roi, conductor Alistair Dixon on Saturday 19th March 2010.

Ivan Hewett, writing on www.telegraph.co.uk , said Robert Hugill's Videte Miraculum soared too, especially at its ending, with the three sopranos perched at a perilous altitude (to their credit, they never wavered).'

And on Seen and Heard they said 'This had a lovely opening and a simple, well considered structure, with the harmonies based in tonality but moving gradually to build up tension through dissonance. Hugill made use of parallel and contrary motion to excellent effect, and motivic sections returned to give a sense of overall coherence. He also used a wide range of textures, including unisons, octaves and polyphony in different numbers of parts. This was another well written work which deserves further performances.'

The anthem, Thou O Christ , setting words by St. Symeon the New Theologian was premiered at St. Botolph without Bishopsgate at a service celebrating St. Symeon. Also new to the catalogue are Lege mich wie ein Siegel , an unaccompanied setting of Luther's translation of 'Set me as a seal upon thine Heart' , and A New Song , an upbeat and rhythmic setting of Psalm 98.

Other works

Also new are two short piano sketches, based on two poems by Robert Browning, Two Sketches after Poems by Browning . And Concerto Piccolo reworks material from Robert's Blake setting, What Is Man? (which is included on Robert's current CD from Divine Art), to form an attractive sequence of recitatives and arias for chamber orchestra.

Full list of new works

Please contact David Hughes at Spherical Editions if you would like a review copy of the score or any of these

He Looked at me - soprano (or tenor) and piano [sph006012] - £1
Four Songs to A.E. Housman - tenor and piano [sph006511] - £3

Videte Miraculum - choir:SSAATTBB, Latin text [sph001021] - £2
Thou, O Christ - choir:SATB, English text [sph004212] - £1
A new song - choir:SATB, English text [sph004211] - £1
Lege mich wie ein Siegel - choir:SATB, German text [sph004210] - £1

Two Sketches for Piano after poems by Browning - piano solo [sph007514] - £1
Concerto Piccolo - Chamber orchestra (2 flutes, 2 oboes, 2 clarinets, 2 bassoons, 2 horns, strings) full score [sph007012] - £4
Individual parts (flute1, flute2, oboe1, oboe2, clarinet1, clarinet2, bassoon1, bassoon2, horn1, horn2, violin1, violin2, viola, cello and bass) £2 each.
For a set of parts, 20% discount applies.

Notes for Editors: Spherical Editions publish the full catalogue of London based classical composer Robert Hugill. The entire catalogue is available for purchase on-line, also available on the web site are audio samples and sample pdf's.


Sample PDF's

Chelsea Opera Group

Chelsea Opera Group are venturing into more popular territory for their next concert. On Sunday Feb 21st they will be performing Verdi's La Traviata at the Queen Elizabeth Hall, conducted by Gianluca Marciano. No unusual editions or rarity value here, but a fine opportunity to hear Nelly Miricioiu as Violetta. Miricioiu, is perhaps a bit mature for an ideal Violetta, but this represents a rare chance to hear her in London in mainstream repertoire. Apart from the odd Tosca, she has been represented in London in recent years mainly by more out of the way operas. For which we are profoundly grateful, but for once it will be interesting to hear her here. Germont Pere will be sung by Alan Opie, so we can be sure of some fireworks in Act 2.

Baroque Opera - patchwork or perfection

When we consider opera performances during the baroque period we rather tend to consider them the way we might a contemporary performance of the same work. Granted there were castrato voices and the production values were different, but the essential works were the same. Going to see Handel's Giulio Cesare in London in 1732, when Handel last revived it, then we would hear pretty much the same work as has been recorded in the 20th and 21st centuries. Wouldn't we.

Well, Up to a point, Lord Copper. Baroque opera required an impresario and for much of Handel's later operatic career he functioned as his own impresario. But if the Impresario was not a composer then the opera company would have one or more composers as their call. It tended to be the libretto, rather than the composer, which was chosen first. So that if you had wandered around Italy at the time you could have picked up repeated settings of the same libretto by different composers. Singers often travelled with suitable libretto which would be re-set.

But this presupposes that the composer was in charge of what was actually performed and most of the time he wasn't. Première runs would usually be the only time when the opera stood a chance of being performed as the composer wrote. Each revival would be re-worked for a new cast. And if the composer wasn't available, then another musical hand brought in by the Impresario would do it. Sometimes, with star singers or if the revival was put on in short order, arias would be imported from other operas.

Handel did a lot of this. When he revived his operas he behaved like an Impresario and Handel the Impresario was rather cavalier with Handel the Composer. There are examples of revivals where the star castrato sang no arias by Handel, but simply included suitable arias that he already knew. On desperate occasions, Handel let singers perform arias by other composers, when less desperate he substituted other arias from his own operas.

The ultimate of this is the Pasticcio, where an existing libretto was fitted with pre-existing arias and one of the Impresario's tame composers cooked up some suitable recitative. We have to understand that for many of the Italian speaking audiences, the libretto was the thing followed by the voices. Something of this was true in London as well, though the Londoners were less tolerant of large amounts of Italian recitative.

When Telemann produced Handel's operas in Hamburg tended to do new recitatives, in German, and adjusted the arias. No-one ever thought of the manuscript as a musical bible, it was more of a source book.

This means that if our time travel happened to wander in to an opera performance during the baroque period, they would be unlikely to encounter the sort of musical thoroughness that we apply today. The performance would almost certainly have an element of musical patchwork to it.

Recent CD Reviews

My review of Kile Smith's Vespers, performed by the early music group Piffaro is here.
A brilliant new work in the spirit of the Lutheran Vespers service ...

And my review of Vivaldi's opera Argippo is here. Both reviews are on MusicWeb International.
A lively and personable, if imperfect, account ...

Further mentions

I've just discovered that the concert by the Chapelle du Roi, conductor Alistair Dixon, on 19th December which featured my new motet Videte Miraculum, was on Mark Pappenheim's Top Ten list in the Independent on 19th December. Very gratifying, especially as I was mentioned by name.

Les Troyens in Amsterdam

On Monday I logged into the Netherlands Opera's web site www.dno.nl, Monday being the first day of booking for their production of Berlioz's Les Troyens which opens in April. And, by the wonders of Modern Technology, we acquired two tickets in the 1st Balcony for the performance on 4th April 2010. I can still remember the amount of paper work or phone calls which used to have to be suffered before you could buy ticket abroad, before the invention of the internet. It is a great boon for itinerant opera lovers such as ourselves that you can book on-line. The take up has not been universal and some opera houses were faster than others. when we booked to go and see Susan Chilcott in Poulenc's Carmelites in Amsterdam in the '90s we had to spend rather a long time on the telephone. Whereas I seem to remember that Dresden Opera House had on-line booking quite early on. But Munich had an arcane system whereby you had to write to them to request tickets, then if you got tickets they wrote to you and you had to send them a cheque (no credit cards).

On-line booking is wonderful for serendipitous opera going. Last year I read about the new production of Carmen at the Opera Comique in Paris, conducted by John Eliot-Gardiner. The Opera Comique Web-site was most helpful, we were free and there were tickets. Bingo!

In Amsterdam we will be seeing the revival of Pierre Audi's 2003 production, one that we missed in 2003 when we managed to see Trojans in London, New York and Paris. This time round Eva Maria Westbroek is Cassandre, Yvonne Naef is Didon and Bryan Hymel is Enee, with John Nelson conducting. I can't wait

Review of Cambridge Handel Encyclopedia

Magnificent Scholarship

My review of the magnificent new Cambridge Handel Encyclopedia is now on Music and Vision. (Note that the sight is moving to being a subscription site so you will have to register to read the review I'm afraid).

ETO plans for autumn

English Touring Opera will be hitting the road again in March with Mozart's Marriage of Figaro, Donizetti's Don Pasquale and Britten's A Midsummer Night's Dream, visiting 16 different venues around the country.

But more interesting are their plans for Autumn 2010, because they will be premiering a new opera by Alexander Goehr, based on King Lear. Goehr remains an under-valued figure when it comes to opera in the UK. Covent Garden performed his re-working of Arianna in 1995, but despite being fascinating, well-made and utterly approachable, the work has never been revived by them. (Though a subsequent Cambridge production has led to a recording on NMC). I'm not sure whether his epic opera based on the Anabaptist uprising in Munster, Behold the Sun, has ever been performed; and I seem to remember that there were issues with the musical text that the Deutsche Oper chose to perform, so that I don't think it was premiered in the composer's preferred version.

So it is with great interest that ETO will not only be premiering Promised End but will be touring it round the UK. The opera will have a libretto based on King Lear by Frank Kermode. The ETO press release describes the librettists as William Shakespeare edited by Sir Frank Kermode so, unlike Thomas Ades and The Tempest, it looks as if Goehr will be setting Shakespeare's words.

Of course, such a heavy-weight piece requires a strong cast and Roderick Earl will be playing Lear, Nigel Robson is Gloucester and Lina Markeby plays both Cordelia and the Fool, The Conductor is Ryan Wigglesworth and the director is James Conway.

With such a meaty piece to prepare and tour, the question of course is what to put with it. Here, ETO have hit on the theme of Drama and are presenting Sheridan's The Duenna in the original musical version with music by Thomas Linley (both Junior and Senior) which hasn't been revived for over 100 years. We are all familiar (in theory even if not in fact) with Prokofiev and Roberto Gerhard's version of this story, so it will be illuminating to hear the Georgian original. Richard Suart will be playing Don Jerome.

Review of New Year's eve concert at the Wigmore Hall

For their New Years eve concert at the Wigmore Hall, Florilegium joined forces with Dame Emma Kirkby to put together a programme devoted to the music of Handel and Purcell. Florilegium opened with Handel's Concerto Grosso Opus 3, No. 3 in the alternative version for flute rather than oboe. I must confess that I missed the oboe's edgier tone in the texture but the group gave the piece a lively and attractive performance. A greater issue was the use of double bass on the bass line, which with such a small group of players seemed to give the piece an overly dark sound.

This was followed by Handel's cantata Tra le fiamme with Emma Kirkby. Accompanied by such a small instrumental group (just 1 instrument to a part) gave the piece an intimate chamber feel, very much like that of the early performances in the Palazzi in Rome I would suspect.

There then followed Handel's Concerto a Quattro, which was described as an expansion of Handel's Trio Sonata in D minor to include a substantial cello part for Count Rudolf Franz Erwin, a passionate cellist. Though there seems to be no mention of the work, or Count Erwin, in the new Cambridge Handel Encyclopedia. Still, it was a charming piece with a showy cello part.

The first half finished with Sweet Bird from L'Allegro, where Emma Kirkby duetted with Ashley Solomon's recorder. In both her vocal contributions Emma Kirkby's voice was perhaps not quite as flexible as it was, but this was balanced by a new depth both to her vocal colouring and to her interpretations. The problem with hearing older performers is that you have to banish their younger selves from your ears, it is a problem of longevity. And Kirkby is still one of the finest Handelian sopranos around, she understands that there is no need for volume and knows how to make each not count musically. Also, her stage manner is as charming and welcoming as ever.

The second half was devoted to Purcell. Suites from The Fairy Queen opened and closed, and in between we had Music for a While, Sweeter than Roses, The Plaint (from The Fairy Queen) and An Evening Hymn, plus a selection of Chaconnes from the ensemble. Kirkby was heartbreakingly beautiful and moving in the Purcell songs and the ensemble made an involving and lively contribution. All in all a wonderful evening. The encore was an aria from Solomon, given in what was effectively an chamber reduction, but marvellous.

And another review

This time on the Seen and Heard web site, by Carla Rees.

Videte Miraculum was heard in versions by Tallis, using a spacious six part texture and in a world premiere version by Robert Hugill. This had a lovely opening and a simple, well considered structure, with the harmonies based in tonality but moving gradually to build up tension through dissonance. Hugill made use of parallel and contrary motion to excellent effect, and motivic sections returned to give a sense of overall coherence. He also used a wide range of textures, including unisons, octaves and polyphony in different numbers of parts. This was another well written work which deserves further performances.

Recent CD Review

My review of Salvatore Sciarrino's Madrigali is here, on MusicWeb International.
Not for the faint-hearted … uncompromising but rewarding ...

Recent CD Review

My review of Robin de Raaff's opera Raaff is here, on MusicWeb International.
Should be of interest to anyone who loves opera and wants to know where it might be going in the 21st century ...

As seen in the Telegraph

A nice review of Saturday's St. John's Smith Square concert from Ivan Hewett in the Telegraph - 'Robert Hugill's Videte Miraculum soared too, especially at its ending, with the three sopranos perched at a perilous altitude (to their credit, they never wavered).'

Premiere

Well Saturday's concert went off well. Alistair Dixon and La Chapelle du Roi gave a fascinating concert mixing old and new with premieres by Paul Ayres and Gabriel Jackson along with my own piece. It was fascinating to hear Morten Lauridsen's O Magnum Mysterium performed by just 9 singers rather than by the plushly upholstered tones of a large group of singers. I was extremely pleased with Videte Miraculum, and it was fascinating to re-acquaint myself with a work written some months ago.

New Lamps for Old

My motet Videte Miraculum gets its premiere tomorrow in the Chapelle du Roi's New Lamps for Old concert. My motet sets the same text as Thomas Tallis's respond Videte Miraculum and there will be similar new/old pairings from Francis Pott, Kenneth Leighton, Morton Lauridsen, Paul Ayres and Gabriel Jackson.

Recent CD Review

My review of Handel's cantata Apollo and Dafne is here.
Showing its age but certainly in the realms of the interesting and, perhaps, desirable. ...

Messiah at ENO

Last night we went to see ENO's staging of Messiah. Well we managed the first 2 parts and I'm afraid that we left at the second interval. The Part 1 was almost OK and had the odd magical moment. The designs were superb, complete with a reflective floor and some imaginative video installations (sets Tom Pye, lighting Jean Kalman, Video Lexo Warner, Lysander Ashton and Tom Pye). The costumes were casual modern, which meant that the men of the chorus as usual looked profoundly stuffy and they had managed to make Catherine Wyn-Rogers look frumpy which is quite an achievement.

I can see the point of staging the piece in a setting which mirrors the actions of everyday life, with all sorts going on. But I am afraid that I lost patience as soon as the first cute tot dashed across the stage. This particular tot (Max Craig) was rather ubiquitous and Deborah Warner seemed to use him to undercut arias and moments of drama. This was made most manifest in the turning of the 'And there were shepherds' section into a school nativity play with lots of cute kids. This was a shame as treble (either Harry Bradford or Louis Watkins) was excellent.

At moments of drama she also introduced dancers (choreography Kim Brandstrup). This increased in Part 2 when the opening section, including He was despised accompanied a strange dance of a young man being beaten up and then being comforted by Catherine Wyn-Rogers, with the chorus watching. The later sections of this part seemed to be taking place at some sort of revival meeting. I felt that in this part, Warner had lost her way somewhat and was at a loss to know what to do with the chorus especially in the more complex movements. So she did as little as possible with them.

There were some striking images, but the happy-clappy evangelical atmosphere engendered seemed at odds with Handel's music. Frankly, I spent a lot of time with my eyes closed, just listening. The soloists were a decent bunch. Soprano Sophie Bevan had to cope with some startlingly fast speeds from conductor Lawrence Cummings, but did superbly though she rather tended to over-ornament. Catherine Wyn-Rogers was profoundly moving and it was a shame that she had been encouraged to bellow sections of He was despised. Tenor Eamonn Mulhall was a last minute replacement for ailing John Mark Ainsley. Mulhall was impressive, though he did not quite seem to have got the measure of the tricky Coliseum acoustic. Brindley Sherratt was wonderful as the bass soloist, combining drama with sympathy for Handel's style.

The chorus were a little taxed by the music, and there were some moments of frankly raw singing particularly from the tenors. The staging used a community group in addition to the choir and I felt that Warner and Cummings should have had the courage of their convictions and used a larger choir with a full symphony orchestra in the pit. As it was, Cummings seemed to be treading a strange line between period and modern practice.

So all in all, a rather mixed view, I'm afraid. As a raison d'etre for staging Messiah the jury is still out as far as I am concerned.

Review of Christine Brewer / Charles Mackerras Wagner concert

My review of the concert of music by Wagner given by Christine Brewer and Charles Mackerras with the Philharmonia Orchestra on 10th December at the South Bank is here.

Digging into the past

Some years ago I was given a pair of 19th century bound volumes labelled plays. The bindings gave no clue as to who had had the contents bound. Inside were some dozen librettos for performances by the Royal Italian Opera at Covent Garden. Each libretto listed the work to be performed, the orchestral members (by surname) and conductor (always Michael Costa) along with the artists involved. For some productions the designers of the scenery were named, always the same people. No dates were given. All operas were sung in Italian, including Fidelo and Les Huguenots.

There were various interesting points. No director was ever named. The orchestral players are all men and are listed by surname only, but the chorus members are not mentioned at all. The repertoire consists of operas by Rossini, Donizetti, Meyerbeer, Bellini, Mozart and Beethoven. As I have no information on the original owner of the wordbooks, I have no way of knowing whether the selection is the complete picture. For instance there is no Verdi, despite I Masnadieri being premiered in London in 1847.

I have finally got in contact with the Royal Opera House archives and they have been able to confirm the dates for the librettos, they range from 1849 to 1854, with most being clustered around just a couple of years. Interestingly the House's archives are not complete as a lot was lost in the fire in 1857.

This is the second time recently that we have been attempting to trace an exact date for a musical document. Previous D. had had access to a fragment of manuscript with a partial rehearsal schedule call for Aldeburgh on it under Britten's direction, requiring some fascinating research into Aldeburgh performances under Benjamin Britten.

A tale of two counter-tenors

Last night we went to the Wigmore Hall for Bejun Mehta's recital with Nicholas Drake accompanying on piano. And last week we went to the Barbican for Philippe Jaroussky's concert with Concerto Köln. Both counter-tenors are in the current vanguard of young start counter-tenors. Both have relatively high-placed voices which enable them to sing a wider range of pieces than is commonly associated with counter-tenors.

Jaroussky stuck firmly to baroque repertoire, mixing operatic arias by J.C. Bach with more well known ones by Handel. Jaroussky's voice is sweet and beautiful, but does not strike me as being exceptionally powerful. He does, though, have an upward extension which means that he has greater flexibility and control in his upper reaches and seemed unphased by top E's (and perhaps even F's) [at concert pitch, I've no idea what the written pitch of the notes was]. This is allied to a strong technique, which meant that he was able to dash off with ease the virtuoso vocal parts written by J.C. Bach.

I am not sure that Handel was the best partner for the J.C. Bach arias, as Handel's ability to mine the depths of emotion, with relatively economical means rather showed up J.C. Bach's showier (flashier?) arias, which seemed to skim the surface, but did so in a quite brilliant manner. One could understand why his music was popular. Especially when these vocal lines were coupled to attractive proto-Mozartian accompaniments.

Concerto Köln played conductorless and there were times when I felt that a stronger guiding hand might have helped. Jaroussky had a tendency to go over-board in the da capo sections of the Handel arias, re-writing the vocal line in an alarming manner. This is definitely a place where less is more.

Mehta in his recital, ranged far more widely, creating a programme which would not have been out of place for a variety of more traditional song recital voices. He started with Purcell and Haydn's English Canzonets. Finished the first half with Beethoven's An die ferne Geliebte. Then in the second half gave us a ravishing selection of English song from Vaughan Williams, Howells, Stanford, Lennoz Berkely, Gurney and Warlock.

Mehta's voice is similarly quite highly placed, and he sang most of the songs in quite high keys, providing plenty of top E's. But Mehta's voice also has darker tones than Jaroussky's and I was conscious at times of Mehta's managing his voice in its upper register, whereas I wasn't conscious of this with Jaroussky.

Mehta seems to be conscious of delivery a finely crafted vocal line, and sometimes seemed to sacrifice other elements to the beauty of line. There was a feeling that he rather slid round the notes a little too much, his technique seemed far more suitable for the songs in the 2nd half than the first. Or perhaps it was just that he had relaxed a bit more. For whatever reason, the Purcell and Haydn, whilst beautifully done, rather failed to make their mark completely. I think that Mehta is also a little to interventionist and perhaps needed to find a vein of plangent simplicity [something he did only at the end with a lovely performance of Music for a While as his final encore].

Beethoven's cycle was well crafted and dramatic, but I wanted more a feeling of the words.

But in the English songs, technique and music seemed to come together. Mehta's plangent tones exactly suited the songs. Voice, artists and composer seemed to come together perfectly in Howells The little boy lost and The Willow Bird. Stanfords La Belle Dame sans merci enabled Mehta to demonstrate his dramatic skills.

Both counter-tenors explored new repertoire, Jaroussky brilliantly venturing 4 barely-known J.C. Bach arias which needed (and got) a brilliant technique to make them work. American born and trained Mehta was also venturing into new repertoire, not only was his recital unusual territory for a counter-tenor, but for Mehta himself the English song repertoire was relatively unfamiliar territory.

Now out on AudioBook

The play for which I wrote incidental music, Candle Dancing by Coni Koepfinger, has been released as an audio-book. The audio book includes a little of my original incidental music as background to the readings, enough to give you a flavour of the original 1998 production. The audio-book is available from Tate Publishing here.

War and Peace

Prokofiev wrote War and Peace in 1942, but there followed over a decade of changes before he could get the opera performed. Even when he submitted it to the Soviet Authorities in 1941/1942 he was forced to make changes. Now Dr. Rita McAllister has gone back to the original manuscripts, notably the composer's piano score, to reconstruct Prokofiev's first thoughts, his original setting of the opera in 11 scenes. This has included McAllister having to orchestrate some 450 bars of music. Dr McAllister's article about her new edition can be read here. From the first Prokofiev had to re-work the War scenes to comply with the Soviet authorities desire to make them more patriotic. The 10 year process of re-working emphasised the public, patriotic at the expense of the personal in the opera.

Now a collaboration between the Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama and the Rostov State Rakhmaninov Conservatoire is bringing this first version of the opera to the stage in Glasgow and Edinburgh. It will be fascinating to see Prokofiev's first thoughts. War and Peace is one of those operas which has no definitive version; many of Prokofiev's revisions were done at the behest of others and take on an increasingly desperate nature as he tried to get the opera performed. Having a good edition of his first thoughts (previously hidden in the Soviet Archives) will enable us to make more informed decisions about what to include (and to miss out) of future performances.

Recent CD Reviews

My review of a disc of Bach Missae Breves is here.
Now showing its age ...

And my review of Emmanuelle Haim's new recording of Handel's oratorio La Resurrezione is here. Both reviews on MusicWeb International.
Time and again my ear was drawn to the lovely instrumental contributions ...

Conch shells and horns

On of the most striking moments in the recent performance of Gluck's Alceste by Chelsea Opera Group was during Act 3 the Infernal God summons Alceste and is meant to be blowing into a conch shell. The composer writes for two horns, playing in unison, but the horn players hold the bells of their horns nearly together and the horns act as sort of mutes for each other. The effect is described by Berlioz in his Treatise on Orchestration. It both looks and sounds fascinating; looks, because of course, it is rather a contortion for two horn players standing side by side to place their bells together as the instruments are played laterally. And it sounds hauntingly fascinating. Though it doesn't seem to be a commonly used effect.

Recent CD Review

My review of Christmas a cappella from Chicago a Cappella is here, on Music and Vision.
... I would have liked a little more grit ..

Les Arts Florissants - Grands Motets

Last Thursday (sorry for the late posting) we went to the Barbican to see the final concert in Les Art Florissants 30th Birthday jamboree. The audience seemed to include rather more of the great and good than usual, reflection of the high status that this celebration has been achieving.

Whereas the earlier events had covered much of their more recent musical explorations, this concert went back to their roots presenting music by Rameau, Lully, Campra and Desmarest. What we got was 4 works, a Grand Motet by each composer. All were written for the same sort of ensemble, choir, group of soloists and orchestra with trumpets added for some movements.

All 4 composers used large groups of soloists with all 6 (Amel Brahim-Djelloul soprano, Emmanuelle de Negri soprano, Toby Spence tenor, Cyril Auvity tenor, Marc Mauillon baritone, Alain Buet bass) being employed in the final Lully Te Deum. Though there were solos, all composers used small groups of singers to contrast with the larger choir. In fact there was rather a lot of inevitable coming and going. You got the feeling that the original motets, written for sacred use, would probably have had the solo parts sung by choir members so that the division between solo, ensemble and choir was less obvious. It was a shame that this could not be done, but with the choir placed behind the large orchestra it was difficult to see how this could have been achieved on the rather limited Barbican stage.

Toby Spence's voice has darkened and grown larger since he regularly sang for William Christie (I remember him memorably in a performance of Rameau's Les Boreades some years ago), but he has not lost the flexibility and sang with great beauty even if he was slightly louder than ideal at times. Cyril Auvity sang the high tenor roles and the two of them had a number of memorable duets.

Though all four composers wrote music of interest, the palm surely goes to Rameau for his spectacular orchestrations in his motet, Deus Noster, with its depictions of tempests. The formal part of the evening concluded with Lully's very grand Te Deum, which uses two choirs as well as all 6 singers. But this was not the end. We got two encores, the second of which Tendre Amour from Les Indes Galantes was sung by everyone, with the soloists joining the choir. The result was sensuously beautiful and so romantic as to be incredible.

Review of "Alceste"

My review of Gluck's Alceste from the Chelsea Opera Group is here, on Music and Vision.