Andrew Lloyd Webber Foundation invests in young artists training

The Andrew Lloyd Webber Foundation has announced that it is giving £380,000 in grants to various organisations to help support their education programmes. The Royal Ballet School's Dance Partnership and Access programmes receive support with their programmes supporting young people with workshops and tuition. This funding is particularly valuable as the Department of Education has frozen their grant.

RPS 200

Ivory concert tickets belonging to
founder directors of the Philharmonic Society

1813 seems to have been quite an auspicious year. Both Wagner and Verdi were born (as were the explorer David Livingstone, the philosopher Kierkegaard and the composer Alkan). Also, the Royal Philharmonic Society was created. From the outset its aims were 'to promote the performance, in the most perfect manner possible, of the best and most approved instrumental music' and to 'encourage an appreciation by the public in the art of music'. Aims which are as relevant today as 200 years ago. From the outset the society was associated with contemporary music, giving the UK premieres of two Beethoven symphonies and three piano concertos as well as commissioning the ninth symphony, and supporting the composer when he was ill and in need of money. Wagner was the society's musical director for its 1855 season, he conducted eight concerts, was scathing about the press and hated the weather. The society's celebrations for its 200th birthday are threaded through with these aims, reflecting the continuing contemporary relevance that the society has.

The Opera Awards - nominations open

The Opera Awards are new; they seek to reward excellence in opera whether it be from performers, producers or the teams that work in opera. The awards are being produced in association with Opera magazine, and sponsored by the Opera Foundation. Nominations are now open, and anyone can nominate a person or a company or a production. So get your thinking caps on and come up with the outstanding events in your operatic year (the awards cover the whole of 2012). Closing date is 31 January 2013 and the awards will be presented at an awards ceremony on 22 April 2013 at the Hilton Hotel in Park Lane. So lets see if we can make the Opera Awards a serious celebration of the best in opera. Nominations are via an on-line form on their website.

Opera Holland Park Awards 2012

What was your favourite production at Opera Holland Park this year? The striking new Eugene Onegin with act 3 in Soviet Russia, the atmospheric Lucia di Lammermuir featuring Elvyra Fatykhova in her UK debut, Cosi with Julia Riley and Elizabeth Llewellyn, the rarity of Mascagni's Zanetto, the lively Gianni Schicchi or the 1950's period Falstaff. The Opera Holland Park Awards enable you to vote for your favourite production and your favourite artists. You can vote on-line at the Opera Holland Park 2012 Awards website. Voting closes Monday 26 November.

Life from Light - interview with Toni Castells

Toni Castells

If you have heard of Toni Castells new piece, Life from Light, it is probably because one section details with sexual intercourse and the composer has used a graphic text describing this, taken from Wikipedia. Castells is comfortable with the piece being seen as controversial, saying that 'controversy is good, as long as it makes people think about these important issues. The system needs numb people but the planets need them fully aware and awakened'. In fact Life from Light, which debuts on 15 November at the Union Chapel in Islington, deals with far wider issues than just sexual intercourse and can be seen as controversial in other ways.

Royal Philharmonic Society bicentenary

RPS Ticket from 1869

To the Argyll Arms pub off Regent Street to launch the celebrations for the Royal Philharmonic Society's 200th Birthday. There has been a pub on the site of the Argyll Arms since 1740, though the present interior is an amazing high Victorian one. In the early 19th century, the members of the Royal Philharmonic Society would repair to the pub after their concerts at the Argyll Rooms concert hall in Regent Street. Back in the present day we were welcomed by John Gilhooly, Chairman of the Royal Philharmonic Society.

Sicut Illium

St George's Cathedral, Southwark

Cantores Chamber Choir under their conductor David Allinson are giving a concert on 17 November at 3pm at St George's Cathedral, Southwark, entitled Sicut Lilium. Focussing on the Virgin Mary and featuring music by Taverner, Parsons, Josquin, Mouton, Guerrero, Victoria and Palestrina, the concert takes place in the Lady Chapel of the Cathedral. (Allinson and his other choir, Renaissance Singers, featured in Saturday's performance of the Florentine Intermedi at the Brighton Early Music Festival). More details on Sicut Lilium from the Cantores Chamber Choir website.

New President for British Youth Opera

British Youth Opera has announced that Dame Felicity Lott will be taking over from Sir Thomas Allen as President. Allen was appointed Chancellor of the University of Durham in 2012 and continues to work as a baritone and director. Lott's appointment comes in time for the celebrations of BYO's 25th anniversary. There is a celebratory concert on 18 November at Cadogan Hall, London, with 35 soloists, all BYO alumni including Rosemary Joshua who sang in the first BYO Season.

The BYO 2013 Summer season takes place at the Peacock Theatre in September. Possible repertoire includes Britten's Turn of the Screw, and Paul Bunyan, Cimarosa's Il matrimonio segreto and Mozart's La finta giardiniera.

Further information from the British Youth Opera website. Information on the Nov 18 concert from the Cadogan Hall websites.

Paul Hamyln Foundation 2012 Awards for Artists

The Paul Hamlyn Foundation has announced the recipients of its 2012 Awards for Artists.going to visual artists and musicians. The visual artists are Ed Atkins, Pavel Büchler, Andy Holden, Elizabeth Price and Lis Rhodes. The musicians are varied group: Steve Beresford, composer, arranger and free improviser extraordinaire, the English Folk musician Eliza Carthy and young composer Edmund Finnis. The grants are given with ‘no strings attached’, allowing each recipient ‘the freedom to develop their creative ideas and contributing to their personal and professional growth’.

Puppetry in Opera

There is a two day seminar, fascinatingly titled Puppetry in Opera being organised by the Puppet Centre. Taking place on 9 and 10 November at the Barbican and Central School of Speech and Drama. Day one includes a showing of work in progress at the Pit, plus speakers such as David Pountney, Daniel Snowman and Annabel Arden. Then day two has a series of workshops taking a forthcoming Opera Group/Opera North/ROH2 production as a case study with sessions including 'How to make a puppet sing'. Sounds completely fascinating. More details from the Puppet Centre website.

Too much to take in - Wigmore Hall's Spring season

By the time you read this, many of the concert in the Wigmore Hall's January to March 2013 Spring concerts season will be fully booked as public booking opened last week. This is not surprising because the season is, as usual, fully of goodies including some fascinating series such as Graham Johnson accompanying French Song, the Hugo Wolf songbooks, a celebration of Schubert and a residency from Bernada Fink.

Celebrating Gabrieli at Brighton Early Music Festival

Giovanni Gabrieli probably studied in his native Venice with his uncle Andrea Gabrieli. But his period in Munich, working with Lassus, must have had a profound effect on his musical style. When he returned to Venice, while still in his 20's, he started working at St. Mark's Venice and would continue there until his death. Gabrieli was important for the way he developed the poly-choral style into something which we think of as the epitome of Venice. In fact, encountering his music in the concert hall is a relatively rare experience, usually we hear Gabrieli's music on disc. So it was a real pleasure to listen to the BREMF Consort and the English Cornett and Sackbut Ensemble under the direction of Deborah Roberts perform a programme on Sunday 4 November celebrating the music of Gabrieli (for the 400^th anniversary of his death) as part of the Brighton Early Music Festival.

Florentine Intermedi of 1589 at BREMF

Original set design for the 3rd
Intermedio in 1589

In 16th century Italy, the arts were very much central to a ruler's image and rulers used the arts not just for enjoyment but to make political statements, sometimes grand ones. In 1589 when Ferdinando de'Medici, Grand Duke of Tuscany, married Christine of Lorriane, grand daughter of Catherine de'Medici, Queen Mother of France, a grand political statement was needed. Two years earlier Ferdinando's elder brother and his wife had died, rumoured to be poisoned by Ferdinando, who had promptly traded his cardinal's hat for the Grand Duchy. So measures needed to be taken to emphasise the grandeur and solidity of Ferdinando's rule; what was needed was a grand theatrical event. In the Uffizi Theatre (a grand hall designed specifically for theatrical entertainments), there was mounted a play, Girolamo Bargagli's La Pellegrina and in between each act of the play there was an intermezzo. These intermezzi (or Intermedi) were common at the time, lighter entertainment between the acts of theatrical drama, sometimes quite short, just a solo or two. Most were ephemeral and have been lost. But for Ferdinando and Catherine, no expense was spared. The talents of Florence were drawn together to create them. These Intermedi were not opera, and were not proto-opera but another form entirely. But what fascinates is us is that many of those involved went on to create the first operas. Rather enterprisingly, Brighton Early Music Festival decided to crown its own 10th anniversary celebrations with two staged performances of the Florentine Intermedi of 1589, one performance at 5pm and one at 9pm on Saturday 3 November. We were lucky enough to see the second performance.

Set design for 4th Intermedio from 1589

Handel's last castrato

Gaetano Guadagni

Handel’s early oratorios were cast from the singers he had around which meant that he used Italian opera singers (and got some pretty strange English as far as we can gather). In revivals he wasn’t above including Italian arias in an oratorio if the available Italian could not sing in English. But as oratorio took over as his prime musical offering, so the star Italian singers by and large disappeared. Instead Handel relied on singers with whom he worked regularly. In a sense he seems to have like training and coaching singers himself, prizing expressivity over virtuosity and star voices. For Samson Handel used Kitty Clive, a singing actress (a musical comedy star) for the role of Dalila.

The Rest is Noise at the Southbank

From January 2012, the Southbank centre starts its year-long festival, The Rest is Noise, which is themed on Alex Ross's book detailing the history of classical music in the 20th century. I have to confess that I have slight reservations about the festival, uncertain quite how a history book (albeit a popular one) can be used as basis for a festival. Part of me worries that its all a cynical ploy to cash in on the popularity of Ross's book.

Ross sets his book in chapters which try to capture a particular moment, well demonstrated by his brilliant opening which starts with the 1906 performance of Strauss's Salome which was attended by an amazing roster of composers. The festival seems to be doing the same, with each month themed. Some work better than others. But, when confronted with the programme I have to put aside my grouches, because in terms of simple concert going there are some superb things.

Handel and Maurice Greene

Maurice Greene

Maurice Green (1696 - 1755) is one of those contemporaries of Handel that the great composer rather eclipsed. He was appointed Master of King's Musick in 1735, but for most Royal events he was passed over in favour of Handel. Handel seems to have not liked Greene, but then Handel found it difficult to have other composers around him. When it came to composition, he was the least collegiate of me. On December 7 at St. George's Hanover Square, there is the chance to hear some Greene and some Handel in the same concert.

Utopia Ltd in Greenwich

Its not Gilbert and Sullivan's best operetta by any chalk, but Utopia Limited does have a certain resonance for today, with its government corruption, scandals, and privatisation. The libretto satirises limited liability companies, a bankrupt company could leave creditors unpaid without any liability on the part of its owners. But being Gilbert, there's a lot more besides, including the British Empire, imperialism and the idea of 'barbaric' nations. It was Gilbert and Sullivan's penultimate collaboration, their first after the infamous row over expenses for The Gondoliers. It is also expensive to mount. But the Centenary Company are performing it at the Greenwich Theatre from 7 to 10 November.

Robert Poulton

The baritone Robert Poulton was killed in a car crash on Tuesday. He was touring with Glyndebourne Opera on Tour and they cancelled Wednesday's performance of Rusalka in Norwich (in which he was playing the gamekeeper) out of respect. He trained at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama and developed his career in the Glyndebourne chorus and remained a stalwart with that company. Other notable role included the acrobat and lion tamer in Lulu for ENO, the Postman in Buxton Festival's Kaschei the Immortal, Scarpia  Falstaff, and the Forester (Cunning Little Vixen) for Grange Park Opera,  Scarpa with Scottish Opera, La Traviata and Rigoletto with Opera Holland Park, and a memorable Marco in Gianni Schicchi with the Royal Opera. As a singer he had remarkable breadth and he will be sorely missed.

Triple Bill - GSMD - review

Guildhall School of Music and Drama (GSMD) assembled a varied trio of undervalued opera for presentation as their autumn opera offering on 1 November 2012 at their Silk Street Theatre. The GSMD has performed all three operas before, at various times, so someone is obviously keen. There were two by Massenet, both dating from roughly the same period in the mid 1890's, La Navarraise and Le portrait de Manon, one a dramatic piece of neo-verismo and the other a delicate whimsy based on his earlier success Manon. Finally a crazy comedy by Martinu, Comedy on the Bridge originally written as a radio play in 1937 and not performed on stage until 1951. It was a suitably varied mix, though perhaps not one as  contrasted and highly spiced as Puccini's Il Trittico. It did have the advantage of offering a bevy of variedly challenging roles to the GSMD singers.

Rite of Spring Centenary

Nikokai Roerich's design for
The Rite of Spring in 1913

Next year sees the centenary of the premiere of Stravinsky and Nijinsky's ballet, The Rite of Spring. Diaghilev's Ballets Russes gave the premiere at the Theatre des Champs Elysees on 29 May 1913. And naturally a number of organisations are celebrating the centenary in a variety of ways, with Sadlers Wells Theatre devoting a whole mini-season to it. The problem is that neither Stravinsky's music, nor Nijinsky's choreography shocks any more. And for the choreography we only have a pale simulacrum reconstructed from drawings and memories. So Sadler's Wells are programming Michael Keegan-Dolan's new version and have commissioned a new work entirely from Akhram Khan.

London Song Festival - Comedy Songs - review

Lighter, comic songs are frequently tricky for trained singers to bring off. Many were written for actors, rather than highly developed voices, and need quite careful and special handling. So Nigel Foster was giving his singers a challenge rather different do usual by launching this year's London Song Festival with a programme of English and American Comedy Songs. Soprano Laura Wolk-Lewanowicz and baritone Grant Doyle joined Foster at St Paul's Church Covent Garden on Wednesday 31 October. Foster's programme mixed English and American songs from the 20th and 21st centuries in thematic groups.

CD review - Viktor Bijelovic

Viktor Bijelovic is a young pianist, born in Serbia and resident in London since the age of 11. He already has prizes in quite a few competitions under his belt and having recorded this CD of Chopin and Liszt in 2011, he has plans for a new CD next year.

This disc was recorded in the Jacqueline du Pre Music Hall in Oxford. The programme combines Chopin with piano music by his contemporary, Liszt. The two had an awkward relationship. Chopin envied Liszt's technique but found him frankly rather vulgar, with his showing off and his big piano sound. Liszt on the other hand envied Chopin's far wider range of colours at the piano but found his technique lacking.

Opera goes to prison again

In March 2013, Pimlico Opera will be staging Westside Story in HMP Erlestoke, Devizes in Wiltshire. The cast, largely made up of prisoners, with a core team of a professional director, a few professional singers and backstage team will perform Westside Story to the paying public in the prison. It is something that Pimlico Opera has been doing, admirably, for 20 years, all without public subsidy. Each project in prison displays the ability of art to change lives, the prisoners receive coaching and gain in dignity and self-esteem. It can all seem a little worthy on paper, until you go and experience it for yourself.

Our Extraordinary World Gala - review

Galas are funny things, and must be a nightmare to put together; trying to assemble a a coherent evening around a series of snippets made tempting by the star names singing, but dependent on diaries and personalities. Last night's gala at Covent Garden, Our Extraordinary World (30 October), was given in the presence of HM the Queen and Prince Philip and was intended both to celebrate the Queen's Diamond Jubilee but also the whole of the Covent Garden enterprise, both on-stage and off. There was also the feeling that it marked the launch of a new era, with Kasper Holten as Director of Opera and Kevin O'Hare as Director of the Royal Ballet. The offerings of opera and ballet were evenly balanced, with some tempting new pieces being created specially for the occasion. Interleaved with all of this were short video compilations of interviews with everyone connected with Covent Garden, dancers, singers, backstage staff, Friends of Covent Garden, education, community, indeed a celebration of the whole enterprise.

New Turnage cantata for London and Derry-Londonderry

Derry-Londonderry's role as City of Culture 2013 will be celebrated next year with a new cantata from Mark-Antony Turnage with words by the Pullitzer-prizewinning Northern Irish poet Paul Muldoon. The cantata will be premiered simultaneously in London and in Derry-Londonderry on 3 July 2013, with performances at the Guildhall in each city. The cantata, At Sixes and Sevens, will be performed at the Guildhall London by the London Symphony Orchestra and in Derry-Londonderry by Camerata Ireland directed by Barry Douglas.

Greenwich Early Music Festival

From 8 to 10 November, the Royal Greenwich Early Music Festival is taking place in an around the Old Royal Naval College in Greenwich, whose buildings are now home to the University of Greenwich and the Trinity Laban Conservatoire. (the festival is jointly promoted by the Early Music Shop, the Greenwich Foundation and Trinity Laban Conservatoire of Music and Dance) The festival involves concerts in the college (in the Painted Hall and in the Chapel) and in St Alfege's Church in Greenwich, plus an exhibition, the largest Early Music Exhibition of its kind. This year performers include His Majestys Sagbutts and Cornetts, the Trinity Laban Classical Orchestra, Philomel, the Sixteen, Eva Fegers, Dan Laurin, the Rose Consort of Viols and the European Union Baroque Orchestra.

Camerata Musica - new season in Cambridge

Peterhouse College

Next week Camerata Musica's new season launches in Cambridge with a recital by John Mark Ainsley in the Peterhouse Theatre. Camerata Musica was founded in 2006 at Peterhouse College (the oldest in Cambridge) to bring new audiences to classical music, giving the graduates and post-graduates access to some fine music making. Half the seats at all the concerts are reserved for students, and concerts are regularly oversubscribed. Full price concert tickets are available from £20, with discounts for a season ticket. John Mark Ainsley's recital with Roger Vignoles is on 7 November

Recent CD review

My review of Johann Hermann Schein's Israelsbrunnen, his influential collection of motets performed by the Dresdner Kammerchor is here, on MusicWeb International.

Performances of great charm. 

Serious Cabaret

My career has included a number of forays into cabaret, as composer, arranger and artistic director and I am always impressed with people who can make the genre work in new ways. I loved Mary Carew and Philp Mayers disc Serious Cabaret but missed their performance at Kings Place last month. Now they return with their programme for two further engagements this weekend at the CBSO centre in Birmingham on Friday 2 November, and at the Oundle Festival on Saturday 3 November. Or you could always simply buy the CD, its one of my favourites, a wonderful mixture of cabaret items old and new with some great discoveries and some lovely arrangements (Diamonds are forever to William Bolcom, Friedrich Hollander to Marc Blitzstein, taking in Zemlinsky and Stefan Wolpe on the way. Serious Cabaret is on the Orchid Classics label.

Scottish Ensemble in London

The Scottish Ensemble are making two visits to the Wigmore Hall this season. Tomorrow, 30 October, they are bringing a programme themed around Benjamin Britten. The ensemble will play his Three Divertimentos which use material that he wrote at the Royal College of Music. The programme also includes music by composers Britten revered, Mozart and Schumann, plus Bach's Violin Concerto in E major. In case you are wondering about string music by Schumann, the ensemble are playing artistic director's arrangement of Schumann's String Quartet No. 3 in A.

Belisario at the Barbican - concert review

Carolina Ungher who created the role of
Antonina in Belisario

Opera Rara’s developing relationship with BBC Radio 3 bore fruit this weekend with two events, centred on Donizetti rarities. On Saturday, BBC Radio 3 broadcast a recording of Donizetti’s Caterina Cornaro with David Parry conducting the BBC Symphony Orchestra, a recording which will be issued on Opera Rara in 2013. And last night at the Barbican, Sunday 29 October 2013, Sir Mark Elder conducted a concert performance of Donizetti’s Belisario again with the BBC Symphony Orchestra; the concert being the culmination of a week of recording of the work, again for Opera Rara. Belisario was given in concert, but semi-staged by Kenneth Richardson. The singers still used scores, but there were entrances and exits, dramatic lighting and a degree of interaction between the singers. Belisario was written by Donizetti just after Lucia di Lamermoor, with the same librettist Salvadore Cammarano, though the work is perhaps not quite as fully developed as Lucia, but Elder and his forces showed that Belisario contains some vintage Donizetti.

BREMF - 10th Birthday Celebration - Journeys through Europe

St Bartholemew's Church, Brighton

Not quite the opening event of this year's Brighton Early Music Festival but their 27 October event was very much a celebration of the start of the festival and its 10th anniversary. The concert was a free event in St. Bartholomew's Church, starting at 8.30pm with the audience free to come and go as they pleased; the whole programme repeated at 10.30pm. Chairs were pushed to the sides of the nave; those who were early were lucky enough to bag seats but the nave gradually filled up with people of all ages sitting casually on the floor. A sort of early music club night if you will, except the age range was far wider.

BREMF had done an event like this last year as part of Brighton's White Nights. With no White Nights this year, they decided to go it alone, encouraged by the wide range of people who tried the open entry casual event. And indeed on Saturday there were a fine variety of both ages and styles. There were five groups playing, all taking part in BREMF's Brighton Early Music Live! scheme, whereby the festival mentors a number of ensembles each year. The five represented a nice variety of styles of music, with some innovative thoughts on presentation. Each group got a slot of 20 minutes to play; programme notes were basic so I have no details of exact works. As the audience was being encouraged to listen with an innocent ear, I felt that I would review in the same manner and didn't approach the organisers to get a detailed work list.

Johann Adolph Hasse

There is a lovely entry in Charles Burney’s diaries from when he visited Vienna in the 1770s. There he visited the elderly composer Johann Adolph Hasse (1699 - 1783) and his wife, the soprano Faustina Bordoni (1697 - 1781). The diarist seemed charmed by the composer and his wife, and paints a picture of elderly retirement which is relatively rare for the period. Hasse seems to have had a long life, with a successful marriage, in an age when artists did not always live long and certainly did not manage a comfortable retirement. So who was Hasse? He’s a composer whose name crops up, and whose operas seemed to be mentioned but rarely performed nowadays. He was probably one of the most successful opera composers of his age and one half of one of baroque opera's power couples.

British Composer Awards shortlist

The short-list for this year's British Composer Awards has been announced. Sir Harrison Birtwistle gets two mentions, for his Angel Fighter in the vocal category (premiered by the BBC Singers and David Hill, with Andrew Watts and Jeffrey Lloyd Roberts at the Cadogan Hall) and his Violin Concerto in the orchestral category (commissioned by the Boston Symphony Orchestra for Christian Tezlaff). Jonathan Harvey's The Annunciation is in the liturgical category along with Cecilia MacDowell's The Lord is Good and Frances Grier's Missa Brevis. The other entries in the vocal category are Joe Cutler (Chanticleer and the Opera Fox for the Roald Dahl Museum) and Colin Matthews (No Man's Land for Ian Bostridge, Roderick Williams and the City of London Sinfonia under Stephen Layton), the others in the orchestral are Julian Anderson (The Discovery of Heaven premiered by the London Philharmonic) and Rebecca Saunders (Still for Carolin Widmann and the BBC Symphony Orchestra). Thomas Ades crops up in the chamber music category with The Four Quarters (for the Emerson String Quartet).

CD review - A Song of Farewell - Music of Mourning & Consolation

A Song of Farewell - Music of Mourning & Consolation is one of Paul McCreesh’s series of discs with the Gabrieli Consort exploring unaccompanied choral music of the 16th to 21st centuries. This disc is the first of such programmes to appear on McCreesh’s Winged Lion label. Previous programmes have been themed on spiritual pilgrimage and the Virgin Mary; this disc focuses on music for mourning and for consolation.

The centre-piece of the programme is Howells' Requiem, which was written just before his son Michael died (the manuscript includes marks made by Michael). Howells reworked some of the material as Hymnus Paradisi but put both works away unperformed. Hymnus Paradisi was allowed out in the 1950’s but the Requiem was not allowed to be performed for another 20 years. It is a powerful and intimate work, setting a distinctive mixture of sacred texts.

La Boheme in Oxford

To Oxford's New Theatre for WNO's revival of Annabel Arden's production of Puccini's La Boheme. The New Theatre is a curious place, a 1930's cinema with very narrow foyer space and apparently no pit, as the orchestra were on the floor in the stalls (with seats removed). I did wonder what the balance would be like Wagner or one of the bigger Strauss operas. Listening to the overture, it struck me that it was a long time since I had seen this opera. And quite how perfect, of its kind, it is.

Choral at Cadogan - Tallis Scholars

Lady Margaret Beaufort
Robert Fayrfax's patron

It says a lot for the changes in concert going habits that have been wrought in the last few years or so, that the Tallis Scholars could perform a programme consisting of just two large scale polyphonic works and pretty near fill the Cadogan Hall. For the opening concert, on 25 October, of the Choral at Cadogan series, Peter Phillips and the Tallis Scholars performed Robert Fayrfax's Missa Tecum Principium and Thomas Tallis's Lamentations. Using just 10 singers to perform Fayrfax's large-scale five-part mass, the result was intensely serious and entirely engrossing.

Fayrfax's music is still not regularly performed by contemporary groups (and the Tallis Scholars do not seem to have recorded his music), though he was a notable and influential figure in his day. He wrote in the early Tudor period, working for Henry VII and Henry VIII as a Gentleman of the Chapel Royal before any of the religious upheavals. He possessed the patronage of Henry VII's mother, Lady Margaret Beaufort who commissioned his Missa O Bone Jesu, and he led the Chapel Royal at the Field of the Cloth of Gold in 1520. He was a major influence on John Taverner and on Thomas Tallis.

Jacques-Francois Gallay - CD launch concert

On Friday 26 October, Anneke  Scott will be performing at the Schott Recital Room in Great Marlborough Street, London as part of the launch of her new album Prelude, Caprices, Fantaisies - Concerts Caches. The album, released on the Resonus label, features music by the French 19th century composer and horn virtuoso Jacques-Francois Gallay (1795-1864). Scott has recorded the album on an 1823 cor solo by Marcel-August Raoux (loaned by the Oxford Bate Collection) which is identical to Gallay's own instrument. The concert, at 7pm, will feature unaccompanied music for horn by Gallay.

Two Beethoven Premieres

Beethoven in 1815 portrait
byJoseph Willibrord Mähler

Not only have we had the premiere of  a Beethoven piano sonata, but now a second piece will receive what is believed to be its premiere today. Students from Manchester University will be today performing a hymn written by Beethoven in 1820. It was discovered by Professor Barry Cooper, a musicologist from Manchester University; Cooper is also the author of the volume on Beethoven in the Master Musician's series and is the general editor and co-author of the Beethoven Companion.

Cooper was working in Berlin on the sketches for Beethoven's Missa Solemnis and found the hymn amongst the sketches, apparently unnoticed. It is presumed that Beethoven wrote the hymn for Archduke Rudolf of Austria, for whom Missa Solemnis was written. The hymn is an organ harmonisation of the Latin Pange Lingua with the first line unaccompanied, which is probably why no-one ever noticed it before. It will be performed today at 2.30pm at the University of Manchester's Martin Harris Centre and will be published in the journal of the Royal Museum Association.

Further information from the Manchester University website.

Beethoven's early piano sonata, Sonata Fantasia in D,  was premiered earlier this week by young pianist Martin Oeiat at Amsterdam's Concertgebouw after being reconstructed by Dutch Beethoven musicologist Cees Nieuwenhuizen. Nieuwenhuizen's reconstruction is based on the existing 1100 bars of music from the 'Kafka' Sketchbook, published in 1970.

Neither of these pieces is quite earth shattering, but it is fascinating that a composer as well known and as well studied as Beethoven can still have new pieces come to light. You wonder what else is hidden, unnoticed or uncatalogued, in the world's libraries.

Puccini's second go

Puccini wrote his second opera, Edgar, in 1889 and it was premiered at La Scala, Milan. Based on a play by Alfred de Musset it features a young man torn between the love of a pure girl, and passion for a gypsy. Sounds familiar? The opera was tepidly received, and Puccini revised it twice, the second time reducing the four acts to three. It was even less successful in the revised form and Puccini abandoned it, using some of the music for Tosca. Now the enterprising New Sussex Opera are giving the UK premiere of the original four act version, with a strong cast, featuring John Hudson and Mary Plazas, conducted by Nicholas Jenkins.

Take one home for Christmas

The Musician's Benevolent Fund have just launched their Opera Offstage calendar featuring jokey images of well known opera singers off the operatic stage, including John Tomlinson as Father Christmas, Sarah Walker in her private pool and Nicky Spence getting a tattoo. Singers featured include Renee Fleming, Susan Bullock and Richard Berkeley Steele, Gerald Finley, Lesley Garrett, Susan Bickley, Dame Felicity Lott and Duncan Rock, Rebecca and Bonaventura Bottone, Gerald Finley, Jonathan Lemalu (and son), and Duncan Rock . The calendar was Nicky Spence's idea, he is an ambassador for the Musician's Benevolent Fund, having received support from them during his studies.

Helping young musicians at the start of their careers and professional musicians threatened with accident, illness or injury, the MBF last year saw an 80% increase in applications from musicians in need of its assistance.

 The calendar is £12 and can be bought direct from the Musicians Benevolent Fund website.

Rosenblatt Recitals - Joel Prieto and Iain Burnside

Tenor Joel Prieto will not be entirely unknown to Londoners, he shared a Rosenblatt Recital in 2010 and was Fenton in the recent Falstaff at Covent Garden. His return to Rosenblatt Recitals for his first complete recital, on 22 October, also saw him making his Wigmore Hall debut, with Iain Burnside at the piano. Prieto is Spanish born, raised in Puerto Rico and trained in New York. His recent repertoire, besides Fenton, has included Ferrando and Don Ottavio and plans include Don Pasquale and L’elisir damore. He has a lovely lyric tenor voice, which he showed off with imagination in a recital that took in Mozart and Beethoven plus composers from Puerto Rico and Latin America.

John Ireland day

The Royal College of Music is holding a one day seminar on the RCM student and professor John Ireland,  John Ireland: English Impressionist, on Saturday 1 Nov 2012. Sessions include Ireland at the College, Ireland and  the Piano and  Ireland and Poetry. The day will look at Ireland's college connections and his whole catalogue of works, Speakers include Paul Spicer and David Owen Norris, with masterclasses from Leon McCawley and Stephen Varcoe. The day-time events conclude with a round table discussion, Ireland Now, with Anthony Payne, Lewis Foreman, David Owen Norris and Jeremy Dibble.  This is followed by a concert of Ireland's songs and piano works. There will also be an exhibition of Ireland's manuscripts.

Further details from the Royal College of Music website. The event is free but tickets are required.

Honorary Degree for Ronald Corp

Photo credit
Julian Hanford

Ronald Corp, the composer, conductor, Anglican priest and educator extraordinaire, has been awarded an honorary degree by Anglia Ruskin University (full citation on their website). He founded the New London Orchestra in 1989 to promote 19th and 20th century music. With them he has recorded an influential series of CD's of British light music; his most recent concert with the orchestra was a concert performance of Delius's A Village Romeo and Juliet to celebrate the composer's 150th anniversary.

He also founded the New London Childrens Choir with the aim of introducing young people to both the challenges and the fun of singing and performing. A widely performed composer (see his website for more details) he was awarded the OBE for services to music in 2012.

First Live - how to interest young people in live orchestras?

How do you interest young people in live classical music. One admirable way is of course to encourage them to play an instrument. Though not every young person actually wants to do this and frankly there just isn't the capacity. Many local authorities are hard pressed to give access to music to those children who want it, never mind the ones who are less interested. Another method is to widen the idea of what we mean by music, so that young people get involved in live musical activities but with a more popular bent. But this still leaves them without any knowledge or interest in live orchestral music. So the charity Orchestras Live have come up with a new idea, First Time Live.

McOpera - a new venture

With the delightful name of McOpera, the musicians of the Orchestra of Scottish Opera are marketing themselves as musicians co-operative. Last year's restructuring at Scottish Opera resulted in the orchestra being made part-time and this latest move is aimed at providing a new business model to help keep the orchestra together. McOpera, which currently has 53 of the orchestral musicians on board, will offer ensembles of varying sizes for hire, ranging from small instrumental groups to a large orchestra all taken from the pool of musicians available.

Pianist Fazil Say on trial in Turkey

I wrote earlier about Turkish pianist Fazil Say's prosecution in Turkey for comments on Twitter. He appeared in court in Turkey on Thursday 18 October charged with insulting Islam; he is defending himself. The charges arise from jokey tweets which the pianist made earlier this year. Say has rejected the charges, calling for his acquittal. If found guilty he faces a maximum sentence of 18 months, which will probably be suspended.

Say has said in public that he is an atheist and also that he plan's to move to Japan.

Say's forthcoming engagements, as listed on his website, include a residency in Frankfurt (with the Istanbul Symphony Orchestra and the Haba Quartet), the 13th Antalya Piano Festival and appearances with the Bern Symphony Orchestra and the Vienna Symphony Orchestra.

Opera North summer season

Opera North have announced the operas for their Summer 2013 season. Charles Edwards with be directing and designing Handel's Joshua, conducted by Stephen Layton with Fflur Wyn, Jake Arditti and Henry Waddington. More staged oratorio (see my article on staging Jephtha). Will be interesting to see what Edwards makes of Joshua. It is frankly, not one of Handel's most operatic works, being a rather bloodthirsty series of victories with minimal characterisation. He and librettist Thomas Morrell were evidently trying to re-capture the success of Judas Maccabeus.

Then Giles Havergal is directing a new production of Albert Herring with Josephine Barstow as Lady Billows. The production will not be in the Leeds Grand Theatre but in the smaller Howard Assembly Rooms, which should make for an interesting re-balancing of the opera, which Britten wrote for small scale touring. Conductor Richard Farnes will be at the helm for the concert stagings of Wagner's Siegfried at Leeds Town Hall with Estonian tenor Mati Turi and Swedish soprano Annalena Persson with Michael Druiett as the Wanderer.  Further details from the Opera North website.

Classico Latino live at Union Chapel

On 26 October, Classico Latino will be performing at the Union Chapel. The concert will be the launch of their new album Latin American Classicas: A Musical Journey Through South America. Classico Latino is a trio which plays Latin American Music on western classical instruments, with cellist Graham Walker, violinist Lizzie Ball and pianist Ivan Guevara.

The new album features guest appearances from a number of musicians including the Gentlemen of the choir of St Johns College Cambridge, and Columbian singing star Andres Cepeda.

Julius Caesar at the London Coliseum

ENO: Julius Caesar, Lawrence Zazzo and Fabulous Beast
(c) Robert Workman

I have to confess that I was rather nervous of the idea of Michael Keegan-Dolan’s new Julius Caesar at the London Coliseum. By the time we saw the production (Friday 20 October) there had been enough reviews out for me to have my prejudices confirmed. In the event, I found the performance completely engrossing and one of the most stimulating performances of a Handel opera that I have seen in a long time. Though UK opera houses admirably perform Handel’s opera serias, there is a tendency to fill the stage with business, whether from fear of the large open spaces of Handel’s scores with their long arias, or simply from a need to keep the audience entertained. To get straightforward, direct productions you have to go smaller companies such as English Touring Opera where James Conway has produced an admirable series of Handel’s opera seria. Of course there was nothing strictly simple about Keegan-Dolan’s new Julius Caesar.

BRB in London

Birmingham Royal Ballet arrive in London on Tuesday (23 October) for a short season of ballets at Sadler's Wells Theatre.They are not bringing their production of Swan Lake which is currently being toured to other venues. Instead we have six one-act ballets spread over two evenings with a mix of old and new.

Hans van Manen's Grosse Fuge will be familiar to many and it is being teamed with two recent ballets. Lyric Pieces by American choreographer Jessica Lang, to music by Edvard Grieg, and Take Five, David Bintley's ballet to music by Dave Brubeck.

American film and show choreographer Joe Layton's The Grand Tour opens the second evening. It pays homage to the 20's in amusing fashion and uses music by Noel Coward.. It is teamed with Faster, and The Dream. Faster is the second collaboration between David Bintley and Australian composer Matthew Hindson and is a tribute to the London 2012 Olympic Games. The Dream is of course another older masterpiece, Frederick Ashton's perfect jewel of compressed story telling and lyricism.

More details from the Sadler's Wells website.

CD review - Lawes harp consorts

My review of  The Passion of Musicke, a lovely disc of Harp Consorts by William Lawes is here on MusicWeb International.

Substantial and supremely rewarding ... consummate playing.