Rough for Opera - Speak Red, A Father is Looking for his Daughter, Dreaming Clouds

Second Movement's Rough for Opera returned to the Cockpit Theatre yesterday (14 May 2019) for its seventeenth edition. Billed as a scratch night for new opera, the event gives composers, librettists and creators the chance to try work out in front of an audience and then get feedback, each performance being followed by a Q&A session. 

Yesterday we heard three works in progress. Excerpts from Speak Red by Santa Buss & FXXX BXXXXX presented by Oedipa with Alice Purton (vocals/cello), Heloise Werner (vocals/cello) and participants from UCL's Division of Psychology and Language Sciences and Communication Clinic. A Father is Looking for his Daughter by Alex Mills and Gareth Mattey with Ella Taylor (father), Rosie Middleton (Auditor), Cecilia Bignall (cello), Calum Huggan & Angela Wai-Nok Hui (percussion), Crispin Lord (director), and Ashil Mistry (conductor). Dreaming Clouds by Alex Ho (composer, co-director, performer) and Julia Cheng (choreographer, co-director, performer).

The company performing Speak Red included 15 people with aphasia, the difficulty with language and communication which can occur after a stroke. The piece was a work in progress, and we heard three scenes, in which the participants' powerful individual stories were combined with that of Ruby McDonough, an American woman whose fight against discrimination in the USA changed the way the law works. There was some strikingly imaginative moments, in a piece which used opera and music theatre to present ideas about the difficulties of non-communication, rising to the challenge of being inclusive whilst creating a work of dramatic interest.

A Father is Looking for his Daughter was, at first hearing, the most finished piece of the evening. A stand alone operatic scene, it had in fact been created in a relatively short period by composer Alex Mills [who wrote Dear Marie Stopes, see my review] and librettist Gareth Mattey, and the performance enabled them to consider how the piece might develop, whether it is stand-alone or not. Dealing with issues of identity, borders and parenthood, the work reacted to the stories about recent separations between parents and children on the USA/Mexico border, yet also had at its heart the chilling way the auditor (Rosie Middleton) was redacting out all reference to the father's (Ella Taylor) being transgender.

The final work, Dreaming Clouds, was the first collaboration between Alex Ho and Julia Cheng, both are second generation Chinese immigrants and the work explored the borders between their Chinese heritage, notably Cantonese Opera, and Western culture. It was a strikingly visual piece, with Julia Cheng's choreography being a powerful and visually entrancing feature of the work.

Classical & jazz giants, movie stars, science: Man & God at the Bloomsbury Theatre

The name of Leopold Godowsky (1870-1938) is not that well known today, pianist, composer and transcriber of music, he is perhaps best known for his Studies on Chopin Etudes including those transcribed purely for the left hand. His son, Leopold Godowsky, Jnr is even less known and yet his life is all the more astonishing. A talented violinist, he married Frances Gerswhin the younger sister of George Gerswhin, thus uniting two remarkably musical dynasties. But Leopold Godowsky, Jnr was also interested in science and with his friend Lopold Mannes the two experimented with colour photography and were responsible for inventing the first practical colour transparency film, Kodachrome.

All this and more is covered in a new musical Man and God with music by Jake Dorfman. A tale taking in Gershwin, Einstein, and Hitler, this incredible story of classical and jazz giants, movie stars, and science, which is being performed at the Bloomsbury Theatre on Saturday 18 May 2019, as part of University College London's Performance Lab.


Full details from the Bloomsbury Theatre website.

Striking new directions: Markus Reuter's string quartet from Solaire Records

Markus Reuter String Quartet No. 1 'Heartland'; Matangi Quartet; Solaire Records

Reviewed by Robert Hugill on 5 May 2019 Star rating: 3.5 (★★★½)
A large-scale string quartet by rock guitarist Markus Reuter proves surprising and intriguing

A number of musicians have made the transition from pop or rock music to classical, but usually the carry something of the one world to the other. The fascinating thing about the String Quartet by the rock guitarist Markus Reuter is that the work seems to give no indication of its composer's rock background. This premiere recording by the Matangi Quartet on Solaire Records demonstrates that Markus Reuter's String Quartet No. 1 'Heartland' deserves to be taken on its own terms.

So who is Markus Reuter? He has played with the progressive rock band The Stick Men, with the Europa String Choir, he has worked with legendary guitarist Robert Fripp, and helped set up Crimson ProjeKCt, one of the most prestigious and most long lived King Crimson spin-offs. The music on this disc is a very different sound world, just string quartet, yet it has its inspiration in the music imagined by the teenage Markus Reuter.

In Opera Magazine

Nice to see a review of OperaUpClose’s new production of Donizetti’s Mary Stuart in the June 2019 edition of Opera Magazine.  

The production features Flora McIntosh as Mary and Julian Debreuil as Talbot, both Flora and Julian will of course be singing in The Gardeners on 18 June, Flora plays the Grandmother and Julian plays The Gardener. 

Tickets for The Gardeners at Conway Hall on 18 June are available from TicketTailor.

Also featuring in Opera magazine this month, our advert for The Gardeners looking very handsome in in Stephen A. Brown's article 'Carry on Singing' about competitions and young artists' programmes, a lovely way to feature the young artists performing in The Gardeners. 

Huw Wakins' Symphony from Kensington Symphony Orchestra

Huw Watkins

Huw Watkins' Symphony receives its London premiere tonight (13 May 2019) when the Kensington Symphony Orchestra, conductor Russell Keable, performs the work at Cadogan Hall as part of a programme which also includes Lyadov's The Enchanted Lake and Sibelius' Four Legends from the Kalevala.

Watkins' Symphony was commissioned by the Halle and premiered by them, conductor Sir Mark Elder, in Manchester and Sheffield in 2017. The work is in two movements, it does not strictly adhere to classical symphonic form. Rather, the composer interprets this great tradition through his development of ideas and use of the orchestra. [see Robert Beale's review of the original performance on Bachtrack]. The Symphony, performed by the Halle under Ryan Wigglesworth, features on a 2018 NMC disc of Watkins' symphonic works [see my review].

As a composer, Anatoly Lyadov was associated with Mussorgsky and the Mighty Handful, and studied with Nikolai Rimsky Korsakov, whilst as a teacher Lyadov's pupils included Sergei Prokofiev and Nikolai Myaskovsky. The Enchanted Lake (1909) is one of Lydaov's tone poems based on Russian legends.

Sibelius originally started composing an heroic opera based on the Finnish epic poem, the Kalevala, but changed direction and created a suite of four tone poems, The Lemminkäinen Suite or Four Legends from the Kalevala in 1895. The first two movements were withdrawn by the composer shortly after the premiere and only revised in the 1930s. As a result, the final two movements are best known 'The Swan of Tuonela' and 'Lemminkäinen's Return' and the Kensington Symphony Orchestra's performance is a rare chance to hear all four together.

Further information from the Kensington Symphony Orchestra website,  and the Cadogan Hall website.

A young man's passion: Julian Prégardien & Erik Le Sage in Robert Schumann's Dichterliebe

Robert Schumann Dichterliebe, Robert & Clara Schumann Songs, duets & piano pieces; Julian Prégardien, Erik Le Sage, Sandrine Piau; Alpha Classics
Reviewed by Robert Hugill on 10 May 2019
Star rating: 5.0 (★★★★★)
Schumann's Dichterliebe in an intelligent and lyrically passionate re-thinking

The opening track of this new recording of Robert Schumann's Dicterliebe from tenor Julian Prégardien  and pianist Erik le Sage on Alpha Classics is something of a surprise as the voice that greets us is that of soprano Sandrine Piau. To accompany Schumann's 1840 song cycle, Prégardien has chosen a selection of songs, duets and piano pieces by both Schumanns, Robert & Clara. The beloved is present, implicitly, throughout Dichterliebe and in selecting the accompanying material Prégardien makes us explore the relationship further. Another big feature of the recording is the piano, not a modern grand but an 1856 fortepiano by Julius Bluthner, giving us a window into the sort of sound-world which Schumann might have known.

We start with the duet In der Nacht from the Spanisches Liederspiel, a rather serious and intent piece where the entry of the male voice comes as something of a surprise. This is followed by one of Clara Schumann's expressive, romantic piano works, the second of the Three Romances Op.11. Robert Schumann's Die Lowenbraut setting Adalbert von Chamisso's ballad is something of a strange piece. Prégardien and Piau render it as a duet, with Piau voicing the young bride with Pregardien as narrator. The performance style is a little distant and contained, only in the final verses does Pregardien really let rip with the drama.

Far more than choral virtuosity: Handel's Israel in Egypt from the BBC Singers & Academy of Ancient Music

BBC Singers, Academy of Ancient Music, Gergely Madaras; Milton Court Concert Hall (Photo BBC Singers)

Handel Israel in Egypt (1756); BBC Singers, Academy of Ancient Music, Gergely Madaras; Milton Court Concert Hall
Reviewed by Robert Hugill on 5 February 2019 Star rating: 4.5 (★★★★½)
Though we only got the torso of the work, this was a tour de force from both singers and instrumentalists, technique, drama and engagements

The BBC Singers has such a reputation in 20th century and contemporary music that it can be something of a surprise to find them in more standard repertoire, though in fact the ensemble's concert season takes in music from 17th century to the present day.

For the BBC Singers concert at Milton Court Concert Hall on Friday 10 May 2019, the choir was joined by the Academy of Ancient Music and conductor Gergely Madaras for a performance of one of the great 18th century choral showpieces, Handel's oratorio Israel in Egypt. Whilst the work is all about the chorus, there are solos and at this performance the soloists all came from the choir, soprano Emma Tring, altos Nancy Cole and Jessica Gillingwater, tenor Tom Raskin, and basses Jamie W. Hall and Andrew Rupp.

Israel in Egypt has a rather complex history, and the work has never quite found a finished form. Handel's first version used a re-write of the Funeral Anthem for Queen Caroline as part one, this failed to gain popularity and he quickly dropped the funeral anthem and added additional solos to the work, later revivals created a variety of different first parts for the piece, with the result that the work survives in the repertoire in a version which Handel never performed, parts two and three of the original three-part work forming a new two-part work. By way of preparation, Gergely Madaras chose the sinfonia to the Funeral Anthem for Queen Caroline, a logical choice. And once the oratorio proper started there was much to enjoy indeed.

French inspiration, spectacular scenery & classical music: I chat to festival director Christoph Müller about this year's Gstaad Menuhin Festival

Gstaad, Switzerland

Gstaad is a town in the German-speaking section of the Canton of Bern in southwestern Switzerland. Whilst the area is perhaps well known for its skiing, it is also the home of a major classical musical festival; the Gstaad Menuhin Festival, the second largest festival in Switzerland, founded in 1957 by Yehudi Menuhin, who was director for 40 years. Thanks to the spectacular setting it combines nature with classical music at a high level. This year's festival, which runs from 18 July to 6 September 2019 is presenting 60 concerts in seven weeks. The current director of the festival is Christoph Müller, and we chatted via Skype recently about what this year's festival has to offer.

Saanen Church
one of the Gstaad Menuhin Festival venues

Christoph emphasises the festival's special location, which provides not only the natural backdrop but also historic churches with wonderful acoustics, and they use the large festival tent (seating 1800) for symphonic and operatic concerts. Whilst music is the main focus of the festival, it is able to offer a relaxed atmosphere so that visitors can combine relaxing holiday with music, unlike festivals in busier urban areas like Lucerne or Salzburg.

Each year the festival has a theme, and this year it is French music and the city of Paris. Not only is Paris an inspiring melting pot of music, but there is a local aspect to French culture too. Christoph explains that though some sort of barrier exists between German-speaking and French-speaking Switzerland (with two different cultures and two different languages), 500 metres behind the festival venues the French part of Switzerland begins, so French culture is actually very close them. Christoph wants the festival to build a bridge between the two spaces, bringing French music closer to his audience. And French music is not usually performed in such a concentrated way, which makes this year's festival special indeed.

There are different strands, different islands in the programming with chamber music performed in Saanen Church, and symphonic music in the tent. The pianist Bertrand Chamayou is in residence, and in fact Chamayou was very much an inspiration for Christoph to programme this year's festival. Chamamayou will be giving five concerts, both solo recitals and joining with friends such as Sol Gabetta and Alina Ibragimova.

One of the highlights of the symphonic strand is the visit of the Dresden Staatskapelle, which performs at the final concert on 6 September. Usually the orchestra plays at the Lucerne Festival but for the first time its Swiss visit will be to Gstaad instead, where it will be making their festival debut. And Christoph is very proud to be hosting the orchestra. Other festival debutants, include the pianist Yuja Wang and the violinist Hilary Hahn.

Crossing the Border - the London Festival of Baroque Music

Sébastien Daucé and the Ensemble Correspondances at the 2018 London Festival of Baroque Music

The year's London Festival of Baroque Music, which opens today (10 May 2019) takes Crossing the Border as its theme, with nine days of events exploring travel and discovery and their importance in the development of music. So there are themes arising out the the 18th century Grand Tour, looking at the styles of music travellers would encounter, as well as the music of the Conquistadors putting Spanish baroque music alongside music from Central and Southern America, with a host of other styles and influences too such as the development of flamenco out of Sephardic music of the Middle ages.

One highlight of the festival will be Nicolette Moonen’s The Bach Players joining with baroque dancer Ricardo Barros’s Mercurius Company to express music by Telemann, Rebel and Vivaldi in terms of musical performance and dance. And dance is also to the fore with Jordi Savall and Hesperion XXI whose L’Europa Musicale - From the Renaissance to Baroque programme looks at popular dance in music during the transition from Renaissance to Baroque.

Other visitors to the festival include Le Concert de l’Hostel-Dieu and Franck-Emmanuel Comte, who will be performing a programme of female baroque composers celebrating the 400th anniversary of the birth of Barbari Strozzi,  and Ensemble Masques and director Olivier Fortin, who will take us on a Grand Tour with both music and travellers tales from the great cities of Europe. The ensemble Improvviso will be presenting a programme of music by composers writing in a borrowed musical language, including Telemann exploring Polish folk music, and most unusually, works from Polish musician Wojciech Bobowski’s collection of 17th-century Ottoman music.

Other distinguished visitors to the festival include the Marian Consort, Ex Cathedra and Jeffrey Skidmore, La Nuova Musica and David Bates, La Serenissima with Adrian Chandler.

An annual feature of the festival is the visit to Westminster Abbey, and this year The Choir of Westminster Abbey and St James's Baroque under James O'Donnell will be performing Handel's Coronation Anthems written for performance at the Coronation of King George II at the abbey in 1727. A new development at this year's festival is the creation of a Young Artists Competition, which takes place on 13 May 2019.

Full details from the London Festival of Baroque Music website.

Brainwaves and modernism: the Ligeti Quartet explores consciousness at Kings Place

The Ligeti Quartet performing at Kings Place in 2017

Ruth Crawford Seeger, Cliff Kerr, Shiva Feshareki, Witold Lutoslawski; Ligeti Quartet; Kings Place Reviewed by Robert Hugill on 10 May 2019 Star rating: 4.0 (★★★★)
Two iconic 20th century quartets alongside more recent work in a highly imaginative and challenging programme

Exploring the idea of consciousness in music is a tricky thing, music's sheer nebulousness makes it difficult to handle concrete concepts. Yet the sheer challenge can bring rewards. In its programme at Kings Place on Thursday 9 January 2019, the Ligeti Quartet (Mandhira de Saram, Patrick Dawkins, Richard Jones, Val Welbanks) put together a programme which drew in different threads of the way we think about music and its performance. The centrepiece was Cliff Kerr's Brainstaves for string quartet and EEGs, which attempted to modulate the actual music being played via the performers own brainwaves! There was also Shiva Feshareki's Venus/Zoreh, contemplating the infinite via a deliberate reduction in musical aparatus by making the players use only open strings, yet giving them freedom to improvise, and Witold Lutoslawski's String Quartet with its controled use of aleatoric procedures. And the evening opened with Ruth Crawford Seeger's 1931 String Quartet.

Ruth Crawford Seeger had a fascinatingly diverse career, and her String Quartet represents the culmination of her first modernist period, before she started concentrating on American folk music. Seeger cultivated a deliberately independent voice, and the quartet is highly uncompromising in its approach, challenging for both listeners and players. It is in the standard four movements, the first was built out of small snatches of dialogue, restless combinations of lyric lines and busy triplets with moments of furious anger. The second movement seemed an extension of this uneasy dialogue, with fragments floating over harmonic stasis. The third created a remarkably intense atmosphere out of imitative entries from the players, again you sensed Crawford Seeger exploring the quartet as a real communal experience between four equals. In the finale it was the violin that dominated, with strong gestures answered by quieter phrases from the other three.

Sheffield Chamber Music Festival

Sheffield's Music in the Round launches the 35th annual Chamber Music Festival on Friday 10 May 2019, with nine days of chamber music and more at the Crucible Theatre, Sheffield and at Yellow Arch Studios with resident chamber music group Ensemble 360 at the heart of the festival, giving performances in the round in the Crucible Theatre. Visitors to the festival include pianist Stephen Hough as well as turntablist Shiva Feshareki, folk-trio Leveret and actor Henry Goodman.

The repertoire over the nine days is varied, with rarities such as Howells' Rhapsodic Quintet, contemporary works by Thomas Ades, Anna Meredith and Carmen Ho (the premiere of a festival commission), alongside Haydn, Elgar, Janacek, Britten, Mendelssohn, Brahms, Dvorak, Poulenc, Messiaen, Schubert, and Mozart

There will be a day devoted to string music from around the world, mixing Western classical repertoire with Indian classical Kamalbir Singh (Indian classical violin) and John Ball (tabla). And another day is devoted to the music of Johannes Brahms.

In addition to the main concerts, there is a series of short, informal rush hour concerts with tickets at £5 (free for the under 18s). First time visitors to the Crucible can purchase their first pair of tickets for £5, and under 35s are entitled to a  pair of £5 tickets.

Full details from the Music in the Round website.

Guildhall School Gold Medal 2019

Pianist Joon Yoon receiving the Guildhall School Gold Medal in 2018

Friday (10 May 2019) is the final of the Guildhall School of Music and Drama's Gold Medal at the Barbican Hall. The competition was founded in 1915 and since 1950 has been open to singers and instrumentalists in alternate years. This year four singers are competing, Ema Nikolovska (mezzo-soprano), William Thomas (bass), Samantha Clarke (soprano) and James Newby (baritone). (James Newby sang Butterworth and my song cycle Winter Journey at Conway Hall Sunday Concerts last Sunday, see my article). On Friday, each singer will perform a short programme with piano (accompanists Dylan Perez, Michael Pandya and Panaretos Kyriatzidis), followed in the second half with a programme of arias accompanied by Guildhall Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Richard Farnes. This year's judges include Sir Bryn Terfel, a Guildhall School alumnus and winner of the Gold Medal in 1986.

The singers' programmes include a varied range of music, songs and arias by Purcell, Schubert, Wolf, Medtner, Rodrigo, Gounod, Britten, Mahler and Mozart performed by Ema Nikolovska; Wolf, Poulenc, Loewe, Rossini, Mussorgsky and Rachmaninov performed by William Thomas; Strauss, Poulenc, Copland, Rachmaninov, Mozart, Puccini and Stravinsky performed by Samantha Clarke; and Warlock, Liszt, Duparc, Butterworth, Handel, Mahler and Mascagni performed by James Newby.

Recent winners of the Gold Medal have included joint 2015 winners soprano Jennifer Witton and mezzo-soprano Marta Fontanals-Simmons (who took the title role in Gavin Higgins' The Monstrous Child, see my review), 2016 winner harpist Oliver Wass (who is performing in the premier of my opera The Gardeners on 18 June 2019 at Conway Hall), 2017 winner baritone Josep-Ramon Olivé and 2018 winner pianist Joon Yoon.

Full details from the Guildhall School website.

Telemann from Toulouse: music for strings in stylish modern instrument performances

Georg Philipp Telemann Suite 'Don Quixotte'; Anne Gaurier, Orchestre de Chambre de Toulouse, Gilles Colliard; Calliope Reviewed by Robert Hugill on 8 May 2019 Star rating: 3.5 (★★★½)
A lively selection of four of Telemann's works for string orchestra in stylish modern-instrument performances.

The sheer size and diversity of Georg Philipp Telemann's output means that many admirable pieces get lost or ignored. On this disc from Calliope, the Orchestre de Chambre de Toulouse, director Gilles Colliard bring together four of Telemann's delightful works for string orchestra. The best known is the Suite 'Don Quixotte (Burlesque de Quixotte) but just as deserving of our attention are the Concerto for Viola da Gamba in A major with soloist Anne Gaurier, the Ouverture in G major 'La bizarre' and the Ouverture in D.

We start with the Suite 'Don Quixotte', which consists of an overture (in the French style) and seven short descriptive movements. Under Gilles Colliard's direction the orchestra attacks the overture with great gusto and vivid energy, though perhaps the overall feeling is a little too hard edged and you wished they would relax a little. Later on in Le reveile de Quixotte and Les soupires amoreux apres la princess dulcinee the atmosphere is charmingly gentle, but other movements like the attack on the windmills are as vividly pressed forward as the overture. Colliard certainly brings a wide range of colours from his modern instrument group, and there is much to enjoy here though I wanted the faster moments to relax somewhat.

Bringing classical Canada to the UK - Canada's National Arts Centre Orchestra on tour

Alexander Shelley & the National Arts Centre Orchestra

Canada's National Arts Centre Orchestra is touring Europe this month, and its first stop is the UK with concerts and outreach events from 10 May to 14 May. The full tour takes in five countries and seven cities, with events in Saffron-Walden, London, Paris, Utrecht, Copenhagen, Stockholm and Gothenburg. Conducted by Alexander Shelley, the tour is celebrating the orchestra's 50th anniversary. The orchestra's UK concerts are at Saffron Hall (12 May 2019) and Cadogan Hall (14 May 2019) when the music performed will include Serbian-Canadian composer Ana Sokolović's Golden slumbers kiss your eyes (a new song cycle on themes of childhood nostalgia and time forever lost with counter-tenor David DQ Lee), alongside Ravel's Piano Concerto in G with Canadian pianist Jan Lisiecki, plus music by Dvorak.

The orchestra is also participating in a number of educational and engagement activities. It will be in residence at the Royal College of Music (13 & 14 May 2019) for chamber music coaching session, a conducting workshop, mock-audition session, and an event which will connect Brent District School band in London, England and OrKidstra, in Ottawa, Canada digitally in real time!

The National Arts Centre (NAC) in Ottawa, Canada is home to NAC Orchestra, English Theatre, French Theatre, Indigenous Theatre and Dance, as well as showcasing established and emerging Canadian artists. The National Arts Centre Orchestra was founded in 1969 as the resident orchestra of the newly opened NAC, and its music director since 2015 is the London-born conductor Alexander Shelley. Past music directors have included Trevor Pinnock and Pinchas Zuckerman



Further information from the orchestra's website.

A huge undertaking: Busoni's Piano Concerto recorded live in Boston - Kirill Gerstein, Boston Symphony Orchestra, Sakari Oramo

Ferruccio Busoni Piano Concerto; Kirill Gerstein, Boston Symphony Orchestra, Sakari Oramo; Myrios Classics
Reviewed by Robert Hugill on 5 May 2019
Busoni's mammoth concerto in a striking new live recording from Boston

What does Busoni's music sound like? Despite his name being well known, Ferruccio Busoni is perhaps best known for his involvement in Bach's music than for his own music. It does not help that his mature works are relatively sparse, of his circa 300 original works, more than 200 of them were composed before he was aged 24 (when he won the Rubenstein Prize in Moscow with his Konzertstuck for piano and orchestra). And, of course, it does not help that such an iconic work as his Piano Concerto (which was premiered in Berlin 1904) is huge in conception, difficult for the pianist without the benefit of showy virtuosity and, for the last 10 minutes or so of its over 70 minute duration, requires the addition of a male voice chorus!

This new recording on Myrios Classics has the benefit of being taken from live performances by Kirill Gerstein with the Boston Symphony Orchestra conducted by Sakari Oramo with the men of the Tanglewood Festival Chorus.

Perhaps Busoni's problem is that he is so diverse, one of the last great virtuoso pianists in the 19th century mould, he taught, he composed, he arranged and edited a vast quantity of music. His piano of version of Bach's Chaconne is only the tip of the iceberg, and the pianist Ronald Stevenson (himself a great Busoni disciple) used to tell the story of Busoni's wife once being introduced as Mrs Bach-Busoni. Busoni's compositional output had to be fitted into his performing and teaching commitments.

Even his teaching does not really give us a focus on the man, there is hardly a Busoni school, you only have to look at the diversity of his students, his keyboard pupils included Percy Grainger, his composition students included Kurt Weill, Philipp Jarnach, Stefan Wolpe, and Edgar Varese!

In focus indeed: Hugill premieres at Conway Hall

Robert Hugill (Photo Robert Piwko)

Last night (Sunday 5 May 2019) we had a superb evening of song and chamber music at Conway Hall, with Anna Huntley (mezzo-soprano), James Newby (baritone), Rosalind Ventris (viola) and William Vann (piano), as part of the Robert Hugill in Focus event at the Conway Hall Sunday Concerts. The programme combined my own pieces with those of George Butterworth, Frank Bridge and York Bowen. In the first half,  James Newby gave a moving performance of George Butterworth's A Shropshire Lad accompanied by William Vann. Then Anna Huntley, Rosalind Ventris and William Vann gave us a powerful account of Frank Bridge's striking Three Songs for mezzo-soprano, viola and piano. The first half ended with a lovely discovery, York Bowen's Phantasy for viola and piano.

York Bowen's Phantasy won the Cobbett Prize in 1918, and in fact Frank Bridge won a special prize in the first Cobbett competition in 1906, and would write other works inspired by the competition's requirement to produce music in the Phantasy mould. Chatting in the interval I discovered that Walter Willson Cobbett had also endowed the Cobbett Medal, which is still given by The Musicians' Company for services to chamber music (the most recent recipient was John Gilhooly, director of the Wigmore Hall).

For the second half of the concert we turned to my own music, a lovely opportunity to hear music from the disc Quickening in concert for the first time. James Newby and William Vann gave the first public performance of my song cyle Winter Journey setting the poetry of Rowan Williams, then Rosalind Ventris and William Vann performed my Three Pieces from the Book of Common Prayer, then Anna Huntley, Rosalind Ventris and William Vann performed my Christina Rosetti cycle, Quickening (the first time the cycle has been performed publicly in the original keys).  To round off the evening all the performers joined together to perform Summer Rain, a new arrangement for mezzo-soprano, baritone, viola and piano of one of my cabaret songs from the 1990s!

Palpable enthusiasm & engagement: An English Coronation from Paul McCreesh, Gabrieli & Gabrieli Roar

An English Coronation: 1902-1953; Gabrieli Consort & Players, Gabrieli Roar, Chetham's Symphonic Brass Ensemble, Paul McCreesh; Winged Lion   
Reviewed by Robert Hugill on 5 May 2019 
Star rating: 5.0 (★★★★★)
The young people of Gabrieli Roar bring amazing freshness and engagement to Paul McCreesh's 'fantasy coronation' programme

We might think that we are familiar with the music from the Coronation Service, but the sheer size of the service meant that there was a considerable amount of music required. And so the four 20th century coronations, those of King Edward VII (1902), King George V (1911), King George VI (1937) and Queen Elizabeth II (1953), present a remarkable assemblage of British music of the 20th century.  From these, Paul McCreesh has selected what he sees at the best music from these four and assembled it into a coherent liturgical structure, a fantasy Coronation if you will. Giving us the opportunity to hear some fine music and some neglected music in this striking context.

The disc An English Coronation 1902-1953, on Gabrieli's Winged Lion imprint, is very much a showcase for Gabrieli Roar, Gabrieli's choral training programme for young British singers, and they are joined by the Gabrieli Consort and Players, conductor Paul McCreesh, plus the Chetham's School Symphonic Brass Ensemble with Simon Russell Beale (as the Archbishop of Canterbury), Rowan Pierce (soprano), Matthew Martin (organ) and Ellie Slorach (Assistant conductor).

McCreesh has structured the disc as per the Coronation Service, largely following the 1937 service, with just a few small cuts. The choirs are divided into two, as they were at the Coronation, the smaller Westminster Choir which performed the unaccompanied music and the Coronation Choir which sings the larger scale music, combining the Gabrieli Consort and the 250 strong Gabrieli Roar, made up of singers from eleven partner choirs. The orchestra, of course, plays on period instruments (including Nicholas Daniels on Leon Goossens' early 20th century oboe) so one of the joys of the disc is being able to hear this music sung by the type of large-scale forces used at the Coronations and with the right sort of transparency in the orchestra. With the fanfares (an important part of the occasion), being provided by Chetham's School Symphonic Brass.

The old ethos and a new professionalism: celebrating Garsington Opera at 30

Auditorium of Garsington Opera at Wormsley 2011 (Photo Dennis Gilbert)

Garsington Opera is celebrating its 30th anniversary this year, with four new productions at its home at Wormsley. The company has developed considerably since it was first founded by Leonard Ingrams in the garden of his home at Garsington Manor, with the move from the company's original home to the custom designed theatre on the Wormsley Estate initiating a series of remarkable transformations. But along with this the company has tried to keep something of the ethos of the original theatre in a garden. Executive Director Nicola Creed has been with Garsington Opera for 19 years and seen many of these changes through. I met up with Nicola recently, just before the start of rehearsals for the 2019 season, to look forward to the delights to come and to look back a little as well.

Whilst the 2019 season is certainly intended as a celebration, putting together a season is such a complex operation that the resulting combination of operas is a weaving together of a number of strands. Mozart has always been a theme in Garsington programmes, so this year there is a new production of Mozart's Don Giovanni. The company has presented the opera many times and they are excited to have Michael Boyd (former artistic director of the Royal Shakespeare Company), with his theatre background, tackling the opera for the first time. And evidently he took some convincing.

The season, as ever, has to be a mix of period, and of light and dark. So also present is Britten's The Turn of the Screw, and Britten has been a notable visitor to the festival too with productions of Albert Herring (in the old theatre in 1996), A Midsummer Night's Dream and Death in Venice (2015, see my review), whilst The Turn of the Screw was last done by the company in 1992. Surprisingly the company has never done Smetana's The Bartered Bride, so that is definitely something of a novelty in many ways. And Offenbach's Fantasio, receiving its UK stage premiere, continues Garsington's tradition of excavating rarely performed operas.

Haydn's La vera Costanza - Garsington Opera 1992 (Photo Sally Greene)

There is no revival of a classic production (something that companies often do for anniversaries), but Nicola points out that they only started reviving productions after the move to Wormsley, and now they try to have a revival each year. But she sees the four new productions as a big bold way to celebrate. There are also a number of other anniversaries in the coming years to be acknowledged, so that in 2020 their production of Beethoven's Fidelio makes a notable return, whilst in 2021 the company will be celebrating the 10th anniversary of the move to Wormsley.

Music and poetry in focus - Robert Hugill, George Butterworth, Frank Bridge, York Bowen at Conway Hall on Sunday

Robert Hugill (Photo Robert Piwko)

The combination of music and poetry is theme of the Sunday's concert at Conway Hall (5 May 2019, 6.30pm) as part of the long-running Conway Hall Sunday Concerts series. Whilst the focus is my own music, with song cycles setting Christina Rosetti and Rowan Williams, plus a suite for viola inspired by psalms and prayers from the Book of Common, there is also the opportunity to hear George Butterworth's iconic settings of A.E. Housman, and more rarely Frank Bridge's settings of Matthew Arnold, Shelley and Heine (in translation) in his songs for mezzo-soprano, viola and piano.

The performers are Anna Huntley (mezzo-soprano), James Newby (baritone), Rosalind Ventris (viola) and William Vann (piano). I will be giving a pre-concert talk discussing both my own music that of the other composers in the programme, and after the concert there is a Q&A.

Full details from the Conway Hall website.

Understanding why the Tsar wanted his picture taken: Kurt Weill & Georg Kaiser's opera in a rare revival

Kurt Weill's German theatre works written with the expressionist playwright Georg Kaiser tend to get less exposure than Weill's collaborations with Bertolt Brecht. But Weill and Kaiser wrote three major works, the operas Der Protagonist (1926) and Der Zar lässt sich photographieren (1928), plus the musical play Der Silbersee (1933) (Weill first collaborated with Brecht in 1927 and Die Dreigroschenoper came in 1928). The first two are comic operas, and Weill intended them as a double bill, and the third is a strange hybrid of opera and play. The operas belong to the genre of Zeitoper, short, satiric pieces which comment on the times, a style which evaporated rapidly on the rise of the Nazis.

This year we have a chance to see two of Weill and Kaiser's collaborations. In the Autumn, English Touring Opera is producing The Silverlake (Der Silbersee) and tomorrow (4 May 2019) The Tsar wants his picture taken (Der Zar lässt sich photographieren) is being performed at the Bloomsbury Theatre.

The Tsar wants his picture taken features baritone Edmund Danon (Tsar), Anna Sideris (False Angele), Patricia Auchterlonie (Angele) and Joanna Harries (Leader), with full orchestra conducted by Johann Stuckenbruck. The performance is part of University College, London's (UCL) Performance Lab which combines a series of performances by artists, dancers, opera singers, stand-up comedians and UCL academics combined with a season of symposiums and discussions. So that for the opera, new light has been shed on the implications of the comic plot by academics from UCL Hebrew and Jewish Studies, and the performance will be followed by a discussion.

The opera was condemned as degenerate, which might seem strange to us today except that we are now coming to understand that Jews tended to dominate photography at the time,  so that the contemporary audience would understand the comedy in an entirely different way to a modern one. Amazingly, the orchestra is using the original 1927 parts, complete with vintage graffiti!

Other performances as part of Performance Lab include Muso from Impropera (7 May 2019), the improvising opera company, whose performance will be inspired by objects from the UCL collections!

Further information from the UCL Culture website, and the Bloomsbury Theatre website. 

Youthful Verdi revealed: a lithe and impulsive I Lombardi from Heidenheim

Verdi I Lombardi; Pavel Kudinov, Ania Jeruc, Marian Talaba, Leon de la Guardia, Cappella Aquileia, Leon Bosch; Coviello Classics
Reviewed by Robert Hugill on 10 April 2019 
Star rating: 3.5 (★★★½)
Based on live performances at the Heidenheim Festival, this reveals a lithe and impulsive side to Verdi's early opera

Verdi's I Lombardi is one of his early operas which gets the occasional outing but does not quite make it into the main canon. There are significant recordings in the catalogue (Domingo, Deutekom, Raimondi and Gardelli, Pavarotti, Anderson, Ramey and Levine), but this new one from Marcus Bosch and the Capella Aquileia, based on a production at the Heidenheim Festival [see my review] deserves consideration because it is part of a welcome trend for opera companies to re-assess the style of Verdi's early operas. Like the early Verdi productions at the Buxton Festival, Heidenheim produces early Verdi on a small scale, with smaller voices and a lither more, intimate sound. It is a movement which takes these operas on their own terms, rather than back-projecting middle-to-late Verdi onto the early works.

This is the third of Heidenheim's early Verdi series on Coviello Classics, Marcus Bosch conducts the Cappella Aquileia and Czech Philharmonic Choir Brno, with Leon de la Guardia as Arvino, Pavel Kudinov as Pagano, Anna Werle as Viclinda, Ania Jeruc as Giselda, Daniel Dropulja as Pirro, Christoph Wittmann as the Prior of Milan, Andrew Nolen as Acciano, Marian Talaba as Oronte, and Kate Allen as Sofia.

The dramaturgy of I Lombardi is unsatisfactory because Verdi and his librettist Temistocle Solera seem to have been concerned to keep the story highly compressed. The result is an opera which has under two hours of music despite a story which moves across time and distance. In fact, Verdi would return to the themes of I Lombardi in La Forza del Destino though the latter opera is on a far larger scale. The version of I Lombardi performed here is also cut, which does not always help the dramaturgy either.

Music, literature and more: the Bath Festival

The Bath Festival runs from 17 to 26 May 2019, with 120 events providing a diverse programme of music and literature.

A concert by the city's own Bath Philharmonia Orchestra will feature two talented young soloists, pianist Isata Kanneh-Mason in Clara Schumann's Piano Concerto and saxophonist Jess Gillam. Other young artists are featured in the festival's Classical Stars of the Future series, hour-long concerts with artists all under 30.

Visitors to the festival include Chineke!, the first professional orchestra with majority BAME musicians, Penguin Cafe, a group which blurs the boundaries between pop and classical founded in 2009 by composer Arthur Jeffes paying homage to his father's Penguin Cafe Orchestra of the 1970s, pianist Pavel Kolesnikov in Brahms, Beethoven and Tchaikovsky, recorder player Tabea Debus and the ORA Singers. There is a chance to hear two great sets of variations, harpsichordist Mahan Esfahani in Bach's Goldberg Variations, and pianist Piotr Anderszewski in Beethoven's Diabelli variations.

The Castalian String Quartet is joined by pianist Aleksandar Madzar for Elgar's Piano Quintet, whilst Iford Arts Opera will be performing Johann Strauss' Die Fledermaus. Komedia will be offering a portrait of that most diverse of composers, Richard Rodney Bennett, from song to jazz to film music, including clips of films for which he wrote the scores.

The festival mixes literature and music, and sometimes the two combine so there is a chance to hear Jane Glover talking about Handel, and Oliver Soden will talk about his new biography of Michael Tippett alongside a performance of Tippett's song cycle The Heart's Assurance by soprano Harriet Burns and pianist Alasdair Hogarth.

Full details from the Bath Festival website.

Revivifying Olimpie: Spontini's opera in a terrific new recording from Palazzetto Bru Zane

Gaspare Spontini Olimpie; Karina Gauvin, Kate Aldrich, Mathias Vidal, Josef Wagner, Le Cercle de l'Harmonie, Jeremie Rhorer; Palazzetto Bru Zane
Reviewed by Robert Hugill on 16 April 2019 
Star rating: 5.0 (★★★★★)
A terrific recording which sheds light on Spontini's finely neo-classical final French opera with style and passion

Spontini's operas, despite the iconic status of La Vestale, still have not made the impact on the modern opera house that they deserve. A composer much admired by Berlioz, the neo-classical nature of his style seems somewhat difficult to re-capture in modern performance.

This new recording of Spontini's Olimpie, his final French opera, has been produced by Palazzetto Bru Zane and is a welcome opportunity to re-assess Spontini's music played on the instruments of the period. Jérémie Rhorer conducts Le Cercle de l'Harmonie and the Flemish Radio Choir, with Karina Gauvin as Olimpie, Kate Aldrich as Statira, Mathias Vidal as Cassandre and Josef Wagner as Antigone, plus Patrick Bolleire and Philippe Souvagie.

Spontini composed Olimpie in 1819, his third major French tragedy following La vestale (1807) and Fernand Cortez (1809). A composer much supported by the Empress Josephine, Spontini did not seem to fit into Restoration Paris and Olimpie failed. He moved to Berlin where he was given a post by the King of Prussia, and Olimpie was performed in Berlin with a new German text by E.T.A. Hoffmann, and a revised ending [this German version is usually called Olympie]. This was a success and the new libretto was translated back into French. The revised opera was performed in Paris in 1826, it barely did better than the original in 1819.

Celebrating the past and looking to the future: the CBSO looks to its centenary in 2020

Mirga Gražinytė-Tyla and the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra (Photo CBSO)

The City of Birmingham Symphony (CBSO) was founded in 1920, and so the orchestra's 2019/20 represents the advanced guard of its centenary celebrations. Mirga Gražinytė-Tyla returns as the CBSO's music director for her fourth season, leading over 40 concerts during a season in which the orchestra uses the centenary celebrations as an excuse both to look back, celebrating the past, and to look forward with new commissions.

Musical celebrations in the West Midlands have played a significant role in the UK's musical life, notably the Birmingham Triennial Festival. The CBSO is celebrating this with performances of Mendelssohn’s Elijah (premiered in Birmingham in 1846), Elgar’s The Dream of Gerontius (premiered in Birmingham in 1900) and Handel’s Messiah (the bedrock on which Birmingham’s famous Triennial Festivals were built). Another West Midlands first was Britten's War Requiem (given its world premiere by the CBSO in Coventry Cathedral in 1962), and the final large scale choral work is Mahler’s Symphony of a Thousand (intended to receive its UK premiere by the CBSO in 1921).

The orchestra has a strong relationship with composers conducting their own work, including Holst, Vaughan Williams, Walton, Sibelius and Knussen. Mirga Gražinytė-Tyla will be conducting three works originally performed under their composers by the CBSO, Elgar’s Cello Concerto (also marking its centenary in 2019) with soloist Sheku Kanneh-Mason, Tippett’s A Child of Our Time, and the Symphony No.2 by Ruth Gipps, a former CBSO oboist.

The orchestra has commissioned 20 composers for new works to be premiered during the 2019-20 and 2020-21 seasons, and in this first batch there is a new cello concerto by former CBSO Composer in Association Julian Anderson and the first symphony by Thomas Adès, and works by Gary Carpenter, Unsuk Chin, Grace-Evangeline Mason, Thea Musgrave, Jörg Widmann and Stef Conner. In addition 20 young composers (under 30) are being chosen by the CBSO and their works performed as encores during the season for the CBSO Encores Project.

Another anniversary is that of the CBSO Youth Orchestra, which celebrates its 15th birthday with the ensemble’s first ever performance of Stravinsky’s The Rite of Spring, with conductor Andrew Gourlay. Joining the orchestra in this concert will be BBC Young Musician 2018 Lauren Zhang to perform Prokofiev’s Piano Concerto No.2.

Full details from the CBSO website.

A Day in the Life: Kevin Malone's new violin concerto inspired by tragic stories from the industrial heritage of the textile mills

Anglo-American composer Kevin Malone's new violin concerto for Andy Long, associate leader of the Orchestra of Opera North, is inspired by the industrial past of the area in which the orchestra is based. A Day in the Life, which will be premiered by Andy Long, the Orchestra of Opera North and conductor Robert Guy on Friday 3 May at Morley Town Hall, is based on the life of the early 19th century Mill Hand, Robert Blincoe who became known as the 'Real Oliver Twist'. Malone's new concerto dramatises a day in the life of Blincoe, whose tragic story captured Andy Long's imagination as a boy and seemed to form the ideal vehicle for the concerto which Long commissioned from Malone.

The concerto is being performed as part of a programme of Malone's music, all inspired by mill life, with the overture, A Peterloo Parade, based on contemporary and historical chants heard at rallies, especially those at the St Peter's Square, Manchester rally and massacre ("Peterloo") of 1819, and My Mill Life, a work for solo violin and pre-recorded monologues by current and former mill workers in Northern textile industry which will explore the relationships of the workers with their working environment.

After the premiere the programme is being taken on tour to Leeds, Saltaire, Pudsey, and Bradford, all areas associated with links to textile mills and the industrial revolution.

New York-born Kevin Malone teaches composition at the University of Manchester, and first worked with Andy Long when Long's chamber music group, The New World Ensemble, recorded two pieces by Long.

Further information from the concert series website.

A window onto 18th century taste: the multi-composer Naples version of Handel's Rinaldo

Handel & Leo Rinaldo (1718 Naples Version); Carmela Remigio, Francisco Fernandez-Rueda, Loriana Castellano, Teresa Iervolino, Francesca Ascioti, Orchestra La Scintilla, Fabio Luisi; Dynamic  
Reviewed by Robert Hugill on 21 April 2019 
Star rating: 3.5 (★★★½)
The pasticcio version of Handel's Rinaldo as performed in Naples in 1718 sheds new light on 18th century performance practice

We tend to apply our modern sensibility of fidelity to the score to 18th century performance where the idea of a fixed score was wholly unheard of. So modern revivals of Handel's operas rarely explore the composer's myriad versions (each time Handel revived an opera he changed it), sticking close to the premiere version. At the London Handel Festival, Opera Settecento has been admirably exploring the pasticcios Handel created for London, dramatic assemblages which mixed music from other composers with his own recitatives.

But what happened when Handel's operas travelled abroad? In Hamburg his friend Telemann supervised productions which adapted the operas to local tastes, quite radically for our modern sensibilities. And in 1718, the castrato Nicola Grimaldi arrived in his native Naples. He seems to have had Handel's Rinaldo in his luggage, having had great success in the title role in London in 1711. It seems it was decided to mount the opera in Naples with Grimaldi repeating his role. The composer Leonardo Leo and an anonymous librettist adjusted the opera to local taste, which involved not only changing the plot, but adding comic scenes.

Enough information survives for Giovanni Andrea Sechi to reconstruct Handel and Leonardo Leo's Rinaldo as performed in Naples in 1718. On this new set from Dynamic we have the first recording of this version presented by the Festival Valle D'Itria with Fabio Luisi and Orchestra La Scintilla, with Carmela Remigio as Armida, Francisco Fernandez-Rueda as Goffredo, Loriana Castellano as Almirena, Teresa Iervolino as Rinaldo and Francesca Ascioti as Argante.

Inspired by birds: the City of London Sinfonia looks at composers' fascination with birdsong

On Friday 3 May 2019, the City of London Sinfonia launches its new concert series Absolute Bird which explores 800 years of music inspired by birdsong. Created in partnership with the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds, the concerts celebrate birdsong in music, looking at the sheer diversity of music in which the composers have been influenced by birds and birdsong. There is music from Rebel's Les Elements to Respighi's The Birds, from traditional English song to Moondog, with instruments ranging from the full orchestra, to harpsichord to Huw Watkins performing Messiaen.

The Creative Director and Leader of CLS is Alexandra Wood and when I chatted to her last week about the series she explained that the birdsong goes beyond the concerts and that birdsong is being used in the orchestra's learning and participation programme as well. CLS has a residency at the Bethlehem and Maudsley Hospital, and their events at the hospital include looking at music which includes birdsong as well as improvising on it. This applies also to CLS work in schools, which Alexandra points out is important because of the limited amount of music in schools. And it is not just music, the use of birdsong brings in the idea of nature too, helping the children to listen in another way.