Pelleas et Melisande at the Grimeborn Festival

For this year's Grimeborn Festival, the Arcola Theatre has collaborated with Bury Court Theatre on a production of Debussy's Pelleas et Melisande. One of the great icons of the opera stage, Debussy's only completed opera is a stretch for any company, particularly one performing in a small scale studio theatre with just a piano as accompaniment leaving nowhere for the singers to hide indeed. Luckily Grimeborn was blessed with a very strong cast consisting of Simon Wallfisch, Ilona Domnich, Alan Ewing, Oliver Hunt, Carris Jones, Lucy Roberts and Justin Brindley with Philip Voldman at the piano. The production was directed by the Swiss-Turkish director Aylin Bozok and lighting was by Joshua Pharo.

Costumes were loosely 19th century and Ilona Domnich's Melisande had luxuriant long blond hair. The set, such as it was, was abstract with much use of Pharo's evocative lighting. The effect of performing with the audience on three sides of the playing area, in a studio theatre, was to bring the singing into strong relief. This was intensified by the fact that by using the piano accompaniment we lost much of the effect of the orchestra.

St Lawrence Jewery August Music Festival

The August Music Festival at St. Lawrence Jewery is in full swing with free lunch time recitals each week day.On Wednesday 21 August I went along to hear a programme from Song in the City. Pianist Catherine Norton was joined by soprano Holly Marie Bingham and tenor Eduard Mas Bacardit (both studying at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama) in an intriguing programme which interwove Britten's song cycle On this Island with songs by Schubert.

On this Island was Britten's first published song cycle, based on poems from a collection of the same name published in 1936 by W.H. Auden. The cycle was performed with each song paired with a song on a similar theme by Schubert, with the two young singers taking it in turns.

Complete Organ all set to return to the Royal Festival Hall

Thanks to contributions from 60,000 people, not to mention an epic bike ride and a grant from the Heritage Lottery Fund, the South Bank Centre's Pull Out All the Stops campaign has reached its target, which means that the final third of the organ is on track for being re-installed in the Royal Festival Hall. Hurrah!

Some 60,000 people made contributions totalling £1.35m, and the South Bank Centre Chairman Rick Haythornthwaite and a team of cyclists did a sponsored ride from Durham to London in 24 hours and raised £100,000. The Heritage Lottery Fund has contributed £950,000. All this means that Harrison and Harrison (who originally designed and built the organ in 1954) will have completed the reinstallation of the final third of the organ by the end of this summer and are ready to commence the final voicing. The organ will be complete for the Pull Out All the Stops Festival which starts on 18 March 2014.

Dame Janet Baker - a birthday tribute

Today is Dame Janet Baker's 80th birthday so I thought that I would allow myself to reminisce a bit, about some of the superb performances of her's that I had seen over the years. I was a student in Manchester in the mid-1970's when the glow of Sir John Barbirolli's artistic relationship with Dame Janet was still cast over the city. I remember vividly her performance in Mahler's Das Lied von der Erde (ironically with the BBC Philharmonic Orchestra and Raymond Leppard) as well as song recitals at the old Free Trade Hall. (She sang Had I but Jubal's Lyre as an encore and interleaved Debussy and Faure settings of the same texts for the first half).

Other performances have tended to blur into subsequent ones, seen a few years later in Birmingham. It was there that I saw her as the Angel in The Dream of Gerontius at Birmingham Town Hall (this was well before Birmingham Symphony Hall).  But more than these live encounters she was the sound track of my learning large chunks of the classical repertoire, her recordings the benchmark.

Wigmore Hall / Kohn Foundation International Song Competition

The Wigmore Hall/Kohn Foundation International Song Competition returns to the Wigmore Hall this year. The biennial event has been running since 1997 and this years competition starts on 30 August with the first of a series of preliminary public rounds. The four singers chosen for the final will battle it out on 3 September at Wigmore Hall.

Vivienne - a second view

Stephen McNeff and Andy Rashleigh's Vivienne was reviewed in a guest posting on this blog when Hilary Glover went to see Clare McCaldin's performance at Tete a Tete: The Opera Festival. I was keen to see the work for myself, so went along to The Forge in Camden on Tuesday 20 August. To catch Joe Austin's production with Clare McCaldin and Libby Burgess at the piano.

The 40 minute work is one single extended operatic monologue, a tour de force from performer, Clare McCaldin, and composer alike. I had never visited The Forge before, and Vivienne suited the venue's relatively intimate space.  The work deals with Vivienne Haigh-Wood and her disastrous marriage to the poet T. S. Eliot and her eventual confinement in a mental institution, ignored and unvisited by Eliot.

Austin's production, designed by Simon Kenny, took place in a simple white space with two white chairs. McCaldin, as,Vivienne, entered wearing just a white shift. Set in the context of Vivienne's incarceration in a mental institution, the work looked back at her relationship with Eliot, whilst conveying the feeling that in the constant present she was eternally waiting for him.

The Romantic Cello

This new disc from the young cellist Philip Handy and pianist Robert Markham, on VIF Records, is centred on the music of Frederick Delius. They perform Delius's Sonata for Cello and Piano and his Caprice, and surround these with other works from the 20th century romantic tradition, with Frank Bridge's Meditation, Berceuse and Sonata for Cello and Piano, and Samuel Barber's early Sonata for Cello and Piano. The recital is completed with the Homage to Delius by Thomas Daish which was written for Philip Handy.

Frank Bridge wrote many small pieces for cello and piano, and Handy and Markham start their recital with two, Meditation and Berceuse. Both are very much songs without words and Handy plays them with a very elegant sense of line. he has a nice singing tone with a good depth to it, and he shapes Bridge's phrases finely. The Berceuse is perhaps the slightly more complex piece, with a nicely flowing piano part.

Bridge's Sonata for Cello and Piano is an entirely different affair, far bigger in scale. It was written in the period 1913-17 (roughly the same time as Delius was writing his sonata), and the work reflects Bridge's despair over the war and the state of the world.

Flourish - opera competition

Opera Up Close has launched Flourish, its second annual competition to find a new chamber opera. The competition aims to provide a platform for emerging and established composers and librettists. The initial round is doing anonymously and six entries are shortlisted for a showcase performance, the composer/librettist entering a score for 20 minutes of muisc. Last year the winning pieces was Two Caravans, composed by Guy Harries with a libretto by Ace McCarron, based on the novel by Marina Lewycka, best-selling author of A Short History of Tractors in Ukrainian. The opera is being produced at the Kings Head opening on 29 September. The final performance of Two Caravans on 20 October will be preceeded by the showcase performance of the shortlisted entries in this year's competition. The winner of this year's competition will be produced by Opera Up Close next autumn. The closing date for entries is 1 September, info and guidelines from the Kings Head Theatre website.

Schubert at St James's

The young Bulgarian pianist Veneta Neynska will be performing Schubert at a lunchtime recital on Wednesday 21 August at St. James's Piccadilly at 1.10pm. Neynska's programme will include Schubert's Moments Musicaux Op 94 and Sonata in G Major op 78.  The sonata was written in 1826 and is the last of Schubert's sonatas to be published in his lifetime. 

Neynska trained in her native Bulgaria, at the USC Thornton School of Music in the USA and at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama and this concert represents her long awaited return to the UK after a gap of four years. Entrance to the concert it free.

Tete a Tete: The Opera Festival - a third helping

Grant Doyle, Rebecca Askey, Rebecca Thorn & Hazel Holder
in Dart's Love by Kerry Andrew and Tamsin Collison
(c) Claire Shovelton

For our final visit to Tete a Tete: The Opera Festival at the Riverside Studios in Hammersmith on Sunday 18 August 2013 we caught two operas, Richard Barnard's The Hidden Valley which was commissioned by WNO MAX and Kerry Andrew's Dart's Love which was commissioned by Tete a Tete. The two were linked in a number of ways, both dealt with a watery river theme combined with love: in Barnard's opera a cow herder falls in love with the daughter of the River God, in Andrew's opera the River Dart itself is in love with a young man who swims there. But both operas also featured the talents of Kerry Andrew, her vocal group Juice Vocals sang in Barnard's opera whilst she composed Dart's Love. 

The Hidden Valley was performed by Laura Pooley, Owen Webb, Meillir Jones, Tome Lowe, Alexei Winter, Michael Lowe and Juice Vocals, conducted by Richard Barnard and directed by Dafydd Hall Williams, with designs by James Helps. Dart's Love was performed by Grant Doyle, Claire Wild, Rebecca, Askew, Rebecca Thorn and Hazel Holder, conducted by Timothy Burke, directed by Bill Bankes-Jones and designed by Tim Meacock.

Owen Webb, Laura Pooley and Tom Lowe in
he Hidden Valley by Richard Barnard and Alan Harris
(c) Claire Shovelton

En travestie - the curious tradition of the breeches role

Minnie Nast as Sophie and Eva von der Ostern as Octavian
in Der Rosenkavalier (1910/11)

Women playing men's roles on stage, so-called breeches parts, is on the face of it rather a curious tradition. Men playing women's roles are generally comic, but women playing young men is a more complex issue. In opera the tradition can be explained in terms of the way women stood in for and then replaced castratos. In Italian baroque opera the hero always had a high voice and this created tradition of women, usually contraltos, who specialised in playing male roles. Handel, when in London with a limited supply of castratos, often had recourse to using women for his leading men. French baroque opera, with its use of high tenors rather than castratos, seems not to have developed the same tradition and breeches parts are rare.

But as the tradition developed into the 19th and 20th centuries, it raises erotic and gender issues, how did the audience really view these women and how should we?

Tippett's The Midsummer Marriage at the Proms

Sir Andrew Davis - © Dario Acosta Photography

Sir Michael Tippett's The Midsummer Marriage has a lot of things against it, it requires a large cast including dancers and a large chorus and orchestra, the plot with its elements of Jungian analysis is confusing, the composer's libretto with its colloquial elements now sounds rather dated and frankly a bit embarrassing. But you only have to listen to the music to be entranced. From the opening moments of Sir Andrew Davis's performance with the BBC Symphony Orchestra at the Proms in the Royal Albert Hall on 16 August 2013, you knew that you were in for a very special occasion. The BBC had assembled a very strong cast, with Paul Groves and Erin Wall as the Mark and Jenifer, David Wilson-Johnson (standing in for Peter Sidhom) as King Fisher, Ailish Tynan and Allan Clayton as Bella and Jack, Catherine Wyn-Rogers as Sosostris, and Madeleine Shaw and David Soar as the Ancients, with the BBC Singers and the BBC Symphony Chorus. The performance was billed as semi-staged, directed by Kenneth Richardson.

The stars of the show, though, were undoubtedly Andrew Davis and the BBC Symphony Orchestra, bringing out all of Tippett's dancing rhythms and giving a lovely sheen to the complex orchestral textures. The music for the entrances of the Ancients, with the celesta, were simply magical. Without any dancers, we were left to our own imaginations for the Ritual Dances, and Davis brought out the full range of drama and danger in these pieces. I had forgotten how richly and imaginatively they were written, but throughout the performance I came back to Tippett's rhythms. Davis clearly loves the opera and he and the orchestra gave us Tippett as his rhapsodic and entrancing best.

Bruce Munro's Cantus Arcticus

Bruce Munro, an installation artist working in light. has produced an exhibition inspired by Einohujani Rautavaara's Cantus Arcticus. The exhibition is on at the National Trust's Waddesdon House, it was installed in March and is on display at the Coach House Gallery for the 2013 season. Munro's Cantus Arcticus was inspired by the shimmering curtains of the Northern Lights and by Rautavaara's music of the same name, which in turn was inspired by the landscape and bird song of the Arctic tundra.

Munro's piece is composed of 15 abstract bird forms rendered in curtains of glowing fibre optic occupying the Coach House floor. Light cascades from above each piece, casting soft pools that change colour in response to Rautavaara’s music, which plays in the space. Finnish composer Rautavaara's Cantus Arcticus was written in 1972, subtitled Concerto for Birds and Orchestra it incorporates tape recordings of birdsong recorded near the Arctic Circle and on the bogs of Liminka in northern Finland.

Composing without the Pictures - Concert works by film composers

This fascinating disc is a compilation of concert music written by some well known film composers. But what makes it so striking is that Richard Harwood as assembled a group of pieces written for solo cello, not a genre you would associate with composers like Ennio Morricone and Miklos Rosza. The recording includes a wide variety of composers, Morricone, Rosza, Ernst Toch, John Williams, Dario Marianelli, Alex Heffes, Fernando Velazquez and Benjamin Wallfisch. The recording is available for download only, on the Resonus Classics label.

The first two pieces on the disc are linked to one of the great mid-20th century cellists, Gregor Piatigorsky.

Ernst Toch (1887 - 1964) is best known for the scores to Peter Ibbetson, Ladies in Retirement and Address Unknown. His Impromptu for Cello Solo in Three Movements, Op 90c from 1960 was composed for Piatigorsky's 60th birthday. The work is in three movements, Andante Cantabile, Allegretto grazioso and Adagio, con espressione - quasi der Letzte Kampf. This last is likely to refer to Toch's battle with stomach cancer. The Andante Cantabile is rather a free cantilena which Harwood plays with a fine grained singing tone. The Allegretto is a perky, Shostakovich-esque movement, followed by the rather darker Adagio. Again Harwood plays with lovely fine grained tone and a singing line, with darker undertones leading to a haunting end.

Britten100 goes global

The celebrations for Britten's centenary have turned into a global event with concerts and opera performances all over the world. Some are sponsored by the Britten Pears Foundation and the British Council, but many are simply organisations own responses to the composer with a number of different Britten festivals being presented. There are currently over 150 performances of the War Requiem scheduled world-wide, with over 100 of A Midsummer Night's Dream, over 80 of Peter Grimes and 40 of Billy Budd.

In Moscow there a festival planned by the Britten Pears Foundation and the British Council including the Russian premiere of Death in Venice conducted by Gennadi Rozhdestvensky, though quite what effect the work will have given Russia's new clampdown on homosexuality is anyone's guess. Also in the festival Sir Mark Elder conducting the Russian National Orchestra and Ian Bostridge in The Canticles.

New musical director for the Temple Church

Temple Church, London

The Temple Church has announced that from later this year, their musical director will be Roger Sayer. The current incumbent, James Vivian, is becoming the Director of Music at St. George's Chapel, Windsor Castle, this autumn. Roger Sayer has been at Rochester Cathedral since 1994, as Director of Music and as Organist. He is also Deputy Chorus Director of London Symphony Chorus, working with conductors Valery Gergiev, Sir Mark Elder and the late Sir Colin Davis. A prizewinner at the St Albans International Organ Competition, Sayer is a guest teacher at the Curtis Institute in Philadelphia. (Further info and a video announcement after the break).

Competition results

Our competition to win tickets for Live by the Lake at Kenwood closed this morning. Congratulations to the 50 people who entered the correct answer (Ana Maria Martinez caused a stir at Glyndebourne in 2009 in Rusalka) and particular congratulations to Hayley whose name came out the hat first. We hope that she enjoys Opera Alfresco on 31 August, with Ana Maria Martinez, Wynne Evans and David Kempster and the ENO Orchestra conducted by Paul Daniel in Bizet- Carmen & The Pearl Fishers • Rossini - William Tell & The Barber of Seville • Dvorak - Rusalka • Puccini - La Boheme, Madam Butterfly & Turandot • Verdi - Don Carlos, La Forza del Destino, Rigoletto & La Traviata.

Christopher Wood - Requiem

This new disc is a live recording of a new Requiem Mass by Christopher Wood, orchestrated by Jonathan Rathbone. The performance was recorded in a concert given by soloists Rebecca Bottone, Clare McCaldin, Ed Lyon, Nicholas Garrett with L'Inviti Sinfoni and L'Inviti Singers conducted by Paul Brough.

If you think about it, there aren't many large scale romantic requiems. Despite the attempts of choral societies and orchestras over the years, Mozart's Requiem with its sombre orchestration is neither romantic nor large scale. There is Verdi's Requiem of course, which brought the opera house into the church. And Faure's Requiem, though or course this latter started as a small scale piece and only grew into the full blown romantic work as a result of Faure's publisher.

The Miller's Wife

Cheyney Kent in The Miller's Wife by Mike Christie
at the Grimborn Festival

I first came across Mike Christie's opera The Miller's Wife when he presented the first scene at one of Second Movement's Rough for Opera evenings (see my review). Now the complete opera has been premiered (on 14 August 2013) at the Arcola Theatre as part of the Grimeborn Festival with a cast including Owain Browne, Clara Kanter, Susan Jiwey, Margaret Cooper, Cheyney Kent, Tamsin Dalley, Lindsay Bramley, William Morgan, Eleanor Ross, Stella Woodman with Susannah Wapshott at the piano. The opera was presented in the smaller of Arcola's two studio theatres, performed in the round with Matthew Gould's production, designed by Jean Gray, making effective use of the space.

Mike Christie's own libretto tells a story inspired by an event in his family. Set in the 19th century, the first act dealt with the Miller, Bill Marner (Owain Browne) and his desire for a son and complex lovelife. His wife (Clara Kanter) is an invalid and her carer, Maude (Susan Jiwey), is Bill's mistress and having his baby. Except she's not. Stir into this mix a pregnant village girl (Margaret Cooper) and her vengeful father (Cheyney Kent), who thinks Bill has raped is daughter, plus a pair of comic aunts (Tamsin Dalley and Lindsay Bramley) and you have a mix worthy of Catherine Cookson.

On the Road Again - the Sixteen's 2013/14 programme

Under their conductor Harry Christophers, the Sixteen are presenting a 2013/14 which includes some serious Tudor polyphony on their annual Choral Pilgrimage and elsewhere. Naturally there will be celebrations for Britten's centenary. Handel's Jephtha makes an appearance with the promise of a recording to come next year.

The Sixteen's Choral Pilgrimage 2014 presents a programme of early Tudor polyphony with music by John Sheppard, Richard Davy and William Mundy including Mundy's glorious Vox Patris Coelestis and Sheppard's Gaude, gaude Maria. The tour starts in Paris 13 Feb 2013 and continues to Cambridge, Oxford, Croydon, Greenwich, Exeter, Truro, Llandaff, Ealing, Rochester, Peterborough and York with further dates in Autumn 2014, giving you the chance to hear some amazing large-scale (Vox Patris Coelestis is BIG) in the sort of acoustic for which it was intended.

Ben Johnson in Britten and Handel

Ben Johnson, credit Chris Gloag

Having enjoyed Ben Johnson's recent recording of Britten's Canticles (see my review), I wanted to hear him in more Britten and so was pleased to find that he was performing Britten's Serenade for tenor, horn and strings with the Trafalgar Sinfonia, conducted by Ivor Setterfield, at St Martin in the Fields on Tuesday 13 August 2013.  Johnson also sang a pair of Handel arias, and Britten's O Waly, Waly whilst the orchestra played Handel's Concerto grosso op 6 no 9 and Arrival of the Queen of Sheba, Purcell's Chacony and Elgar's Serenade for Strings.

The Trafalgar Sinfonia is a string ensemble of some 12 young professional players. It was formed in 1992 by Ivor Setterfield and they are in their 14th season of concerts at St Martin in the Fields. Whilst many of the concerts there seem to be of the Vivaldi by Candlelight genre, in fact if you look at the repertoire they play there are some interesting nuggets to be had. On 22 August for instance, you can hear concertos from Vivaldi's L'Estro Harmonico and La Stravaganza.

They opened with a crisp and lively performance of the sinfonia from act three of Handel's Solomon (The Arrival of the Queen of Sheba) in a version which replaced Handel's oboes with solo violins. This was a firmly modern performance with bows definitely on string, but the players made a rich sound with a nice bounce to it. There were similar virtues in Purcell's Chacony in G minor (Z730) which Setterfield made quite dramatic at times.

Britten on Film

BFI Southbank iscelebrating Benjamin Britten's centenary with a series of screenings. There is a programme GPO Documentaries devoted to Britten's work with the GPO Film Unit, plus filmed versions of his operas including a version of The Turn of the Screw long thought to be lost, as well as special previews of new films by John Bridcut and Tony Palmer.

The Coral Sea - music for saxophone and piano

The McKenzie Sawers Duo is an Edinburgh-based saxophone and piano duo, comprising Sue McKenzie and Ingrid Sawers. For this new disc on Delphian, they have recorded a programme of contemporary British music for saxophone and piano. A vein running through all the piece is jazz and its influence, as all the composers on the disc, Gabriel Jackson, Graham Fitkin, Nikki Iles, Mark-Anthony Turnage and Gavin Bryars, are influences by jazz in some way, particularly given the saxophone's history with jazz music.

Gabriel Jackson is perhaps best known as a composer of choral music but in The Choral Sea he displays and equally deft touch with instrumental forces. The Choral Sea is inspired by a photograph of the same name by Robert Mapplethorpe which in turn inspired a prose poem by Mapplethorpe's friend Patti Smith. Jackson's piece is in three movements, Prologue, Voyage and Litany, corresponding to the three sections of the poem with Jackson reflecting the construction of the poem in his music.

The result is an uneven distribution of movements (their respective lengths are 0:53, 12:39 and 3:12) but the piece reads well as a single span of music. Written in 1996-97, it was premiered by Martin Robinson and Antony Gray at the Tate Gallery. It opens with a piano introduction followed by a soulful, chant-like solo for the saxophone with just the occasional piano in the bass.

Autumn at the Handel House Museum

The Handel House's Autumn season includes a number of intriguing events. Composer in residence Cevanne Horrocks Hopayian presents a series of concerts themed on duels, Handel's Muses reaches Anna Maria Strada and Elisabeth Duparc and we get to examine music played for Louis XIV's dinners.

Richard Egarr is in residence with recorder player Pamela Thorby, performing Bach's French Suites and music by Charles Dieupart (c1667 - 1740) - 9 & 10 September.  And composer in residence is Cevanne Horrocks Hopayian. She presents four concerts on a theme of duelling, with husband and wife violinists Ellie Fagg and Tom Norris (17/10), Hugh 'Crewdson' Jones playing his electronic concertina (20/10), virtuoso guitarist Christ Montagu (24/10) and a duel between Red Priest's harpsichordist David Wright and Bjork's percussionist Manu Delago (27/10).

Tete a Tete: The Opera Festival - a second helping

Dionysios Kyropoulos and Alberto Prandini
in The Secretary Turned CEO (c) Claire Shovelton

A visit to Tête à Tête: The Opera Festival is always a varied and thought provoking experience. We went along on Sunday 11 August and saw three pieces which took very different starting points. Thus presenting us with a variety of ideas for what opera is (see also Hilary's guest posting about her visit to Tête à Tête: The Opera Festival on Thursday 7 August). Danyal Dhondy's The Secretary Turned CEO (presented by Lucid Arts and Music with Dionysios Kyropoulos, Charlie Drummond and Alberto Prandini) re-worked Pergolesi's La Serva Padrona into a a hilarious, accessible modern farce. Tom Floyd's MICROmegas gave us the first act of a new SciFi opera based on Voltaire (presented by Shadow Opera Group with Alex Bevan, Jan Capinski, Richard Downing, Robert Garland, Sophie Goldrick and Emily Griffiths), whilst Paul Everndon's Guilt based on texts by Hildegard of Bingen (with Sibylla Meinenberg and Jeanna L'Esty) had us discussing whether it was an opera at all.

Dhondy's The Secretary Turned CEO, with libretto by Becca Marriot, was first tried out at one of Second Movement's Rough for Opera evenings (see their blog).  The piece combines a new libretto with arrangements of Pergolesi's original arias and new recitatives, set for an ensemble consisting of double bass (Diccon Cooper), guitar (Oliver Weeks) and piano/violin/melodica (Danyal Dhondy). Dhondy and Marriot wanted to try to re-capture the original’s scandalous aesthetic.

Billy Budd at Glyndebourne

Billy Budd, Glyndebourne 2013,
photo credit Richard Hubert Smith

Michael Grandage's production of Benjamin Britten's Billy Budd debuted in 2010. Within Christopher Oram stylised but traditional sets, the production brilliantly evoked the tensions within a Napoleonic era ship. Now the production has returned revived by Ian Rutherford, with Jacques Imbrailo still in the title role, surrounded by an enormously strong ensemble including Mark Padmore, David Soar, Richard Mosley-Evans, John Moore, Peter Gijsbertsem, Colin Judson, Stephen Gadd, Darren Jeffery, Alasdair Elliott, Brendan Collins, Duncan Rock and Jeremy White, conducted by Andrew Davis. We saw the first night, 11 August 2013, and there wasn't a weak link in the casting; this is the sort of piece which Glyndebourne is able to do extremely well, generating a real sense of ensemble in the long rehearsal periods. But more than that, it mined the opera's full emotional power.

Whilst Grandage's production is traditional, its concerns were in fact akin to those of David Alden's radically different production for English National Opera. Both deliberately ignored the sense of the sea in Britten's score, and set the opera in an enclosed world in the middle of the ship. There, of course, they part company with Grandage and Oran offering us a very detailed reconstruction of life on a Napoleonic ship. Oran's accurate costumes combined with Grandage's detailed action for the sailors, into apparently presenting a realistic view of life on a Napoleonic era man of war. This was deceptive, of course, the set was in fact the hollowed out centre of the ship, stylised rather than realistic, and the action though detailed, would never have passed muster on a real man'o war; there was often the sense of action for the sake of it. But the top level of Oran's set lowered impressively so that for some of the scenes below decks, we got a real feeling of the pressure-cooker nature of life on board.

Only four days left! Win tickets to Live by the Lake at Kenwood

Don't forget our fabulous competition to celebrate Live by the Lake, the return of outdoor concerts to Kenwood we have two tickets for the Opera Alfresco event on 31 August to give away. See our competition page for more details, you have until 14 August to enter.

John Eliot Gardiner conducts Bach at the Proms

Sir John Eliot Gardiner
(c) Sheila Rock - Decca

The late night Prom on Friday 9 August 2013 at the Royal Albert Hall featured John Eliot Gardiner conducting the Monteverdi Choir and English Baroque Soloists in a pair of Bach works which do not get the exposure that they deserve, the Easter Oratorio and the Ascension Oratorio. Both works contain some vintage Bach but are relatively short and live in the awkward territory between cantata and what we nowadays think of as oratorio. Along with soloists Hannah Morrison, Meg Bragle, Nicholas Mulroy and Peter Harey, Gardiner and his forces gave us life-enhancing performances which made you wonder why we don't hear this music more.

Bach's Easter Oratorio went through a series of curious transformations before Bach settled on its final form. It started out life as a birthday cantata, with a text by Picander, for Duke Christian of Saxe-Weissenfels in February 1725, Picander and Bach then turned it into a cantata for Easter Sunday in 1725, before re-cycling the work again as birthday cantata for Count Joachim Friedrich von Flemming. The 1725 Easter version had four named characters, Mary Mother of James, Mary Magdalene, Peter and John but in the 1730's Bach returned to the work, dropped the characters names and made some other changes, turning it into the Easter Oratorio. There is still no direct narrative, no Evangelist, just a series of recitatives and arias which touch on the Easter story. Though there is much vintage Bach in the work, particularly in the glorious orchestral writing, as a contemplation of the Easter story it lacks the emotional depth of the Passions. The pastoral nature of the original birthday cantata is still discernible in the music.

Tête à Tête Opera Festival at the Riverside Studios

Alison Wells in Fossils and Monsters

Photo Credit – Claire Shovelton

The Opera Festival organised by Tête à Tête at the Riverside Studios is now in its seventh year. Running over three weeks from the 1^st to the 18^th August this festival showcases brand new, short, operas, from which the audience can pick and choose. Each show is about 40 minutes to an hour long, while ‘Light Bites’, at only five minutes long, entertain the audience in-between the main events, as well as being performed at Fulham Palace and in parks and squares around Hammersmith.

Last night (Thursday 9^th August) I saw Fossils and Monsters, The Garden, and Vivienne. Short, however, does not mean that these operas are somehow lesser than grand classical operas. Like a good short story they get straight to the point. Character development is as strong as the emotional intelligence delivered by the performers.

Fossils and Monsters compares the lives of two extraordinary women living at a time of great scientific discovery and theorising about the nature of life and creation (some years prior to Charles Darwin’s ‘On the Origin of Species’). Mary Anning was a fossil hunter who found the first ichthyosaur in the unstable Blue Lias rocks at Lyme Regis. Both Mary and the ichthyosaur are childhood memories of mine but, as anyone who has seen Horrible Histories knows, Mary Anning’s life was not equal to her scientific talent – male scientists who came to her for help in identifying fossils took credit for her work.

Wigmore Hall goes into TV

Following hot on the heels of the televisation on Sky Arts of the Rosenblatt Recitals from the Wigmore Hall, Wigmore Hall itself has announced a collaboration with Sky Arts. From Monday 12 August a series of 7 recitals from Wigmore Hall will be broadcast on Sky Arts, mixing chamber music, choral music, vocal recitals and early music. The programmes were recorded live in HD, and each is being broadcast more than once. They are of an hour's duration, rather than full concert length, and each includes an interview with the artists. 

The series opens on 12 August with pianist Marc-Andre Hamelin in Brahms, then Ralph Kirshbaum and the Takacs Quartet in Schubert's String Quintet in C, D956 (19/8/2013), Sarah Connolly and Malcolm Martineau in French song (26/8/2013), Iestyn Davies, Thomas Dunford (lute), Jonathan Manson (viol) in Johnson and Dowland (2/9/2013), Takacs Quartet in Beethoven's String Quartet in C sharp minor Op. 131 (8/9/2013) and Stile Antico with Fretwork in music by Byrd for the Feast of Corpus Christi (16/9/2013). The series ends on 23 September with a great treat, Ailish Tynan, Sarah Connolly, Mark Padmore, Ben Johnson, Robin Tritschler, Christopher Maltman, Benjamin Appl and Graham Johnson in a selection of Schubert solo and ensemble songs.

Further information from the Wigmore Hall website.

Viktor Bijelovic - Empassioned

Like many musicians seeking a source of funding for projects, London-based Serbian pianist Viktor Bijelovic turned to Kickstarter for his second CD. Empassioned is a recital of music by Beethoven, Gluck (arranged by Sgambati), Chopin, Debussy, Rachmaninov and Liszt. The disc has one distinctive aspect, the first track is a spoken one. At his concerts Bijelovic talks to the audience and introduces each of the works. This spoken narration is a brave attempt at reproducing this, as Bijelovic explains why he chose the pieces and how they are linked.

He opens with Beethoven's Sonata Op. 57, Appassionata, one of the works Beethoven wrote in response to his increasing deafness (Beethoven started writing it in 1804, the year after he came to grips with the irreversibility of his deafness). The opening of the first movement, Allegro assai, is poised with the grumbling in the bass a gentle disturbance. After the first eruption, Bijelovic successfully alternates quiet poise with manic energy. His performance is very poetic, he doesn't thump and the loud passages are vibrant rather than excessive. There is an impulsiveness to his playing with threads its way through the whole disc.

Milton Court and more - new season at GSMD

The Guildhall School of Music and Drama's programme for Autumn 2013 has rather a special buzz about it, because September sees the opening of Milton Court, the school's new facility complete with a concert hall, 227 seat theatre and a studio theatre. This is being inaugurated with a series of events including recitals by such as Thomas Ades, Anne Sofie von Otter, Rolf Hind, Graham Johnson and Felicity Lott. Opera includes a neglected one-act comic opera by Donizetti. There is even a chance to hear Guildhall artists in Louis Andriessen's De Staat and extracts from Cornelius Cardew's The Great Learning.

The first event in Milton Court Concert Hall is James Gaffigan conducting the Guildhall Symphony Orchestra and Chorus in the world premiere of Julian Philips Come forth to play, Elgar's Cockaigne and Beethoven's Ninth Symphony with Katherine Broderick, Catia Moreso, Timothy Robinson and David Stout (all of whom are alumni).

Co-Opera Co Summer Season

Co-Opera Co is back for its  Summer season from 3 September, this time at the Hackney Empire, where the young singers will be performing in two new productions The Mikado and Madama Butterfly. The company's aim is to give aspiring artists the chance to work with and learn from some of the most highly regarded singers, conductors, directors, actors and choreographers in the business today. To this end, their Summer Season is the culmination of a learning process for the young performers. 

Ryedale Magic Flute at Grimeborn

Luke D. Williams and Caroline Kennedy
in The Magic Flute, from Ryedale Festival Opera,
photo credit Adam Rosenbach

The Ryedale Festival takes place in and around Ryedale in North Yorkshire, this year from 12 to 28 July 2013. This year's festival opera was Mozart's The Magic Flute. Nina Brazier's production debuted in July at Ampleforth College Theatre before coming to London as part of this year's Grimeborn Festival at the Arcola Theatre in Dalston. I caught the first night on 7 August 2013. The young cast included Ben Thapa  Luke D Williams  Helen Bailey, Anna Rajah  David Hansford and Adam Player. Christopher Glynn, Artistic Director of the Ryedale Festival, conducted an ensemble made up of the Quintessence Wind Ensemble and the Eka Quartet.

I have to confess that this was my first visit to the Arcola Theatre which inhabits the old Reeves (Artists Colourmen) paint factory. The main theatre is a large rectangular box-like space with two banks of seats facing each other at either end of the room with the playing area in the middle. Running along one side is a small seating balcony and under this were placed conductor Christopher Glynn and the ensemble, giving Christopher Glynn an excellent view of the cast despite the open nature of the playing area.

The perils of reissues - Sour Cream again

Earlier this month I reviewed The Passion of Reason a CD on the Glossa label which was originally issued in 1995 and produced by the recorder trio Sour Cream. The project was the brainchild of recorder player Kees Boeke and he describes it as 'one of my main enterprises of the 1990's'. Unfortunately he was not consulted about the re-issue and the record company have re-issued the set without Boeke's extensive essay which explains how the pieces relate to the discs main thesis about scientific music and numerology. It makes fascinating reading and I hope to write more when I have digested it. But it doesn't help the fact that anyone buying the re-issue will find themselves bit mystified. My slightly expanded review still available on this blog.

Philharmonia 2013/14

The Philharmonia Orchestra's 2013/14 opens with the first blast of their three year Berlioz project, a trio of concerts of Czeck music, a celebration of Richard Strauss's 150th anniversary, the return of Abel Gance's Napoleon and Thomas Ades Violin Concerto, plus a wealth of other goodies.

The Philharmonia's Berlioz projects starts with Esa-Pekka Salonen conducted La Damnation de Faust (26/9) and the Symphonie fantastique (29/9), with a terrific cast including Paul Groves, Gerald Finley and Christianne Stotijn. Later on we are promised Romeo et Juliette, and the Grande Messe de morts.

Salonon will also be conducting the orchestra in the premiere of Kaija Saariaho's Maan varjot (Earth's shadows), a new work for organ and orchestra which will help celebrate the newly refurbished Royal Festival Hall organ with Olivier Latry (the titulaire of Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris) as the organ soloist. (26/6/2014). And Salonen closes the season with Mahler's Eighth Symphony, (29/6/2014).

The Bear goes Walkabout

Two young ensembles, Helios Chamber Opera and the Melos Sinfonia have combined in a programme centred around Walton's one act comic opera The Bear. They commissioned two short operas from Philip Ashworth and Joel Rust to accompany the Walton, with all three linked by their subject matter - widows. The three operas span time and style, with Rust's darkly tragic Red as Blood set in the Iceland of the sagas, Walton's comic extravaganza The Bear setting Paul Dehn's libretto based on a Chekov play and Rust's Bare being wittily contemporary. The cast included Helen Stanley, David Fearn, Henry Neil, Sam Carl, Urzula Bock, Angus McPhee with Oliver Zeffman conducting the Melos Sinfonia, an ensemble which he founded. The three operas were directed by Ella Marchment and designed by Kate Auster (sets) and Florence Mein (costumes). The triple bill debuted at the Rose Theatre, Kingston before travelling to the Sage Gateshead and the Edinburgh Festival Fringe. We caught the final outing at St Cyprian's Church, Clarence Gate, London on Tuesday 6 August 2013.

Both Rust and Ashworth are still studying, Rust with Julian Anderson at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama and Ashworth with Kenneth Hesketh at the Royal College of Music. Their commissions for the operas in the triple bill came about as the result of a competition which Helios Chamber Opera and the Melos Sinfonia ran to select to new works suitable for accompanying Walton's opera.

Plaque for Beethoven

John Nash's Argyll Rooms where
Beethoven's Ninth Symphony received its UK premiere

On 11 August a Westminster City Council Green Plaque will be be unveiled at the site of the first UK performance of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony, in London's Regent Street. The plaque is being unveiled to mark the Bicentenary of the Royal Philharmonic Society, which commissioned Beethoven’s masterwork in 1822. The Philharmonic Society, conducted by founder member Sir George Smart, gave the first UK performance of Beethoven's Ninth Symphony on 21 March 1825 at the New Argyll Rooms. Designed by John Nash, this collection of concert rooms stood from 1820 -1830 on the spot of what is now the Regent Street branch of National Westminster Bank.

The Royal Philharmonic Society is celebrating its 200th birthday this year and the unveiling forms part of a day celebrating the RPS and Beethoven's Ninth Symphony culminating in a performance of the work by the National Youth Orchestra and National Youth Choir at a special free BBC Prom and the world premiere of a specially commissioned new work, Mark-Anthony Turnage's Frieze, which was inspired by Beethoven's great symphony.

Royal Philharmonic Society largesse

The Royal Philharmonic Society, which celebrates its 200th anniversary this year, is distributing over £81,000 to young composers and performers though its Young Musicians Programme. £13,500 goes to young composers with five new works commissioned for performance in 2014, plus the first in a series of ‘mini-commissions’ for student composers. There is £30,000 support for the purchase of new instruments for music students and young performers receive £38,000 towards further study abroad and professional development. The RPS's Young Musicians Programme is designed to reflect the many, and increasing, practical and artistic needs of music students and nascent professionals.

The Phoenix Rising

The vocal ensemble Stile Antico's latest disc celebrates the publication of Tudor Church Music by the Carnegie UK Trust in 1922 to 1929. Almost forgotten nowadays, this publication helped to make available some of the glories of Tudor church music, enabling amateur choirs to be able to easily perform this music. In celebration, Stile Antico has recorded some of the major highlights including William Byrd's Mass for five voices and Ave Verum, Orlando Gibbons' O clap your hands and Almighty and everlasting God, Thomas Morley's Nolo morem peccatoris, Thomas Tallis's Salvator Mundi and In ieiunio et fletu, John Tavener's O splendor gloriae, and Robert White's Portio mea and Christe qui lux es et dies.

The expensive library edition of Tudor Church Music was not a particular financial success and it was trimmed from 20 volumes to 10 volumes. But individual items were available in 'octavo' editions designed to be purchased by choirs, which meant that many items such as Byrd's Ave Verum were freely available for the first time and these practical editions were highly popular. And the influential nature of the edition is indicated by the fact that when Ouxford University Press produced the Oxford Book of Tudor Anthems in 1978, a significant number of the pieces had originally appeared in Tudor Church Music. The works selected for the 1920's publication have effectively defined the standard canon of this music.

Autumn at the Royal College of Music

The Royal College of Music's Autumn season includes a double bill of operas by Ravel,  some important contemporary music from Gerard Grisey, Pierre Boulez, Karlheinz Stockhausen and Luigi Nono, as well as music from RCM members of staff William Mival and Simon Holt. The Sacconi Quartet will be making an appearances and the RCM Museum has a pair of intriguingly talks.

Singing in Slovenia

Waiting for the concert to happen:
The author and other members of London Concord Singers
on the steps of the Franciscan Church, Ljublana, Slovenia

Temperatures in Ljubljana, Slovenia, are reaching 40 C but the city is a very relaxed place and has proved, so far, to be a delightful location for a concert. London Concord Singers sang their first performance last night (3 August 2013), a concert at the city's Franciscan Church, a glorious pink 17th century edifice at the centre of the city not far from the famous triple bridge. We had arrived two days previously and spent the time exploring this charming and hospitable capital city. But 4.30pm on Saturday was the start of our rehearsal, and as we assembled in the elaborate baroque interior we had to all get back into a properly disciplined state of mind. 90 minutes later we were all moderately satisfied and rather pleased with the attractively warm acoustics at the church.

Dinner opera at the diner – Roma and La Plus Forte

Running since 2007, this year the summer event Bold Tendencies includes the London Contemporary Music Festival (LCMF 2013). Housed in the top four floors of Peckham car park, the project has both a community and international focus, and the two operatic vignettes Roma by Kate Whitley and La Plus Forte by Gerald Barry, were performed as part of its ‘experience based works and clusters of related happenings’.

The open plan space of the car park was, for one evening, turned into a restaurant. Industrial inspired tables made from steel boxing and insulation were suspended from the ceiling and patrons lucky enough to get seats sat on similar, and remarkably sturdy, benches. A long bar off to one side and one row of tables were reserved for diners.

LSO's 2013/14 season

The London Symphony Orchestra's 2013/14 season is full of good things. There's Gergiev in Berlioz (lots of it), Gergiev in Scriabin, a concert performance of Rigoletto, a new Peter Maxwell Davies symphony, Der Rosenkavalier and Harrison Birtwistle's Earth Dances to name but a few.

The LSO's chief conductor has a six concert Berlioz festival conducting the Symphonie fantastique and Les nuits d'ete with Karen Cargill (31/10 & 14/11), The Death of Cleopatre with Cargill and Harold in Italy with Antoine Tamestit (1/11 & 12/11), The Damnation of Faust with Olga Borodina, Michael Spyres and Ildar Abdrazakov (3/11, 7/11) and Romeo and Juliet with Borodina, Kenneth Tarver and Ildar Abdrazakov (6/11 & 13/11). The rather curious mixture of English and French for the titles is taken directly from the LSO season book, clearly there are some titles no-one dares do in English any more (Fantastic Symphony any one, Summer Nights?)

Dai Fujikura - Flare

Dai Fujikura, the London-based Japanese composer, has launched his own record label, Minabel Records, for recordings of his own works. The first release under the new imprint is Flare showcasing seven of Fujikura's chamber works, performed by the Arditti Quartet, Vox Humana, Masanori Oishi, Mari Endo,Kenji Nakagi, the Goldfield Ensemble, Johanna Persson and the Zilliacus/Persson/Raitinen Trio. Rather impressively five of the pieces are recorded live.

Though Fujikura was born in Osaka, Japan, he has lived in the UK for more than 20 years and he studied composition in London with Edwin Roxburgh, Daryl Runswick and George Benjamin. In his music Fujikura is fascinated by the forms and patterns observed in the natural world, patterns of synchronised movement and geometric precision. On this disc, this is reflected in the way the textures of the pieces develop, transmute and fragment as Fujikura uses often advanced playing techniques to create patterns in sound.

Wigmore Hall new season - November/December 2013-14

November at the Wigmore Hall starts with Julian Anderson as composer in residence. Anderson, whose first opera is being premiered by ENO in 2014, is the Wigmore Hall's second composer in residence. The Aurora Orchestra give two concerts on 2 November, mixing Anderson's music with that of Oliver Knussen, George Benjamin, Hans Abrahamsen and Salvatore Sciarrino. (2/11)

There are two farewells. Baritone Wolfgang Holzmair, who made his Wigmore Hall debut in 1989, gives his farewell concert accompanied by Imogen Cooper in a programme of Schubert songs (16/11). And Dame Felicity Lott , who made her Wigmore Hall debut in 1975, also makes her final solo recital accompanied by Graham Johnson in a programme of music by Schumann, Wolf, Strauss, Bridge, Britten, Bizet, Bernard, Yvain. Mireille and Offenbach (15/11)

400 teenagers will travel - National Youth Orchestra in Derry-Londonderry

As part of the celebrations in Derry-Londonderry for the City of Culture 2013, the National Youth Orchestra is in Northern Ireland for a 10 day residence, led by conductor Vassily Petrenko. They will be joined by three youth choirs, the National Youth Choir of Great Britain, the Irish Youth Chamber Choir and Codetta (a chamber choir based in Derry-Londonderry). The 400 young performers will be playing Beethoven's Ninth Symphony along with RVW's Toward the Unknown Region and songs from Shostakovich’s Ten Poems on Texts by Revolutionary Poets, at Belfast’s Waterfront Hall and at Millennium Forum, Derry~Londonderry. Soloists in the Beethoven include Lisa Milne, Andrew Kennedy and Andrew Greenan.

Edward Cowie - Gesangbuch

For the latest of their discs on Signum devoted to single composers, the BBC Singers, under conductors Simon Joly and Stephen Cleobury, have turned to Edward Cowie. Cowie was the BBC Singers first associate composer (from 2002-2005) but the works on this disc stretch back to 1975. Bookended by performances of Cowie's Lyre Bird Motet (2002) and its companion Bell Bird Motet (2011), the main work on the disc is Cowie's Gesangbuch (1975-76) performed with the instrumental ensemble Endymion, plus The Soft Complaining Flute with Simon Preston.

Edward Cowie (born 1943) studied with Alexander Goehr and Witold Lutoslawki but he also trained at the Slade as an artist and trained first as a physicist. Cowie employs the act of drawing as a part of the compositional process, and the CD booklet includes images from sketchbooks which relate to the works on the disc. For Cowie these form a second stage of the process (you can see some samples on Edward Cowie's website) before the final composition. The visual images are surprisingly delicate and colourful, with an emphasis on texture which comes as no surprise to someone familiar with Cowie's music.

The pieces on this disc don't really use melody as such, nor do they use words. Cowie generally sets phonetic sounds of his own invention alongside fragments of texts taken from his preparatory sketches. Instead he plays with colours and textures in the music, distilling work from lots of fragments. The results are sometimes difficult to apprehend at first, and I found myself fretting about what texts were being used. But Cowie uses his voices like instruments, line is generally not important. Instead you get clusters of notes and sounds, tiny inflections which build.