First UK appearance for 15 years: conductor Peter Dijkstra talks about the Netherlands Chamber Choir

Peter Dijkstra and Netherlands Chamber Choir ©FoppeSchut

On 8 March 2017, the Netherlands Chamber Choir (Nederlands Kamerkoor) and its chief conductor Peter Dijkstra, will be performing at Cadogan Hall, the choir's first UK appearance for 15 years. Their programme consists of music by Britten (Hymn to St Cecilia, Sacred and Profane), Gabriel Jackson, Luciano Berio and the Swedish composer Lars Johan Werle. I caught up with Peter via Skype to find out more about the programme.

Peter DIjkstra - photo Wiebrig Krakau

His starting point was Benjamin Britten's Sacred and Profane, a cycle of eight pieces from the end of Britten's life (1975), Peter describes it as demanding for the vocal ensemble. Britten set a mix of sacred and profane ancient texts, so Peter wanted to pair the work with music which had a similar combination of the sacred and the profane. For us in life, do we turn to the sacred or are we more interested in the temptations of profane things, these are questions which Peter wanted to ask in the programme. In fact, when we spoke Peter and the choir were immersed in an entirely different programme, performing minimalism with music by Arvo Pärt and Philip Glass.

For the Sacred and Profane programme, Peter also wanted to find texts which worked well together. Peter describes Gabriel Jackson's Ave Regina coelorum as a very pure setting of a Marian antiphon, yet it is accompanied by electric guitar, one of the most profane instruments you could image. Jackson's treatment of the guitar is very diverse, so the twangy sounds of the guitar work well and there is even an aria for soprano and guitar. Peter calls it 'a wonderful thing'.

Lars Johan Werle is, for Peter, a dear composer from the Swedish choral tradition. Peter feels that when the listener starts listening to Werle's Canzone 126 di Francesco Petrarca they might think they were listening to an ordinary Monteverdi madrigal, but then it takes flight into an extraordinary contemporary piece with note clusters and spoken passages, a madrigal in a new guise. So the work picks up on another theme of the programme, 'old texts with new music'.

The choir has a very broad range in its programming, from Renaissance, through oratorios by Bach and Handel, to new music and commissions. In every programme they have a new aim regarding the sound the choir makes, depending on what the music asks for. For the Sacred and Profane programme, Peter will be searching for an expressive sound from the singers which will work well with the texts. Berio's Cries of London is very soloistic for the singers, yet more experimental in style and asks for straight tone. Whereas the works of Lars Johan Werle will need more expressive sound.

Peter Dijkstra, Netherlands Chamber Choir - photo Martina Simkovicova

To sing a programme based around English texts to an English audience was not in fact the choir's specific choice, they simply presented a selection of possible programmes to Cadogan Hall and it was Sacred and Profane which was chosen. It reflects a level of curiosity, about a Dutch choir singing English music, which Peter finds wonderful.

An immersive experience: Even You Song at Peterborough Cathedral

Even You Song at Peterborough Cathedral (Photo: Benedict Johnson)

Bettina Furnée, Lucy Sheerman, Cheryl Frances Hoad Even You Song; Peterborough Cathedral Choir, choir of schoolchildren, David Humphreys, James Bowstead, Steven Grahl; Peterborough Cathedral
Reviewed by Robert Hugill on Feb 16 2017
Star rating: 4.5
An immersive experience in Peterborough Cathedral based on Evensong and benefiting from a striking core by Cheryl Frances Hoad

An experience combining text, visual images and music, which referenced the structure of Evensong yet integrated interviews with Peterborough residents about a trip to the moon along with images of their houses, combined with a heavy dose of community involvement. Even You Song sounds like the sort of immersive experience which you might get in an art gallery, and in fact it arose our of the residency of artist Bettina Furnée and writer Lucy Sheerman at Metal Peterborough (Metal Peterborough is a community cultural hub housed in a gatehouse at the entrance to Peterborough Cathedral). 

Even You Song proved substantial and striking; partly because the community involved was that of Peterborough Cathedral so that the immersive experience took place within the cathedral, and the music performed by the cathedral choir along with a choir of school children was a substantial score by Cheryl Frances Hoad.

Even You Song was performed at Peterborough Cathedral on Thursday 16 February 2017, where a huge audience filled the nave and the chancel, whilst the choir of Peterborough Cathedral, children from St Augustine's CE (V) Junior School, Bishop Creighton Academy, West Town primary Avademy and William Law CE Primary School, organist David Humphreys, James Bowstead (conductor of the children's choir), and conductor Steven Grahl (director of music at Peterborough Cathedral), plus Reverend Canon Bruce Ruddock (cantor), Reverend Canon Jonathan Baker (welcome and reflections) and Sue Baker & Keely Mills (readings), performed something which was structured like Evensong, yet had a new text by Lucy Sheerman, and music by Cheryl Frances Hoad.

Sheerman's text was based on interviews done with Peterborough couples about going to the moon; this might sound gimmicky, but it was a neutral way of getting people to talk about the unknown and the resulting text was surprisingly thoughtful and poetic. During the performance, images were projected created by artists Bettina Furnée, who had taken pictures in the interviewees homes. Sometimes these were illustrative of the text being sung or spoken and sometimes they were profoundly abstract details.

Cheryl Frances Hoad's score was large scale, she had set the Magnificat and Nunc Dimittis, along with the Preces and Responses, created psalms and settings for the new collects, plus a long anthem, a hymn along with organ voluntaries. A striking and substantial achievement,

What lies beneath: welcome development plans at St George's Hanover Square

St George's Hanover Square

The last few years or so have seen a great deal of activity at St George's Church, Hanover Square, as the PCC has substantially re-furbished the historic interior and commissioned a brand new Richards, Fowkes & Co organ. Now there are plans afoot to remedy a significant lack in the church facilities, decent loos and somewhere casual for parishioners and concert goers to gather. Lack of space is a familiar reason why historic churches have difficulty fitting in facilities, but St George's has a secret weapon.

As Handel's parish church, St George's Hanover Square is the home to the London Handel Festival and, as concert goers and artists all know, the church's historic interior and fine acoustic are not matched by the back stage and front of house facilities. But when the church was built it was with a significant undercroft. Never, apparently, used for burials this may have been intended as a school but seems to have spent most of its life as storage, perhaps most memorably by a wine merchant.

I visited the church recently when the parish administrator Stephen Wikner kindly took me down to the undercroft. There are still remains from previous existences, with the hoist for the wine, and brick partitions vaults. These latter are not structural and the plan is to remove them to reveal a handsome vaulted space. This will be multi-functional, with a commercial restaurant Monday to Friday, and availability for weddings at weekends. It will provide handsome facilities for concert goers, and a new meeting room (available for hire) which will double as a green room (no more using the church vestry).

The undercroft extends into the area under the portico, and this will house the handsome new toilets. The existing toilets and access staircase are 20th century and can be stripped out to provide space for a fine staircase linking to the grand stair upstairs.

Of course restaurants need kitchens and facilities, and these will be created by excavating the courtyard south of the church. When complete, the courtyard will return to use, providing external access to the new restaurant, as well as housing the new disable access lift (something that St George's sorely lacks).

The undercroft plan is an imaginative solution to a tricky problem, and the restaurant should provide a welcome income stream for the church (which will be funding the changes partly using its own investments). Concert goers and artists at the London Handel Festival will certainly be grateful. The new undercroft development will also provide welcome facilities for those who attend St George's services. And perhaps the development will encourage more people to take advantage of the church's fine acoustic to mount concerts there.

Louise Alder and Gary Matthewman at the Wigmore Hall

Louise Alder
photo William Alder

Soprano Louise Alder and pianist Gary Matthewman are giving a recital at the Wigmore Hall on Sunday 19 February 2017, at 3pm. They will be performing Huw Watkins' Five Larkin Songs (which were premiered by Carolyn Sampson in 2010 and won the vocal category of the 2011 British Composer Awards), plus a group of songs by Sibelius (Kyssens hopp Op. 13 No. 2, Vilse Op. 17 No. 4, Säv, säv, susa Op. 36 No. 4, Flickan kom ifrån sin älsklings möte Op. 37 No. 5) and songs by Puccini and Verdi.

Louise Alder's recent roles have included Ilia in Mozart's Idomeneo at Garsington (see my review), and Zerlina in Mozart's Don Giovanni with Glyndebourne on Tour (see my review) and she will be making her Welsh National Opera debut as Sophie in Der Rosenkavalier later this year.


The concert is part of the Wigmore Hall's Chamber Zone, the free ticket scheme for 8-25 year olds, and tickets for those under 35 are £5. Full details from the Wigmore Hall website.

The Food of Love: settings of the Song of Songs from Ensemble Plus Ultra

Illustration for the 1st verse of the Song of Songs,
a minstrel playing before Solomon
(15th century Rothschild Mahzor)

The Food of Love - Song of Songs Victoria, Palestrina, Lassus, Ceballos; Ensemble Plus Ultra; Cadogan Hall
Reviewed by Robert Hugill on Feb 16 2017
Star rating: 4.0
Beautifully realised vocal ensemble performances of texts which hover between sacred and secular

Ensemble Plus Ultra made its Cadogan Hall debut as part of the Choral at Cadogan series on Wednesday 15 February 2017, with a programme of settings of the Song of Songs by Victoria, Palestrina, Lassus, and Ceballos, interleaved with readings of Shakespeare's sonnets. The ensemble, soprano Grace Davidson, mezzo-soprano Martha McLorinan, counter-tenor David Martin, tenors William Balkwill and Simon Wall and bass Jimmy Holliday, makes something of a speciality of music from the Spanish Golden Age but in this programme they also visited Rome for the music of Palestrina and Munich for the music of Lassus.

Liturgically the text of the Song of Songs was taken to refer to the Church as the bride of Christ, though not all settings of the texts from the Song of Songs were written to be used liturgically. Palestrina's 29 settings may well have been designed for private performance, we don't really know. And some of the texts get a bit near the knuckle for liturgical use. Composers responses to the texts varied, with settings ranging from the positively madrigalian with lots of word colouring, to the simple pure lines of classic Palestrina.

The programme opened with three settings of Nigra sum sed formosa, by Victoria and by Palestrina with chant in the middle. In Victoria's setting the group brought out a real sense of the word play, with some vivid interaction between different groupings, whereas Palestrina's response was much more smooth lines and nice blend. In between we had the poised chant sung by the two women in the group.

The ensemble consists of some of the most experienced consort singers around, and this shows in the group's combination of blend and character; individual lines were characterised but the whole was highly responsive. I felt that they took some time to quite get the measure of the tricky acoustic of the Cadogan Hall and balance in some of the early items in the programme was not ideal.

I felt that the group did not always get beyond the calm beauty of Palestrina's music. Their performance of his four-part Surge propera was perfectly done but it was the more extrovert, madrigalian five-part setting which came alive. The same was true of Trahe me post where they really brought out Palestrina's mobile lines, whereas his Osculetur me was perfectly poised and controlled.

Pembroke College - Bliss series

Joseph Middleton in the Old Library
Pembroke College

As part of Pembroke College's Sir Arthur Bliss International Song Series which is curated by pianist Joseph Middleton, soprano Felicity Lott and Joseph Middleton are giving  recital in the college's Old Library on Friday 17 February 2017, when they will be performing songs by Faure, Duparc, Debussy, Hahn, Poulenc, Berners and Britten. Further ahead soprano Carolyn Sampson and Joseph Middleton will be giving a recital on 8 May 2017, and on February 24, 2017 Sir Thomas Allen is giving a public masterclass.

The series is named for the composer Sir Arthur Bliss who studied at the collect. The singers who come to the college as part of the Bliss series also work with students. The Bliss series came about because the college wanted to encourage students involved in non-chapel centred music and Joseph Middleton was appointed in 2006. Since then the scheme has evolved into the song recital series in the college's Old Library, and young singers and pianists at the college get coaching from Joseph and the high profile singers work with them too. On May 1, 2017 the performers from the Pembroke Lieder Scheme give a showcase in the Old Library.

Full details from the Pembroke College website.

Looking ahead: Britten Sinfonia in 2017/18

Britten Sinfonia - photo Harry Rankin

The 2017/18 season sees the Britten Sinfonia celebrating its 25th birthday. Thomas Ades continues his cycle of Beethoven symphonies paired with the music of Gerald Barry, including the London premiere of Barry's piano concerto with soloist Nicolas Hodges.

The Choir of King's College, Cambridge joins the Britten Sinfonia with conductor Stephen Cleobury for Bernstein's Chichester Psalms and RVW's Dona Nobis Pacem with soprano Ailish Tynan, and a new work by Emma Ruth Richards. Britten Sinfonia Voices joins the orchestra for Stravinsky's Mass alongside Mozart and Esa Pekka Salonen's Concert Etude for solo horn performed by BBC Young Musician finalist Ben Goldscheider.

Sir Mark Elder conducts Mahler's Ruckert Lieder with mezzo-soprano Elisabeth Kulman, plus Brahms and Finzi. The orchestra is taking part in the Barbican's This is Rattle celebration, performing Stravinsky, Britten, Oliver Knussen, Helen Grime and Thomas Ades.

Pepys the musician: music by Cesare Morelli

Cesare Morelli is not a household name. He was a 17th century Italian musician whose posthumous reputation now owes something to the fact that his employer from 1675 to 1682 was one Samuel Pepys, and Morelli, a singer and guitarist in Pepys' household, wrote songs for Pepys. A programme on Morelli is planned for BBC Radio 4 and the programme will look at four neglected music manuscripts written for Samuel Pepys by Cesare Morelli (who was a Roman Catholic), giving us a fresh window on to the religious Catholic/Anglican struggles of the 16C and 17C, through the relationship between Pepys and Morelli.

As part of this, there is a concert of Morelli's music Pepys the Musician, at St Olave's Church, Hart Street, London EC3R 7NB tonight (15 February 2016) at 8pm. Bass baritone David Ireland, guitarist Toby Carr and lute/theorbo player James Bramley will be performing a selection of songs by Morelli, plus one by Pepys himself and Morelli's arrangement of Pelham Humphrey's Lord I have sinned which was made for Pepys. Dionysius Kyropoulos, the stage director and academic who has done a lot of work on Morelli's music, will also be talking.

Full details from the Overtone Productions website. The finished programme is planned for 11.30am, 4 April 2017 on BBC Radio 4.

Farinelli - A Portrait: Ann Hallenberg, Chrstopher Rousset & Les Talens Lyriques

Farinelli - A Portrait Riccardo Broschi, Geminiano Giacomelli, Nicola Porpora, Leonardo Leo, Handel; Ann Hallenberg, Les Talens Lyriqes, Christophe Rousset; Aparte Music
Reviewed by Robert Hugill on Feb 07 2017
Star rating: 4.0
Astonishing virtuosity and style in this disc of arias written for the castrato Farinellii

The castrato Farinelli was a phenomenon; Charles Burney said of him 'In his voice, strength, sweetness and compass; in his style, the tender, the gracious and the rapid'. Farinelli - A Portrait from Aparte Music attempts to give us an idea what he sounded like. Recorded live at the Bergen International Festival in 2011, it features mezzo-soprano Ann Hallenberg accompanied by Les Talens Lyriques and Christophe Rousset in arias by Riccardo Broschi, Geminiano Giacomelli, Nicola Porpora, Leonardo Leo and Handel.

Apart from the Handel (which were included in the concert as encores), all of the arias are from operas premiered by Farinelli, which means the arias were written for him. And in fact Riccardo Broschi was his brother and Nicola Porpora his teacher, so we should presume they had a fair idea of what he was capable.

Of course the frustrating thing for modern Baroque lovers is that Farinelli never sang any Handel. The two never worked together and the only time Farinelli sang in a Handel opera, for the Opera of the Nobility in London, he used his own arias.

Hallenberg starts of with 'Son qual nave ch'agitata' from Riccardo Broschi's Artaserse which Farinelli made his UK debut with in London to thrilling effect. Opening with a stunning messa di voce (gradual swelling and diminution) the audience was so impressed it applauded for five minutes before he could go on. Quite what he was capable of is displayed by Broschi's outrageously ornamented aria, and here we start to appreciate Hallenberg's rock solid technique so that she make the aria real bravura fun. Even the slower aria by Broschi, 'Ombra fedele anch'io'  is full of notes, Farinelli did not seem to do simple.

A unique campus of the arts: a walk round Snape Maltings with Roger Wright

Snape Maltings - photo Philip Vile

Snape Maltings in Suffolk has an intriguing history, built as a maltings in the 19th century it owes its existence partly to the location on the river Alde which provided a means of transport (by barge), and it is this location which has proved so evocative in the building's more recent history as a concert hall, where the very location seemed to reflect the essence of Benjamin Britten's music. But there is drama and complexity in the story too.

Snape Maltings - photo Ashley Dace, CC BY-SA 2.0, 

Thanks to Britten visionary idea, the maltings was yurned into a concert hall for the 1967 Aldeburgh Festival. Yet Snape Maltings burned down at the opening of the 1969 festival and yet was re-built in time to open the 1970 festival. Since then the use of the site has increased, and Snape has developed from being a location for the Aldeburgh Festival to a year-round musical arts campus. During my recent trip to Aldeburgh (see my article), we were taken round Snape Maltings by the present director, Roger Wright, to talk about what has been achieved and the ambitious plans for the future.

In 1938 Britten moved to a house in Snape village, the first of his houses in the Snape/Aldeburgh area. The house was on a hill, and overlooked the Snape Maltings, then still in use as a maltings. By 1965, the maltings were no more and the buildings were available as warehousing. It was Britten's visionary idea to turn the largest of the buildings into a concert hall. And this proved to have superb acoustics, a large rectangular shape with rough red bricks which have just the right acoustical qualities. As he shows us round Roger Wright also comments that the hall is highly democratic, there is no particular place where sight and sound are better than elsewhere.

Semyon Bychkov conducting the Britten Pears Orchestra in Snape Maltings concert hall - photo Matt Jolly

It was Britten's vision that the maltings would become more than a concert hall, though lack of money prevented the development. In 1979 the granary store was converted into the Britten-Pears School, and in the 1990s more foyers and circulation spaces were added to the concert hall. The big turning point came in 2009 when the Hoffmann Building opened, containing a mix of performance studios and rehearsal spaces. This musical campus was still surrounded by further buildings from the former maltings, some of which were ruinous and others were run as a commercial enterprise by the original owners. It was this Aldeburgh Music of which Roger Wright became chief executive in 2014. Yet this is a job which he has never actually done!

Looking ahead: Wigmore Hall's 2017/18 season

Jorg Widmann - photo Marco Borggreve

The Wigmore Hall's 2017/18 season has nearly 500 concerts in it including 120 chamber recitals. Gerald Finley opens the season with songs by Schubert, Poulenc,Turnage and Britten on 9 September 2017, whilst the Dutch bass-baritone Robert Holl gives his final Wigmore Hall recital on 27 September.

Baritone Roderick Williams will be singing Schubert's Die schone Mullerin, Winterreise and Schwanengesang for the first time, and will be exploring the works with young performers from the Guildhall School. Winterreise is also the focus for tenor Mark Padmore's recital with pianist Mitsuko Uchida.

Returning divas include Sarah Connolly, Joyce DiDonato, Elina Garanca, Anna Bonitatibus, Alice Coote, Ann Hallenberg, Robert Invernizzi and Sandrine Piau. Counter-tenor Philippe Jaroussky will be giving an all-Handel programme with Ensemble Artaserse. Also returning are Christian Gerhaher, Simon Keenlyside, Matthias Goerne and Florian Boesch.

Residencies include violinist Isabelle Faust whose focus will include Mozart's mature violin sonatas. German violinist Christian Tezlaff will be exploring Brahms' violin sonatas with Lars Vogt,as well as performing in chamber music including Schubert's String Quintet in C. Italian contralto Sonia Prina gives three concerts performing French melodies, and Italian repertoire with period groups Akademie fur Alte Musik Berlin and Concerto Copenhagen. Jorg Widmann will be appearing as both composer and performer; the Heath Quartet is performing five quartets, other groups also perform his chamber music whilst he will be performing with Sir Andras Schiff and the Tezlaff Quartet.

Composer in Residence Helen Grime is developing a new project exploring motherhood, to be performed by Ruby Hughes and Joseph Middleton.

There will be 17 concerts in which various groups explore the full gamut of Haydn's string quartets, whilst Cuarteto Casals performs the complete Beethoven quartets alongside works by living composers.

Igor Levit will be celebrating Frederic Rzewski's 80th birthday with The People United WIll Never Be Defeated and a specially commissioned new work. Nelson Freire also celebrates the 50th anniversary of his Wigmore debut with a recital.

John Butt and the Dunedin Consort will be performing Bach's Christmas Oratorio, St Matthew Passion and Mass in B Minor. Philip Higham will be playing Bach Cello Suites.

Wigmore Hall Learning programme has been running for 20 years and in 2016 led 539 learning events and engaged with 11531 people. Recent initiatives include a new choir for people living with dementia and their carers.

Music among friends: Klangrede

Klangrede, Eres Holz, Johannes B Borowski, Stefan Keller; Zafraan Ensemble, Titus Engel; bastille musique
Reviewed by Robert Hugill on Feb 06 2017
Star rating: 4.5
Clarity of texture and rigour of thought in this disc of recent music by three Berlin-based composers

This disc is the fourth issue from a new Berlin-based label, bastille musique, whose recordings are carefully chosen both in terms of the content and the presentation. This disc Klangrede, is performed by the Berlin-based contemporary music ensemble, Zafraan Ensemble, conducted by Titus Engel. Engel is perhaps best known for his conducting the premiere of Charles Wuorinen's opera Brokeback Mountain in Madrid in 2014 (see the review in the Financial Times).

On this disc, Engel and the Zafraan Ensemble perform two works each by three contemporary composers, Quintett and Katakothes by Eres Holz, Klaviertrio and Dex by Johannes B Borowski and Hammer and Soma oder Die Lust am Falienlassen by Stefan Keller. All except Klaviertrio being premiere recordings.

A link between the composers and performers is the Hochschule fur Musik "Hanns Eisler" in Berlin, where they all studied, and so it is as a coming together as colleagues and friends that they have created the programme. The title Klangrede (sound-speech) is a rhetorical term first developed by Handel's colleague from Hamburg, Johann Mattheson. Whilst the three composers all seem to have been interested in Mattheson's rhetorical basis for constructing a piece of music, none follows Mattheson's strict six-part structure. Instead we get music which is rather freer, but still with a sense of rhetorical dialectic, a feeling we are listening to conversational argument in music.

The pieces have other elements in common, all are single-movement works, and all were created in the same six year span, so we have something of a snap-shot.

Robert Levin to become the Academy of Ancient Music's first Hogwood Fellow

Robert Levin
photo Clive Barda

The Academy of Ancient Music has created the Hogwood Fellowship in honour of the orchestra's founder Christopher Hogwood and it is intended to further his commitment to providing historical insight and cultural context to the music they perform. 

The inaugural Hogwood Fellow will be the pianist, conductor and musicologist Robert Levin whose tenure will last until the end of the 2017/18 season. Robert Levin's period as Hogwood Fellow will include performances with the orchestra as well as interviews, talks, articles and programme notes. This will continue the Academy of Ancient Music's tradition of ensuring the performances are grounded in scholarship and cultural context.

Robert Levin will next perform with the Academy of Ancient Music at the Barbican Centre's Sound Unbound weekend, 29-30 April 2017. The Academy of Ancient Music directed by Frank de Bruine (oboe) and Bojan Cicic (violin) is performing its programme Bach and the Italian Concerto, concertos by Bach, Vivaldi, Albinoni and Marcello, at the Barbican's Milton Court Concert Hall (15 Feb), the Assembly Room, Bath (16 Feb), Civic Theatre, Chelmsford (18 Feb), the Apex, Bury St Edmunds (23 Feb), the Sheldonian, Oxford (24 Feb).

Looking Ahead: Aurora Orchestra in 2017

The Aurora Orchestra and Nicholas Collon at the Proms

During 2017 the Aurora Orchestra and conductor Nicholas Collon continue their two London concert series. At the Southbank Centre, where the group is an Associate Orchestra, the Orchestral Theatre concerts deliberately challenge the accepted concert formats and genres. Whilst at Kings Place the group is working its way through the complete cycle of Mozart piano concertos. Outside of London they have a variety of events including performing Britten's Albert Herring at the Grange Festival under conductor Steuart Bedford.

Having recently explored Metamorphosen with Edmund de Waal, Anthony Marwood and Sara Mohr-Pietsch, the Aurora Orchestra's Orchestra Theatre series at the Southbank Centre continues on 3 June 2017 when at St John's Smith Square (the Southbank Centre's Queen Elizabeth Hall in exile), the orchestra will continue its exploration of Brahms symphonies from memory, with Symphony No. 1, paired with Richard Ayres' No. 42: In the Alps. The concert is repeated on 4 June at Symphony Hall, Birmingham. Further ahead in September Brett Dean's Pastoral Symphony is paired with Messiaen's Oiseaux Exotiques and Beethoven's Pastoral Symphony from memory.

At Kings Place the Mozart piano concerto series will be featuring pianists Imogen Cooper, Shai Wosner, John Reid, Katia & Marielle Labeque and Tom Poster. There will also be free pre-concert events, the first being Imogen Cooper in conversation with Alfred Brendel. And the late night series, The Lock-In continues its informal format.

As well as collaborating with the Grange Festival on Britten's Albert Herring which is conducted by Steuart Bedford and directed by John Copley with Yvonne Howard as Lady Billows, the orchestra will be joining with Tenebrae, conductor Nigel Short for performances of Faure's Requiem at St John's Smith Square (part of the Holy Week Festival) and at St George's Bristol.

Further information from the Aurora Orchestra website.

Ben Gernon in Manchester, Scotland and Salzburg

Ben Gernon and the BBC Philharmonic Orchestra

The young British conductor Ben Gernon (aged 27) was recently announced as becoming the principal guest conductor of the BBC Philharmonic Orchestra. Gernon has appeared twice at the BBC Proms, and in 2013 won the Nestle and Salzburg Festival Young Conductors Award, also becoming Dudamel Fellow with the LA Philharmonic. 

Gernon started his musical life as a tuba player in his local brass band conducted by his father. He went on to study tuba and conducting at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama with Patrick Harrild and Sian Edwards respectively, and also cites Sir Colin Davis as a profoundly important figure in his musical development. He already has a couple of discs under his belt, so we look at those to see what his tenure at the BBC Philharmonic might herald.

Gernon will formally take up his position with the BBC Philharmonic in Autumn 2017, but has already built up an admirable relationship with the orchestra. He recently conducted a programme which included Walton's Viola Concerto and Malcolm Arnold's Electra with music by John Foulds and Frank Bridge, a programme which paired Debussy's La Mer with Tchaikovsky's Symphony No. 1 with Saint-Saens Piano Concerto No. 2 with Benjamin Grosvenor, as well as Beethoven's Eroica Symphony. Not a bad mix! (and there is still a chance to catch him in action on BBC iPlayer)

In 2013, Gernon won the Nestle and Salzburg Festival Young Conductors Award, and the recording of Gernon's performance of Prokofiev's Symphony No. 5 with the Gustav Mahler Jugendorchester has been issued as a CD by the Salzburg Festival. Prokofiev's symphony, written during the Second World War and his first since returning to Soviet Russia, is a complex and often dark piece, very far from the sort of Soviet realism expected of composers. Gernon makes the Andante first movement sober and thoughtful, there are moments of high drama but overall a feeling of steady exploration. Whilst there are some fine details from the Gustav Mahler Jugendorchester, it is Gernon's overall control of the large scale paragraphs which impresses. The Allegro marcato evokes the composer ballet Romeo and Juliet (not surprisingly as it uses discarded material), but though the players make it perky they bring an edge to it though not as satirical as a Shostakovich scherzo. Rhythms are crisp and tight, with great sense of movement and a suave trio. The Adagio is a combination of lyric beauty and neoclassical elegance, developing an interesting degree of complexity with a serious undertow. Gernon makes the Allegro giocoso finale quite a sober and thoughtful ending to the symphony, certainly not as mad-cap as David Nice's programme note implies, but there is a wonderful control of texture. You can still pick up the disc from Amazon.

In 2014, Gernon made his Proms debut with the Scottish Chamber Orchestra in a concert celebrating the 80th birthday of Sir Peter Maxwell Davies, and Gernon's 2016 recording with the orchestra on Linn records showcases some of Davies most attractive works, the concert overture Ebb of Winter, Last door of light, Farewell to Stromness and An Orkney Wedding with sunrise, plus guitarist Sean Shibe playing the solo guitar piece Hill Runes (available from Amazon).

Queer Talk: homosexuality in Britten's Britten

Queer Talk exhibition detail ©Britten-Pears Foundation

The composer Benjamin Britten and his partner Peter Pears were not known either for their openness about their sexuality or any sort of activism. In modern parlance they certainly were not out. But yet people knew. When Britten died in 1976 (nine years after the decriminalisation of homosexuality in England and Wales) he was determined that his biographer should tell the whole truth about his relationship with Pears, and Pears bravely spoke openly about their relationship on Tony Palmer's film A Time There Was. 

Queer Talk exhibition, detail of timeline
©Britten-Pears Foundation

Whilst Britten and Pears might have been discreet, a distinct thread of homosexuality runs through Britten's work, and the composer did a sort of balancing act as he sought to reflect this and acknowledge his relationship to Pears whilst never being too overt. 

This is the background to the exhibition Queer Talk: homosexuality in Britten's Britten which is in The Red House, Britten and Pears' home in Aldeburgh now owned by the Britten-Pears Foundation. In an exhibition space formed from Britten's former swimming pool curator Dr Lucy Walker, director of public programming and learning at the Britten-Pears Foundation, has assembled a small but telling exhibition which relates Britten's experience and works to the attitudes of the outside world.

Key to the exhibition is the juxtaposition of the public and private. All along one wall runs a lively timeline which places events in Britten's and Pears' life against the wider political and social homosexual context, include a line of flags indicating when countries legalised homosexuality. On the opposite wall there is another display, culled from the recent book of Britten and Pears' correspondence (some 350 or so letters). These are more intimate expressions of regard, love and affection, the sort of private slang phrases which any could develops. In a way this is to shine a light on something which they kept very private, and the organisers are aware that there are still people alive in Aldeburgh who knew the couple. But in historical terms Britten and Pears are moving from private people to historical figures, and Dr Walker feels that it is important for people to know Britten and Pears fully.

Two of Britten's works are featured in detail, Canticle 1 and the opera Billy Budd and there is a video which includes excerpts from them, as well as the out gay tenor John Mark Ainsley talking about the canticle, the role of Captain Vere in Billy Budd and Britten's Nocturne.

New Teeth4 - Bastard Assignments

Josh Spears and Timothy Cape in
Timothy Cape's Wildflower

New Teeth 4; Bastard Assignments; Hackney Showrooms
Reviewed by Robert Hugill on Feb 10 2017
Star rating: 4.0
From the bizarre to the wonderful, another one of Bastard Assignments evenings of cross-arts performance

The composers collective Bastard Assignments has been presenting a season of cross-arts performances across London under the intriguing title New Teeth. On Friday 10 February 2017 I caught up the final event, New Teeth 4, in the theatre at Hackney Showroom. The group's regular line-up of composers Timothy Cape, Edward Henderson, Caitlin Rowley and Josh Spear (who performed their own work as well as performing that of others), were joined by guests Ludwig Abraham, Andy Ingamells and Sharon Gal, cellist Sarah James and Impermanence Dance Theatre (Eleanor Perry, Danny Hay Gordon, Patricia Langa and Ale Marzotto Levi).

There were eight pieces, Ludwig Abraham's Tykes, Timothy Cape's Wildflower, Caitlin Rowley's Paper, Josh Spear's Extended Play, a set by Sharon Gal, Andy Ingamells and Maya Verlaak's Tape Piece and Andy Ingamells' Solo and He that plays the English Gentleman shall be welcome, with the evening concluding with a set by Impermanence Dance Theatre. Apart from the dance at the end, all the pieces involved an element of performance and many evinced a fascination with using non-traditional objects as sound sources.

Edward Henderson & Andy Ingamells
in Andy Ingamells & Maya Verlaak's Tape Piece

We opened with Ludwig Abraham's Tykes (performed by Ludwig Abraham), which began with a series of instructions to the audience before Abraham's started to receive instructions himself from a disembodied voice, mainly about learning hip-hop. It was an intriguing piece which finished as suddenly as it started.

Timothy Cape's Wildflower (performed by Timothy Cape, Caitlin Rowley and Josh Spear) continued his fascination with orchestrating sounds of natural objects, which we have experienced to memorable effect in previous Bastard Assignments events. Wildflower started with two film sequences, first a random selection of object (glass and plastic bottles, empty containers etc) which were made to resonate by a steady stream of water from a hose-pipe, this was followed by a wind-chime arranged from random objects at the sea side with the clinking sounds backed by the rush of the sea. The final sequence was Timothy Cape, Caitlin Rowley and Josh Spear re-creating the sounds from the final sequence (thankfully we did not have the danger of getting wet in a recreation of the first film sequence), so there were clinking bottles, cans and others backed by white noise from the radio hiss. The results were surprisingly evocative, subtle and complex, with a remarkable range of timbres.

This fascination with the timbre of natural objects continued with Caitlin Rowley's piece Paper, but with a difference. In the past I have heard Rowley working live with paper and card to produce a range of subtle complex sounds. For Paper we saw her working with paper, card and a variety of objects, but the sounds were all produced by cellist Sarah James, combining pitched and unpitched sounds, and a variety of extended techniques. There were some magical moments, but some unsupportable ones too, particularly the unbearable sound levels when the film showed paper being cut.

In case you missed it: January on Planet Hugill - Ligeti, Menotti and George Benjamin

Welcome to January on Planet Hugill, a month when we were named as as one of Feedspot Blog Reader's Top 25 Opera Blogs & Websites on the Web.

It was month which also included three remarkably different 20th and 21st century operas, Menotti's The Medium, Ligeti's Le grand Macabre and George Benjamin's Written on Skin.

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▪ Concentrated intensity: George Benjamin and Martin Crimp's Written on Skin revived at Covent Garden

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▪ Black morality tale: Ligeti's Le grand Macabre from Simon Rattle and the London Symphony Orchestra at the Barbican

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▪ Dark doings: Menotti's The Medium from Magnetic Opera, Menotti's grand-guignol opera in a performance from a strong young cast in a basement theatre

Wigmore Hall

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▪ Uneven partnership: Maria Katzarava & Stefano La Colla at Rosenblatt Recitals

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▪ 1767 - a retrospective: eleven-year old Mozart in context from Classical Opera

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▪ Muhly, Argento and Schumann from Alice Coote and Julius Drake, three powerful cycles, exploring creativity and mental health

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▪ Twentieth century Romantic English song at the centre of this engaging recital from counter-tenor Tim Mead and pianist James Baillieu

Various Venues

Two Twentieth Century classics

Crouch End Festival Chorus, conductor David Temple, is presenting two contrasting 20th century classics on Sunday 12 February at their concert at the Barbican. Accompanied by the London Orchestra da Camera, the choir will perform Holst's The Hymn of Jesus and Prokofiev's Alexander Nevsky, alongside Vivaldi's Gloria, with soloists Jessica Cale (soprano) and Kitty Whately (mezzo-soprano). For the Hymn of Jesus, they will also be joined by the Finchley Children's Music Group and choir of City of London School for Girls.

The Hymn of Jesus was Holst's first major work after finishing The Planets. Written in 1917 (and premiered in 1920) the piece is undoubtedly a response to the carnage of World War One (Holst was unable to enlist for medical reasons). The piece sets a text from one of the Gnostic Gospels, the Acts of St John, using a translation from the Greek which Holst prepared with assistance from Clifford Bax and Jane Joseph. The piece is a long way from the Victorian and Edwardian oratorio with both text and music being profound and not a little challenging, and Holst's ecstatic writing prefigures later English composers such as Tavener and Tippett.

Prokofiev's Alexander Nevsky started out life as a score for Sergei Eisenstein's 1938 film, It was Prokofiev's third film score, previously he had written for Lieutenant Kije (1934) and The Queen of Spades (1936) though the Queen of Spades project never reached fruition. Prokofiev would also write the score for Eisenstein's last film Ivan the Terrible (1942-45).   In 1939 Prokofiev arranged the music from Alexander Nevsky into a cantata, perhaps inspired by the great popularity of the film.

Full details from the Barbican website.

Composition is a full on meeting with his Christianity: Patrick Hawes on his new disc Revelation

Patrick Hawes

A new album, Revelation, of music by the composer Patrick Hawes was released on 10 February 2017 on the Naxos label. The music on the disc includes two new pieces, Revelation based on texts from the Book of Revelation, and a setting of the Beatitudes, plus a new recording of Quanta Qualia, performed by a Canadian ensemble, the Elora Singers, conductor Noel Edison. I caught up with Patrick by Skype to find out more about the new project.

Patrick first came to prominence with his debut album Blue in Blue which was nominated for a Classical Brit in 2004, the first track on the album being the popular Quanta Qualia. Hawes was commissioned by HRH The Prince of Wales to write the Highgrove Suite in 2009, which was premiered in 2010. His biggest work to-date is his Lazarus Requiem. Premiered at the Cadogan Hall, London in 2008, the work intersperses the traditional Latin Requiem text with an account in English of the raising of Lazarus from St John’s Gospel. The album Angel, recorded by soprano Grace Davidson, the Choir of New College, Oxford and the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, was released on Decca in 2014 and reached Number One in the Classical Charts.

He loves all the hell and damnation, thunderstorms and dragons

The new album, Revelation, is Patrick's first since Angel and I was curious as to why he chose the Book of Revelation for the text of his new work. Patrick explained that it is such a dramatic text, which has everything in it, a wide range of emotions and plenty of pictorial images. He loves all the hell and damnation, thunderstorms and dragons, but that it was the last book in the Bible also had an appeal. Patrick's favourite sentence in the whole of scripture, 'Worthy is the Lamb' (best known in Handel's setting from Messiah) comes from the Book of Revelation, so there is something quietly gentle in the texts, about peace and reconciliation as well.

The number seven features quite heavily in the Book of Revelation, there are seven churches of Asia, seven lamps blazing, so Revelation has seven sections of text plus passages from the prologue and epilogue of the Book of Revelation. For the seven texts, 'Worthy is the Lamb' of course was included, as was a poetic text like 'I saw a new heaven' (at this point in our conversation Patrick and I have a little diversion to talk about other settings of this text, notably the one by Edgar Bainton). The selection also covers the contrasts which Patrick had talked about, with flashes of lightening, and refererences to the Second Coming. Patrick comments that you can see what Charles Jennens chose the Book of Revelation as a source for the text of Handel's Messiah, adding that he is something of a Handel fanatic. Whilst Handel's Worthy is the Lamb is a climactic point in Messiah, Patrick's setting is quieter and tender.

Whilst writing Revelation, Patrick travelled to the island of Patmos where St John wrote the Book of Revelation, and he found the experience an amazing and moving one (you can see the video from the trip on YouTube).

Revelation includes some his most abstract music

Ich fühle luft von anderem planeten

Schoenberg and the performers after the first night of Pierrot Lunaire in Berlin in 1912.

On Sunday 12 February 2017 at Conway Hall at 6.30pm, there is a lovely concert where Louise Kemény (soprano), Adrienn Kantor (flute), Alena Lugovkina (flute), Joe Shiner (clarinet), Alice Eddie (clarinet), Jamie Campbell (violin), Sarah Sew (violin), Bryony Mycroft (viola), and Sophie Gledhill (cello) will be performing Schoenberg's String quartet no. 2 and Pierrot Lunaire plus songs by Stravinsky, Copland and Ravel.

Before hand, at 5.30pm, I will be giving a pre-concert talk entitled Ich fühle luft von anderem planeten, when I will be talking about the works in the programme and looking at the influence of Schoenberg's Pierrot Lunaire on Ravel and Stravinsky.

Full details from the Conway Hall website.

Exploring Britten's Aldeburgh

The Red House and Britten's Studio © Philip Vile

On Wednesday (8 February 2017) I had an enjoyable awayday in Snape and Aldeburgh courtesy of the Britten-Pears Foundation. We had a tour of the exhibition Queer talk: homosexuality in Britten's Britain, which runs at the Red House, Aldeburgh until 28 October 2017 (see my review). Whilst there we were treated to a short recital by pianist Jocelyn Freeman in the atmospheric surroundings of Britten's library and a tour of the Red House, before visiting other places associated with Britten including the Aldeburgh Cinema (in which he owned shares and which has a programme of films complementing the exhibition), and Aldeburgh church. We finished our trip at Snape Maltings where chief executive Roger Wright showed us round and talked about the plans for the future (I will be writing an article about Snape shortly).

Graves of Britten & Pears - image by Tony Pick © Britten-Pears Foundation

The Red House is the last of three which Britten had in the Snape and Aldeburgh area; in fact his first house was an old mill which overlooked the maltings, well before the idea of the concert hall germinated.

The Red House is an old red-brick farm house, Britten and Pears did not make any significant changes to the house, and the contents remain very much as they were when Pears died (including a well stocked drinks cabinet, a games cupboard, and cupboards of crockery). Now owned by the Britten-Pears Foundation, the house is opened to the public each year and the aim is to try to avoid a museum atmosphere and evoke the personalities of Britten and Pears, including the studio where Britten used to write (where you can listen to a talk given by Britten about the distractions of trying to write whilst staring out of the window!)

One notable sight is the art collection which seems to cover many of the walls.

Sundays at 3pm

The Arcubus Ensemble, conductor Julian Collins,  takes its name from St Mary de Arcubus the medieval building which stood at the current site of the church of St Mary le Bow in the City. The choir's composer in residence is Russell Hepplewhite (whose opera The Price for W11 Opera we saw recently). 

The Arcubus Ensemble give a regular series of Sunday afternoon concerts at St Mary le Bow, combining Hepplewhite's music with earlier repertoire. On Sunday 12 February 2017 at 3pm, they will be performing Hepplewhite's Christina Rosetti setting Paradise: In a dream for upper voices and piano, alongside John Tavener's hauntingly beautiful Svyati for choir and solo cello, and Victoria's Requiem Mass.

Further ahead there is Lassus, Bruckner, Arvo Pärt, William Byrd, Jonathan Dove and many more. Full details from the Arcubus Ensemble website.