An encounter with Kate Lindsey

The American mezzo-soprano Kate Lindsey made her UK debut last year as Zerlina in Don Giovanni at Covent Garden. On May 18, 2013 she makes both her Glyndebourne debut and her role debut as the Composer in Katharina Thoma's new production of Richard Strauss's Ariadne auf Naxos which will be Vladimir Jurowski's last project as musical director, with Soile Isokoski as Ariadne and Laura Claycomb as Zerbinetta. I travelled down to Glyndebourne to meet Lindsey and interview her for OperaToday.com. Modern Glyndebourne with its combination of new and old buildings, is something of a maze. Once the cab had dropped me at the stage door, I was welcomed and then taken on a circuitous route, circumnavigating some building works, through to the old building which was once the green room of the old theatre but is now the artists' area. A pleasant courtyard led to the artists' canteen, where over coffee I chatted to Lindsey.

Dressed all in black, with very striking black cowboy-style boots, Lindsey is slim and attractive, with long dark hair, so it is easy to understand why she has been making something of a success of travesty roles. Niklausse in Les Contes d'Hoffmann is something of a speciality, she returns to the role next year in Munich, and she has a growing roster of Mozart travesty roles, Cherubino and Annio with Sesto (La Clemenza di Tito) to come. But she has also been performing Angelina in Rossini's La Cenerentola so clearly she does not plan to stay permanently in trousers.

Rupert Charlesworth wins London Handel Singing Competition

Rupert Charlesworth, who won the 2013
London Handel Singing Competition

Tenor Rupert Charlesworth has won the 12th London Handel Singing Competition, which took place as part of the London Handel Festival. At the final on 11 April 2013 at St George's Church, Hanover Square, Charlesworth sang arias from Rodelinda, Theodora and Belshazzar. Charlesworth won both the First Prize - the Regina Etz Prize, and the Audience Price - the Michael Normington Prize. He won a performance at next year's London Handel Festival as well as a cash prize. The winner of the second prize, Stephen Chambers (also a tenor), will also sing at the 2014 festival. The Adjudicators were Ian Partridge, Edward Blakeman, Catherine Denley, Michael George and Rosemary Joshua. Rupert Charlesworth is a 2011 Academy Laureate of the Festival d’Aix-en-Provence. He covered the role of Angel 3/John in George Benjamin's Written on Skin at Aix en Provence and Covent Garden and will be singing the role at the 2013 Maggio Musicale Fiorentino. He sang the role of the Solider in ETO's Emperor of Atlantis in 2012.

Gaelle Arquez & James Baillieu recital

Last night (17 April) we attended a private recital by mezzo-soprano Gaelle Arquez and pianist James Baillieu, given in preparation for their Wigmore Hall concert on Sunday 21 April 2013. Arquez studied musicology at the Paris Conservatoire, going on to win the 2009 Gold Medal Singing Competition, and she is a recipient of the Wigmore Hall/Independent Opera Voice Fellowship. Their recital was of French and Spanish song, combining songs by Reynaldo Hahn, Francis Poulenc and Henri Duparc, with Georges Bizet and Leo Delibes in Spanish mood, plus songs by Agustin Lara, Manuel de Falla and Fernando Obradors.

Buxton Festival 2013 launch

Richard Strauss - Intermezzo
Buxton Festival 2012
with Stephen Gadd
and Janis Kelly

To the Houses of Parliament yesterday (17 April 2013) for 2013 Buxton Festival launch, which took place in the Terrace Room, with its glorious views of the Thames (thankfully at high tide). The event was hosted by Andrew Bingham, the MP for High Peak within whose constituency Buxton lies. Speakers included the Chairman of the Buxton Festival Dame Janet Smith, Andrew Bingham MP, the Secretary of State for Culture Media and Sport Maria Miller MP and Stephen Barlow, the artistic director of the festival. This year's festival includes a tempting and varied programme with operas by Mozart, Gounod, Saint-Saens, Vivaldi, Sciarrino and Messager plus extensive other programmes.

Dame Janet explained that one reason for having the launch in London, in so prominent a place, was to help spread the word about the festival. The festival has over 3000 loyal friends, who come each year to show their support but this is not enough for festival finances and they hopes to attract more people. Both she and Andrew Bingham emphasised that Buxton was not that far away from London. In fact one innovation, which was introduced last year and continues this year, was the presentation of the main operas at matinees to make it easier for people who might wish to travel.

Handel's L'Allegro at the London Handel Festival

Elisabeth Duparc
'La Francesina'
soprano soloist in
premiere of Handel's
L'Allegro

George Frideric Handel's oratorio L'Allegro, il Penseroso ed il Moderato was always intended to be a crowd pleaser, a role that it still occupies today. In late 1739 Handel informed Charles Jennens that he would not yet set the libretto that Jennens had sent him (it would eventually become Messiah). Instead for his 1740 season he planned to 'please the Town with something of a gayer Turn'. Instead of being miffed at having his own suggestion turned down, Jennens went into overdrive to organise something suitable for Handel to set. By suitable, Jennens and a number of Handel's other English friends would have meant something by one of the major English writers. Like Milton for instance.

Handel's English friends were keen for him to apply his genius not just to the Bible, but to English writers equal to his genius. He had set Dryden but Dryden was not a poet of the first water. Milton had come back into favour, a monument to him had been raised in Westminster Abbey in 1737. But suggestions that Handel might use Paradise Lost seem to have fallen on deaf ears (Handel was offered at least two libretto's based on Milton's work).

John Beard, tenor soloists
in premiere of Handel's
L'Allegro

Charles Jennens' friend James Harris had an idea for a scheme based on Milton's poems L'Allegro and Il Penseroso, interleaving the two so as to provide the sort of vivid contrasts which appealed to Handel. This worked, and Handel's new oratorio was set in motion. The text, however, was too short and after looking through his edition of Milton, Handel lighted upon At a solemn musick (nowadays known to us for Hubert Parry's musical setting). But this would not do, the sacred nature of the ode contrasting oddly with the secular nature of the first two parts of the oratorio. Jennens commented in a letter to Harris that 'It has no sort of connection with the other', so Jennens wrote a third part Il Moderato (The Moderate Man) as conclusion. This was how L'Allegro, il Penseroso ed il Moderato was premiered by Handel in 1740 (with soloists including Elisabeth Duparc 'La Francesina' and John Beard). But soon afterwards Hand made changes, introducing Italian singers and Italian texts. He seems to have lost confidence in Il Moderato replacing it by his 1739 St Cecilia Ode.

For the London Handel Festival performance at St George's Church, Hanover Square, London on Tuesday 16 April 2013 (the final event of the 2013 festival), Lawrence Cummings conducted the London Handel Singers and Orchestra with soloists Rosemary Joshua, Anna Dennis, Stuart Jackson and George Humphreys. Cummings had reconstructed the form of the work from its premiere performances, so that we had the first two movements of Handel's  Concerto Grosso Opus 6 no. 1 as the overture to part one, the first two movements of Concerto Grosso Opus 6 no. 3 as the overture to part two, and Organ Concerto Opus 7 no. 1 between parts two and three. This latter was played by Cummings on the new organ at St. George's. The result was surprisingly satisfying without the patchwork effect that you might have expected.

Fazil Say convicted

I wrote last year about Turkish composer Fazil Say's trial in Turkey. He has now been convicted of blasphemy and given a ten month suspended prison sentence for inciting hatred over a series of comments made on Twitter. He was tried for denigrating Islam, in a series of tweets he quoted the verse of Omar Khayyam attacking pious hypocrisy. The suspended sentence means that if he commits the same offence again in the next five years, he will go to prison. A recent Amnesty International report called the lack of freedom of speech in Turkey one of the country's 'most entrenched human rights problems'. Say's supporters have been re-tweeting the verses.    The young Turkish pianist, AyseDeniz Gokcin, will be playing some of Fazil Say's music at a concert on 25 April at St James's Piccadilly, London, where she is appearing with the Talent Unlimited Chamber Ensemble. 

From opera to good cause.

The suit in action, Dario Dugandzic
as the man, When a Man Knows

One of the items left over from the staging of my opera When a Man Knows in 2011 was the suit, worn by the baritone Dario Dugandzic who sang the lead male role. The character was supposed to be a successful businessman, so we acquired a stylish suit for him. Too small for either me or my partner to wear, since then the suit has been sitting in our house awaiting a new role. Now it has found a new starring role as we've donated it to the Suit for Success campaign, which re-cycles suits to provide interview wear for young people who are disadvantaged as a result of homelessness or lack of employment.

Cherubini - Lodoiska - CD review

By one of those curious workings of fate Lodoiska, a French opera by an Italian composer, is best known today for the influence it had on a German composer, Beethoven. Luigi Cherubini's Lodoiska was premiered in Paris in 1791. It proved popular and was premiered in other cities, with performances in Berlin in 1797 and Vienna in 1802. Such was its success in Vienna, that three other operas by Cherubini were performed. We know that Beethoven had scores of other operas by Cherubini, and it is clear that the composer must have seen Lodoiska, such is the influence of both plot and style on Beethoven's opera Fidelio. Despite its influence, Lodoiska has not featured much in the record catalogues, Cherubini's preference for using spoken dialogue perhaps putting performers off. This new recording, (naive ambroisie AM 209) the first on period instruments, is complete (with a small amount of spoken dialogue) recorded live in 2010 by the French ensemble, Le Cercle de l'Harmonie with Les Elements and a cast consisting of Nathalie Manfrino, Hjordis Thebault, Sebastian Gueze, Philippe Do, Armando Noguera, Pierre-Yves Pruvot and Alain Buet, conducted by Jeremie Rhorer.

Oxford Early Music Festival

The inaugural Oxford Early Music Festival runs from 4 to 6 May 2013 (ironically the same weekend the Cambridge Handel Festival are performing Handel's Atalanta, so choices must be made!).  The concerts are concentrated into a single weekend, but the organisers hope that the festival will grow. This festival seems to concentrate on young and exciting groups including the International Baroque Players, Oxford Baroque and Stile Antico. The opening concert is Bach's Mass in B minor in the University Church, played by the wonderful International Baroque Players with  Ensemble 45, an ensemble made up of young professionals and top choral scholars, conducted by Daniel Hyde. The fine group of soloists  mixes youth and experience with Catherine Bott, James Bowman, Nicholas Mulroy and James Birchall . On Sunday afternoon there is more Bach, this time music for unaccompanied violin and viola da gamba with Bojan Cicic and Susanne Heinrich, then the evening  sees Stile Antico, back from their US tour, in a programme of Renaissance polyphony, plus a piece written for the group by John McCabe in 2009.  The final pair of events on Monday had Oxford Baroque giving an open rehearsal followed by a concert of music arising outer of Luther's Reformation, with music by Schutz, Schein and Bach. Oxford has some great venues for early music and the festival is sing a variety of them. The deserve every support and have put together an interesting programme for what I hope is the first of many festivals. Further information from the Oxford Early Music Festival website.

Italian Tudors and Fallen Women - WNO 2013-14 season

Welsh National Opera's 2013-14 is the first season to feel the real benefit David Pountney's themed groupings of performances, with the company's year divided into the Tudors, Fallen Women and Faith. The Tudors encompassing Donizetti's Anna Bolena, Maria Stuarda and Roberto Devereux, Fallen Women being Manon Lescaut, La Traviata and Henze's Boulevard Solitude, and Faith pairing Schoenberg's Moses und Aron with Verdi's Nabucco.

I usually moan about UK companies performing Maria Stuarda rather than one of Donizetti's other serious operas, but in the context of two of his other Tudor operas it makes sense. The three productions will use the same set, with two being directed by Alessandro Talevi and the designs for all three being by his regular collaborators designer Madeleine Boyd and lighting designer by Matt Haskins. Rudolf Frey directs Maria Stuarda. Casting includes two Queen Elizabeths, English soprano Judith Howarth in Maria Stuarda and French-Canadian soprano Alexandra Deshorties in Roberto Devereux. Serena Farnocchia and Linda Richardson share the title role in Anna Bolena. (Farnocchia sang the role at last year's Maggio Musicale Fiorentino conducted by Roberto Abbado). Alistair Miles is Henry VIII (and Talbot in Maria Stuarda). Christine Rice is Maria Stuarda. Other cast includes Bruce Sledge (whom we saw in Santa Fe in Rossini's Maometto Secondo) as Leicester, the Italian American tenor Leonardo Capalbo as Roberto Devereux (he returns as Alfredo Germont later in the season), and Leah-Marian Jones as Sara.

Rustem Hayroudinoff piano recital

Russian pianist Rustem Hayroudinoff (strictly he's a Tatar by nationality, he was born in Kazan) was probably the first student to come straight out of Soviet Russia and into the Royal Academy of Music and has now become one of the youngest Professors of Piano at the RAM. His solo recital at St John's Smith Square on Saturday 13 April 2013 was a highly ambitious affair, with a programme starting with J.S. Bach's Partita no. 2 and C.P.E. Bach's Sonata in F sharp minor and finishing with Rachmaninov's mammoth Piano Sonata No. 1 Opus 28. In between we had Liszt's Sonnetto 123 del Petrarca (Petrarch's Sonnet 123) and Liszt's Mephisto Waltz No 1.

Bach's own description of his keyboard partitas is surprisingly depreciating, referring to them on the title page as 'Keyboard Exercises', though they are of course more substantial than this. Bach sticks to the traditional use of dance movements in the suites, Partita no. 2 consists of a substantial Sinfonia followed by an Allemand, Courante, Sarabane, Rondo and Capriccio. As with most of Bach's dance-based forms, you could not imagine dancing to the music, the movements are instead striking explorations of the polyphonic keyboard art. If we compare Bach to his great contemporary Handel, both renowned keyboard virtuosos, both were quite free with their keyboard suites. Bach stuck to the traditional sequences of dance music, but stretched to the forms to suite his purposes, whilst Handel didn't use the traditional dance sequences at all.

CD Review - The Heart that Flutters - Lawrence Brownlee

This recital disc from American tenor Lawrence Brownlee and pianist Iain Burnside, is from the first batch of discs in the new collaboration between Rosenblatt Recitals and Opus Arte. The disc mixes items from Brownlee's two Rosenblatt Recitals (May 2010 at St John's Smith Square and September 2012 at Wigmore Hall) with items recorded in the studio. The result is an attractively eclectic mix including  Spirituals, arias from Rossini's Il Turco in Italia and Donizetti's La Fille du Regiment, songs by Henri Duparc and Ben Moore and Alberto Ginastera's Cinco canciones populares argentinas, but is perhaps notable for the live recording of Franz Liszt's Three Petrarch Sonnets. These have been rather absent from the catalogue in their proper tenor version and it is pleasing to have a newly recommendable version.

Rosenblatt Recitals by the sea

The Pinnacle on Branscombe Beach

Ian Rosenblatt, founder of Rosenblatt Recitals, is starting a festival in Devon which aims to provide the Rosenblatt experience in a seaside setting, in Branscombe in Devon. Sounds delightful. This year's festival runs from 26 to 28 July and is curated by Iain Burnside. It includes soprano Ailyn Perez and tenor Stephen Costello (who happens to be her husband) with Iain Burnside, plus the Carducci Quartet, cellist Philip Higham in a programme of solo Bach and Britten, late night jazz and a beach front concert. What more could one want? (Good weather perhaps!). Further details from the Rosenblatt Recitals website.

Winchester Chamber Music Festival

This year's Winchester Chamber Music Festival takes place from 25 to 28 April 2013, with concerts taking place at the Discovery Centre and at St. Lawrence's Church in Winchester. The festival was founded in 2008 and is organised by the London Bridge Ensemble - Daniel Tong (piano), Laura Samuel (violin), Tom Dunn (viola), Kate Gould (cello). (Tong and Gould are the festival's artistic directors). This year the ensemble are joined by guests Esther Hoppe (violin), Krusztof Chorzelski (viola/violin) and Richard Lester (cello).  The programme has a thread of Shostakovich running through it with the Piano Quintet in G minor, Sonata for Cello and Piano in D minor and Piano Trio in E minor, plus an open rehearsal of the quintet. Other composers featured included Mozart (including a late night performance of his String Quintet in G minor, K516), Haydn, Debussy, Ravel and Borodin. The festival concludes with a performance of Tchaikovsky's Souvenirs de Florence.

Michel van der Aa - Sunken Garden

Sunken Garden
Kate Miller-Heidke & Jonathan McGovern; Photo by Joost Rietdijk

Michel van der Aa is a young Dutch composer and film-maker whose stage works mix live action and film. His music-theatre piece After Life (based on the Hirokazu Koreeda film Wonderful Life), used filmed interviews integrated into the live action. His latest music theatre work, Sunken Garden, (described as a film opera), is a co-commission between ENO and the Barbican, Luminato Festival and the Opera National de Lyon, with the co-production also travelling to the Holland Festival. Sunken Garden, van der Aa's fourth music-theatre work, is the first on which he has worked with a collaborator. The novelist David Mitchell wrote the libretto. Mitchell is the author of the best selling novel Cloud Atlas, but also wrote the libretto for Klaas de Vries' opera Wake performed by Dutch National Reisopera in 2010. Sunken Garden was premiered by ENO at the Barbican in a production designed by Theun Mosk and directed by the composer, with film sequences (including those using 3 D film) also directed by the composer. The singing cast consisted of Roderick Williams, Katherine Manley and Claron McFadden seen live, plus Jonathan McGovern and Kate Miller-Heidke seen on film. There was also a cast of actors seen on film (Stephen Henry, Harriet Dobby, Alwyne Taylor, Joanna Bond, Caroline Jay and Yiftach Mizrahi). Andre de Ridder conducted. We caught the much anticipated premiere on 12 April 2013.

ETO and many more nominated for Royal Philharmonic Society Music Awards

Rupert Charlesworth, Jeffrey Stewart, Callum Thorpe,
Richard Mosley-Evans, Katie Bray, Paula Sides, Robert Winslade Anderson.
English Touring Opera // Bach, Christ lag in Todesbanden.
Photo: Richard Hubert Smith

The Royal Philharmonic Society Music Awards, presented for outstanding achievement in 2012, announced this year's shortlist yesterday. The winners will be announced at a ceremony on 14 May 2012 at London's Dorchester Hotel with RPS Gold Medallist Dame Janet Baker presenting the winners trophies. This years RPS Music Awards are being presented as part of RPS200 celebrating the society's 200th birthday. The list of nominees reflects the amazing breadth of British musical life last year with nods to the Royal Opera House's Ring Cycle and Trojans, as well as ENO, ETO, Aldeburgh and Birmingham Opera Company. Contemporary opera features quite heavily, as does contemporary music in general. The list is so strong, that you rather feel sorry for the judges having to choose. And we'll have to wait until 14 May to find out.

Kathleen Ferrier Awards 2013

On Friday 26 April 2013, the final of the 2013 Kathleen Ferrier Awards takes place at the Wigmore Hall, with the semi final being held on Tuesday 23 April. The Kathleen Ferrier Memorial Scholarship Fund was founded in 1953 in memory of the contralto who died at the age of 41. The first awards took place in 1956 and this year's competition will be the 58th. Recent winners have included Natalya Romaniw (2012), Kitty Whately (2011), Njabulo Madlala (2010), Sarah-Jane Brandon (2009), Ben Johnson (2008) and Katherine Broderick (2007). The list of semi-finalists, who take part in the  semi-finals on 23 April, includes Louise Alder, Johnny Herford, Ashley Riches and Anna Starushkevych.

Veronique Gens and Julius Drake in Duparc, Poulenc, Gounod and Debussy at Temple Song

Veronique Gens does not make that many appearances in the UK so it was a particular pleasure to encounter her recital of French song as part of Temple Music's Temple Song 2013. Her recital, with Julius Drake at the piano, in Middle Temple Hall on Thursday 12 April  including eight songs by Henri Duparc (nearly half of his surviving output, plus two of Claude Debussy's earliest songs, four by Charles Gounod and concluded with a group of songs by Francis Poulenc including Banalites. Inner Temple Hall with its relatively intimate atmosphere and warm acoustic was the perfect setting to encounter an artist as communicative as Gens.

It is always a particular delight to hear French song performed by Francophone artists, and throughout the recital you were aware of Gens making the words, the poetry, as important as the music, without ever compromising the musical line. Highly communicative, you almost did not need the words. The description stylish, civilised, elegant, expressive, infinitely fascinating and mysterious could well apply both to the French song repertoire and to Gens as a performer.

Alessio Bax plays Mozart Piano Concertos nos 24 & 27

I have to confess that when this disc dropped through my letter-box I did not immediately think, Oh goodie, Mozart piano concertos. Yes, I was interested in Alessio Bax, the young Italian born, USA based pianist and the Southbank Sinfonia under their conductor Simon Over. But Mozart piano concertos? I heard quite a number in the 1980's when I attended the concert series given by the Halle in Manchester and then by the Scottish National Orchestra in Edinburgh, where the concertos were something of a staple in the concert programmes. Whilst I have come to love many aspects of Mozart's music, his piano concertos are still something of a puzzle, and this review is by way of an exploration.

The first piano in England

A 1720 fortepiano by Cristofori in
the Metropolitan Museum, New York

In 1749 an English engineer called John Grundy visited Charles Jennens' house, Gopsall Hall in Leicestershire. The new Palladian house was in the process of being built and Grundy provided a design for the grounds (never actually executed). In 1750 Grundy returned, to be entertained at the house. In his travel diary he describes the interior, with the particularly grand music room complete with stucco ceiling and carved marble fireplace. Luckily for us Grundy was inquisitive about things (as engineers might be expected to be). He describes Jennens' grand mahogany music desk, which had music stands (and associated candles) enabling 14 players to play at once. He also talks about the two keyboard instruments, a harpsichord and another made by a Venetian maker in which the strings were hit by small hammers covered with leather, making the tone softer and more melodious than a harpsichord, and with further small hammers to dampen the strings. Grundy had no idea what the instrument was called, but he gives us a very clear description. This was the first piano to appear in England.

Graham Johnson to receive Wigmore Hall medal

Graham Johnson
(c) Clive Barda

Graham Johnson has been awarded the 2013 Wigmore Hall medal 'in recognition of his unstinting championing of Song and his extraordinary achievements on the concert platform and in the recording studio'. The medal will be presented by John Gilhooly, the Director of the Hall, to Johnson during his concert on Saturday 13 April 2013 at the Wigmore Hall. The concert celebrates the launch of Graham’s three-volume encyclopaedia Franz Schubert: The Complete Songs, (published by Yale University Press). 

The concert features Schubert's settings of the British poets Colley Cibber, Abraham Cowley, 'Ossian' (James Macpherson), William Shakespeare and Walter Scott (including a complete performance of Seven Songs from Walter Scott’s Lady of the Lake), as well as songs particularly associated with memories of the book’s dedicatees. The performers include Ailish Tynan, Sarah Connolly, Mark Padmore, Ben Johnson, Robin Tritschler and Christopher Maltman.

CLoSer - Poulenc and Paris

The City of London Sinfonia's CLoSer events are intended to present music in a different, more casual environment to the usual concert hall. They are part of a wider trend for ensembles to put on what might be called classical music club nights, with the intention of attracting a newer, different audience. The City of London Sinfonia presents their CLoSer events at the Village Underground in Shoreditch, a converted Victorian warehouse space used for a variety of concerts and club nights. The CLoSer Poulenc and Paris event on 10 April 2013 was also part of the City of London Sinfonia's Poulenc Festival, celebrating the 50th anniversary of the composer's death. Stephen Layton conducted members of the City of London Sinfonia, with baritone Derek Welton and pianist Antoine Francoise, in Poulenc's Trois Mouvements perpetuels, Le bestiare, Rhapsodie negre and Le bal masque, plus Satie's Trois  Gymnopedies. Before the concert proper I attended a Q&A with City of London Sinfonia staff and players to talk about their CLoSer events.

Modern tides in East London

On Friday 12 April, the music collective Wolf Pack is presenting a 'contemporary music concert for the curious and creative' at the Chisendale Dance Space in East London (Chisendale Road, London E3 5QZ). They will be performing a new conceptual concert based on the them of the tide. The performances will include The Waves by the American composer and virtuoso pianist Frederic Rzewski. Also in the programme will be Floodtide by John Eacott, interpretations of songs written by Radiohead and Beach House, recent works by Gareth Churchill and Stephen Goss plus a commission from Daria Lipsinka.

BBC Music Magazine Awards

The BBC Music Magazine Awards were presented last night (9 April) at a ceremony at Kings Place. The Halle's live disc of Elgar's The Apostles with Rebecca Evans, Alice Coote, Paul Groves, Jacques Imbrailo, David Kempster and Brindley Sherratt conducted by Mark Elder, scooped both the Recording of the Year and the Choral Awards. The Opera Award went to the Early Opera company for their recording of Handel's  Alceste with Lucy Crowe, Benjamin Hulett and Andrew Foster-Williams conducted by Christian Curnyn. Angelika Kirschlager and Julius Drake's second volume of Liszt songs won the vocal award. Other winners included the Berlin Philharmonic and Simon Rattle (Orchestral and DVD), Trio Zimmerman (Chamber). Full details from the BBC Music Magazine Awards website.

Celebrations at the LSO

Having celebrated the 10th anniversary of LSO St Lukes, there is a brace of birthdays coming up at London Symphony Orchestra concerts. On 25 April 2013, John Eliot Gardiner conducts the LSO in a concert which includes Stravinsky's Apollon Musagete and Oedipus Rex with Jennifer Johnston, Stuart Skelton and Gideon Saks, in celebration of Gardiner's 70th birthday. Then on 22 May, Valery Gergiev celebrates his birthday with a concert including Shostakovich's Piano Concerto No. 2, and act five from Berlioz's The Trojans, plus music by Paganini, Ravel and Sarasate with Leonidas Kavakos (violin) and Alexander Toradze (piano). At next week's performances of Britten's The Turn of the Screw (16, 17 April), the conductor will be Richard Farnes replacing Colin Davis who has been ill. The cast includes Andrew Kennedy, Sally Matthews and Catherine Wyn-Rogers. Further information from the LSO website.

Coming up at the Handel House Museum

The Handel House Museum's exhibition on Charles Jennens (see my review) closes on 14 April, but there are lots of other treats in store. Over the next few months concerts in the museum include opportunities to hear music by Handels friends and contemporaries like Telemann and Pepusch, plus explorations of his female muses including Mrs Cibber, Francesca Cuzzoni and Faustina Bordoni, as well as the more exotic castrato. As part of Museums at Night you can see the museum by candlelight, and there are new exhibitions to look forward to, celebrating the history of the building and a single year in Handel's life.. 

Songs about words

Soprano Juliet Fraser and pianist Mark Knoop are performing a programme of experimental song, Songs without words, at Turner Sims concert hall in Southampton (22 April 2013) and at The Forge in Camden (25 April). The concert includes works by Charles Ives, Mauricio Kagel and Laurence Power, plus a new song-cycle from Matthew Shlomowitz, the London-based Australian composer. He is co-director of the ensemble PlusMinus. The cycle is intriguingly called Songs about words and about the pleasure of misery five songs for soprano and piano. The Kagel pieces include Rrrr… and M.M.51 with Crane's Tour de France Statistics 1903-2003.

The perils of opera travel

A few years ago I noticed on the Welsh National Opera website, that the WNO were giving the world premiere of James Macmillan's The Sacrifice in Cardiff on the day of my partner's birthday, so booked tickets as a birthday treat. Now, we generally operate on the basis of sorting out the opera tickets and then booking the accommodation, in this case it was a mistake. The best offer of a room I could get was £900 for the penthouse at one of the big hotels, a bit out of our price range. Widening the search did notgood and finally I Googled the date, only to discover that one of the events in the Rugby World Cup was happening that day. We finally ended up staying in Bristol. Both before and after the opera we found the Cardiff full of hordes of Rugby fans out for a good time. And now, its happened again.

Giles Swayne - Stations of the Cross

In 2004 Bath Camerata under Nigel Perrin premiered Giles Swayne's Stabat Mater, a work which takes the crucifixion story and puts it in a contemporary Palestinian context, so that the grieving Mother of Christ is echoed by the grieving mothers of today. It was this work which was one of the origins of Swayne's organ piece, Stations of the Cross. In the Roman Catholic liturgy the Stations of the Cross are 14 meditations on the crucifixion which are performed regularly in Lent. I have sung in one or two of Swayne's pieces and he has a way of approaching the traditional from a striking new point of view. This new recording from Resonus Classics gives us Swayne's dramatic and thoughtful organ piece Stations of the Cross played by Simon Nieminski on the organ of St. Mary's Metropolitan Cathedral (RC), Edinburgh.

Radio 3 Composer of the Week - Joseph Horovitz and Gordon Jacob

Gordon Jacob

Next week (15 - 19 April), BBC Radio 3's Composer of the Week programme will be featuring Joseph Horovitz (born 1926) and his teacher Gordon Jacob (1895 - 1984). Both have had a significant impact upon students at the Royal College of Music, and both have been prolific in writing concertos, and music for wind and brass. Gordon Jacob studied with Stanford and RVW, and composed over 400 works; he was known for his orchestration. His students included Malcolm Arnold, Frank Bury, Ruth Gipps, Imogen Holst, Cyril Smith, Philip Cannon and Robert Turner. Horovitz is perhaps best known for cantata Captain Noah and his floating zoo, his Lady Macbeth: a scena featured in Sarah Walker's 70th birthday concert (see my review). Horovitz will be joining presenter Donald Macleod to talk about his career and that of his teacher.

Summer at the Royal Academy

Summer term at the Royal Academy includes an interesting mix, with a number of themed series including Bach Cantatas, Haydn Symphonies and the double bass. Opera includes Dido and Aeneas, L'enfant et les sortileges and Peter Maxwell Davies' The Lighthouse as well as a pair of musicals.

Opera Awards

The inaugural Opera Awards take place next week, on 22 April, at the Hilton Hotel with awards being presented in 22 categories, the first time that the opera world has had such an event. The idea being to celebrate opera, and perhaps cause a buzz to a wider audience. The event will also be supporting the creating of bursaries to help support young talent.

The Sixteen - Choral Pilgrimage 2013

The Sixteen's annual Choral Pilgrimage has become something a fixture in the UK's classical music calendar, a programme of some of the greatest renaissance polyphony performed in some of the greatest renaissance buildings. It is a substantial enterprise, 16,000 people saw them last year and this year they perform at 36 venues over the year from Edinburgh, Perth and Carlisle to Lllandaff, Exeter and Truro. We caught up with them in St. Alban's Cathedral on Saturday 6 April 2013 (their third concert, the pilgrimage having started on 2 March in Guildford). The cathedral was full, in fact extra seating had been made available the day before. It is heartening that a group like the Sixteen can fill a church (900 people or more in the nave alone) with a programme of polyphony by Palestrina, Allegri and James MacMillan. The programme was titled The Queen of Heaven and themed around music to the Virgin Mary including Palestrina's Missa Regina caeli and his Stabat Mater, along with Allegri's Miserere and James MacMillan's setting of the same text.

Poeme d'un jour - Ailyn Perez and Iain Burnside

Ailyn Perez and Iain Burnside's recital disc is one of the first group of three issued by the new collaboration between Rosenblatt Recitals and Opus Arte. Ailyn Perez is a young American lyric soprano, of Mexican parentage, who has been garnering great plaudits. Her and Burnside's programme of French and Spanish song by Reynaldo Hahn, Fernando Obradors, Joaquin Turina, Gabriel Faure and Manuel de Falla plus opera arias by Jules Massenet was partly recorded live at their March 2012 Rosenblatt Recital at St Johns Smith Square, and partly in the studio in 2010.

Charles Jennens - the man behind Handel's Messiah

George Frideric Handel lived at what is now 25 Brook Street from 1723 until his death in 1759. The house has been through many vicissitudes since, but has been open as London's Handel House Museum since 2001. Handel's house is displayed in 18th century style, with the interiors reconstructed and restored, portraits and period furniture, whilst the one next door which was lived in by Jimi Hendrix, is used as an exhibition space. I went along yesterday to catch the exhibition, Charles Jennens: the man behind Handel's Messiah before it closed on 14 April 2013.

The museum is somewhat quirky in that the ground floor is still used as a shop, so that visitors enter at the back in the basement, and then make their way up to the first and second floors where the museums are. You start on the second floor, which was Handel's bedroom floor. The rear of the house has been reconstructed, so that the closets are now rather bigger, on the second floor the room is used as an audio/visual room and I caught a bit of the video about Handel with a painter talking about her series of paintings based on Messiah, plus Christopher Hogwood and Charles Mackerras talking about Handel the man. Then into Handel's dressing room, entered from the door at the back, i.e. entering from his closet!

Rediscover the English Oboe tonight

James Turnbull, whose disc The English Oboe: Rediscovered has been released on the Champs Hill label, has a concert tonight (5 April) to launch the CD. The concert is at the Princess Alexandra Hall, Royal Overseas League, St James's Street, London SW1 and James will be playing a lovely mix of music by Michael Berkeley, Thomas Atwood, John Casken, Rubbra, Edward Longstaff, Holst and RVW - I bet you didn't know that there was so much music for the instrument!. Further information from James Turnbull's website. If you can't manage the concert then do buy the CD, and James will be popping up at the Ryedale Festival in July.

AyseDeniz Gokcin

The young Turkish pianist AyseDeniz Gokcin, who made something of a stir with her arrangements of Pink Floyd songs a la Liszt (see my review), is having a busy time at the moment. She is giving a recital at St. James's Church, Piccadilly on Thursday April 25 with the Talent Unlimited Chamber Ensemble. She has also been celebrating the 30th anniversary of Michael Jackson performing Billie Jean by arranging the song and creating an accompanying video.

Tenebrae sings Will Todd - Choral at Cadogan

The chamber choir Tenebrae directed by Nigel Short made their appearance in the Choral at Cadogan series at the Cadogan Hall on 5 April 2013 accompanied by the English Chamber Orchestra in a programme which  celebrated the music of Will Todd. Todd's music was performed with a pair of works, selected by Todd, which reflected his influences: Bernstein's Chichester Psalms and Elgar's part-song There is sweet music.

Music up close

MusicUpClose is a series of six events at Conway Hall intended to illuminate classical music and the way musicians think. The events are devised by the music ensemble sound collective in collaboration with pianist Simon Callaghan, Trinity Laban Conservatoire and Conway Hall. The series, on Wednesday evenings from 17 April 2013, is intended to be non-patronising and to exclude unnecessary technical terms and will be of interest those who love music but don't really know how it works. Participants will be able to ask questions during the rehearsals and performance, and as the events take place in an intimate space, they will be up close.  Its an interesting idea, and the group have come up with a rather attractive mix of themes for the evenings.

Making musical fireworks - The Opera Group at the Linbury Theatre

Mary Bevan as Lila
Picture credit Robert Workman

The Opera Group's latest production, The Firework-maker's Daughter by David Bruce and Glyn Maxwell is currently on tour and arrived at the Royal Opera House's Linbury Theatre last night (3 April 2013). The performance was heavy with collaboration, the opera was a co-commission from The Opera Group and ROH2, it was co produced by The Opera Group and Opera North in association with ROH2 and Watford Palace Theatre. The instrumental ensemble was Chroma, and the director was John Fulljames, former artistic director of The Opera Group and now Assistant Director of Opera at the Royal Opera House. That's a lot of people to keep happy, you almost felt that there were more producers than performers (just five singers, two puppeteers and nine musicians, plus conductor), but then that's modern opera production for you. The weight of expectation would also lay heavy on the audience, as the opera is aimed at children and based on the book by beloved author Philip Pullman. Wednesday nights audience (a packed one) at the Linbury Theatre included plenty of children, and they provided an enthusiastic response so the event must be deemed a success. What of the opera?

The Ashby left behind

For those of you who attended vocal ensemble Stile Antico's lovely concert at the Wigmore Hall last week (see my review) and wondered about Kate Ashby, heavily pregnant, travelling with them on tour then the answer is, she isn't. There's a lovely posting on their blog about it. A founder member of the group, this will be the first time she's missed a gig. More on Stile Antico's blog.

A day with Bach - Bach Marathon with John Eliot Gardiner

Like much of Britain, we took advantage of the Easter weekend to get away and we spent a large chunk of Easter Monday travelling back from the East Midlands. This meant that we listened to substantial amounts of John Eliot Gardiner's Bach Marathon on BBC Radio 3 on the car radio. It proved an uplifting and illuminating way to travel, experiencing Bach's music continuously and one again marvelling at his genius. John Eliot Gardiner proved a stimulating companion, both in his music making and in his introducing of the music. The main performers were his Monteverdi Choir and English Baroque Soloists, with guest appearances from Alban Gerhardt, Viktoria Mullova and John Butt. The BBC dipped in and out of the events in the hall, so that it was actually rather difficult to ascertain quite what the Royal Albert Hall programme was.

Songs of the Sea, Songs of Travel - Anthony Michaels-Moore

Anthony Michaels-Moore and Michael Pollock's disc of songs by Sir Charles Villiers Stanford and Ralph Vaughan Williams is from the first batch of discs from the new partnership between Rosenblatt Recitals and Opus Arte. Michaels-Moore for Rosenblatt Recitals at St John's Smith Square in 2007, and all the songs on this disc were recorded at St. John's in January 2008. The disc traverses English song from the 1870's through to 1925 via the songs of Stanford and his pupil RVW. Both Stanford's Songs of the Sea and Songs of the Fleet and RVW's Songs of Travel can be underestimated, with the songs being richer than they might appear on the surface.

The recording catches Michaels-Moore's voice well, displaying a good firm baritone, with a strongly focused core and only a hint of extra vibrato on the longer notes. Histrionically he catches the mood of Stanford's songs just right. His open, direct delivery also revealing the subtler undercurrents in the songs. Stanford's Songs of the Sea were written in 1904 for the Leeds Festival, for baritone, chorus and orchestra. Michaels-Moore and Pollock use Stanford's version for voice and piano from the vocal score, which means that we lose out on Stanford's superb orchestration, but gain in subtlety of scale.

In case you missed it - March on Planet Hugill

March on Planet Hugill opened in modern day Seville with the Guildhall School of Music and Drama's production of Mozart's Le Nozze di Figaro. We then moved to Hackney for English Touring Opera's new production of Cosi fan tutte with Laura Mitchell and Kitty Whately. Still in Hackney, ETO also gave the UK's first professional stage performance of Donizetti's L'Assedio di Calais.

More rare opera, Lully's Phaeton made a welcome appearance at the Barbican Centre, and Handel'sImeneo, his penultimate opera, was performed at the London Handel Festival.

Sunken Garden teaser

English National Opera is giving the premiere of Michel van der Aa's new opera Sunken Garden at the Barbican Centre on 12 April 2013, with a run of just 7 performances. The work uses a libretto by the novelist David Mitchell (author of Cloud Atlas) and the piece will be using technology to create 'a truly immersive experience', we are promised live performance combined with 3D film. The plot is something of a mystery story and promises to be rather dark. The cast includes Roderick Williams, Katherine Manley and Claron McFaddon and will be conducted by Andre de Ridder. ENO have released a couple of teaser videos and you can see one after the break.

Spring and Summer in Smith Square

The April to August programme at St Johns Smith Square sees the anniversaries of Britten and George Lloyd being commemorated, plus there are memorial concerts for soprano Elizabeth Connell and composer John Marlow Rhys. Tenor David Rendall makes a welcome return, along with a wide variety of other song recitals. There are also staged versions of Handel's Messiah and Britten's Curlew River, plus the varied delights of the Lufthansa Festival of Baroque Music.

St John’s Passion: Bach at the Barbican

James Ghilchrist

Sat on the Barbican’s sofa-like chairs – can there be a pleasanter way to be reminded of the story of Easter than the Academy of Ancient Music’s rendition of St John Passion by Johann Sebastian Bach (1685-1750) on Good Friday (29 March 2013).

The AAM, under the directorship of Richard Egarr is as good an orchestra as any modern ensemble, and when in force, as for the Passion, there is no taint of the fuddy duddy image which can linger around ‘early music’ groups. This is no bunch of self congratulatory musicians, playing metronomically, but rather are a force to be reckoned with. Bach may not have written opera – but in the hands of the AAM this is a close as it gets.

Locus genii

Covent Garden Theatre in the 1820's

We all like to think of London as an intensely historical place, where in many places we walk in the footsteps of the past. But London has had a constant tendency to re-invent and rebuild itself so in musical terms there are not too many places where we can stand in the steps of history. Fires and two world wars, not to mention the Victorian and 20th century passion for regeneration, has left us with few really historic arts venues. Theatres have a tendency to burn down, and all of our concert halls are 20th century or later. Until relatively recently, London didn't even have a composer house museum though the Handel House Museum has thankfully remedied that. Instead we have to use our imagination, and look beneath the present city.

Bach and beyond - April to June highlight at Kings Place

Spring sees Bach continue to be unwrapped at Kings Place, with the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment, the Sixteen and many more. But also, a week of concerts, films and talks celebrates Wagner's centenary. Along the way we have Tasmin Little exploring the history of the violin, and exploration of the influence of Roma (Gypsy) music on classical music, some rather tempting chamber music and, of course, varied talks, comedy and goodness knows what else.