Come into the Garden - Samling Artist Showcase 2019 at Wigmore Hall

Samling Artist Showcase - Come into the Garden; Claire Lees, Anna Stéphany, Nicky Spence, Dominic Sedgwick, Joseph Middleton, Somi Kim, Simon Russell Beale; Wigmore Hall
Reviewed by Robert Hugill on 8 November 2019 Star rating: 3.5 (★★★½)
Songs from Beethoven to Britten in this imaginative Garden-themed survey from artists associated with the Samling Institute

On Friday 8 November 2019 at the Wigmore Hall, the Samling Institute for Young Artists held its annual artist showcase, an event where current and former Samling Artists come together in recital as a celebration of Samling's work. This year's line-up had been subject to some re-arrangement due to illness and unforseen circumstance. First, soprano Simona Mihai had to drop out, to be replaced by soprano Claire Lees, and then tenor Filipe Manu had to drop out owing to illness, to be replaced at short notice by tenor Nicky Spence. Entailing some alterations to the programme.

So the Samling Showcase on Friday, featured soprano Claire Lees [Samling  2017, recently seen as Oscar in Opera Holland Park's 2019 Young Artist performance of Verdi's Un ballo in Maschera, see my review], mezzo-soprano Anna Stéphany [Samling 2005, last seen in Mendelssohn's Eljiah with the OAE, see my review], tenor Nicky Spence [Samling 2006, currently singing Manolios in Martinu's The Greek Passion with Opera North, see my review] and baritone Dominic Sedgwick [Samling 2017, currently a Jette Parker Young Artist at Covent Garden], accompanied by pianist Joseph Middleton [Samling 2008, artistic director of Leeds Lieder] and Somi Kim [Samling 2015 & 2017], with readings from Sir Simon Russell Beale. The programme, Come into the Garden featured music by Robert Schumann, Hugo Wolf, Georges Bizet, Richard Strauss, Ludwig van Beethoven, William Walton, Charles Villiers Stanford, Arthur Somervell, Gabriel Faure, John Ireland, Jean Sibelius, Liza Lehmann, Manning Sherwin, David Baker, and Wynn Stanley.

Sir Simon Russell Beale, Somi Kim, Joseph Middleton, Anna Stephany, Claire Lees, Dominic Sedgwick, Nicky Spence - Samling Artist Showcase 2019, Wigmore Hall (Photo Roger Way)

Bringing to the community something which it would not otherwise see: I chat to festival director Anthony Wilkinson about the Wimbledon International Music Festival

Hugo Ticciati and O/Modernt who make a number of appearances at this years Wimbledon International Music Festival

The Wimbledon International Music Festival opens today, 9 November 2019; three weeks of music making and events under the theme of 'Music Mathematics Architecture'. This year's festival is the eleventh and I recently met up with festival director Anthony Wilkinson to chat about the festival's achievements, this year's highlights and future plans.

The festival is notable for the variety and imagination of Anthony's programming, alongside standards such as Haydn's Creation (which opens the festival), and the Philharmonia Orchestra in Bach, Bartók and Mozart (which closes it) there are programmes such as cellist Matthew Barley joining with Indian musicians, and a number of programmes from the ever imaginative Hugo Ticciati and O/Modernt.

Anthony comments that each year he finds the more imaginative programmes, the ones which bring the most letters, are often the ones where ticket sales are the most sluggish. He finds this sad, because for him one of the joys of the festival is bringing to the community something which it would not otherwise see. And a few times during our chat, we return to the problem of how to promote fantastic music that is unusual, how to encourage the joy of discovery in listeners.
This year he has used the theme of Music Mathematics Architecture to make some interesting connections.

Engagingly youthful: Mozart's Cosi fan tutte from Ian Page and the Mozartists

Playbill of the first performance of Cosi fan Tutte at the Burgtheater, Vienna, 26 January 1790

Mozart Cosi fan tutte; Ana Maria Labin, Emily Edmonds, Matthew Swensen, Benjamin Appl, Rebecca Bottone, Richard Burkhard, The Mozartists, cond: Ian Page; Cadogan Hall
Reviewed by Robert Hugill on 6 November 2019 Star rating: 4.0 (★★★★)
A lithe and youthfully engaging account of Mozart and Da Ponte's final, enigmatic masterpiece

The problem with celebrating Mozart's career year by year, is that it leaves a lot of the good things until the end, particularly when it comes to opera. So every so often Ian Page and The Mozartists cheat and take a break from the year by year exploration of Mozart 250 and give us something from Mozart's maturity.

So, on Wednesday 6 November 2019 at Cadogan Hall, Ian Page conducted the Mozartists in a concert performance of Cosi fan tutte with soloists Ana Maria Labin (soprano) as Fiordiligi, Emily Edmonds (mezzo-soprano) as Dorabella, Matthew Swensen (tenor) as Ferrando, Benjamin Appl (baritone) as Guglielmo, Rebecca Bottone (soprano) as Despina and Richard Burkhard (baritone) as Don Alfonso.

Cosi van tutte remains a somewhat enigmatic opera, no amount of research can ever quite put us in the position of those in the first night audience so that we understand the plot in the terms which they or the composer and librettist did. Even the title, one of those which is never translated, is puzzling, is it serious or ironic? It doesn't help that after a handful of performances following the premiere, the theatres were closed owing to the Emperor's death. So we don't have the sort of extensive contemporary comment on the opera that we do for the earlier Mozart/Da Ponte ones.

The advantage of a concert performance is that we don't have to worry as much about production concept, and can concentrate on Mozart's music and Da Ponte's words. Though, of course, that places a lot of onus on the performers and whilst I have enjoyed countless concert performances, I have also been to plenty where the opera failed to cross the footlights.

Thankfully there was no problem with that here, the cast were uniformly involved and engagingly direct in their performances. Whilst the singers were using scores, no-one had their head buried one or used it for protection, and instead dialogue was just that, dialogue between two people, statements could elicit reactions and there was a delightful sense of ensemble in this most ensemble of Mozart operas. Ian Page's programme note pointed out that we have to wait a long time for the first large-scale aria, and that the first time a singer is really alone on stage for their aria is not until the second act, prior to that the entire piece has been acted ensemble.

This was a youthful and lithe performance, starting with Ian Page's lively and stylish account of the overture. We have reached the point where period instrument performances of this music are relatively common, but I still find the range of colour and timbre that a good performance brings, to be completely magical. Textures were light, but everything was full of colour and transparency did not imply lack of emotional depth.

Leonardo the opera: Alex Mills' latest work debuts at the Victoria and Albert Museum

As 2019 is the 500th anniversary of Leonardo da Vinci's death, the Renaissance polymath is everywhere. Alex Mills, whose imaginative opera Dear Marie Stopes debuted at Tête à Tête: The Opera Festival last year [see my review], is exploring Leonardo through music and his opera Leonardo will debut at the Victoria and Albert Museum on Saturday 9 November 2019 (when there are two performances, at 13.30 and 16;00). Alas the opera is not in one of the museum's evocative Renaissance galleries, but in the Lecture Theatre, though the acoustics there are good.

In the opera Mills aims to focuses on his inner world, emotional life and sexuality, using music to fill in the many gaps that we have in our knowledge of Leonardo the man. In fact, we know fairly little about Leonardo, most of his writings are architectural and technical, and certainly there is precious little about his emotional life or his sexuality. Of course, with historical figures the very silence can be telling.

The text by playwright Brian Mullin is drawn from Leonardo's personal notebooks and journals (of which the V&A have five in their collection), plus other contemporary texts from his lifetime.

The work will be performed by tenor Tom Randle, counter-tenor Feargal Mostyn-Williams and baritone Richard Immerglück with the viol consort Fretwork, conducted by Tim Anderson and directed by Patrick Eakin Young.

Further details from Alex Mills website,  and tickets from the V&A website.

Do not go gentle - the Chamber Choir of London in Dorchester, the Hague & London

The Chamber Choir of London and conductor Dominic Ellis-Peckham will be commemorating Remembrance Sunday with a programme, Do not go gentle at Dorchester Abbey in Gloucestershire (10/11/2019) and repeated at Kloosterkerk, the Hague on Monday (11/11/2019). The programme features Toby Young's setting of the Dylan Thomas poem from which it takes its name, along with music by Ed Rex, Kim Andre Arnesen, Alexander Campkin, Owain Park, and Kerry Andrew, plus RVW's No Long Mourn for Me, James McMillan's A Child's Prayer and Herbert Howell's Requiem. This powerful work was written by Howells in the 1930s, a period when he was much affected by the death of his son Michael (who had evidently 'contributed' to the early manuscript of the piece, in the way of young children). Howells would draw on the Requiem for his Hymnus Paradisi but put the Requiem in a drawer, and it was only in the 1950s that RVW persuaded him to allow it to be performed.

Further ahead, the choir will be bringing its Christmas programme, On Bethlehem Down to London on 13 December 2019, for a candlelit at St George's Church, Bloomsbury, with music by Andrew Carter, Peter Wishart, Judith Weir, Bob Chilcott, Herbert Howells, Elizabeth Maconchy, Jonathan Rathbone, Peter Warlock, Kerry Andrew, Richard Allain, and Cecilia McDowall.

The choir will be in London again in February 2019 at the Royal Festival Hall, but the concert sold out within 15 minutes of booking as it is a programme of music themed around the video game NieR. The choir joins with the Royal Philharmonic Concert Orchestra for NieR:Orchestra Concert re:12018 an immersive video-game concert which features music by composer Keiichi Okabe, and HD video projections by NieR Director Yoko Taro.

Full details from the choir's website.

The Lobster with live music

The Greek director Yorgos Lanthimos is best known for his film The Favourite, but his early catalogue includes the intriguing The Lobster (his first English language film). There is now a chance to see this at selected Picturehouse cinemas with a live sound-track from the Solem Quartet. The film, which is surreal and darkly funny, stars Rachel Weisz and Colin Farrell and features a score which includes quartets by Shostakovich, Schnittke, Beethoven, Britten and Stravinsky.

The Solem Quartet was formed in 2011 at the University of Manchester (it takes its name from the university’s motto "arduus ad solem", meaning "striving towards the sun") and it won the 2014 Royal Over-Seas League Ensemble Competition. The performances of The Lobster form part of the Solem Lates project, where the quartet branches out into diverse genres and plays in unexpected settings.

The Lobster with live score from the Solem Quartet is at selected Picturehouse cinemas, screenings have already started but there are still plenty to choose from between 8 November and 18 December 2019. Full details from the Picturehouse website.

The Solem Quartet (Alistair Vennart, Amy Tress, Stephanie Tress, William Newell)

Beethoven Transformed: volume 1 of Boxwood & Brass' new project

Beethoven arr. Czerny Septet, Beethoven Sextet, Boxwood & Brass; Resonus
Reviewed by Robert Hugill on 5 November 2019 Star rating: 4.0 (★★★★)
Beethoven's early Septet re-cast for Harmonie ensemble, showcasing the fine musicianship of Boxwood & Brass

Harmoniemusik is a style of wind ensemble music written in the 18th century generally in German speaking countries. It was often designed for performance outside, though not exclusively so. And though many major composers wrote for the genre, there were plenty of others who had their music arranged for wind ensemble. The ensemble, Boxwood & Brass, is the UK's only period instrument ensemble exploring this repertoire, giving us the opportunity to hear the music on historically correct instruments. [see my interview with Boxwood & Brass's Emily Worthington and Robert Percival for a full discussion of Harmoniemusik].

For the Boxwood & Brass' latest disc, on Resonus Classics, it has turned to a contemporary arrangement of one of the best loved large-scale chamber pieces of the Classical period, Beethoven's Septet. Written in 1799, the original was for a mixed ensemble of wind and stringa, but it is here performed in an arrangement for Harmonie sextet - two clarinets, two horns & two bassoons (Emily Worthington, Fiona Mitchell, Anneke Scott, Kate Goldsmith, Robert Percival, Takako Kunugi) by Beethoven's pupil, Carl Czerny. Also on the disc is Beethoven's early Sextet Op.71 which sees Beethoven exploring the wind sextet not as Harmoniemusik but as real chamber music.

The disc is part of a project (with more discs to come) from Boxwood & Brass, Beethoven Transformed, which aims to explore early 19th century Viennese Harmoniemusik in the context of Beethoven's music for wind, and to show that the genre was more complex than mere background music.

In 1805, Beethoven asked his former pupil Carl Czerny to make the piano reduction of his opera Leonore. Czerny was in fact only 14, but he had had lessons from Beethoven in 1802 and 1803. Also dating from 1805 is a version of Beethoven's Septet (for a mixed ensemble of wind and strings) arranged by Czerny for Harmoniemusik, wind sextet. The background to the arrangement is unclear, but the timing makes it suggestive that Czerny was working to a commission from Beethoven, though Beethoven came to be annoyed by the success of his early Septet which he did not feel reflected his current compositional style! The booklet article by Emily Worthington also suggests another possibility, that Czerny was working for the clarinettist who owned the manuscript of Beethoven's Septet. And, in fact, the arrangement is not quite complete, and it is rather more virtuosic than a lot of contemporary Harmoniemusik.

ORA's Christmas Gift!

ORA Singers, Suzi Digby (Photo Nick Rutter)

ORA Singers will be supporting 12 new composers this Christmas, offering them a free recording of their Christmas compositions. The new initiative, called Christmas Gift, will select 12 UK-based composers who will have the chance to work with ORA’s world-class vocal ensemble and director, Suzi Digby OBE, before receiving a professional recording of their pieces just in time for Christmas.

Open to UK-based composers of any age, applicants can submit any a cappella Christmas work under 5 minutes in length alongside their biographies in order to be considered for the project. ORA is looking for a broad range of composers, with no age restriction or entry fee. The group hopes to help composers take the next step in their careers by providing a professional recording; whether it be for a college application, prospective commission or portfolio enhancement.

Full details of the Christmas Gift can be found on ORA Singers’ website, with an entry deadline of the 18 November 2019.

UK premiere of Mieczyslaw Weinberg's Cello Concertino in Manchester

Dmitri Shostakovich & Mieczyslaw Weinberg
together in Moscow

I recently chatted to cellist Raphael Wallfisch about his project to record cello concertos by exiled Jewish composers [see my review]. Now Wallfisch is gving the UK premiere of a work by another exile, the Cello Concertino by Mieczyslaw Weinberg (Polish and Jewish by birth, Russian by adoption and a friend of Shostakovich's), which Wallfisch performs with the Northern Chamber Orchestra in the Stoller Hall at Chetham's School in Manchester on Friday 8 November 2019. Also in the programme is Tchaikovsky's Rococco Variations for cello and orchestra, in the composer's original version which Wallfisch has constantly championed [the work is best known in the adaptation by the work's original soloist, and until relatively recently this adaptation was the only version available in the West], plus Holst's St Paul's Suite and Schubert's Symphony No. 5.

Weinberg's Cello Concertino (not to be confused with the Cello Concerto) is an early work, and only came to light in 2016, and seems to be a fore-runner of the Cello Concerto. The score was written in 1948, at the height of the Soviet anti-formalism campaign and Weinberg evidently put it in a draw until 1956 (after Stalin's death) when he re-wrote it, doubling the length and created the Cello Concerto (which was premiered by Rostropovich).

Raphael Wallfisch and the Northern Chamber Orchestra are at the Stoller Hall, Manchester on Friday 8 November 2019, and they repeat the concert at Macclesfield Heritage Centre on Saturday 9 November 2019. Full details from the Northern Chamber Orchestra website

Update: I had mistakenly described the performance as the UK premiere, but it was performed at the Proms this Summer, with Sol Gabetta and the BBC Symphony Orchestra. Many thanks to Michael Smith for pointing this out. 

Update 2: In fact, I had got the work wrong!

A final farewell: the Hilliard Ensemble & Jan Garbarek captured live on their final tour, Remember me, my dear

Komitas, Garbarek, Kedrov, Pärt,Le Rouge, Perotin, Hildegard von Bingen, Brumel; Hilliard Ensemble, Jan Garbarek; ECM
Reviewed by Robert Hugill on 5 November 2019 Star rating: 3.0 (★★★)
For one final time, the Hilliard Ensemble and Jan Garbarek re-visit the wonderful sound world of Officium, here recorded live on their farewell tour in 2014

It is over 25 years since Manfred Eicher (of ECM Records) brought the Hilliard Ensemble together with the Norwegian saxophonist, Jan Garbarek. The result was a successful but at first sight, unlikely, marriage and their disc Officium was a sensation, it combined the Hilliard Ensemble's performances of early polphony with Garberek's evocative saxophone. But, from the start, the members of the Hilliard Ensemble never regarded themselves as singing in an Early Music group. When I heard one of the ensemble's farewell concerts, at the Spitalfields Festival in 2013 [see my review], they talked about how from the earlies days the group's repertoire had encompassed a wide variety of styles from Early to Contemporary, but that their early recordings had all been of Early music which got them the Early Music tag. So a collaboration with a contemporary performing artist was not so strange, and there is a very vocal quality to Garbarek's playing. There were three discs made, Officium, Mnemosyne and Officium Novum. These three were all made in the studio.

But for the Hilliard Ensemble and saxophonist Jan Garbarek's final disc together, recorded on the Officium farewell tour in 2014, they have recorded a disc live. Issued on ECM Records, Remember me my dear features the Hilliards and Garbarek in a wide range of music from Hildegard of Bingen and Perotin, to Komitas and Nikolai N Kedrov to Arvo Pärt and Jan Garbarek.

The Hilliard Ensemble’s David James, Steven Harrold, Roger Covey-Crump, Gordon Jones with Jan Garbarek, far right,
in 2014. (Photo: Daniel Vass/ECM Records )

This is very much the same recipe as before, but the ingredients are subtly different. Much of the vocal material is edgier. The original  Officium veered a little bit into the sort of New Age spiritual territory which led to monks singing chant making hit records. Here, the music sometimes has bite to it, whether early, late or Contemporary. And, of course, the performers are 25 years older. The voices of the Hilliard Ensemble (David James, Rogers Covey-Crump, Steven Harrold, Gordon Jones) are more lived in, more (dare one say it) frayed at the edges, but there is also 25 years more experience performing together, deeper understanding and willingness to go further. The vocal performances are looser, the group is now far more comfortable if not improvising then giving the vocal lines more freedom to match Garbarek's improvisations.

Samling Artist Showcase at Wigmore Hall

The Samling Artist Showcase at Wigmore Hall takes place on Friday 8 November 2019, an annual recital highlighting the young artists supported by the Samling Institute for Young Artists. This year the performers are soprano Claire Lees (Samling Artist 2017, Oscar in Opera Holland Park's 2019 Young Artist performance of Un ballo in maschera), mezzo-soprano Anna Stephany (Samling Artist 2005, last seen in Mendelssohn's Elijah with the OAE), tenor Filipe Manu (Samling Artist 2018, whom we saw in Puccini's Gianni Schicchi with the London Schools Symphony Orchestra) and baritone Dominic Sedgwick (Samling Artist 2017, currently a Jette Parker Young Artist at Covent Garden), accompanied by pianists Joseph Middleton and Somi Kim. They will be joined by the actor Sir Simon Russell Beale for a programme entitled Come into the Garden, with a variety of garden themed songs from Schumann and Wolf to Britten and Walton.

There are unusual items and novelties too, two songs by Beethoven (a composer not frequently represented in song recitals), Bizet's Chanson d'Avril, Franck's Le Mariage des roses (when did you last year a song by Cesar Franck?), Sibelius' Demanten på Marssnön, as well as songs by Stanford and Somervell, plus a clutch of lighter items including Liza Lehmann's delightful There are fairies at the bottom of the garden (a song which takes my happily back to my days directing the Pink Singers in the 1980s!), and David Baker's Someone is sending me flowers.

Full details from Wigmore Hall website.

A distinct voice: Emergence, Nadine Benjamin & Nicole Panizza in settings of Emily Dickinson

Emergence - Aaron Copland, Luigi Zaninelli, Juliana Hall, Sylvia GLickman, Ell Jarman-Pinto; Nadine Benjamin, Nicole Panizza; Stone Records
Reviewed by Robert Hugill on 25 October 2019 Star rating: 3.5 (★★★½)
An intriguing and enterprising collection of Emily Dickinson settings, 30 songs from five 20th and 21st century composers

The poet Emily Dickinson (1830-1886) has a very particular voice, slightly sharp edged perhaps and not quite as comfortable as many 19th century women poets. She was a poet of the ordinary and the everyday, often concise and intense but with poems that cover a wide range. Her verse has, understandably, been popular with composers. This new disc, Emergence, on Stone Records, from soprano Nadine Benjamin and pianist Nicole Panizza assembles together Dickinson settings from five 20th century and contemporary composers, Aaron Copland (1900-1990), Luigi Zaninelli (born 1932), Juliana Hall (born 1958), Sylvia Glickman (1932-2008) and Ella Jarman-Pinto (born 1989). The composers are all Amemrican-based (except for Jarman-Pinto), and the songs very much seem to explore an unfolding tradition, just as you could probably focus on songs setting certain English poets and see the English tradition of setting them. The result is imaginative and intriguing, and gives us a chance to explore a song tradition still not well known in the UK. A similar disc based around Samuel Barber's Hermit Songs anyone?

The best known work on the disc is the opening one, Aaron Copland's Twelve Poems of Emily Dickinson, written in 1950 and Copland's longest work for solo voice (it was his first work for solo voice and piano since 1928!). The twelve songs are all relatively short, with Copland seeming to enjoy Dickinson's brevity and directness. There is no overarching theme, instead it ranges widely of ideas which were common in Dickinson: nature, death, life, eternity.

Now I have a confession, I have always found the cycle difficult to love, whilst I realise that there is much to admire.

Come & Sing Mexican Baroque Choral Gems: Zéspedes and the Music of Puebla Cathedral

WORKSHOP FOR SINGERS

16 Nov 2019 @ St Botolph-without-Bishopsgate

with Jagoba Fadrique

In celebration of the 2019 quater-centenary of Mexican Baroque composer Juan García de Zéspedes (ca. 1619–1678), this one-day workshop will explore a selection of Zéspedes' works alongside others by his fellow Choirmasters at the Puebla Cathedral in Mexico where he was maestro de capilla: Gaspar Fernandes, Juan Gutiérrez de Padilla and Antonio de Salazar. This varied programme of small-scale works will comprise texts in Spanish, Latin, Creole (and Náhuatl!) You’ll be amazed how quickly you can learn a new piece with the help of our friendly conductor Jagoba Fadrique - one of the UK's most sought-after Spanish singers and specialist Hispanic choral directors. 

PROGRAMME

Juan García de Zéspedes Ay que me abraso | Convidando está la noche | Hermoso amor que forxas | Salve Regina

Juan Gutiérrez de Padilla Ah, siolo Flasiquiyo | Las estrellas se ríen | Stabat Mater | Versa est in luctum

Gaspar Fernandes Magnificat | Tleycantimo Choquiliya | Un relox a visto Andrés | Xicochi conetzintle

Antonio de Salazar Guarda la fiera | Missus est Gabriel | O vos Omnes | Oigan un vejamen

PLUS: Registration includes free entry to our evening concert feat. the Lacock Scholars and complimentary wine reception!

***BOOKINGS & MORE INFO HERE***

 

The Exiled Outsiders

Hans Gál (2nd right) in the internment camp
(Photo Courtesy of The Hans Gál Society)

The Exiled Outsiders - Hans Gál, Max Kowalski, Peter Gellhorn; Madeleine Bradbury-Rance, Simon Wallfisch, Richard Stemp, Barbara Gellhorn, Nigel Foster; London English Song Festival at Hinde Street Methodist Church
Reviewed by Anthony Evans on 31 October 2019 Star rating: 4.0 (★★★★)
A fitting tribute to three composers who escaped Nazi Germany & made lives in the UK, and the contribution they made to their adopted country

Hinde Street Methodist church was, once more, the venue for this the fourth concert in the London Song Festival series exploring the theme of Outsiders. At the 31 October 2019 concert, The Exiled Outsiders, the pianist Nigel Foster once again crafted an imaginative and revealing programme. The singers were the soprano Madeleine Bradbury-Rance and the baritone Simon Wallfisch. Richard Stemp and Barbara Gellhorn were the speakers.

The concert was made up of songs by three composers, Hans Gál, Max Kowalski and Peter Gellhorn who having escaped Nazi Germany made new lives in the United Kingdom. Songs were interspersed with readings from Stefan Zweig’s The World of Yesterday, the diaries of Hans Gál written during his internment and letters between Peter Gellhorn and his daughter Barbara and rather poignantly read by her.

Sunday Service: concerts at the Boulevard Theatre

The Boulevard Theatre auditorium (Photo Tom Lee)

The Boulevard Theatre is a new venue which has recently opened in Soho, but the name is an old one. The Boulevard Theatre was originally a sister venue to Raymond's Revuebar (Paul Raymond's striptease club) staging plays and a one time home of the Comic Strip comedians. The new theatre is a 165-seat venue which is part of the new development of Soho's Walker's Court.

As part of the new theatre's programme, it is introducing Sunday Service, a series of classical music concerts starting tomorrow, Sunday 3 November 2019, intended to showcase the most exciting and inventive artists in classical music.

Tomorrow, the series is launched by iyatraQuartet, a multi-instrumentalist group bringing a classical sensibility to a jazz-like approach, building soundscapes of mood as they go, featuring an intriguing combination of influences from Karnatic (South Indian) violin, English folk and Cuban salsa, to early medieval and Western classical music.

Further ahead, award-winning contemporary quartet The Hermes Experiment (harp, soprano, double bass, clarinet) will present a varied programme featuring some of their most recent works, and Kadialy Kouyate will his fantastic band into the West African groove with Kora in the heart of it. The Kumori Saxophone Quartet present a concert of contemporary works and new arrangements, including music by Jonathan Dove, Michael Nyman, Jennifer Higdon (whose opera Cold Mountain premiered at Santa Fe Opera in 2015) and David Maslanka. And David Gordon is the intriguing combination of Harpsichordist, jazz pianist and composer.

The December programme is completed by the London Klezmer Quartet, The Phantasy Trio, and Words into Music which features Kurt Weill, Hanns Eisler, Nikolai Kapustin and others is performed by singer Karoline Gable and pianists Benjamin Cox and Katy Hamilton.

Full details from the Boulevard Theatre website.

An artist should be careful not to put themselves in a box: I chat to tenor Leonardo Capalbo about the challenges of singing the title role in Verdi's Don Carlos

Verdi: Don Carlos - Leonardo Capalbo, Raehann Bryce Davis - Opera Vlaanderen (Photo Annemie Augustijns)

We have heard Italian-American tenor Leonardo Capalbo twice in the title role of Verdi's Don Carlo(s), first this Summer with Grange Park Opera, and then more recently in Ghent with Opera Vlaanderen. Whilst we were in Ghent, I was lucky enough to be able to meet up with Leonardo to talk about his career, his voice, and the role of Don Carlos in particular.

Performing Verdi's Don Carlo (in Italian, in the four-act version) was Leonardo's debut in the role [see my review], and he followed this by performing the opera with Opera Vlaanderen in French in the five-act version [see my review]. Was the change in versions and language was a challenge I wondered? He responded that he feels that everything is a challenge but he loves Verdi's music and finds Verdi's characters the ones he bonds with. And it felt good to do the work in its original French.

You can tell Verdi was thinking about the music of Don Carlos with a French text

Leonardo loves singing in French, and so relished performing in this version and doing the 'Fontainebleau act' (which Verdi cut from the four-act version) not only added some beautiful music to the opera but added to the arc of the narrative. Seeing Don Carlos and Elisabeth uncomplicatedly in love, before her betrothal is announced to Don Carlos' father rather than to Don Carlos himself, helps to show why Don Carlos has a deep connection with Elisabeth later in the opera, and it makes his sacrifice at the end all the more poignant.

Singing in French vocally feels different to Italian. Because of the mixed vowels you have to understand a lot about your instrument to be able to sing French well and release your voice. For Leonardo, a major obstacle to singers in French is the failure to emit the voice in a pleasing fashion. He tries to sing French idiomatically whilst aiming to use the most opulent voice that fits the emotion and style of the music, and he points out that in fact some Francophone singers do not sing French well.

In Italian such things are more straightforward, but Leonardo thinks you can tell that Verdi was thinking about the music of Don Carlos with a French text, the way the musical phrases follow the scansion of the French. He always finds the opera magical, but in French it is more powerful.

Verdi: Don Carlo - Leonardo Capalbo, Brett Polegato - Grange Park Opera 2019 (Photo Robert Workman)

This is down to technique, he keeps his voice flexible

Requiem in a Day

Dorset-based composer Matthew Coleridge's Requiem has already been performed a number of times in the UK and Europe. Now, Coleridge is planning to take it on tour with his Requiem in a Day project. Each Requiem in Day takes the form of choral workshops, with local singers being spending the day being guided through the piece by Coleridge and culminating in a performance in the evening. These will take place at venues across the country, with the first one tomorrow, 2 November 2019 at St James's Church, Louth, Lincolnshire, with organist Jeffrey Makinson from Lincoln Cathedral and baritone Allan Smith (Director of Music at St James's Church, Louth), soprano Gaynor Morgan and the cello soloist for this performance is Gabriella Swallow who grew up in Lincolnshire.

Further details about the Louth performance from Matthew Coleridge's website.

The format has already been tested, and his year, over 140 workshop singers performed the Requiem to a sell-out audience in Devon’s Buckfast Abbey. Many participants spoke about a deeply affecting experience and how powerfully emotive the music is [see video below].

Matthew Coleridge is a self-taught composer from a musical family, both his father and grandfather were composers, and his a cappella works have been recorded by ensembles such as the Queen's Six.

Further dates for Requiem in Day in 2020:

• February 8 Portsmouth Cathedral
• March 28 London (St James, Sussex Gardens)
• May 9 Bristol (All Saints, Clifton)
• June 20 Pershore Abbey, Worcs.
• August 20 Dorchester Abbey, Nr. Oxford
• September 19 Exeter Cathedral

Full details from Matthew Coleridge's website

Aldeburgh, Switzerland, Hammersmith and Paris: Russell Hepplewhite's opera for children with three premieres this Autumn

Hepplewhite: Laika the Spacedog - English Touring Opera

I first came across in 2013 Russell Hepplewhite's operas when English Touring Opera (ETO) performed the award-winning Laika the Spacedog [see my review] and since then Hepplewhite has written a number of other operas for ETO to perform to children and families. 

This Autumn three more of Hepplewhite's pieces are being premiered, and this time it is the children themselves who are performing. Jubilee Opera premiere The Casket Girl and The History Express at the Jubilee Hall in Aldeburgh, and W11 Opera will premiere at EVER YOUNG at POSK Theatre in Hammersmith. Whilst Laika the Spacedog is back in orbit in the UK thanks to ETO, and the opera will be making appearances in Switzerland and Paris.

The Casket Girl, with a libretto by Helen Eastman, is based a real event which took place on the bank of the River Alde in Suffolk in 2013. The remains of a casket of personal treasures were discovered in the Anglo-Saxon grave of a young woman at a location called Barber’s Point. Russell Hepplewhite’s score takes the audience from a modern day archaeological dig to the ancient world of a mysterious maiden, unlocking the secrets of her life and death. The opera performed by Jubilee Opera on 22 and 23 November 2019, at Jubilee Hall, Aldeburgh, conducted by Jack Ridley and directed by Susan Moore (who was in fact in Laika the Spacedog all those years ago), with soprano Sofia Troncoso and baritone Matthew Kellett stars a cast of over thirty children from Suffolk. Preceding The Casket Girl is a new song cycle The History Express by Russell Hepplewhite also with texts by Helen Eastman. The cycle takes the idea of archaeology, and follows a timeline, ‘digging back’ through history, and will feature over fifty children from local primary schools.

Further details and tickets from the Snape Maltings website.

EVER YOUNG, with a libretto by Helen Eastman, is set in the secret laboratory of a research institute, where a genius young scientist is about to announce the discovery of an amazing new drug that will change the world. She has invented a new drug that can stop human ageing, everyone wants the anti-aging treatment but a small group of teenagers aren’t so sure… How does a world work if no one grows old or dies? The opera explores the consequences of what can happen when a youth-obsessed society goes too far

EVER YOUNG is performed by W11 Opera at POSK Theatre, Hammersmith on 7 and 8 December 2019. The production is directed by Tim Yealland (formed Head of Education at ETO and librettist of Laika the Spacedog).

Full details and tickets from the W11 Opera website.

Laika the Spacedog has been revived by ETO and is currently touring the UK, see ETO's website for details. The work is being performed by Nouvel Opera Fribourg, Switzerland on 24 November 2019 as Laika - le chien de l'Espace, conducted by Stephanie Gurga and directed by Anne Schwaller. and the production travels to the Opera Comique in Paris in April 2020.

The Grange Festival International Singing Competition

The Grange Festival International Singing Competition - Dame Felicity Palmer with Kiandra Howarth (1st Prize)
(Photo Robert Workman)

The Grange Festival International Singing Competition; Merchant Taylor's Hall
Reviewed by Robert Hugill on 31 October 2019
A terrifically strong line up of young singers, each in a 20-minute programme of arias from before 1830, accompanied by the Academy of Ancient Music

Two years ago the first Grange Festival International Singing Competition was won by soprano Rowan Pierce [see my article], and the biennial competition returned for its second edition culminating in the final at Merchant Taylor's Hall on Thursday 31 October 2019. Six singers competed, Kiandra Howarth (soprano), Helen Charlston (mezzo-soprano), Jaeil Kim (tenor), Claire Barnett-Jones (mezzo-soprano), Samantha Clarke (soprano), and Jerome Knox (baritone). Each sang a 20-minute programme of arias (dating from before 1830) accompanied by the Academy of Ancient Music, conductor Peter Robinson. The judges were Michael Chance (artistic director of the festival), Hugh Canning (chief classical critic of the Sunday Times), Scott Cooper (director of artistic administration at the festival), David Gowland (of the Royal Opera House's Jette Parker Young Artists programme), John Graham-Hall (tenor), Helen Hogh (from Groves Artists), Rosa Mannion (soprano and teacher at the Royal College of Music), Mary Miller (Bergen National Opera), Dame Felicity Palmer (patron of the competition), and Peter Robinson.

First up was soprano Kiandra Howarth [last seen as Konstanza in Mozart's at the festival, and in the Mozartists' Gluck double bill], who opened with a vibrant & touching account of the Countess' 'Dove sono' from Mozart's Le nozze di Figaro, complete with the dramatic recitative. Then came Cleopatra's 'Se pieta' from Handel's Giulio Cesare. Perhaps Howarth's voice is larger and more dramatic in this music than we are used to, but she was stylish with a lovely line and really made the music mean something. Finally, a real novelty, Lodoiska's 'Tournez sur moi votre colere' from Cherubini's Lodoiska, a terrific piece bringing her set to a close with vivid excitement.

The Grange Festival International Singing Competition - Dame Felicity Palmer with Claire Barnett-Jones, Samantha Clarke (joint 2nd Prize) - (Photo Robert Workman)

Mezzo-soprano Helen Charlston won the 2018 Handel Singing Competition [we heard her in Bach's Christmas Oratorio at St John's Smith Square last year, and in Dame Emma Kirkby's 70th birthday concert at the Wigmore Hall]. She opened with a strong account of Farnace's 'Va, va l'error mio palesa' from Mozart's Mitridate, re di Ponto sung with lovely straight tone. Next she gave us a moving 'Che faro' from Gluck's Orfeo ed Euridice, full of character with beautifully shaped phrases. Anastasio's aria 'Vedro con mio diletto' from Vivaldi's Giustino was something of a novelty, with fine passage-work over a throbbing accompaniment. Charlston concluded with a vivid performance of Ariodante's aria 'Dover, giustizia, amor' from Handel's opera, full of swagger with terrific passage-work.

'The first great example of British exceptionalism' - Purcell's King Arthur re-thought in an engaging performance and accompany CDs from Paul McCreesh and Gabrieli

Purcell: King Arthur - Paul McCreesh & Gabrieli in rehearsal at St John's Smith Square (Photo Gabrieli)

Purcell King Arthur; Gabrieli Consort & Players, Paul McCreesh; St John's Smith Square
Reviewed by Robert Hugill on 30 October 2019 Star rating: 5.0 (★★★★★)
Purcell's semi-opera re-thought in terms of content and performing style, to create something graceful, elegant and vividly theatrical

17th century English semi-opera, that mix of drama, operatic scenes and sheer spectacle which so delighted the audiences in Stuart London, remains rather tricky to pull off today and it is perhaps only the sheer beauty and vitality of Purcell's music that keeps works such as King Arthur or The Fairy Queen alive. For The Fairy Queen we have pretty good documentation for what Purcell actually wrote, because the score was lost (and subsequently re-discovered) and so was not gradually destroyed during the process of performance and revival in the theatre. For King Arthur, things are somewhat different and the original score has been largely lost, probably it fell to pieces at a certain point thanks to ill use in the theatre, and our surviving copies all date from well after Purcell's death.

Purcell: King Arthur - Paul McCreesh & Gabrieli in rehearsal
at St John's Smith Square (Photo Gabrieli)

So, presenting King Arthur provides companies with a number of conundrums, namely how to present a semi-opera in concert and what music to use. Recently, Paul McCreesh and Gabrieli decided to re-think King Arthur after experience of performing the work for over 20 years, and the results are a new recording which is issued on the ensemble's own label [see below]. This was launched on Wednesday 30 October 2019 at St John's Smith Square, where Paul McCreesh conducted the Gabrieli Consort and Players with soloists Anna Dennis, Mhairi Lawson, Rowan Pierce, Jeremy Budd, James Way, Robert Davies (replacing an ailing Marcus Farnsworth), and Ashley Riches.

King Arthur was planned as part of a group of royal operas commissioned by or for King Charles II (between 1681 and 1684). Two were small scale, performed at Court - John Blow's Venus and Adonis and Henry Purcell's Dido and Aeneas (and both were subsequently revived at Josiah Priest's girls school, though the dating of Purcell's opera remains disputed). Two were large scale pieces, designed for the public theatre, both with librettos by John Dryden. Charles' death disrupted things, and Dryden's libretto for King Arthur lay unused. But in 1690, the theatre in Dorset Gardens had a hit with Purcell's semi-opera Diocletian and, casting round for a follow-up, hit upon King Arthur. The problem is politics intervened, the ending had to be changed because of the Glorious Revolution in 1688 (when William and Mary displaced Charles II's brother James II). And we are left with something of mystery, because the final solo song, 'St George' survives only in music which does not seem to be by Purcell.

In terms of what to perform, Christopher Suckling and Paul McCreesh have created a new edition of the work, borrowing instrumental movements from other works by Purcell so that King Arthur now has its full quota of act tunes and act preludes which come before the drama starts and which help to punctuate things, delineating the acts. For the ending Suckling and McCreesh have dropped 'St George' entirely and replaced it with a celebratory piece from Diocletian with adjusted words. As the music for King Arthur is arranged in a series of discrete scenes, simply separating them with instrumental music works well. Inevitably we focus on the quality of the music, and have to take for granted that dramatically the piece is more incidental. Knowing the plot of Dryden's text does not really help, because the strange nature of semi-opera was that the music was provided by the smaller, incidental characters!

Gabrieli played the work at low pitch, reflecting that Playhouses in 17th century London used this sort of pitch, and it means that instead of altos we had high tenors so that the solo line up was sopranos, high tenor, tenor, basses. There was no chorus, the soloists were joined by two further singers, high-tenor Christopher Fitzgerald-Lombard [whom we last saw singing in the chorus of the Dead in my opera The Gardeners!] and tenor Tom Castle, to create a vocal ensemble of nine singers who did all the choruses.

As reflecting the resources available to Playhouses, the instrumental ensemble was similarly tight with 10 strings (including the work's editor Christopher Suckling on bass viol). The strings played with what was then a new French bow-hold which had just been taken on board in London, and for many of the instrumental items the strings were without continuo. It is thought that the main body of strings were in the music room above the stage of the Playhouse, whilst the continuo was on or beside the stage so it could accompany soloist, thus leading to a clear split.