Portrait of a life (or many): Art songs from the African diaspora

Margaret Bonds

Portrait of a life (or many): Art songs from the African diaspora; Nadine Benjamin, Nigel Foster, Michael Harper; St John's Smith Square Reviewed by Robert Hugill on 12 October 2018 Star rating: 4.0 (★★★★)
Art songs from Black composers from the last 100 years, tracing experiences in America, the Caribbean and the UK

Whilst there are Black singers in the operatic community we usually hear from them within a Western classical narrative, we really get to hear from what might be called the Black experience or experiences. Yet there are composers writing within this tradition, voices which are not often heard, so it was with great pleasure that I was at St John's Smith Square on Friday 12 October 2018 when soprano Nadine Benjamin, speaker Michael Harvey and pianist Nigel Foster presented Portrait of a life (or many): Art songs from the African diaspora.

This was a sequence of readings and songs from Black artists, some American, some influences by the Harlem Renaissance and Civil Rights movement and some contemporary British. So we heard songs by Margaret Bonds (1913-1972), Undine Smith Moore (1904-1989), William Grant Still (1895-1978), Florence Price(1887-1953), Nailah Nombeko, H. Leslie Adams (born 1932), Dominque Le Gendre, Shirley Thompson (born 1958), Brittney Elizabeth Boykin (born 1989), Barbara Sherrill and Byron Motley, and Errollyn Wallen (botn 1958), readings from writers including Derek Walcott and Nikki Giovvanni, and song texts by writers including Derek Walcott, Maya Angelou, William Blake and Langston Hughes.

Undine Smith Moore

Following a reading of Mari Evans' Who can be Born Black we heard Three Dream Portraits, settings of poems by Langston Hughes by Margaret Bonds who studied at the Juilliard and with Roy Harris and who collaborated regularly with Langston Hughes. Three Dream Portraits (1959) were three lyrically melancholy songs with hints of blues, spirituals and more in music which aptly complemented Hughes poems which examined what it was to be Black in America. A strikingly different voice and the final song, a setting of Langston Hughes' I, Too, Sing America brought out a voice which is rarely heard in the concert hall.

I, too, sing America.

I am the darker brother.

They send me to eat in the kitchen

When company comes,

But I laugh,

And eat well,

And grow strong.

Crowd-funding & collaboration: new choral music from Lumen

Benjamin Thiele-Long and Lumen

There are a surprising number of composers who operate under the radar, without a significant media presence. Lumen choir and its conductor Benjamin Thiele-Long aimed to help correct this with their crowd-funded disc Lumen de Lumine which was recently released on the Convivium Records label. Lumenis a relatively new amateur ensemble which aims high, and I recently met up with founder and conductor Benjamin Thiele-Long to find out more.

Benjamin Thiele-Long

The new disc contains 14 pieces by 12 composers of varying ages and backgrounds, many will be new names. Benjamin Thiele-Long and the choir created a very open process from the start, and Benjamin describes the selection of the final pieces for the disc as iterative and collaborative, rather than him specifying everything from the start.

The choir was very much part of the process, getting feedback from the composers so that it was a joint journey. And as part of this, they produced a video with the composers explaining the pieces and their background.

The pieces on the disc are very varied, Clive Whitburn's Who is my neighbour is a commentary on global political issues, whilst Joanna Gill's Safe in the arms of He is a very personal, moving piece, and for Et lacrimatus est Jesus composer Margaret Tesch-Muller set herself the challenge of setting the shortest verse in the Bible.

Benjamin describes that idea of the disc as having something for everyone, and he feels that people will hear at least one piece that they like. Also, the group is hoping to convey something of the excitement the choir feels on discovering new music.

Lumen performs a wide mixture of repertoire, and the Saturday after Benjamin and I speak he is conducting the choir in a concert of Tudor anthems by candlelight. Usually, they sing a mixture of modern pieces and polyphony highlighting what Benjamin feels are the synergies and similarities between the two.

Lumen is very much an amateur choir in that the singers want to be there, and Benjamin characterises them as very curious and enquiring, whether the music is old or new. The group performs music that excites the members, and they want to introduce people to new music. The group is based at St John on Bethnal Green where it rehearses and performs.

Originally Benjamin wanted to create a choir something akin to The Sixteen but comprising amateurs, people not drawn to singing in a church or a cathedral choir. He was looking for a rehearsal venue, yet had little or no money and was lucky enough that they were able to rehearse and perform at St John's, with the concerts being free and St John's taking the money from the bar and the collection. The concerts are thus open to everyone and so the choir is part of the local community.

Lumen is not a big group, it started with eight singers, then grew to 12 and is now 16. Size does not matter to Benjamin so much as the quality of the singers, and that they enjoy it. Benjamin feels that in some ways the smaller group is more approachable to its audiences than a larger one, and with 16 singers they bring out the layers and textures of the music. And if the group occasionally overstretches itself, the singers rise to the challenge.

So they have done things like performing Howells' Collegium Regale at Evensong at St George's Chapel, Windsor (in December 2017), yet there are people in the group who do not read music. The new recording, is thus something the choir is rightly proud of.

Benjamin would love to see other groups developing the idea, of a choir providing the platform for composers via crowd-funding. And Convivium Records were encouraging and enthusiastic about the project. Benjamin has hopes there will be another disc, but it was a big job and after all, he has a day job too.

Benjamin trained as a lawyer and was a barrister for over seven years, and now works in PR and communications. He was a boy chorister and had a choral scholarship at Royal Holloway College. He read psychology and in fact, the chapel choir, directed by Lionel Pike (now Emeritus Professor of Music), was the only choral group open to the non-music students. Benjamin joined and fell in love. He feels that he was lucky to have Lionel Pike as mentor and conductor, and Benjamin aims to emulate Pike's approach including explaining the pieces to the choir

After college, Benjamin was a super-numerary at Guildford Cathedral and then whilst he was at the Bar he set up a choir, Carmen Judicibus. He finds a sense of fulfilment in his work different to that he gains from music, and the two are complementary in other ways has his firm sponsored Lumen's disc.

Before creating Lumen, Benjamin did a lot of work in musical theatre and his arrangements and re-scoring work there gave him confidence as a composer, and in fact, there was a piece of his in Lumen's first concert. This was a setting of Paul Laurence Dunbar and Benjamin's piece on the disc Dreams is a setting of the same poet, thus bringing things full circle.

Lumen de Lumine: new sacred and spiritual choral music
Sam Olivier - There is no dusk to be
Carmen Bradford - My people hath been lost sheep
Simon Whiteley - The way of life
Benjamin Thiele-Long - Dreams
Michael Woliakowski - Beati quorum via
Matt Wetmore - O Sapientia
Brian Moles - Most glorious Lord of life
Clive Whitburn - Who is my neighbour?
Kit Graham - Lullaby
Margaret Tesch-Muller - Et lacrimatus est Jesus
Barry Hopwood - Agnus Dei; The Lord's Prayer
Joanna Gill - Safe in the arms of He
Benjamin Thiele-Long - O Nata Lux
Lumen
Benjamin Thiele-Long (conductor)
Available from Amazon.

Elsewhere on this blog:

• Double concerto for bandoneon and violin (★★★½) - CD review
• The choral music of Richard Allain (★★★½) - CD review
• Meyerbeer's Les Huguenots returns to the Paris Opera - Opera review
• Modified Rapture: Verdi's Aida from the Met (★★★½) - Opera review
• The Emperor's Fiddler - violinist David Irving on historical approaches on his new disc - interview
• Schubert's Winter Journey - Robin Tritschler and Malcolm Martineau at Wigmore Hall  - (★★★★★)  Concert review
• Swan songs - Gerald Finley and Julius Drake at Temple Song  (★★★★★)  - Concert review
• Love & Obsession: Robert & Clara Schumann and Brahms at Conway Hall - concert review
• New dance double bill from New English Ballet Theatre & The English Concert (★★★★)  - Ballet Review
• Pared down & claustrophobic: La Tragédie de Carmen from Pop-Up Opera  (★★★) - Opera review
• Vividly theatrical, lyrically sung, but.... - Salome at ENO  (★★★★) - Opera review
• A forgotten tradition: premiere recordings of two English symphonic works from John Andrews & BBC Concert Orchestra (★★★½) - CD review
• Huw Watkins - Two concertos and a symphony (★★★½) - CD review
• Jiri Belohlavek & the Czech Philharmonic in Janacek (★★★★½) - CD review
•  Home

Calypsos and Dancing Masters: The 13th Malcolm Arnold Festival

Sir Malcom Arnold

The 13th Malcolm Arnold Festival takes place this weekend (13 & 14 October 2018) in and around Northampton, particularly at the Royal & Derngate. Highlights of this year's festival include a concert by the BBC Concert Orchestra, conducted by Keith Lockhart, which includes Arnold's Symphony No. 4, alongside Bernstein's Symphonic Dances from West Side Story and Copland's Clarinet Concerto (with Julian Bliss), and John Andrews will be conducting a concert-performance of Arnold's one-act opera The Dancing Master with a cast which includes Charmian Bedford, Thalie Knights and Jan Capinski. 

Arnold's Symphony No.4 was commissioned by William Glock for the BBC and the composer conducted the BBC Symphony Orchestra for the premiere in 1960. Arnold later wrote that the piece was a reaction to the 1958 Notting Hill race riots, the composer being appalled that such things could occur in Britain. The work includes Caribbean instruments and rhythms.

Arnold's 1952 comic opera The Dancing Master, based on a play by Wycherly, was rejected by the BBC as being 'too bawdy for a family audience'!  It was performed by Guildhall School of Music and Drama in 2015 [see my review].

Visitors to the festival this year include Northampton County Youth Orchestra, Rushden Town Band, recorder player Tabea Debus who plays Arnold's Recorder Concerto at the family concert with the Malcolm Arnold Festival Strings conducted by Hilary Davan Wetton.

Full information from the Royal & Derngate website.

Double concerto for Bandoneon and Violin

JP Jofre Double concerto for violin and bandoneon; JP Jofre, Michael Guttman, Orpheus Chamber Orchestra Reviewed by Robert Hugill on 12 October 2018 Star rating: 3.5 (★★★½)
Striking textures and timbres in this intriguing new concerto

The bandoneon (development of the concertina) is an instrument very much associated with Astor Piazzolla, it was the composer's chosen instrument and features a lot in his music and Piazzolla even wrote a bandoneon concerto. But his espousal of the instrument has led others to it as well.

This new disc features a Double Concerto for Violin and Bandoneon by the Argentinian bandoneon player and composer JP Jofre (Juan Pablo Jofre Romarion). Commissioned by the violinist Michael Guttman, it is played on the disc by Guttman and Jofre with the Orpheus Chamber Orchestra. As well as the concerto, we also get three short duets for violin and bandoneon by Jofre.

The concerto is in three movements, an 'Introduction' leading to 'Allegro', 'Adagio' and then a cadenza leading to 'Milonga'. Inevitably, the ghost of Piazzolla hovers over the work, how could it not. After all, as well as playing Piazzolla's instrument, Jofre also studied with Julio Pane who had played bandoneon in the Astor Piazzolla Sextet. Perhaps Jofre's style is somewhat more lyrical and ruminative than Piazzolla's, there are dance rhythm hints here but Jofre takes quite a fluid view of rhythm and structure.

Ten years: Kings Place celebrates in style

Amazingly, Kings Place is ten years old and so well has the venue entered London's artistic consciousness that it feels as if it has been around for much longer. To celebrate the anniversary, Kings Place threw a party last night (11 October 2018) with artists, performers, people from the music business and members of the audience. 

There was a great deal on offer, as well as being superbly fed and watered there was a feast of entertainment too. And as with all the best parties, there was always something exciting happening elsewhere. We managed to catch Harry Christophers and the Sixteen performing Britten's Choral Dances from 'Gloriana', a responsory by John Sheppard and Tippett's Five Negro Spirituals from 'A Child of Our Time', cellist Matthew Barley and his string ensemble performing Brazilian dance music, and a set from Sonic Brew, an ensemble which included violinist Thomas Gould (on electric violin) and pianist Alex Curtis (who had also written a couple of the tunes). The music kicked off with the Royal Academy of Music Brass Ensemble playing fanfares, and the soul brass group, Brassroots played all around the atrium. There was much else besides, we managed to miss Juice Vocals, Sean Shibe and Ayanna Witter-Johnson, not to forget Ex-Easter Island Head, Denys Baptiste Trio, Ant Law |trio, Art of Moog and Kansas Smitty's House Band!

Here's to the next ten years.

Celebrating Black History Month

As part of Black History Month (which runs during October), the UK's leading multi-racial opera company Pegasus Opera (also my local opera company) is presenting a pair of performances of opera, musical theatre and African Song. On 13 October 2018, at Streatham Space Project, there is A Night with Pegasus Opera. Then on 23 October 2018, at the Assembly Room, Lambeth Town Hall, there is Celebrate Windrush: A Musical Voyage, with opera musical theatre and a Caribbean-inspired programme  which pays tribute to the Windrush generation, and there is authentic Caribbean food afterwards!

Performers include Alison Buchanan (artistic director of Pegasus Opera), Angela Caesar, Josephine Amanjwah, Adam Music, Chike Akwarandu, Keel Watson.

Alex Paxton's Noggin the Nog and the Whale

Remember Noggin the Nog? The TV series, and illustrated books, created by Oliver Postgate and Peter Firmin telling the story of Noggin, who becomes King of the Nogs.

"In the lands of the North, where the Black Rocks stand guard against the cold sea, in the dark night that is very long, the Men of the Northlands sit by their great log fires and they tell a tale ... and those tales they tell are the stories of a kind and wise king and his people; they are the Sagas of Noggin the Nog. Welcome to Northlands, a tribute to Noggin, King of the Nogs and the People of the Northlands".

Young composer, Alex Paxton, has produced a community opera based on it, Noggin and the Whale with a narration by Oliver Postgate based on the T.V show. It was performed recently be massed forces including 500 children, produced by Pelican Music, and the above is a video of extracts from the performance.

Further details from Alex Paxton's website.

Pascal Dusapin's dance opera Passion receives its UK premiere

Music Theatre Wales is joining forces with the National Dance Company of Wales to present the UK premiere of Pascal Dusapin's dance opera Passion. Performed in a new English translation by Amanda Holden, Passion will be co-directed by Michael McCarthy Artistic Director of Music Theatre Wales and Caroline Finn, Resident Choreographer of National Dance Company Wales, with Geoffrey Paterson conducting the London Sinfonietta, and Jennifer France (soprano) as Her and Johnny Herford (baritone) as Him, along with dancers from the National Dance Company of Wales and an off-stage vocal ensemble, Exaudi.

In the work Dusapin explores the pain and passion of two lovers who are forced to separate, using the myth of Orpheus as a starting point. A pupil of Iannis Xenakis and Franco Donatoni and an admirer of Varèse, Dusapin studied at the University of Paris I and Paris VIII during the 1970s and his score combines electronics with live instruments including harpsichord and oud.

Passion is being performed on a tour starting at the Anvil, Basingstoke (11 October) and continuing to the Queen Elizabeth Hall, London (13 October), Wales Millennium Centre Cardiff (23 October) Snape Maltings, Suffolk (30 October) and Lowry, Salford (6 November), ending at Theatr Clwyd, Mold on November 10.

Full details from the Music Theatre Wales website.

Choral music of Richard Allain

Richard Allain choral works; choir of Merton College, Oxford, Benjamin Nicholas (conductor); Delphian
Reviewed by Robert Hugill on 10 October 2018
Star rating: 3.5
Intelligent & imaginative, the choral music of contemporary composer Richard Allain

I first came across Richard Allain's music at one of Alistair Dixon's New Lamps for Old concerts with his ensemble Chapelle du Roi. For these, contemporary composers were paired with a pre-existing Renaissance or Tudor polyphonic piece and asked to write a setting of the same text. Richard and I were on the same programme, along with a variety of other composers.

Now there is a disc on the Delphian label devoted to Richard Allain's elegant and well made contemporary choral music performed by the choir of Merton College, Oxford, conducted by Benjamin Nicholas. It is, by and large, a disc of smaller-scale pieces. The longest work on the disc, Videte Miraculum, revisits the 'New Lamps for Old' concept. Commissioned by Suzi Digby and ORA, it is a response to Thomas Tallis' respond Videte Miraculum and Allain uses Tallis as a cantus firmus, surrounding it with a series of gorgeous textures.

This work very much gives a sense of Allain as a composer whose roots are in the past yet who creates his own sound-world. In Videte Miraculum we are aware of Thomas Tallis, but Allain makes his music undulate around Tallis and it is not just richly gorgeous, there are thoughtful moments too.

Blowing the gloom away: Parry's Songs of Farewell from New College, Oxford

Parry Songs of Farewell, Mendelssohn Sechs Sprüche; Choir of New College, Oxford; novum Reviewed by Robert Hugill on 5 October 2018 Star rating: 3.5 (★★★½)
Quinney and his young singers bring a beautiful clarity to Parry's elegiac work

This new disc of Hubert Parry's Songs of Farewell from Robert Quinney and the Choir of New College, Oxford, on its novum label, is based on Robert Quinney's new edition of the Songs of Farewell for Oxford University Press. The disc also includes Parry's Toccata and Fugue 'The Wanderer' , an early version of 'There is an old belief' from Songs of Farewell, and Parry's large scale anthem Hear my words, my people. But there is a surprise too, Mendelssohn's Sechs Sprüche, representing the European music which so influenced Parry.

Parry's Songs of Farewell is an elegiac work, full of thoughts of death and the transience of life, pregnant with the end of society as Parry knew it (the full set was premiered in 1919 after Parry's death, though he heard them all performed individually). To a certain extent, performing the work with a young choir takes daring. And the choir of New College is young, with trebles on the top line and the lower lines taken by students at the University. Except, that Parry used the word 'treble' for the top line in some of the autograph manuscripts, suggesting that he was thinking of a cathedral or collegiate choir rather than one with mixed voices. It is not a particularly religious work, the texts are diverse and God does not feature heavily, but the works were early on adopted by cathedral and collegiate choirs.

Les Huguenots returns to the Paris Opera

Meyerbeer: Les Huguenots (end of Act 3) - Lisette Oropesa, Paul Guy, Ermonela Jaho, Florian Sempey, Karine Deshayes
L’Opéra national de Paris (Photo Agathe Poupeney/OnP)

Meyerbeer Les Huguenots; Lisette Oropesa, Ermonela Jaho, Yosep Kang, Florian Sempey, Paul Guy, Karine Deshayes, dir: Andreas Kriegenburg, cond: Michele Mariotti; Paris Opera
Reviewed by Robert Hugill on 7 October 2018
Meyerbeer's grand opera returns to Paris in the first new production since the 1930s

Meyerbeer: Les Huguenots (end of Act 4) - Ermonela Jaho, Yosep Kang
L’Opéra national de Paris (Photo Agathe Poupeney/OnP)

The Paris Opera is 350, so a little historical celebration is inevitable. Last year, a new production of Verdi's Don Carlos in the original 1867 version written for the Paris Opera, and next year, the greatest opera it never premiered (and ought to have), Berlioz Les Troyens.

This month (October 2018), there was a new production of the opera which effectively defined the Paris Opera in the 19th century, Meyerbeer's Les Huguenots. Between 1836 and 1936 the company gave over 1100 performances of the opera, then nothing. Until now.

Some of the silence is understandable (if not forgivable). Meyerbeer was Jewish and so clearly his music would not fit with the politics of the late 1930s, and then his style fell out of favour in the 1950s. But his operas have been steadily growing in interest again, partly thanks to some remarkable performances by smaller opera companies.

We saw the performance of Meyerbeer's Les Huguenots at the Opera Bastille on Sunday 7 October 2018. Conducted by Michele Mariotti, the production by Andreas Kriegenburg, with sets by Harald B. Thor, costumes by Tanja Hofmann and lighting by Andreas Gruter, featured Lisette Oropesa (replacing Diana Damrau) as Marguerite de Valois, Yosep Kang  (replacing Bryan Hymel) as Raoul de Nangis, Ermonela Jaho as Valentine, Nicolas Teste as Marcel, Karine Deshayes as Urbain, Florian Sempey as le Comte de Nevers and Paul Gay as le Comte de Saint-Bris.

Meyerbeer: Les Huguenots Act 1 - Nicolas Teste
L’Opéra national de Paris (Photo Agathe Poupeney/OnP)

The version used was expansive, no ballet but still three hours 50 minutes of music, five hours in the theatre, and the characters take time to reveal themselves (we do not hear properly from the heroine, Valentine, until the third act). But librettist Eugene Scribe was a master and each of the first four acts ends with a cliff-hanger, and you could see where Verdi and his librettists got the structure for Don Carlos from.

Meyerbeer was Jewish (he never converted, and to the end of his life he still counted in Hebrew), in a society that was innately anti-Semitic. In his two finest operas, Les Huguenots and Le Prophete, he used historical religious intolerance to hold a mirror up to society, and one of the reasons why the operas have retained their toe-hold in the repertoire is that they still hold the same mirror up to modern society.

Les Huguenots uses the French religious wars of the 16th century as its background, with the St Bartholomew's Day Massacre as its climax. When Les Huguenots was produced at Le Monnaie in Brussels in 2011 by Olivier Py, the production was quite dark, and it is this historical background which is important in the opera. Against it, Meyerbeer places the emotional and moral dilemmas of the protagonists.

Andreas Kriegenburg's production in Paris used the confection of setting it in the future, but Tanja Hofmann's costumes were effectively 19th-century style outfits, plus ruffs, for the aristocrats and vaguely Medieval for with contemporary details for the peasants. Against Harald B. Thor's brilliant white sets, these costumes gave the piece a modish cross-period look with a strong 1970s retro look. Thor's multi-level set worked well, but the bright white soon palled. Satisfactory as a back-drop for the lighter first two acts, with Andreas Gruter's candy-coloured lighting, you really wanted (but didn't get) something darker for the final three acts.

Modified Rapture: Verdi's 'Aida' from the Met

Verdi: Aida - Metropolitan Opera (Photo Metropolitan Opera)

Verdi Aida; Anna Netrebko, Anita Rachvelishvili, Aleksandrs Antonenko, dir Sonja Frisell; Metropolitan Opera Live in HD at the Barbican Cinema
Reviewed by Anthony Evans on 6 October 2018
Star rating: 4.5
Putting the grand into Grand Opera, the Met's 30 year-old Aida returns striking as ever with a strong cast

Over the years a certain type of monumental stand and sing Opera has attracted some sniffy opprobrium from some quarters. I’m not sure I’d want to survive entirely on a diet of the sort of stuff Verona has been pumping out for the last 100 years either, but there’s clearly still an appetite for the shows that put the grand in Grand Opera. Screen 1 at the Barbican was packed to see the Metropolitan Opera’s production of Verdi's Aida, surely the epitome of Grand Opera, broadcast live on Saturday 7 October 2018.

At Saturday’s performance Anna Netrebko sang Aida with Anita Rachvelishvili as Amneris. Aleksandrs Antonenko’s Radames completed the love triangle. The kings of Ethiopia and Egypt were Quinn Kelsey and Ryan Speedo Green with Dmitry Belosselskiy as the High Priest Ramfis. Nicola Luisotti was conducting.

Sonja Frisell’s production is now celebrating its thirtieth anniversary. The colossal sets are certainly spectacular and the technology that allows a seamless move from the grand to the intimate remains impressive even now.

Trench Brothers: commemorating the ethnic minority soldiers who participated in World War One

A new music theatre work by Julian Joseph and Richard Taylor, Trench Brothers, is commemorating the ethnic minority soldiers who participated in World War One using music, theatre and puppetry, bringing to life their hopes and fears, their longing for home, their camaraderie, courage and valour. 

There will be two performances of the work at Brighton Dome on 17 October 2018, featuring professional actors, singers and musicians, jazz and Indian classical musicians, and 250 schoolchildren. The performances will be the culmination of a four-year project involving children from local primary schools in Brighton, Newhaven, Lewes and Seaford.

The music is by Julian Joseph and Richard Taylor, and libretto is by HMDT Music’s creative director Tertia Sefton-Green. The work is conducted by Lee Reynolds, directed by Clare Whistler and Freya Wynn Jones, designed by Neil Irish, and will feature jazz vocalist Cleveland Watkiss MBE, opera singer Damian Thantrey, who is half-Indian, actor Richard Sumitro and the classical Indian duo Jasdeep Singh Degun. The production takes as its starting point the complexity of the British West Indies Regiment not being permitted to serve in the front line. The narrative incorporates the stories of real-life soldiers who volunteered to serve the British Empire.

Trench Brothers has visited over 40 schools across the UK since it was launched in 2014. Participating schools receive an artefact handling session, a visit from an actor in the role of a First World War soldier from the Indian Army, and spend a day making a force of Trench Brothers puppets with artists from the Little Angel Theatre.

Each participating school researches an individual soldier, and creates a letter they might have written home, based on their findings. This is then workshopped to produce a song. The fully-orchestrated performances in Brighton Dome will include ‘Letter Songs’ by a range of composers, and in different musical styles, including James Redwood, Jenny Gould, Matthew King, Omar Shahryar and Michael Betteridge.

Further information from the HMDT website.

The Emperor's Fiddler - violinist David Irving on historical approaches on his new disc

The Emperor's Fiddler recording session - David Irving, John O'Donnell, Laura Vaughan, Tommie Anderson

Johann Heinrich Schmelzer's violin sonatas have been recorded for the Obsidian label for a new disc called The Emperor's Fiddler by violinist David Irving using a replica of a c.1670 violin by Jacob Stainer. As David is based in Australia I spoke to him via Skype to find out more about his approach to the music. Firstly, I was curious as to why David wanted to record the sonatas. 

Published in 1664, Schmelzer's sonatas were the first group of sonatas for violin and basso continuo written by a German-speaking musician. All the previous published sonatas had been written by Italians, either resident in Italy or in Germany. The first native German-speaking composer to write sonatas, Schmelzer would be the start of a long tradition. He was also the first non-Italian to become Kapellmeister to the Holy Roman Emperor. For a long time, Schmelzer was vice-Kapellmeister and only got the top job in 1679, just before his death (in Prague, a year later). He is buried in Prague, in the church of Our Lady Victorious, though David informs me that there is no plaque.

In fact, Schmelzer's sonatas are often what students of Baroque violin study, learning phrasing, articulation and use of the bow. And they were amongst the first works that David learned on Baroque violin when he was in his late teens. He listened to them on disc when the only recordings were ones by Andrew Manze (1996, on Harmonia Mundi) and John Holloway (1997, on ECM). In fact, there are few recordings, and still, Manze and Holloway's are the only complete ones, plus a relatively obscure one from Veronica Strehlke (1995, on Cavalli Records).

As there were no other complete recordings since then, recording the sonatas gave David the opportunity to explore territory that is relatively unknown on disc.

Dobrinka Tabakova's 'Together Remember to Dance'

Lucas & Arthur Jussen (Photo Marco Borggreve)

Dobrinka Tabakova's double piano concerto, Together Remember to Dance will receive its UK premiere on Wednesday 10 October 2018 in a concert at Watford Colisseum, performed by BBC Concerto Orchestra, conductor Bramwell Tovey with the young Dutch piano duo Lucas and Arthur Jussen as soloists. The programme also includes music by Poulenc, Milhaud and Martinu. 

Dobrinka Tabakova is the BBC Concert Orchestra's composer in residence. Her double piano cocnerto was premiered by Lucas and Arthur Jansson last year with the Amsterdam Sinfonietta (you can see the event on Vimeo), and the same performers took it to the Istanbul Music Festival earlier this year.

Written for two pianos, percussion and strings, Tabakova's new concerto is in three movements, 'Together', 'Remember' and 'Dance', and it explores the relationship between the pianos and the orchestra in dramatic fashion, with a spiralling waltz as the second movement and a perpetuum mobile as the third.

Full information about the concert from the BBC website.

Introducing the National Opera Studio's 2018/19 Young Artists

The National Opera Studio's 2018/19 intake of Young Artists have just started their nine-months of intensive work. Last night (4 October 2018), just three weeks into the course we heard them in recital at 22 Mansfield Street. Two were absent (Charlie Drummond and Nicholas Mogg), so we heard Ana-Maria Bacanu, Frances du Plessis, Margo Arsen, Marvic Monreal, Beth Moxon, JungKwon Jang, Robert Barbaro, Ben Smith, Adam Temple-Smith and Jake Muffett accompanied at the piano by Emily Hooker, William Green, Benedict Kearns and Michael Papadopoulos.

Each singer gave two arias, and it was quite a striking collection of composers. Yes, there was Mozart, Verdi, Rossini, Weber, Donizetti, Bizet, Tchaikovsky and Handel but we also heard two arias from Massenet's Werther and two arias from Herodiade, and arias from Meyerbeer's Les Huguenots, Menotti's The Medium, Barber's Vanessa, and counter-tenor JungKwon Jang sang 'Di tanti palpiti' from Rossini's Tancredi.

Looking ahead, the Young Artists will be performing Last Days at the Bridewell Theatre with members of the Orchestra of Opera North on 10 December 2018, and will be performing at Cadogan Hall on 18 January 2019 with the orchestra of English National Opera. Full details from the National Opera Studio website.

This year's National Opera Studio Young Artists are:

• Sopranos Ana-Maria Bacanu, Charlie Drummond [who featured on last year's recording of Erik Chisholm's Simoon, see my review], and Frances du Plessis
• Mezzo-sopranos Margo Arsane [whom we caught in Stravinsky's Mavra at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama in 2016, see my review], Marvic Monreal, and Beth Moxon [whom we caught in Handel's Faramondo at the 2017 London Handel Festival, see my review]
• Counter-tenor JungKwon Jang [who won the Audience Prize in the 2017 Handel Singing Competition]
• Tenors Robert Barbaro, Ben Smith and Adam Temple-Smith [whom we caught in Gounod's La Colombe at West Green Opera in 2016, see my review]
• Baritones Nicholas Mogg and Jake Muffett [whom we caught in Poulenc's Carmelites at the Guildhall School in 2018, see my review]
• Repetiteurs Emily Hooker, William Green, Benedict Kearns and Michael Papadopoulos [who we caught playing continuo for Solomon's Knot this year, see our review]

La Traviata at the King's Head

Verdi: La Traviata - Emma Walsh, Victor Sgarbi - King's Head
(Photo Bill Knight)

Verdi La Traviata (a new version by Becca Marriott and Helena Jackson); Emma Walsh, Alex Haigh, Victor Sgarbi, dir:Helena Jackson, mus.dir: Panaretos Kyriatzidis Reviewed by Anthony Evans on 2 October 2018 Star rating: 3.0 (★★★)
Contemporary re-imaginating of Verdi's classic fails to convince

Reimagining operas from the classical repertoire has become something of a staple at the King’s Head and they’ve had some considerable successes not least of which was being nominated for an Olivier Award. So, I had high hopes for the King’s Head’s latest operatic offering, their much-anticipated English language version of La Traviata in a new version by Becca Marriott and Helena Jackson (who also directed). Who doesn’t like “an exhibition of harlotry on the public stage”?

Double cast, at Tuesday’s (2 October 2018) performance a technically assured Emma Walsh sang the titular heroine, Alex Haigh was her would be lover and nascent composer Elijah, Victor Sgarbi was Elijah’s widowed father Richard, a local politician, and Gráinne Gillis’ was Flora the unscrupulous club owner.

This break-neck contemporary version of La Traviata opened in a “Gentlemen’s” club, which in this case seemed to be shorthand for a knocking shop, owned by Flora, where Violetta entertained clientele.

Schubert's Winter Journey - Robin Tritschler and Malcolm Martineau at Wigmore Hall

Robin Tritschler (Photo Wigmore Hall)

Schubert's Winter Journey; Robin Tritschler, Malcolm Martineau; Wigmore Hall Reviewed by Robert Hugill on 3 October 2018 Star rating: 5.0 (★★★★★)
Masterly Schubert performances in a recital themed around Winter, combining well-known and lesser-known songs from the full gamut of Schubert's career

In Schubert's Winter Journey (the first of a quartet of concerts from Robin Tritschler on The Seasons), tenor Robin Tritschler and pianist Malcolm Martineau came up with an intriguing idea for their concert at the Wigmore Hall on Wednesday 3 October 2018, with a group of songs (20 in all) written by Schubert during the Winter. The selection ranged widely from Nachtgesang and Schäfers Klagelied of 1814 to Der Winterabend and Die Sterne of 1828. The songs were grouped thematically, and seemed to evoke another winter journey too with Solitude, Lost Love and Death, plus Childhood. The advantage of such programming, of course, was the way it enabled us to hear songs which are not so frequently performed.

We started with Solitude, a theme that crops up regularly in Schubert's songs and here we had samples from the whole gamut, 1814 to 1828. We started with Der Einsame (1825) with its characterful narrative and perky piano, this was someone happy in their solitude, whilst the early Goethe setting, Nähe des Geliebten (1815), combined a lovely sense of line with lyrical passion. In Der Winterabend (1828), Tritschler and Martineau really captured the mood, with the beauty of Tritschler's voice complemented by the way he is able to tell a story. This sense of narrative and mood, combined with beauties of line, was something which continued throughout the recital, with Tritschler finely complemented by Martineau's wonderfully apposite piano playing. For this first half, we also heard some magically quiet singing.

A feast of Americana - St John's Smith Square's Fall Festival

St John's Smith Square's Americana '18 Festival reaches its climax next week with a Fall Festival, a week of concerts celebrating American Music from Tuesday 9 October to Monday 15 October 2018. Whilst Leonard Bernstein looms large with his Chichester Psalms (from the Addison Chamber Choir, in the version for organ, harp and percussion) and Symphonic Dances from West Side Story (in a version for two pianos from Joseph Havlat and Thomas Ang), there is also his early Piano Sonata (from Nathan Williamson) and late Arias and Barcarolles, plus plenty of other music by composers known and well-known from American mavericks and the African Diaspora to American Whimsies and the Class of 39

There are plenty of other goodies, Lucy Schaufer (mezzo-soprano) and Huw Watkins (piano) celebrate The Class of 38 with music from William Bolcom, John Harbison, Charles Wuorinen, Frederic Rzewski, Bernstein (of course) and many more. Madeleine Mitchell (violin) and Nathan Williamson (piano) cast their net widely too with music by Bloch, Bolcom, John Cage, George Crumb, Ned Rorem and Aaron Copland. Joseph Spooner (cello) and David Owen Norris (piano) explore American Whimsies with music by H.W. Nicholl (a 19th century emigre composer),  Lukas Foss, Wallingford Rieger and George Walker (the first black American composer to win the Pullitzer Prize).

Darragh Morgan (violin) and Mary Dullea (piano) will be performing more Charles Wuorinen, plus Morton Feldman and Elliot Carter, whilst Ensemble Mirage is giving the UK premiere of Lowell Liebermann's Quintet Op.26 (for the rarely heard combination of clarinet, violin, viola, cello and piano). Peter Sheppard Skaeperd (violin) will be giving a rare, uncut performance of George Rochberg's Caprice Variations.

The advantage of such festivals is that we can move into territory which is undeservedly neglected. So Nadine Benjamin (soprano) and Nigel Foster (piano) will be exploring art songs by African American and Black British composers in Portrait of a Life (or many): Art Songs from the African Diaspora including music by Florence Price, William Grant Still, Undine Smith Moore, Dominique Le Gendre, Shirley Thompson and Errollyn Wallen. The Kreutzer Quartet and Roderick Chadwick (piano) will be considering American Mavericks with music by Ruth Crawford Seeger, Lukas Foss, Leon Kirchner, and Gloria Coates.

Full details from the St John's Smith Square website.

Swan songs - Gerald Finley and Julius Drake at Temple Song

Julius Drake, Gerald Finley (Photo Sim Canetty-Clarke)

Schubert Schwanengesang, Brahms Four serious songs; Gerald Finley, Julius Drake; Temple Song at Middle Temple Hall Reviewed by Robert Hugill on 2 October 2018 Star rating: 5.0 (★★★★★)
Masterly performances of two great works from Gerald Finley and Julius Drake

Temple Song returned to Middle Temple Hall on Tuesday 2 October 2018 for the first recital of Temple Music's 2018/19 season. Bass-baritone Gerald Finley joined pianist Julius Drake for Swansongs, performing two late works, Schubert's Schwanengesang and Brahms' Four serious songs. A programme which the two performed at the Elbphilharmonie in Hamburg in September.

Schubert's final song-cycle, Schwanengesang consists of a group of songs setting texts by Rellstab, a group setting texts by Heine and a final song setting a text by Seidl. There is some doubt about whether it is a song cycle at all, but a convincing argument can be made on both musical and musicological grounds. Though arguably the final song, Die Taubenpost setting a text by Seidl, was added by the original publisher it is now a settled part of the sequence in its own right.

Gerald Finley addressed these issues by performing all the songs from the cycle but splitting them up so in the first half of the concert we heard the Rellstab settings followed by the Brahms, and in the second half the remainder of the Schubert. It was an arrangement which worked surprisingly well, highlighting not only the two composers' final vocal works but also their parallel concerns about life and death.

Singing from memory, Finley's performance of Schubert combined a wonderful projection of the words with a finely smooth line and a manner which suggested the singer recalling past events. Finlay was demonstrative without being overly operatic, with more tightly controlled gestures than on the opera stage and a superb projection of his lovely even baritone voice, and I particularly loved the way he could lighten the tone for effect in the upper register.

The Night Shift: Nervous Notes

 All performers suffer from nerves, in one way or another, and they can often be a valuable factor in performance but rarely do musicians make it explicit that they are suffering from nerves. It is de rigeur for performers to seem poised and controlled, or at least usually. For the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment's (OAE) Night Shift tomorrow, Thursday 4 October 2018, the OAE's horn player Martin Lawrence will be exploring how performance anxiety affects musicians. Not by lecturing about it, but by performing.

Lawrence and the OAE will be performing Mozart but Lawrence will be voicing his anxieties into a looping pedal during the piece, thus creating a cacophony of nervous thought, giving the audience a sense of the overwhelming nature of performance anxiety. The evening will also feature explorations of the ‘two selves’ which musicians often have on-stage, and demonstrations of how the physical symptoms of anxiety can change a performance for the better. Audience members will be encouraged to tweet their own uncomfortable responses to the event. The performance is inspired by Martin Lawrence's PhD research which reveals that the physical symptoms of performance nerves, far from being a form of self-sabotage, which must be hidden, can actually improve the performance.

The event takes place as part of Thought Fest, a festival which is being presented by Regents Place (a real-estate area just north of Euston Road) and the Knowledge Quarter, which is a partnership between 87 knowledge-based institutions. The OAE's performance takes place in a temporary structure next to the New Diorama Theatre.

Further details from the Regent's Place website (tickets are free but have to be pre-booked)

Alexander Campkin's Sent from God

The Chamber Choir of London's new single has recently been released, the latest in a series of monthly singles which the choir is releasing. 

Conducted its music director Dominic Peckham, the choir performs Alexander Campkin's anthem Sent from God, a striking a cappella piece which mixes tonal contemporary idioms with some rather interesting chant-influenced writing. There are hints of John Tavener in the choral writing, but the use of a solo soprano line in dialogue with the full choir creates a very striking effect. As ever, the choir gives a lovely vibrant and focused performance, attacking Campkin's writing with straight, direct tone.

Alexander Campkin is a young British composer who studied at Oxford University and at  the Royal Academy of Music. His commission from the Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra, hoping, received its London premiere at the BBC Proms in August 2018. His anthem Sent from God sets verses from the first chapter of the Gospel of St John, and was commissioned for Birmingham Cathedral

Further details from iTunes or from Amazon.

A Londinium Bestiary

The Medieval world was fascinated by mythical and semi-mythical beasts, using their behaviour as exemplars in moral and religious teaching. These stories also provide a wonderful fund of inventive texts for setting. The choir Londinium, conductor Andrew Griffiths, will be exploring these worlds with their A Londinium Bestiary at St John’s Waterloo church, Waterloo Road, London, SE1 8TY on Friday 5 October 2018. The choir will be performing three works, Kenneth Leighton’s Laudes Animantium op.61, Bernard Hughes’ A Medieval Bestiary and Ola Gjeilo's Unicornis Captivatur.

Kenneth Leighton’s unpublished Laudes Animantium op.61 was composed in 1970-71 and sets a sequence of poems about animals, from Blake's Lamb and Tyger to Tennyson's Kraken, by way of Edward Lear. Bernard Hughes’ A Medieval Bestiary (2011) was commissioned by the BBC Singers and sets texts from a thirteenth-century bestiary interspersed with three Anglo-Saxon animal allegories to explore the relationship between medieval man and the animal world. Ola Gjeilo’s Unicornis Captivatur was written in 2001. The text from the Engelberg Codex, introduces us to the unicorn, pelican, phoenix, hydra and crocodile

Full details from the Londinium website.

Love & Obsession: Robert & Clara Schumann and Johannes Brahms at Conway Hall

Johannes Brahms

Robert Schumann, Clara Schumann, Johannes Brahms - piano quartets & songs; Louise Winter, Primrose Piano Quartet; Conway Hall Reviewed by Robert Hugill on 30 September 2018 A musical exploration of the complex relationships between Robert & Clara Schumann and Johannes Brahms

On Sunday, 30 September 2018, the Primrose Piano Quartet (Susanne Stanzeleit, Dorothea Vogel, Andrew Fuller, John Thwaites) was joined by mezzo-soprano Louise Winter for Love & Obsession at the Conway Hall's Sunday Concerts series. A programme of music by Robert & Clara Schumann and Johannes Brahms, behind the music, lay the fascinating story of the intertwined relationships of the three. The evening's programme included Brahms' Two songs for alto, viola and piano, Op.91, his Piano Quartet in C minor Op. 60 and a selection of his songs for voice and piano, three songs by Clara Schumann, songs from Robert Schumann's Myrthen, Op. 25 and his Piano Quartet in E flat OP. 47. I was there to introduce the programme, giving a pre-concert talk As if sent straight from God which put the story of Robert Schumann, Clara Schumann (nee Wieck) and Johannes Brahms in context.

Robert & Clara Schumann

One intriguing aspect of the programming was that instead of presenting the works individually, the ensemble created a pair of sequences, interleaving the movements of the Brahms quartet with his songs, and interleaving the movements of the Schumann quartet with his songs, thus providing us with a different view of the music and harking back to a different way of programming which was common in the 19th century.

We started with Brahms, the first of his  Two songs for alto, viola and piano which were written for the violinist Joseph Joachim and his wife. Joachim was a great friend of both Brahms and Clara Schumann, and he had a regular duet partnership with Clara. For 'Gestillte Sehnsucht' we had lovely mellow viola playing and a flowing piano complementing the dark, rich-toned and quite sober performance from Louise Winter.

The Brahms sequence, with the movements of his piano quartet interspersed with the songs Standchen Op. 106, Der Tod das ist die kuhleNacht Op. 106 No. 1 and An die Nachtigall Op.46 No.4 provided a strikingly different view of the music. The brooding opening of the quartet with its stormy allegro led to the delightfully characterful Stanchen, which was followed by the excitement of the 'Scherzo'. The next song, from the Four Serious Songs which Brahms wrote in 1896 on Clara Schumann's death, was dark and concentrated, whilst the 'Andante' was singing and lyrical. An die Nachtigall was lighter and rather touching, whilst the finale 'Allegro comodo' built to a thrilling climax.

The piano quartet brought out a strong feeling of narrative and story telling in the music, which complemented the songs. Though the music was dark and brooding at times, the group's approach was also quite classical in its approach. Similarly, Louise Winter was often quite sober in the songs, her rich dark voice giving them a certain stateliness.

New dance double bill from New English Ballet Theatre & The English Concert

Jenna Lee: The Four Seasons - New English Ballet Theatre (Photo Deborah Jaffe)

The Four Seasons | Remembrance Max Richter, Handel; Jenna Lee, Wayne Eagling, New English Ballet Theatre; Peacock Theatre Reviewed by Robert Hugill on 29 September 2018 Star rating: 4.0 (★★★★)
A double bill of new ballets showcasing the engaging presence and energy of this young company.

New English Ballet Theatre is a relatively new company, founded in 2012 by artistic director Karen Pilkington-Miksa it is devoted to creating new work in the classical tradition. For its Autumn 2018 tour it presented a double bill of new ballets, The Four Seasons and Remembrance (seen 29 September 2018 at the Peacock Theatre. Jenna Lee's The Four Seasons (which the company premiered in 2017) to Max Richter's recomposition of Vivaldi's The Four Seasons, and Wayne Eagling's Remembrance to Handel's Ode for St Cecilia's Day performed by The Erebus Ensemble and The English Concert, conductor Harry Bicket, with soloists Fflur Wyn (soprano) and Joshua Ellicott (tenor). The sets for Remembrance were by Nina Kobiashvili, the costumes and lighting for both ballets were by April Dalton and Andrew Ellis respectively. 

Jenna Lee was the choreographer of Alexandra Dariescu's The Nutcracker & I [see my review], Wayne Eagling danced with the Royal Ballet from 1969 to 1991 and was artistic director of English National Ballet from 2005 to 2012.

Whilst the Handel was performed live, Max Richter's score for The Four Seasons was a recording. This is understandable in economic terms, but it would have been intriguing, to say the least, to have the Max Richter performed live by an amplified English Concert and it would have given the ballet the sort of lift that only live music can. These details were not specified in the programme, and it did not credit the recording of the work used.

Pared down & claustrophobic: La Tragédie de Carmen from Pop-Up Opera

Bizet/Peter Brook: La Tragédie de Carmen - Chloe Latchmore, Satriya Krisna
Pop-Up Opera (Photo Ugo Soffientini)

Bizet/Peter Brook/Marius Constant/Jean-Claude Carriere La Tragédie de Carmen; Chloe Latchmore, Satriya Krisna, Alice Privett, James Corrigan, dir: John Wilkie, m.dir: Berrack Dyer; Pop-Up Opera at the Asylum Reviewed by Ruth Hansford on 25 September 2018 Star rating: 3.0 (★★★)
Bizet's masterpiece in a stripped-down version in an atmospheric setting

At the end of last year I spent a delightful afternoon at the V&A watching Pop-Up Opera’s Hänsel und Gretel [see Ruth's review] and was looking forward to seeing how they would tackle Peter Brook’s pared-down version of Bizet’s masterpiece. 

Pop-Up Opera presented La Tragédie de Carmen at the Asylum Chapel in Peckham (25 September 2018) in a production directed by John Wilkie, music director Berrak Dyer with Chloe Latchmore, Satriya Krisna, Alice Privett and James Corrigan. 

In this four-hander, first performed in Paris in the 1980s, Brook had added some dialogue from Prosper Mérimée’s original story, and this casts a different light on the character of Carmen and the motivations of Don José. However the dialogue was not included in Pop-Up’s version, so we had a text-book seductress in a red skirt and heels, but with no context.