NMC appeal - new operas

NMC Recordings celebrates its 25th anniversary in 2014 and as part of this they have launched an appeal to raise funds to issue recordings of three significant contemporary operas, by Sir Harrison Birtwistle, Judith Weir and Gerald Barry. Amazingly, NMC is a charity run as a not-for-profit and started with substantial support of the Holst Foundation. This means, of course, that they can take a long view and issue recordings which a commercial organisation would not. So far they have recorded over a dozen contemporary British operas to-date. The new appeal needs to raise £43,0000 to support Birtwistle's Gawain, Weir's The Vanishing Bridegroom and Barry's The Importance of Being Earnest.

Jonathan Harvey

Jonathan Harvey, who died this week at the age of 73, was one of those quiet souls who become eminent without you quite noticing. He studied at St. John's College, Cambridge, and was advised by Britten to take lessons with Erwin Stein. (Stein, formerly Schoenberg's assistant, was an editor for Boosey and Hawkes where he worked with Britten). But Harvey's influences developed quite widely; on a Harkness Scholarship at Princeton, Harvey would meet Milton Babbitt, he discovered Stockhausen and was invited by Pierre Boulez to work at IRCAM.

New Music 20x12 now on-line

The PRS for Music Foundation's New Music 20x12 project involved commissioning 20 works, each 12 minutes long, to be performed in the UK in 2012. The composers and partner organisations were highly diverse, including Sally Beamish writing for the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment, Howard Skempton writing for the Central Council of Bell Ringers, Graham Fitkin writing for the London Chamber Orchestra, Luke Carver Goss for the Black Dyke Band, Gavin Higgins writing for the Rambert Dance Company.  Now you can view the works on-line.

Last month on Planet Hugill

Vanity Fair scene from Pilgrims Progress

at ENO (c) Mike Hoban

Just in case you missed it! November opened with the launch of this year's London Song Festival and the tragic news of Robert Poulton's death. We closed with a guest review of the last night of the festival and I participated in the Courtauld Community Choir.

Guildhall School of Music and Drama presented an enterprising triple bill of operas by Massenet and Martinu, ENO were equally enterprising with their production of Vaughan Williams's Pilgrims Progress and Chelsea Opera Group performed Massenet's Don Quichotte with Robert Lloyd.

Cool poster - cool concert

I couldn't resist featuring this concert because of the rather striking flyer design. The London Gay Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Christopher Braime are performing their Christmas themed programme on Sunday 9 December, at St. Sepulchre without Newgate. The programme consists of Dvorak's Slavonic Dances,  Sibelius's Finlandia, Tchaikovsky's Nutcracker Suite and a suite from Rimsky Korsakov's The Snow Maiden. It is the last item, taking music from Rimsky Korsakov's rarely performed opera which rather lifts the programme out of the ordinary.

Motets from Tempus per Annum in London this month

Two motets from my collection Tempus per annum will be performed this month. On Thursday 13 December London Concord Singers, conductor Malcolm Cottle, will be giving the premiere of the Advent motet Propre es tu and on Friday 7 December, La Chapelle du Roi, conductor Alistair Dixon, will be performing Puer natus est nobis which they premiered in 2009.

British Composer Awards

The winners of this year's British Composer awards were announced this week, and the full list can be seen on the British Composer Awards website. Sir Harrison Birtwistle's Concerto for Violin and Orchestra won the orchestral category. The work was premiered by Christian Tetzlaff with the Boston Symphony Orchestra in Boston, and received its UK premiere at the Proms with Tetzlaff, this time with the BBC Symphony Orchestra. The stage awards went, for the second year running, to a non-operatic work. This time DESH, Jocelyn Pook's evocative score for Akram Khan's astonishing stage work. DESH means homeland in Bangladeshi, and the piece is a journey with Khan discovering his roots. Pook's score mixes in found material from trips to Bangladesh. You can buy a disc of the piece from Pook's website.

Universe of Sound - The Planets Remix

The Universe of Sound was a brilliant installation/exhibition which enabled visitors to experience what it was like to be really inside an orchestra whilst it was playing Holst's The Planets (see my review of the exhibition at the Science Museum). At the centre of the installation was an HD recording made by Esa-Pekka Salonen and the Philharmonia with films being made from various points of view within the orchestra. Now these are available on-line at The Space, the Arts Council's digital download site.

Big Give: The English Concert

The English Concert's Big Give project is to raise £52,000 to support a week-long Master Class on Handel's Radamisto for young singers and players at the Centre for Early Music Performance and Research in Birmingham. There will also be public showcases of excerpts from the opera at the Barbican and at Birmingham Town Hall. Their 2011 Big Give project was a residency at the Foundling Museum which included a master class for young harpsichordist directors. Further information, and donations, from their Big Give project page

CD review - Open your eyes

For her recital disc with Malcolm Martineau, Open your eyes, soprano Katherine Broderick has chosen lieder from the turn of the 19th century, with Richard Strauss's Acht Gedichte aus 'Letzte Blätter' Op 10, Alban Berg's Sieben frühe Lieder and Arnold Schoenberg's Brettl Lieder. The Strauss songs include Zueignung, his first published song. The songs illustrate the way that the lied was changing at this period. Rather neatly, Strauss was 10 years older then Schoenberg, whilst Schoenberg was 9 years older than Berg. There are other linkings, with Schoenberg's songs related to the Überbrettl cabaret, founded by the librettist of Richard Strauss's early opera Feuersnot.

Soane by candle light

To the Soane Museum on Monday 4 December, for a candle-lit evening event for patrons and supporters of Grange Park Opera. The library on the ground floor and the yellow drawing room were lit as normal, but the remainder of the ground floor and the magical basements were all lit by candles. This, of course, is how Soane's visitors would have seen the rooms if they visited him in the evening. I believe that Soane himself used to take visitors round with a candle. It is, in fact, an amazing experience; to wander round the basements full of antiquities just by candle light. There were, of course, plenty of room stewards to keep their eye on us, but there were all highly knowledgeable as well. And then there was the music.

O Magnum Mysterium

The Choir of Queens' College Cambridge, director Silas Wollston celebrates the release of its CD.

Thursday 6 December sees the choir of Queens' College Cambridge performing under their director Silas Wollston at the Dutch Church in the City of London. They will be celebrating the release of their CD And comes the Day on the Orchid Classics label. The concert includes an eclectic mix of music for Christmas and Advent, including Bob Chilcott's Advent Antiphons and carols by Britten, Howells and Wollston. There is also the opportunity for the audience to compare and contrast, with settings of O Magnum Mysterium by Gabrieli, Poulenc and Morten Lauridsen. The concert is being repeated on 7 December at Queens' College Chapel, Cambridge, and on Sunday 9 December at L'eglise de la Madeleine, Paris.

Out with a bang

The Peter Moores Foundation has announced that it is winding down its activities, but it is going out with a bang. The foundation's Swansong Project will mark the end of the foundation and celebrate 50 years of philanthropy (the foundation was set up by Sir Peter Moores in 1964). They will be supporting projects at 8 of the companies with which they have been closely associated, Birmingham Opera, English Touring Opera, Opera North, Scottish Opera, Welsh National Opera, English National Opera, Covent Garden and Glyndebourne. There will also be one final opera for Chandos's Opera in English series.

Christmas on the BBC

The BBC has published information about what delights we have to look forward to during the Christmas season, a period which usually frankly has me running for the digi-box and our back-log of recorded programmes. We have the usual suspects, there is Carols from Kings, and we revisit the Military Wives Choir. The Archbishop of Canterbury gives his New Year's message and, in a separate programme muses on his departure from Canterbury. The present Queen's message is, of course, a staple of Christmas Day. There is also a three part programme on Queen Victoria's fraught relationships with her children, and BBC 4 has a Screen Goddesses season.

CD review - Cantata for the Children of Terezin

Mary Ann Joyce-Walter's Cantata for the Children of Terezin sets poems written by the children who were incarcerated in the Terezin concentration camp. Joyce-Walter says that the work was composed with the intention of evoking compassion for the most innocent and vulnerable. This disc on the  Ravello label includes the cantata as well as Joyce-Walter's orchestra piece Aceldama, recorded by the Kiev Philharmonic Orchestra and the King Singers of Kiev conducted by Robert Ian Winstin.

Whitgift School music competition

The Royal Philharmonic Orchestra
and the Whitgift Chamber Orchestra
at Cadogan Hall in April 2012
(photo: Danny Fitzpatrick)

The Whitgift School in Croydon has launched an International Music Competition for young players. There are three categories, (12-13, 14-15 and 16-17) and entry is initially via YouTube video! The prizes include £150,000 in scholarships as well as opportunities to perform with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra. The winners will be selected from live performances in June and July next year with a jury which includes cellist Guy Johnston, Remus Azoitei (professor of violin at the Royal Academy), journalist Jessica Duchen and a member of the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra. Further information from the Whitgift School website; the closing date is 1 March 2013.

Lost and Found - a Brodsky Quartet Adventure

The Brodsky Quartet is currently celebrating their 40th anniversary (see our blog post) with a series of concerts which includes their Wheel of 4Tunes, where the audience gets to choose the programme from 40 different string quartets. Whilst touring the Netherlands, their car was broken into, a laptop stolen along with a bag containing all the viola and cello parts for all the 40 quartets being offered. A devastating loss.

Inaugural performance of the Orchestra Musica Romantica

Orchestra Musica Romantica
Cadogan Hall, 1 Dec 2012

Last night, 1 December, was the inaugural performance (or should I say debut) of the Orchestra Musca Romantica in aid of Action Medical Research at Cadogan Hall, Sloane Square. Dubbed a ‘super-orchestra’ by Classic FM, Orchestra Musica Romantica is the child of Jörg Hammann, who also plays violin with the London Symphony Orchestra and conducts the Orchestra of the Guildhall Music College. It is a project orchestra with the specific aspiration of giving back to the community. As he explains is his blog for Gramphone, it is ‘an orchestra for those in need’.

The Mikado at the London Coliseum

ENO - The Mikado
credit Chris Christodoulou

After a crisply sparkling account of the overture, from David Parry and the English National Opera orchestra, the curtain opened on Stefanos Lazarides dazzling white, Grand Hotel set. Jonathan Miller's production of Gilbert and Sullivan's The Mikado was back, with a strong cast which mixed innocence and experience. The production is 26 years old and looking as good as ever, and celebrating 25 years of Richard Suart's association with the role of Ko Ko. We saw the opening night (Saturday December 1), though the cast had already performed a matinee that afternoon.

I fagiolini - live in York

There is a fascinating film on YouTube of I Fagiolini's July 2012 performances of Striggio's Mass in 40 Parts done live in York Minster, with the audience free to move around within the circle of the performers. Looks as if it was magical. Further information from the I Fagiolini website. See the film after the jump.

Richard Strauss and the gay sensibility

What? Strauss is a composer known for his devotion to the female voice and a who used his own family life as the subject for his work. So where does gay sensibility come in? In 1897 Strauss wrote Vier Lieder Op. 27 as a wedding gift for his wife. The songs include Morgen and Heimlich Aufforderung, songs which have been beloved of sopranos ever since. The opening of Morgen with its long violin melody which is taken up by the soprano is just about perfect. Except of course that Strauss originally wrote it for piano, and when he recorded it himself (which he did twice) he used a male voice. Now, I once heard Dietrich Fischer Dieskau sing the song and frankly, was not completely convinced. So what is going on?

The Big Give - Gabrieli Young Singers' Scheme

Paul McCreesh and forces recording Elijah in 2011
© Ben Ealovega

The Gabrieli Consort and Players' project in this year's Big Give is their Young Singers' Scheme. The first fruits of this scheme were unveiled this year with the stupendous recording of Mendelssohn's Elijah (see my review on this blog), with a choir which included the Young Singers alongside Wroclaw Philharmonic Choir and Gabrieli. In January 2013 Paul McCreesh is going back into the studio to record Britten's War Requiem with the Young Singers and their Big Give project will help.

The basic financial facts are that Gabrieli already has money pledged, if they can raise £10,000 during the three days of the Big Give (6, 7, 8 December) then they will have a total of £20,000. Some of this will go towards the War Requiem recording, but the majority will go towards other activities with the Young Singers.

Bridging that gap

Many opera companies are seeking to help singers bridge the gap between post-graduate study and their full career. Some voice types require a long further period of work before the voice comes into its own, this is particularly true of dramatic sopranos, and also many male voice types. At Grange Park Opera they have a you artists scheme, the Rising Stars, who do a production each year. But in addition there is their Scholarship Fund, which helps singers with lessons and coachings for particular roles. Their website includes some fascinating testimonials about what can be achieved by such means. Now the website also includes a fascinating blog post from tenor Anthony Flaum who is studying at the National Opera studio, it gives a fascinating insight into a young singers world.

Singing for Lely - the Courtauld Community Choir

Peter Lely - The Concert

We attended one of the Courtauld Lates during the run of the Courtauld Gallery's previous exhibition, and had enjoyed the mixture of art, talks and music (see my blog entry), so had every intention of going along on the evening of Thursday 30 November for a similar event themed on their Peter Lely: A Lyrical Vision exhibition. Then an email arrived from someone I had sung with who works at the gallery, with information about a choir being formed to rehearse and perform music from Lely's time. All from scratch. So at 5pm yesterday (30 November) I found myself in the lecture theatre of the Courtauld Institute (which is in Somerset House, next door to the Courtauld Gallery) with a varied mix of people all who had come to sing.

Last night of the London Song Festival

Jonathan McGovern
credit Benjamin Ealovega

Admittedly there was no flag waving or ‘Land of Hope and Glory’ but nevertheless this was an evening the London Song Festival could be proud of. Now in its 6th year, the London Song Festival, founded by Nigel Foster aims to ‘halt the decline of the song recital’. A mixture of showcase concerts and masterclasses run throughout October and November. The showcase concerts feature young professional singers and the workshops are aimed at GCSE and A level students as well as singers from Music College.

Ruby Hughes
credit Camilo Echeverri

Last night’s concert (28 November) was billed as being built around the theme of ‘Songs of Wandering and of the Night’, but both ‘wandering’ and ‘night’ were very inventively interpreted. The singers were Ruby Hughes and Jonathan McGovern. Ruby studied at Chetham’s, Guildhall and Munich and is currently a New Generation Artist at BBC Radio 3. Jonathon studied at King’s College London, Royal Academy of Music and Royal Academy Opera, and is a Britten-Pears Young artist and an Associate artist with Classical Opera. Both have shining credentials, having won prizes galore before settling into recital and opera, and both have sung with the ENO and the BBC Philharmonic. The accompanist was Nigel Foster himself.

ENO Community Choir

If you are a Friend of English National Opera, then you probably received an e-mail recently about a carol concert next week. This is being given by the ENO Community Choir, a group which meets on Thursday evenings during term time. They sing a varied repertoire from pop to opera, world music and seasonal classics. They are directed by Rachel Dawson and are open to anyone, all they ask is that you work on your voice and commit to attending weekly rehearsals. More information from the group's page on the ENO website.

British Composer Awards celebrates 10 years

This year's British Composer Awards will be announced at an awards ceremony at the Goldsmith's Hall on Monday 3 December. Amazingly the awards are 10 years old. When they were first set up by the British Academy of Songwriters and Composers you wondered why no-one had thought of it earlier, and now it has become a brilliant part of the musical year. This year, to celebrate the 10th anniversary, there is also a concert on Wednesday 5th December at the Queen Elizabeth Hall on London's South Bank. This will feature 11 compositions from previous awards, performed by Endymion and the Vasari Singers.

I'Incoronazione di Poppea at the RCM

Louise Alder (Poppea) and Rannveig Karadottir (Nerone)
L'Incoronazione di Poppea at RCM

Monteverdi's operas are the earliest to have a regular place in the repertoire. Whilst his first opera Orfeo was written for the Mantuan Court, his final one L'Incoronazione di Poppea was written for the public theatre in Venice. The performances there were a commercial enterprise and the operas structured in a way which appealed to the Venetian public. This involved a mixture of comic and serious in the same work, something which was distinctive to Venetian opera. Such works were not, however, haphazard with the lower class characters being the comic ones and the upper class ones being the serious. You only have to compare Cavalli's Serse (written for Venice) and Handel's Serse (written for London) to see how time and distance had changed the way opera was structured. Handel's version drops all but one servant, and all the comic flirting and liaisons disappear. But the Venetian idea of a mixture of comic and serious continued into the 18th century when Goldoni wrote the librettos for a series of operas by Galuppi. These, with their serious masters and comic servants, were an important influence on Mozart.

Though Busenello's libretto for Monteveredi's L'Incoronazione di Poppea is quite tightly constructed, it still results in a rather diverse plot, a sprawling work with a substantial running time. It is also a style of opera which is entirely absent from our opera houses (early 19th century Italian operas such as Rossini's The Thieving Magpie use the semi-seria genre but few more recent ones do). So directors tend to go at it with a pair of shears, and no production is ever quite the same as the previous. The new production at the Royal College of Music directed by James Conway, designed by Samai Blak, which we saw on 28 November, uses a heavily cut version with emphasises the drama of Monteverdi's opera at the expense of other elements.

Cello Pilgrimage - over £50

The newsletter for the Friends of the National Churches Trust popped into my letterbox recently. Skimming through it, amongst the information about grants given to churches, was a note about Orlando Jopling and his Cello Pilgrimage. Orlando Jopling has now given over 75 recitals of Bach's Suites for solo cello, in an amazing variety of churches, from huge light-filled Wren masterpieces in city centres to intimate and atmospheric medieval churches on remote moorland. And so far raised over £50,000.

Challenging on all fronts - ETO's plans for 2013

English Touring Opera has confirmed its plans for 2013, and quite a programme it is too. As already announced, their spring tour involves Mozart's Cosi van tutte, Verdi's Simon Boccanegra, and Donizetti's L'assiedo di Calais; sponsorship from the Peter Moores Foundation meaning that they can tour the Verdi with a slightly bigger orchestra than would otherwise be possible. In the autumn, the trio of operas are equally challenging in different ways, Monteverdi's L'Incoronazione di Poppea, Cavalli's Giasone and Handel's Agrippina.

Merton College Choir - Choral at Cadogan

In its present incarnation, the choir of Merton College, Oxford has existed since 2008 when Benjamin Nicholas and Peter Phillips became the Reed Rubin Directors of Music. Consisting of undergraduates and post-graduates, many holding choral scholarships at Merton College, the choir has rapidly developed a fine reputation. 2014 will see the college's 750th anniversary celebrations and as a built up to this, the college has started commissioning music for the choir, starting with the Seven Magnificat Antiphons for the Merton Choirbook, which were premiered earlier this year. The choir brought these along with a programme of other Advent Music to Cadogan Hall on Tuesday 27 November.

The People's Orchestra - building on success

Following their successful debut concert in November at Birmingham's Adrian Boult Hall, the People's Orchestra have two further concerts in December. One, at Symphony Hall in Birmingham, is the Radio WM Christmas concert and the other, at Millennium Point, is the premiere of The Hobbit. Midlands based The People's Orchestra was set this year to be a new amateur orchestra filling in a gap in provision when students leave youth orchestras. The orchestra specialises in film music and their debut concert, Trailers combined the film music, with Indian Dance and Drumming, and two completely new pieces of music created by the members.

BBC joins South Bank Centre's Rest is Noise Festival

The South Bank Centre's ambitious The Rest is Noise festival runs for all of 2013 and aims to survey key moments in 20th century music (see my blog entry previewing the festival). The BBC has announced plans for a partnership with the South Bank Centre, with BBC Four and BBC Radio 3 offering complementary programming, plus the participation of the BBC Concert Orchestra in the festival itself.

Celebrating 10 years of support for young artists

You might not have actually heard of the Borletti Buitoni Trust, but you almost certainly have heard one of the artists supported by them. The Trust provides financial support to young artists at the beginning of their career and has an impressive roster of alumni. Now some of these are coming back to help the Trust celebrate its 10th birthday in May 2013 with a range of concerts and events at the South Bank.

CD review - Klassika

Richard Chapman is a classically trained guitarist who has decided to stretch the envelope and has released an EP (on digital download) of his own music, pop-folk in feel, but still with a challenging guitar part. If you have ever been dissatisfied with the finger-work and with the eternal strumming on popular guitar-led music, then this is for you.

Chelsea Opera Group - Don Quichotte

Poster for the first Paris
Don Quichotte in 1910

Most of Massenet's operas are about the female voice, not only does he seem to have been in love with it but many of his works were inspired by his love for particular singers. His infatuation with the soprano Sibyl Sanderson brought a clutch of works written for her in the 1880's and 1890's. Later mezzo-soprano Lucy Arbell would have roles in six of the composer's final operas. These later works were nearly all premiered at Monte Carlo rather than Paris; Massenet seems to have not been able to recapture the Parisian success of his early career. It is from this later period that Don Quichotte dates. Written for the great Russian bass Feodor Chalyiapin, with Lucy Arbell as Dulcinee. It was to prove successful in Monte Carlo and in Paris and would give the composer a late success.

The Director Speaks

Before last night's BBC Radio 3 broadcast of English National Opera's new production of Ralph Vaughan Williams's Pilgrims Progress, there was the usual introduction with an interview with Roland Wood (who sang Pilgrim and Bunyan) and with the director, Yoshi Oida. It was illuminating and fascinating as Oida had a quite distinctive take on Bunyan's story (he'd not read the book until asked to direct the opera). When we saw the opera live,  I had gathered a lot of what Oida seemed to be saying by the end of the opera. But I could not help feeling that to have heard (or read) Oida's short talk before seeing the production at the London Coliseum would have been helpful.

CD Review - The Last Musician of Ur

In 2003 the Gold Lyre of Ur was damages by looters at the Iraq Museum in Baghdad. The Lyre is the earliest stringed instrument ever found. In 2004 harpist Andrew Lowings began a project to build an authentic playable reproduction of the lyre. He asked composer Michael Mauldin if he could use some of Mauldin's harp music to help promote the project. This collaboration was to grow, in 2009, into a commission for an orchestral piece with prominent harp part, telling the story of the Last Musician of Ur.

Delights at the Handel House museum

The January to April season at the Handel House museum has some wonderful events lined up, alongside their new exhibition about Charles Jennens, the librettist to Handel's oratorios. Concerts include Italian opera in England, new work from Kerry Andrews their previous composer-in-residence and the opportunity to sing in Handel's Saul.

Charles Jennens provided Handel with the librettos of two of his finest dramatic oratorios, Saul and Belshazzar as well as compiling the text of Messiah. He was curious and rather difficult person, with rather definite ideas about Handel's music and how his words should be set. His slightly dyspeptic marginalia in Mainwaring's biography of Handel are characteristic, but also very useful to historians.

London Symphony Orchestra explorations

The London Symphony Orchestra's Winter Season now on, includes some rather interesting concentrations on individual artists and composers. They are having a mini Szymanowski festival with Valery Gergiev conducting Szymanowski's 3rd and 4th symphonies, plus the 2nd violin concerto, and groups of concerts devoted violinist Leonidas Kavakos and composers Mark Antony Turnage and John Adams.

Passion and Discipline - the Russian Virtuosi of Europe

Russian Virtuosi of Europe

The Russian Virtuosi of Europe were formed in 2004 by the London-based Russian violinist Yuri Zhislin, bringing together young players from the Russian School of string playing. The ensemble's appearance at Cadogan Hall on Friday 23 November, was the first chance to hear them in London this season. The concert also gave us the opportunity to hear the work of Rachael Young, a young New Zealand born cellist turned conductor who has been working with Leonard Grin. Their programme included three contrasting works by Russian composers, Schnittke, Shostakovitch and Tchaikovsky.

Call for young singers - Genesis Sixteen

Genesis Sixteen
(photo credit Benjamin Harte)

Harry Christophers and the Sixteen are looking for young singers to take part in the next Genesis Sixteen, their free choral training programme for 18 to 23 year olds. Founded in 2011 by the Sixteen in partnership with the Genesis Foundation, Genesis Sixteen is a training programme for singers keen on ensemble singing; the first such programme in the UK. It aims to bridge the gap from student to professional practitioner.  The 22 singers chosen will take part in four week-long and weekend courses, receive group tuition, individual mentoring from members of The Sixteen and master-classes from vocal experts.

Well meaning confusion - why Carmen sounds like it does

Galli-Marie
as Carmen

When the Peter Moores Foundation sponsored recording of Bizet's Carmen in English was recorded for Chandos, one of the first jobs was to prepare an edition of the opera for the performers to use. Richard Langham Smith's new edition is published by Peters and forms a new Urtext edition. The strange thing is not that it should need doing, after all most 19th century operas are getting new Urtext editions to help remove the inaccuracies that have crept in. But the oddity about Bizet's Carmen is that there has never been a coherent edition which reflects what was first performed and that for much of Carmen's popularity, the edition used bore striking differences from what was first performed. So what was the problem?

Tony Hall - envoi

So he is going. It was inevitable that Tony Hall would leave the Royal Opera House at some time and we must think ourselves lucky that he has devoted 11 years to Covent Garden and managed a quiet transformation. Whoever is chosen in his place, it will mean that Coven Garden will start next year with both a new Director of Opera (Kasper Holten) and a new Chief Executive, so we have interesting times ahead.

40 already - Brodsky Quartet celebrates at Kings Place

From the 6 to 8 December, the Brodsky Quartet are celebrating their 40th anniversary with a series of events at Kings Place, in London. The quartet have never been ones to simply follow the well trod route, and unpredictable as ever their concerts at Kings Place include Schubert and George Crumb, a celebration of jazz, blues and rock, and the opportunity for the audience to choose the programme.

Christine Brewer at the Wimbledon Music Festival

Christine Brewer's appearances in the UK are not that frequent, so it was an especial pleasure to encounter her in recital accompanied by at the Wimbledon Music Festival at St John's Church, SW19 on Thursday 22 November. The first half of her programme consisted of Richard Strauss's Four Last Songs and Richard Wagner's Wesendonck Lieder with the second half being taken up with 20th century songs, all written as encore type pieces for sopranos such as Kirsten Flagstad, Eileen Farrell and Helen Traubel.

Creating socially responsible individuals as well as musicians

Stockwell Children's Orchestra
in rehearsal

Four times a week after school, children from In Harmony Lambeth meet for their after school orchestra. The children receive up to 5 hours of music tuition during school hours, but membership of the orchestra is essential to the In Harmony Lambeth project. In fact, as soon as a child gets his or her instrument, they can join the most junior orchestra. I went along on Thursday to attend a rehearsal of the Holst Ensemble, In Harmony Lambeth's senior orchestra.

Creeping capitalism - branding the Coli

If you are one of those people who gets annoyed (as I do) by the names of places being used as extended advertising (e.g. the O2 Arena) then the news from the London Coliseum will not please. ENO are re-evaluating their sponsorship and the naming rights to the London Coliseum are potentially available. This is a practice common in football stadiums, but frankly I would be sad if we had to extend it to theatres and the like, even though it could bring in potential revenue. What's in a name, is it worth having the London Coliseum branded if the money brought us, say, a new Ring Cycle?

Greener concerts

I have already blogged about the performance of Maurice Greene's Amoretti at St George's Church, Hanover Square on December 7. One of the performers, harpsichordist Luke Green, has let me know that there are two other opportunities to hear the programme as they are performing it on Tuesday 4 December at Fitzwilliam College, Cambridge and on Wednesday 5 December at New College Oxford. The Oxford performance will be prefaced by a talk by H. Diack Johnstone. The performers are Benjamin Hulett (tenor), Giangiacomo Pinardi (theorbo) and Luke Green (harpsichord). They will be performing Maurice Green's complete 1748 song-cycle setting Spenser's Amoretti and will be celebrating the launch of their Naxos recording of the work.

The Cardinall's Musick at Wimbledon Music Festival

Andrew Carwood and his ensemble, the Cardinall's Musick, brought their programme Il Siglio D'Oro: Muisc of Spain's Golden Age to St Paul's Church, SW19 as part of the Wimbledon Music Festival on Wednesday 21 November. Directed by Carwood, who provided illuminating and entertaining spoken introductions to the programme, the eight singers performed music by Guerrero, Morales, Esquivel, Victoria, Esquivel and Lobo, all of it dedicated in some way to the Virgin Mary. In one of his introductions Carwood explained that the Western Church, unlike the Orthodox Church, had no female personification in its representation of God. So at a time when God was often a man of war, it was to the Virgin that people turned for the feminine virtues. And this is reflected in the amazing flowering of music dedicated to her at the period.

Total Permission

Total Permission underwater

As part of the London 2012 Cultural Olympiad there was a strand called Unlimited which encouraged deaf and disabled artists to take risks, to create work that is exceptional. To celebrate The Space, the Arts Council's digital download service, now has a new documentary, Total Permission, in which Charles Hazelwood encounters 12 of the artists commissioned by Unlimited.  In the film Hazelwood talks to the artists, reviews their work and talks to audience members at the Southbank Centre's Unlimited Festival. Hazelwood is himself the founder of the British Paraorchestra, the UK's first orchestra featuring world class musicians with disabilities.

Backstage at the opera

As a rule I prefer not to use acronyms, but the Wales Millennium Centre is such a cumbersome name that perhaps WMC is preferable. Still, it is an attractive building with far more to it than you realise. The weekend of 24/25 November is you can explore further, as they are having an open weekend, your chance to get to see what happens back stage and in other nooks and crannies of the building. There are performances in the Weston Studio including children's shows, a circus aerial workshop and a drama workshop, events in the BBC's Hoddinott Hall with a free performance from the BBC National Orchestra of Wales and a 'try out an instrument' workshop. There is a youth opera workshop in the WNO's Orchestra Hall and throughout the day there are performances on the main stage. Further information from the Wales Milennium Centre website.

London Handel Festival

The first outlines of next year's London Handel Festival have come in, with some rather tempting offerings, including Handel's penultimate Italian opera, three of his oratorios with Italian names and opera by his contemporaries Telemann and Hasse. Both Handel's early Italian oratorios are being performed. Il trionfo del tempo e del disinganno at St George's Hanover Square on 21 March, with is pair Il Resurrezione at the Wigmore Hall on 1 April. The festival concludes with a performance on 16 April at St George's of one of Handel's most quintessentially English oratorios, L'Allegro, il Penseroso ed il Moderato with its text based on Milton's poems. And this year's opera will be Imeneo.