To encourage more female artists to see opera and orchestral music as a viable career path: new conductor traineeship at Opera North aimed at female conductors

Dalia Stasevska makes her UK debut with the Orchestra of Opera North (Photo Justin Slee)

Opera North has announced that it is looking for applications for a conductor traineeship aimed specifically at female conductors. The intensive ten-week course, which takes place during Opera North's Winter season, between November 2021 and February 2022, aims to improve career development opportunities for women within conducting. 

During the ten weeks (which will require residency in Leeds) there will be two dedicated conducting workshops under the guidance of Opera North’s music director Garry Walker, one-on-one discussions and lessons with visiting conductors including principal guest conductor Antony Hermus, Sian Edwards, head of conducting at the Royal Academy of Music and a regular on the Opera North podium, and the company’s music staff.

The trainee will be able to observe Opera North’s forthcoming productions of Rigoletto, Alcina and Carmen in Leeds, from first musical sessions through to stage and final rehearsals, there will be a chance to get hands-on with the work of Opera North’s education and outreach departments as assistant conductor for Youth Opera Project performances of Hans Krása’s Brundibár.

Garry Walker comments:

"We think that the Female Conductor Traineeship is unique in terms of the breadth of experience that a successful applicant stands to gain, from Opera North’s mainstage opera and orchestral programmes to our work in education and the community.

"By offering invaluable one-on-one mentorship from seasoned music staff and guest artists, as well as the support of the wider Opera North family, we hope to encourage more female artists to see opera and orchestral music as a viable career path, and to ensure that our Company and the industry at large is drawing on the widest range of professional conducting talent, now and in the future.

"We are looking for someone with outstanding musical and communication skills, who may or may not yet have had much conducting experience, but wishes to explore a pathway into conducting by means of this immersive programme.”

Closing date is Monday 9 August, full details from the Opera North website.

Unearthing the future - Tête à Tête: The Opera Festival for 2021

Last Summer, Tête à Tête: The Opera Festival was one of the few organisations who managed to put together a season of live, indoor events with audiences with their 2020 festival at The Cockpit. For 2021, the festival is returning to The Cockpit as well as having events at the Cubitt Sessions in Kings Cross, with an excursion to the Round Chapel in Hackney, with many of the shows having an online version as well.

The live events at this year's Tête à Tête: The Opera Festival run from 27 July to 17 August, and the festival takes as its theme Unearthing the future. Some works such as Darren Berry's comic operetta The Crocodile King of Old Kang Pow, and Edwin Roxburgh's Her War, represent complete visions for works partially revealed last year, whilst Alastair White's RUNE represents the culmination in a fashion-opera trilogy which has been unfolding over the last few years with ROBE [see my review] and WEAR. Following on from last year's We Sing/I Sang [see my review], Leo Doulton returns with another improvised work, Come Bargain With Uncanny Things.

Inspirations behind this year's operas include the love poems of Roman poet Sextus Propertius, one of the great classical novels of Chinese literature, and a novel by Italo Calvino. Marco Galvani's Helena [see my review of Invisible Cities, Sansara's recent disc of Galvani's choral music] takes Karel Čapek's 1920 science-fiction play RUR as its starting point. Our attitudes to our bodies and our sexualities form a number of key themes, so strong LGBTQ+ representation features in Warboy & Stewart's Shut Down The Club, an operatic techno rave looking at clubbing after covid, whilst Alice d'Lumiere's Until the Trans Lady Sings, is a piece about an aspiring singer wrestling with gender and vocal identities, and Her Body from Seawolf (Susannah Self) is a feminist, body positive piece exploring our relationship to mind, body and spirit.

Full details from the festival website.

Summer in the Square: Southbank Sinfonia brings a bit of Italian sunshine to its new home at St John's Smith Square

Southbank Sinfonia is having a three-day festival to celebrate its new home at St John's Smith Square; Summer in the Square will feature four concerts from 23 -25 July 2021. Normally in July, the orchestra travels to Italy for a week-long festival in the glorious Italian sunshine, but this year they hope to bring the Italian sunshine to London.

The weekend opens with an all-Beethoven programme, the Violin Concerto with violinist Ruth Rogers and Symphony No. 5 conducted by the orchestra's founder, Simon Over. On Saturday afternoon there is a string concert featuring music by Tchaikovsky, Piazzolla and Haydn, with David Corkhill conducting a programme of Mendelssohn, Mozart, and Nielsen in the evening, including a chance to hear Nielsen's Clarinet Concerto. On Sunday, Simon Over conducts Mendelssohn's Italian Symphony alongside Ravel's Piano Concerto in G with pianist Tom Poster as the soloist.

In August, the orchestra will be moving to Opera Holland Park where it joins forces with British Youth Opera for a production of Rossini's L’occasione fa il ladro conducted by Peter Robinson.

Full details from Southbank Sinfonia's website.

Sistema Europe Youth Orchestra’s SummerFest 2021

After a year's enforced break, Sistema Europe Youth Orchestra’s annual music gathering, SummerFest, is returning with an online edition taking place 21-24 and 28-30 July 2021. The event will feature live-streamed performances from across Europe and lectures and workshops focused on innovative approaches in music education, the festival offers an eclectic programme including topics such as diversity in music, techniques for ensemble teaching, sustainable development goals, and child safety, all open to Sistema projects as well as the wider public from all over the world.

There will be headline events with Dame Evelyn Glennie and with YouTube-star Roberts Balanas, along with plenty of other participatory events as well as a chance to catch up on the work of European Sistema groups.

Founded in 2021, Sistema Europe is a network for all European Sistema and Sistema-inspired
organisations and individuals aspiring to carry out activities true to the principles of Venezuela’s El
Sistema.

All sessions are free of charge, full information from the Sistema Europe website.

Seeking new grounds at Waterperry Opera Festival with their production Hansel and Gretel

Waterperry Opera Festival runs from 12 to 21 August 2021 at Waterperry Gardens in Oxfordshire. In this Guest Posting from the team at the festival, they explain how this year the festival team is working to welcome families and members of the deaf and hard of hearing community. 

Peter Rabbit's Musical Adventures at the 2019 Waterperry Opera Festival (Photo Robert Workman)

As an organisation, Waterperry Opera Festival is constantly seeking to explore new, innovative ways to engage with, produce, and perform opera, with the goal of making it relevant and accessible to diverse and varied audiences. Showcasing this is their family-friendly production of Humperdinck’s Hansel and Gretel.

Their aim with this production is to produce high-quality opera in a bilingual format for Deaf, Hard of Hearing and Hearing audiences of all ages and backgrounds; by combining the visual storytelling of  British Sign Language (BSL) with the musical and dramatic world of Humperdinck's classic opera.

Sunshine, sand and Harmoniemusik: the Hanover Band's bandstand tour

Period instrument ensemble, the Hanover Band, has come up with an innovative solution to performing to large audience. From 11 July 2021, the ensemble is touring a programme of Harmoniemusik, 18th century Viennese wind music, to bandstands around the South coast.

Starting at Margate yesterday (11 July), the ensemble is performing Beethoven’s Wind Octet Opus13 and Mozart's Serenade No 10 K361, 'Gran Partita' at bandstands in Brighton, East Sussex, and Crawley, West Sussex, in July, and in Hastings, East Sussex, in August.

This is music that was often designed to be performed out of doors and so will form an ideal backdrop to the sunshine (we hope!) and sand of the English seaside.

Full details from the Hanover Band's website.

Dark Matter and Bach: The Undiscovered Universe from the OAE and Dr Harry Cliff

The Undiscovered Universe - Bach, Byrd, Telemann and 'Dark Matter'; Bethany Horak-Hallett, Guy Cutting, William Gaunt, Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment, Dr Harry Cliff, Steven Devine; Kings Place
Reviewed by Robert Hugill on 11 July 2021 Star rating: 4.0 (★★★★)
Particle physics, Dark Matter and the Large Hadron Collider alongside wonderfully engaging Bach and more

The Undiscovered Universe, the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment's latest edition of Bach, The Universe and Everything was due to premiere at Kings Place in December 2020, first postponed to May 2021, the concert finally happened on Sunday 11 July 2021. Steven Devine directed the OAE in Bach's cantata Ich steh mit einem Fuss im Grabe, BWV 156 with soloist Bethany Horak-Hallett, Guy Cutting and William Gaunt plus music by Byrd and Telemann and a talk by Dr Harry Cliff, a particle physicist from the University of Cambridge

We began with Steven Devine's delightful account of Bach's chorale prelude, Machs mit mir, Gott nach deiner Gut, followed by an unconducted performance of William Byrd's anthem Praise the Lord, all ye Gentiles, a setting of text from Psalm 117 first published in his 1611 Psalms, Songs and Sonnets, which opened things up with vivid brightness, yet there was delicacy too and a sense of the eight voices forming a real vocal ensemble with a sense of individual lines and voices.

Next, Dominika Feher (one of the OAE's violinists) read an intriguing extract from David Whyte's 2014 book Consolations: The Solace, Nourishment and Underlying Meaning of Everyday Words, a lovely poetic discussion about the meaning(s) of the word 'shadow'.

Bach's cantata Ich steh mit einem Fuss im Grabe was his fourth and last cantata for the Third Sunday after Epiphany, written in Leipzig in 1729.

Manchester Collective premiere the new string quartet from Edmund Finnis, one of the curators of this year's Spitalfields Music Festival

Edmund Finnis

Edmund Finnis, Mica Levi, Philip Glass, Stravinsky; Manchester Collective; Spitalfields Music Festival at Christ Church, Spitalfields
Reviewed by Robert Hugill on 10 July 2021
Last-minute changes to the line-up fail to disrupt a terrific evening of fine music making including the premiere of a new quartet by one of the curators of this year's festival

The Manchester Collective's concert at Christ Church, Spitalfields on Saturday 10 July 2021 at part of the Spitalfieds Music Festival centred on the premiere of Edmund Finnis' String quartet no. 2. Finnis is a composer with whom the ensemble has a strong association (he is one of this year's curators at the festival and a close artistic collaborator of the ensemble, which commisioned The Centre is Everywhere from him), yet the concert had a number of intriguing elements, some planned and some unplanned. The ensemble's appearance at the church represented a change from its usual exploration of non-traditional spaces, so that many of their London appearances have been at the CLF Art Cafe in Peckham. They were playing a programme curated by composer Edmund Finnis, whereas they usually play programmes they have created/curated themselves. So much for the planned elements.

A week before the concert, many of the leading performers in the Manchester Collective had to self-isolate (they are all OK, but have just been exposed to someone with COVID), hence the line-up of players in the quartet had to change radically. We lost the Ligeti Cello Sonata from the programme, but apart from that, this challenging programme went ahead and frankly, if we hadn't been told the details I am not sure we would have noticed, such was the strength of the performance.

The focus of the Manchester Collective's concert at the Spitalfields Music Festival was the premiere of Edmund Finnis' String Quartet No. 2, and around this Finnis had selected a group of works that he loves, by composers who all have distinctive musical personalities. So there was Philip Glass' String Quartet No. 2 (Company), Stravinsky's Three Pieces for String Quartet, Mica Levi's You Belong to Me, Finnis' Sister (the first piece of his performed by the Manchester Collective) and ending with the premiere of his String Quartet No. 2.

Dr Bluebeard will see you now: Gothic Opera remakes Bartok's opera and sets it in an Edwardian sanatorium

Bartok: Bluebeard's Castle - Gothic Opera (photo Nick Rutter)

Bartok Bluebeard's Castle; Simon Wilding, Alexandra Long, Carmine de Amicis, dir: Julia Mintzer, cond: Thomas Payne; Gothic Opera at Porchester Hall
Reviewed by Robert Hugill on 9 July 2021 Star rating: 3.0 (★★★)
A radical reinterpretation of Bartok's opera with a striking contemporary dance element and imaginative animations

Bartok: Bluebeard's Castle
Carmine de Amicis, Simon Wilding
Gothic Opera (photo Nick Rutter)

In many ways, Bartok's opera A kékszakállú herceg vára (Duke Bluebeard's Castle) is impossible to stage. Bartok put so much of the action (whether literal or metaphorical) in the wonderful music that a semi-staged, concert performance often works best, allowing the direction to concentrate on the relationship between the Duke and his new wife, Judith. So I was very intrigued when, as a follow-up to their radical staging of Marschner's Der Vampyr, Gothic Opera turned its attention to Bartok's opera.

Bartok's Bluebeard's Castle was staged by Gothic Opera at Porchester Hall, directed by Julia Mintzer, conducted by Thomas Payne using an orchestration by Leon Haxby, with Simon Wilding as Bluebeard, Alexandra Long as Judith, with Carmine de Amicis, Alice Usher, Katherine MacRae, and Charlotte Osborn. Designs were by Charles Ogilvie, lighting and sound by Will Alder with animations created by students at Ravensbourne University.

We caught the second of three performnces on 9 July 2021. When we were arrived we were ushered into the faded Edwardian grandeur of the Porchester Hall, swathed in gloom and with mist swirling. The orchestra of organ (Thomas Ang) and string quartet (the Halcyon Quartet - Millie Ashton, Leidy Sinclair, Nathalie Green-Buckley, HeeYeon Cho) was placed on the stage and we were in the body of the hall with a stage-like structure to one side, surrounded by platforms. 

The opera was performed in Hungarian, with the surtitles projected on a screen to one side, and the action started with librettist Béla Balázs' spoken prologue given by unseen speakers. The main action took place in and around the stage structure and when each of the doors opened an animation was displayed on the main screen behind. These were created with students from Ravensbourne University, The Torture Chamber - Virginia Anyalee, The Armoury - Klaudia Graczak, The Treasury - Dev Bye-A-Jee, The Garden - Vincent Sautter and Tony Tyler, The Kingdoms -Oliver O'Keefe.

So far, so intriguing.

But director Julia Mintzer had chosen not to stage Bartok and Balázs' opera, instead giving us a new music-theatre piece which took Bartok's music as its sound-track.

Rhythm pitch and tension: composer Graham Fitkin chats about his 1990 album of multi-piano music 'Flak' which has just been digitally remastered

Composer Graham Fitkin pictured on the original album cover his 1990 album, Flak

Graham Fitkin's album Flak was originally released in 1990, his debut disc as composer and performer alongside pianists Eleanor Alberga, Errollyn Wallen and Shelagh Sutherland in what have become some of his classic works for multiple pianos. Popular at the time, the album has continued to be played and now Graham has released a new digitally re-mastered version created by Real World Studios' Tim Oliver. I recently caught up with Graham, from his studio in Cornwall, to talk about Flak, how the music and the album came about and how, 30 years on, he feels about the music.

The impetus for the new, digital release, was partly that the album has never been available online, if you wanted to listen to it you had to buy a CD (or a cassette), and this rather bothered Graham who is still fond of the album. The second reason for the project was to improve the sound quality of the original, to remove some aspects of the sound which he doesn't like (and has never liked). The original recording was made at Southfield Park with two grand pianos on a stage where the backdrop was breeze-block with no curtains. The result was a very live sound, with a distinct ping to the sound of the pianos coming off the concrete blocks. This was improved for the completed recording, but to Graham's ears there was still too much ping to the sound, and now he is pleased that Tim Oliver has been able to do something about it.

Graham Fitkin today

The disc is all music for piano, four pieces for four pianists at two pianos (Sciosophy, Flak, Untitled 11, There Is A Great Weight On My Head Tonight) and six pieces for solo piano (The Cone Gatherers, Piano Piece 90, From Yellow To Yellow, Piano Piece Early 89, Piano Piece Mid 89, Piano Piece Late 89), a reflection of Graham's fascination with the piano at the time. He loves the piano, he plays it and he likes the fact that you can get all the polyphony you want from one mono-timbral instrument; putting two or three pianos together seemed a good idea. The first time he came across multiple pianos was in Steve Reich's 1967 piece Piano Phase, a work that Graham still plays. And after exploring music for multiple pianos, Graham then looked at other instruments such as multiple saxophones and two harpsichords.

2020 Guildhall Wigmore Recital Prize winner finally able to take up her prize

Élisabeth Pion

Each year the Guildhall Wigmore Recital Prize awards a talented musician from the Guildhall School of Music and Drama with a recital at Wigmore Hall. In 2020 it was the turn of Canadian pianist Élisabeth Pion. Inevitably, her 2020 recital was postponed and is now finally taking place on Monday 19 July 2021, when Pion will be performing a programme which mixes sonatas by Mozart and Beethoven, with Ravel, Messiaen and Lili Boulanger.

Having previously studied in Canada, Élisabeth is currently finishing the Artist Diploma - Performance degree with Ronan O’Hora at the Guildhall School, where she is a full scholarship holder since 2018. Amongst her other notable awards, she received the Silver Medal of the Musician’s Company of London.

Full details from the Wigmore Hall website.

Rebecca Saunders to be composer-in-residence with Dresden Philharmonie for 2021/22

Rebecca Saunders (Photo Astrid Ackermann)

The British-born Berlin-based composer Rebecca Saunders has been announced as the Dresden Philharmonie's composer-in-residence for the 2021/22 season which also includes premieres from Salvatore Sciarrino, Brett Dean and Christfried Schmidt, alongside performances of RVW, Elgar, and Ethel Smyth.

Saunders, who was awarded the Ernst von Siemens Music Prize in 2019, will see performances of two of her larger works as part of the orchestra's season at Dresden's Kulturpalast, To an Utterance for piano and orchestra and Still for violin and orchestra. The soloist in To an Utterance will be pianist Nicolas Hodges who gives the work's delayed premiere at the Lucerne Festival this year [see my interview with Nicolas], whilst the title Still comes from the eponymous short story by Samuel Beckett.

The orchestra's recently announced 2021/22 season will also include the premiere of Piogge diverse (Types of Rain), written in 2020 by Salvatore Sciarrino for the orchestra's 150th anniversay. And another delayed work will be Brett Dean’s Gneixendorfer Music - A Winter Journey for which the orchestra will give the work's German premiere, and the season also includes a programme of Dean's chamber music.

A programme commemorating the unification of Germany will include the premiere of  Symphony No.2 by the East German Christfried Schmidt, 50 years after the work was written. Schmidt dedicated the work to Martin Luther King Jr. The programme will also include the final work by Bernd Alois Zimmermann (1918-1970), Ecclesiastic Action, which is based on passages of the Old Testament and The Grand Inquisitor episode of Dostoevsky’s The Brothers Karamazov.

The season also includes the Symphony No. 4 by Franz Schmidt (1874-1939) as well as music by Karl Amadeus Hartmann (1905-1963) including his Symphony No. 6. Intriguingly a programme focusing on Women Composers conducted by Marie Jacquot will include Ethel Smyth's Mass in D alongside music by Lili Boulanger. Whilst Andrew Manze conducts a music from around the time of World War I, pairing RVW's Pastoral Symphony and Elgar's Cello Concerto with music by Rudi Stephan (1887-1915) who died in the war.

Full details from the Dresden Philharmonie's website.

An engaging journey: La Folia from Ensemble La Notte

La Folia - Rebel, Handel, Matteis, L'Estrange, Telemann, Purcell, Rameau, Vivaldi; Ensemble La Notte
Reviewed by Robert Hugill on 6 July 2021 Star rating: 3.5 (★★★½)
The young period instrument ensemble takes us on a journey through chaos and the bizarre in Baroque music

For such a formal, structured world there is a remarkable amount of chaos and madness in the Baroque and early Classical eras from Purcell's mad songs to Haydn's evocation of chaos in The Creation. Ensemble La Notte's new disc, La Folia, promises to explore chaos, madness and the bizarre in Baroque music with pieces by Rebel, Handel, Matteis, L'Estrange, Telemann, Purcell, Rameau and Vivaldi.

The disc has been released to coincide with the anniversary of Telemann's death, but in fact the programme is very much a patchwork of composers, styles and genres. We begin in dramatic form with 'Le Chaos' from Rebel's ballet-suite Les Elemens, a dramatic and daring evocation of chaos in music. Though after the intial chords which include all eight notes of the scale, structure returns albeit in dramatic form. The music is very effectively reduced down to the forces of La Notte, recorders (Kate Allsop), violin (Maxim del Mar), bassoon (Mark Wilson), cello (Mary Walton), theorbo (Jonatan Bougt) and harpsichord (Callum Anderson). More Rebel comes next, from Les Caracteres de la Danse, which forms an elegant musical contrast to 'Le Chaos'.

Wonderfully satisfying: a very stylish production of Rossini's La Cenerentola at The Grange Festival

Rossini: La Cenerentola - Christian Senn, Heather Lowe, Carolina Lippo, Maria Ostroukhova - The Grange Festival (Photo Simon Anand

Rossini La Cenerentola; Heather Lowe, Nico Darmanin, Christian Senn, Simone Alberghini, Carolina Lippo, Maria Ostroukhova, Roberto Lorenzi, dir: Stephen Barlow, cond: David Parry; The Grange Festival
Reviewed by Robert Hugill on 7 July 2021 Star rating: 4.5 (★★★★½)
An impressively international cast with 1950s period designs forming a stylish backdrop to a production full of character

We caught the final performance, on 7 July 2021, of Stephen Barlow's production of Rossini's La Cenerentola at The Grange Festival, conducted by David Parry with Heather Lowe as Angelina, Nico Darmanin as Don Ramiro, Christian Senn as Dandini, Simone Alberghini as Don Magnifico, Carolina Lippo as Clorinda, Maria Ostroukhova as Tisbe and Roberto Lorenzi as Alidoro. Designs were by Andrew D Edwards and lighting by Paul Pyant. As with the festival's previous opera productions, the accompaniment was based on a recording made by the Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra, with David Parry playing the continuo accompaniment live.

Barlow and Edwards set the production in the 1950s with film very much as a reference. The opening scene was set in a once glamorous trailer park, with Clorinda and Tisbe (Carolina Lippo and Maria Ostroukhov) lounging in stylish underwear reading period film magazines, one of which featured Grace Kelly who was clearly the style icon for Heather Lowe's Angelina in her glamorous appearance atop a long staircase for the closing scene of Act II. And here the wallcovering echoed a classic Christian Dior design, as did the outlines of the dresses. Edwards' clever multi-level enabled much to be made of the space as well as making scene changes simple (all was on the revolve). The small but hard-working chorus were largely confined to the upper levels of the set, an ingenious touch, except for moments such as the big Act Two solo from Don Ramiro (Nico Darmanin) which was done as a Hollywood song and dance number.

Rossini: La Cenerentola - Nico Darmanin & chorus - The Grange Festival (Photo Simon Anand)

But all this style simply formed a backdrop for a production which allowed character to be built. Barlow set things up neatly during the overture when a scene in front of the curtain showed the jokey relationship between Ramiro (Nico Darmanin), Dandini (Christian Senn) and Alidoro (Roberto Lorenzi) as Alidoro co-ordinated a bet between Ramiro and Dandini about swapping clothes and who could dress in the other's clothes the fastest. With both Darmanin and Senn stripping down to vest and pants, I rather began to detect an underwear theme with this year festival [see my review of A Midsummer Night's Dream].

More than just a film composer: Nino Rota's viola sonatas at Sands Films Music Room

Like many 20th-century film composers, Nino Rota has suffered the curse of having his non-film music (of which there is a significant quantity) disappear behind his film scores. Yes, he wrote music for The Godfather, La Strada and 148 other film scores, but there are also 11 operas, three symphonies, concertos and much much more. And two viola sonatas, one dating from the 1930s and the other from 1945, and there is a chance to hear these later this month, when Lorena Canto (viola) and Yvain Calvo (piano) perform them at Sands Films Music Room on 15 July 2021. 

Rota was a child prodigy and composed his first opera when he was eleven. Encouraged by Arturo Toscanini he studied at the Curtis Institute in Philadelphia in the 1930s before returning to Milan where he graduated from the University in 1937. This is the period of the first viola sonata. Then during the 1940s, the period of the second sonata, he wrote scores for more than 32 films but it wasn't until 1952 that his collaboration with Federico Fellini began, with Lo sceicco bianco (The White Sheik).

Rota also had a personal connection to Sands Film Studios and would visit the studios when he was in London as well as writing the music for Richard Goodwin’s (director of Sands Films at the time) Romeo and Juliet.

Thus there will be a chance to renew this connection when Lorena Canto and Yvain Calvo perform Nino Rota's Viola Sonatas at Sands Films Music Room on 15 July 2021. Tickets are available either in-person or online, further details from EventBrite. Lorena Canto also has a fundraising page to help with the costs of the project.

A gloriously offline moment: I chat to artistic director Christopher Glynn about the 40th anniversary Ryedale Festival

How do you plan a festival in a time when the rules about what might and might not be possible are constantly changing and where simply getting artists to travel can be a challenge, never mind finding venues where you can have a socially distanced audience. When I asked Christopher Glynn, artistic director of the Ryedale Festival, this question he laughed and said hard work and a determination to do it. This year's Ryedale Festival is running from 17 July to 31 July 2021 with a series of events with live audiences. I chatted to Christopher recently by Zoom to find out more about how they made it happen.

Christopher Glynn (photo Joanna Bergin)

This year is the festival's 40th anniversary so they were determined to make something happen and the decision was taken early on to have a late-announced, one-off festival with 40 events (for 40 years) as opposed to their regular happening with around 80 events. This year the concerts are shorter and they are all repeated, as most of the venues are relatively small. Yet this is something that Christopher has found it fascinating to explore, another way of looking at the festival and throughout our chat I was struck by his creative attitude, taking the restrictions as a way of re-evaluating. The venues are all being operated at 50% capacity so every concert is being given twice.

So the big difference this year to the regular festival is that there are fewer concerts, they are shorter and there are no intervals. This latter is something that Christopher comments that they will be interested to see what happens. Whilst some people will miss the interval, he has already had positive comments from people who find having a shorter concert a benefit, meaning that you can easily fit dinner in beforehand or afterwards. 

Normally, the festival takes pride in creating events that could not be heard anywhere else, which Christopher regards as an important feature of the festival. But this is not happening this year, and they will be saving up their ideas for next year.

Independent voices: James Gilchrist & Nathan WIlliamson's One Hundred Years of British Song explores William Alwyn, Alan Bush, Alan Rawsthorne, Elizabeth Maconchy, Doreen Carwithen

One Hundred Years of British Song, volume two - William Alwyn, Alan Bush, Alan Rawsthorne, Elizabeth Maconchy, Doreen Carwithen; James Gilchrist, Nathan Williamson; SOMM
Reviewed by Robert Hugill on 5 July 2021 Star rating: 4.0 (★★★★)
A terrific exploration of 20th-century English song that has somehow been forgotten, many works by composers better known for their symphonic or instrumental repertoire

Tenor James Gilchrist and pianist Nathan Williamson's One Hundred Years of British Song project on SOMM Records is ploughing a fascinatingly independent path. Intended to spotlight composers who made a considerable contribution to the song repertoire but whose success in other genres often led to their songs being overlooked, volume one included songs by Gustav Holst, Rebecca Clarke, Ivor Gurney and Frank Bridge. For One Hundred Years of British Song, volume two, on SOMM, James Gilchrist and Nathan Williamson perform song cycles by William Alwyn, Alan Bush, Alan Rawsthorne, Elizabeth Maconchy and Doreen Carwithen.

The five composers on this disc all initially concentrated mainly on symphonic and chamber instrumental music rather than song and this seems to have given them an independence from the strong tradition of English song from the first part of the 20th century. Here we have five confident and independent voices.

We Can Make It

A year ago, nobody knew that the global effects of COVID would still be so prevalent now, with a huge and lasting effect to global economies and mental health on a scale yet unforeseen. One year on from the release of the anthem for kindness Can You Hear Me - a collaboration between Rupert Gough & The Choir of Royal Holloway composed by Thomas Hewitt Jones with words by Matt Harvey - the composer, lyricist and choir have once again collaborated to release We Can Make It, an anthem which is written in solidarity with all children and young people who are struggling at this time.

We can make it was recorded in the chapel of Royal Holloway, and the choir is joined by treble soloist Isaac Stott, who is in his final year as a chorister in Tewkesbury Abbey Schola Cantorum.   

Read my recent interview with Rupert Gough, chatting about the Choir of Royal Holloway's recent disc of music by Pierre Villette.

Support Save the Children by downloading We Can Make It

Celebrating 20 years of the Royal Opera House's Jette Parker Young Artists Programme

The Royal Opera's Jette Parker Young Artists Programme is celebrating its 20th anniversary, having trained and supported 137 young singers, directors, conductors and pianists. For 2021/22, soprano April Koyejo-Audiger, tenors Thando Mjandana, Alan Pingarrón and baritone Chuma Sijeqa will join the Young Artists and along with soprano Alexandra Lowe, mezzo-sopranos Kseniia Nikolaieva and Stephanie Wake-Edwards, tenors Andrés Presno and Egor Zhuravskii, bass Blaise Malaba, stage director Isabelle Kettle, opera répétiteur Michael Sikich, opera conductor and répétiteur Michael Papadopoulos and ballet conductor Edo Frenkel, will form the 20th anniversary Young Artists company.

In October 2022, the Meet the Young Artists week returns with a chance to hear current and former young artists in concert as well as a celebratory alumni recital curated by the programme's founder and artistic director David Garland. Whilst throughout the season there will be a series of lunchtime recitals from current Young Artists.  

In May 2022, there will be a performance of Stravinsky's opera Mavra alongside Schoenberg's Pierrot Lunaire. On 23 July 2022 there will be a special main-stage performance celebrating the achievements of the Young Artists. This will be conducted by Antonio Pappano who celebrates his 20th anniversary as the company's music director.

Throughout the season the Young Artists appear in roles for the company, and a new initiative sees recent conservatoire graduates receiving mentoring from former Young Artists, whilst there will be observership opportunities for directors and conductors and lighting designers.

Full details from the Royal Opera House's website.

 

The Secret Garden returns

The Secret Garden

Faced last Summer with the cancellation of all indoor concerts, cellist Chris Grist (founder and artistic director of London Concertante) opened up his garden and arranged a series of outdoor concerts. The experimental series of five concerts became nine sold-out events, performed by members of London Concertante as well as guests including a jazz trio and a comedy troupe, along with a bar and a fine food menu.

The Secret Garden is returning again this Summer with 15 events from 30 July to 12 September 2021, with events which mix classical concerts with theatre, comedy and jazz. Performers include London Concertante in programmes from Baroque to Mozart and Jean Francaix with clarinettist Michael Collins, to Schubert's String Quintet and Strauss' Metamorphosen, as well as visitors such as the Brodsky Quartet in Bach, Britten and Beethoven, the Kings Singers, food critic and jazz pianist Jay Rayner, comedians Sara Pascoe and Angela Barnes, jazz musicians Jason Rebello and Tim Garland, the Sam Leak Trio, and the Pip Utton Theatre Company.

And there will be food from an Afghan fusion barbecue!

Full details from The Secret Garden website.

Three composers, 29 songs that deserve to be better known: London Song Festival's exploration of music by Geoffrey Bush, Malcolm Arnold, Peter Wishart

Geoffrey Bush, Malcolm Arnold, Peter Wishart

Three Unsung Genuises - Geoffrey Bush, Malcolm Arnold, Peter Wishart; Anna Cooper, James Atkinson, Nigel Foster; London Song Festival at Hinde Street Methodist Church
Reviewed by Robert Hugill on 6 July 2021 Star rating: 4.0 (★★★★)
A wonderful exploration of songs by three recent centenarians, none of whom gets the recognition these imaginative songs deserve

London Song Festival's short Summer festival of song came to a striking conclusion on Monday 5 July 2021 with a programme entitled Three Unsung Geniuses. At Hinde Street Methodist Church, Anna Cooper (mezzo-soprano), James Atkinson (baritone) and the festival's artistic director, Nigel Foster (piano) performed songs by Geoffrey Bush (1920-1998), Peter Wishart (1921-1984) and Malcolm Arnold (1921-2006).

Anna Cooper is the winner of the 2021 Maureen Lehane Awards whilst James Atkinson's performances have included Oxford Lieder Festival [see my review] and British Youth Opera [see our review]

The music of Geoffrey Bush and Peter Wishart is certainly not a well-known as it deserves to be, whilst though Malcolm Arnold's music is known, his songs remain relatively unexplored. Geoffrey Bush was encouraged and mentored by John Ireland; he studied at Oxford and then lectured at London University for over 40 years as well as other teaching posts including Visiting Professor of Music at King's College London. He edited Musica Britannica volumes on Parry and Stanford. Bush wrote a large number of songs with a dozen or so sets and cycles, as well as six operas and two symphonies. Peter Wishart studied music at Birmingham University with Victor Hely-Hutchinson and privately with Nadia Boulanger. He too had a significant teaching career and he eventually became Professor of Music at Reading University. He wrote symphonies, five operas and more, and his song writing is very much linked to his marriage to mezzo-soprano Maureen Lehane in 1963 (his third marriage). The Jackdaws Educational Trust was founded by Lehane in Wishart's memory. Malcolm Arnold's career encompassed ballets, symphonies, concertos and of course film scores, and though his film music includes vocal pieces, vocal writing did not play a large role in his output yet his small body of songs is well worth exploring.

Norwich-based music writer, Tony Cooper, reports on the North Norfolk Music Festival

St Mary's Church, South Creake, venue for the North Norfolk Music Festival

Now in its 16th glorious year, the North Norfolk Music Festival - founded by world arts traveller Barry Cheeseman and the distinguished British viola player Simon Rowland-Jones - runs this year from Tuesday 10 August to Saturday 21 August 2021 in St Mary’s Church, South Creake, near Wells-next-the-Sea.

The festival always offers a platform to extremely-talented young musicians and in keeping with this fine tradition it opens with a series of piano and string quartet master-classes hosted by Melvyn Tan and Simon Rowland-Jones on Tuesday/Wednesday, 10/11 August, 3-6pm. They’ll be working with pianists Thomas Kelly and Anna Manastireanu as well as the Clova String Quartet.

Following their master-class programme one can hear them in concert the following day (Thursday 12th) with the Clova Quartet (formed at the Royal Academy of Music in 2019) playing Beethoven and Bartók (3pm) followed by Thomas Kelly playing Beethoven, Brahms, Chopin and Liszt (6pm) while on Friday 13th Anna Manastireanu (currently the Constant and Kit Lambert Junior Fellow at the Royal College of Music) will team up with the Clova Quartet for a late-morning concert (11.30) to include Wolf’s Italian Serenade.

Ensemble collaboration: Stephen Sondheim's A Little Night Music from Opera North and the Leeds Playhouse

Sondheim: A Little Night Music - Opera North, Leeds Playhouse (Photo Sharron Wallace)

Sondheim A Little Night Music; Dame Josephine Barstow, Quirijn de Lang, Stephanie Corley, dir: James Brining, cond: Opera North; Opera North and Leeds Playhouse
Reviewed by Robert Hugill on 3 July 2021 Star rating: 5.0 (★★★★★)
With a largely operatic cast yet staged at Leeds Playhouse this fine collaboration brings a different focus to Sondheim's intriguing evening of marital disharmony

Stephen Sondheim's A Little Night Music was planned by Opera North and the Leeds Playhouse for May 2020, a follow-up to their hugely successful production of Sondheim's Into the Woods in 2016. the production finally saw the light of day on 26 June 2021, in a suitably modified production.

We caught Sondheim's A Little Night Music at the Leeds Playhouse on 3 July 2021. The production was directed by James Brining (artistic director of Leeds Playhouse) and conducted by James Holmes (Opera North's former head of music) with the orchestra of Opera North using Jonathan Tunick's original orchestrations, and members of the chorus of Opera North cast in around a dozen roles. The cast included Dame Josephine Barstow as Madame Armfeldt, Stephanie Corley as Desiree Armfeldt, Lucy Sherman as Fredrika Armfeldt, Quirijn de Lang as Fredrik Egerman, Corinne Cowling as Anne Egerman, Laurence Kilsby as Henrik Egerman, Amy J Payne as Petra, Christopher Nairne as Count Carl-Magnus Malcolm, Helen Evora as Countess Charlotte Malcolm and Ivan Sharpe as Frid. The quintet was double cast and we saw Miranda Bevin, Amy Freston, Hazel Croft, James Davies and Stuart Laing. Designs were by Madeleine Boyd, lighting by Chris Davey, and choreography by Lucy Hind. Sebastian Frost was the sound designer and it is a tribute to his work that I hardly noticed it.

Sondheim: A Little Night Music - Josephine Barstow - Opera North, Leeds Playhouse (Photo Sharron Wallace)

The stage at the Leeds Playhouse is a surprisingly capacious place. It was fully opened up with James Holmes conducting the 25-strong orchestra at the rear. For the overture and the opening to Act Two, the orchestra was visible whilst for the remainder of the show they were hidden behind a black scrim.

The set was a simple open space populated with objects under dust-covers at first. The quintet, in mid-century work outfits, unpacked and set the scene and throughout were responsible for moving props and furniture around. The setting was mid-century with Desiree as a working woman which of course meant that Josephine Barstow's Madame Armfeldt wore a fabulous 1930s-style satin gown. The props included a dolls-house for Frederika to play with yet also hinting at the wider antics of the play. For Act Two, the fountain was placed centrally forming a significant part of the action.

Opera North has a long history of performing American musicals, though generally British opera companies do not explore this repertoire (the way many regional German companies do). Yes, Sondheim needs trained voices but we usually hear it with music-theatre trained ones. Bringing the members of the chorus of Opera North as the vocal quintet provided a fascinating change to the sound world. Vibrant and present, these five were part of the theatre itself, not observers but active participants with a suitably live-in quality to the performance.

Exploring big themes: composer Luke Styles chats about his posthumous collaboration with Benjamin Britten in the new opera Awakening Shadow

Luke Styles

On 4 July 2021 at Cheltenham Music Festival, conductor George Vass and Nova Music Opera will premiere composer Luke Styles' new opera Awakening Shadow, except that the opera isn't quite by Luke. The piece that Donna Lennard (soprano), Ralph Thomas Williams (countertenor), Christopher Bowen (tenor), Bradley Smith (tenor), and Felix Kemp (baritone) will perform is a posthumous collaboration between Luke and Benjamin Britten as Awakening Shadow incorporates all five of Britten's canticles. The work has had rather a long path to completion, as Luke explained when I chatted to him.

In 2013, Luke was composer-in-residence at Glyndebourne, and they asked him about creating an opera that combined his own original music with three of Britten's canticles. This work, Wakening Shadow, which combined three canticles with four scenes by Luke, was premiered at Glyndebourne in 2013, directed by Daisy Evans and conducted by Vladimir Jurowski, as part of the Britten centenary. Four years later, three different companies were interested in Wakening Shadow but wanted to use all five of Britten's canticles and have a smaller cast with fewer instrumentalists.

So Luke returned to the work and asked himself, 'can I use this?' The answer was no. It wasn't just the complexity of working in the two extra canticles and reducing the number of performers, in the intervening eight years Luke had developed as a composer so he decided to create the work anew. The result is Awakening Shadow which mixes Britten's five canticles with six short scenes by Luke (a total of 30 minutes of music). Luke candidly admits that the new work would not exist if he hadn't been asked to create Wakening Shadow by Glyndebourne back in 2013.

The Journey of the Pantoum

To celebrate the release of their disc of piano trios by Ravel and Saint-Saens on BIS, the Sitkovetsky Trio (Alexander Sitkvetsky, violin, Isang Enders, cello, Wu Qian, piano) has released a delightful animated film by Pavel Hudec based around Ravel's music and its inspirations.

The disc features Ravel's Piano Trio in A minor (his only work in the genre) and Saint-Saens' Piano Trio No. 2 in E minor, Op.92 which was written just 20 years before Ravel's work. Further information on the disc from their link tree.
 

 

Planted Symphony: Lucy Hale's final piece re-imagined as an audio trail

Lucy Hale: Planted Symphony installation - Drake Music (Photo Becky Morris Knight)

The composer Lucy Hale died in January 2021, she was 26 and she was disabled, yet managed to achieve a great deal. She had a place on the Royal Philharmonic Society's Composers programme [read the RPS tribute to her] as the Rosie Johnson RPS / Wigmore Hall Apprentice Composer 2020-21, and she was set to write a new work for performance at the Wigmore later this year. She was the inaugural Young Composer-in-Association with BSO Resound, Young Composer-in-Residence with Orchestras for All, and a dedicated Associate Musician with Drake Music. 

At the time of her death she was working on a new piece, Planted Symphony. This has been re-imagined as an audio trail, commissioned by Drake Music and touring to Milton Keynes International Festival, Inside Out in Dorset, and Waltham Forest this Summer, fully accessible via smartphones.

Hales’ initial composition sketches with Musical Director, Ben Sellers have been developed and arranged by Cassandra Gurling with poet Dave Young (The Shouting Mute) providing the words. With narration and audio description by Nickie Miles-Wildin and vocals by Miryam Solomon, the piece has been created by Disabled and non-disabled artists working together to honour Hales’ original ideas.

Planted Symphony tells the tale of Lagether, a herbalist who calls upon the natural world to help her heal, grow and be transformed. Using GPS, the music will automatically play into visitors' headphones as they move through the garden trails. Each movement will have an accompanying installation by Jon Van Beek including a giant welcome mat and wicker huts for solo journeys accompanied by a clarinet.

Planted Symphony will be at Milton Keynes International Festival (14-18 July 2021), Higham's Park, Waltham Forest (18 & 19 September 2021), Inside Out Festival, Dorset (24-26 September 2021) and online at http://www.plantedsymphony.com/ from October 2021.

Satisfyingly concentrated: Harry Christophers & The Sixteen's The Call of Rome at Kings Place

Harry Christophers, The Sixteen - Kings Place (Photo Monika S Jakubowska/Kings Place)

The Call of Rome - plainchant, Josquin, Anerio, Victoria, Allegri; The Sixteen, Harry Christophers; Kings Place
Reviewed by Robert Hugill on 1 July 2021 Star rating: 5.0 (★★★★★)
This year's Choral Pilgrimage reaches Kings Place with very satisfying programme of music by composers working in Rome

Harry Christophers and The Sixteen's 2021 Choral Pilgrimage features a programme entitled The Call of Rome with music by four composers who worked in Rome, particularly with the Papal Choir, Josquin Desprez (1450/55-1521), Tomas Luis de Victoria (1548-1611), Felice Anerio (1560-1614) and Gregorio Allegri (1582-1652), and I caught up with them at Kings Place on Thursday 1 July 2021. The choir is presenting two versions of the programme, for the Summer concerts in June and July there is one lasting an hour whilst during the Autumn they will be performing a longer version.

Both programmes explore music written for the Papal Choir or music in the Papal Choir's library. We heard three of the Tenebrae Responsories for Holy Saturday by Victoria who worked in Rome for 20 years but was not a member of the Papal Choir, though an early version of the music is held by the Papal Choir's Library. Josquin was a member of the choir for five years, and we heard his motets Gaude virgo mater Christ and Illibata Dei virgo. Felice Anerio trained as a choir boy at St Peter's Basilica under Palestrina, before going on to take Palestrina's place as composer to the Papal Choir after Palestrina died. We heard his motet Regina caeli laetare a8. 

Harry Christophers, The Sixteen - Kings Place (Photo Monika S Jakubowska/Kings Place)

The final composer was Gregorio Allegri, who worked with the Papal Choir for 23 years and whose Miserere was a great feature of the Holy Week celebrations. Except, as the extensive programme notes explained, what made the Miserere exceptional was not so much Allegri's music as the ornamentation, the abellimenti, that the singers brought to it. So we heard the version of the Miserere created by Harry Christophers and Ben Byram-Wigfield which, in each ornamented verse, moves from the earliest known manuscript right through to the 20th century version with the top C which is in fact a mistake in transcription! To bring things up to date for this tour, Christophers had commissioned Roxanna Panufnik, Gabriel Jackson and Bob Chilcott to write their own ornamentations. We heard the version by Bob Chilcott who, it turns out, was a boy treble at Kings College, Cambridge where he did indeed sing that top C.

More than a work in progress: first showing of Erchao Gu and Clare Best's opera Rotten Kid

Erchao Gu: Rotten Kid - artwork used during scenography
Guildhall School of Music and Drama

Erchao Gu and Clare Best Rotten Kid; Guildhall School of Music and Drama
Reviewed by Robert Hugill on 30 June 2021
A new opera based on a comic Chinese folk tale, presented as work-in-progress but demonstrating remarkably confident handling of the genre

Its creators describe the new opera Rotten Kid as a work in progress, but at the score-in-hand work-in-progress showing at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama's Milton Court Concert Hall on Wednesday 30 June 2021, Rotten Kid proved to be a wonderfully confident cross-cultural creation. With music by Erchao Gu and libretto by Clare Best, the piece was performed in a production directed by Nazli Tabatabai-Khatambakhsh with George Curnow (tenor) as Rotten Kid, Juliet Wallace (soprano) as Mother and Francisco Reis (bass) as the Suitors. Victoria Hofflin conducted with an ensemble of violin (Anastasia Egorova), clarinet and bass clarinet (Jonathan Willett), double bass (Matthew Downey) and percussion (Tom Hodgson). The scenographers were Manuela Pecorari and Paola Sanchez, the production manager and deputy stage manager was Paris Linxuan Wu.

Three characters in a room: Nature and the Imagination from the Pelléas Ensemble

Nature and the Imagination - Debussy, Rameau, Richard Rodney Bennett, Benjamin Graves, Gershwin; Pelléas Ensemble; LINN
Reviewed by Robert Hugill on 29 June 2021 Star rating: 4.5 (★★★★½)
The ensemble's debut album features an imaginative programme which moves effortlessly from Rameau to Debussy to Bax to contemporary

"… music … is limited not to a more or less exact reproduction of nature, but to the mysterious correspondences between Nature and the Imagination" - Debussy, Why I wrote "Pelléas", 1902.

It is Debussy's quote which gives this album its name. Nature and the Imagination on LINN Records is the debut album of the Pelléas Ensemble (Henry Roberts, flute, Luba Tunniclife, viola, Oliver Wass, harp) and features Debussy's Sonata for flute, viola and harp, and Syrinx, Rameau's Deuxième concert in G major, RCT 8 (from Pièces de clavecin en concerts), Sir Richard Rodney Bennett's Sonata after Syrinx, Sir Arnold Bax's Elegiac Trio, Benjamin Graves' Scherzo (which was written for the ensemble), and Gershwin arranged Stephen Roberts A Foggy Day - Love Walked In.

Encouraged by the publisher, Jacques Durand, from 1914 Debussy planned a set of six sonatas for various instruments, in homage to the French composers of the 18th century. But the First World War, along with the composers Couperin and Rameau, inspired Debussy as he was writing the sonatas. The Sonata for flute, viola and harp was written in 1915 and premiered at the New England Conservatory, Boston, USA in 1916.

There is little that is traditional about the piece, its three movements are fluid and at times fragmented, with what can seem a pointillistic use of colour.