During lockdown, pianist Katrine Gislinge would perform concerts at home for her husband, Danish composer Bent Sørensen, thus enabling him to enjoy live music at a time when most of society was cut off from concerts. Gislinge and Sørensen have had a fruitful collaboration, with the composer writing a whole series of works for her, from solo piano works such as the 12 Nocturnes (2014) and Fantasia Appasionata (2017), to a series of works for piano and small ensemble. Now the fruit of their lockdown sessions is about to manifest itself.
On Friday 12 November, Katrine Gislinge is the soloist in the premiere of Bent Sørensen's third piano concert, La sera estatica which is performed by the Copenhagen Philharmonic, conductor John Storgårds at the Royal Danish Academy of Music in Copenhagen.
The music of the concerto is inspired directly by the music that Gislinge played for Sørensen during lockdown, he says of it, "It’s moulded into my music. There are quotes and short glimpses of other composers and works, but it’s painted over and melted together with my music."
La sera estatica is Bent Sørensen’s third piano concerto. It follows La Notte (Piano concerto no.1, 1998) and La Mattina (Piano concerto no.2, premiered in 2009 and written for Leif Ove Andsnes). La Notte is about the night’s mysteries and dreams, and La Mattina is about the slow awakening towards the dancing day. La sera estatica is about the evening landscape, the falling darkness, but perhaps it’s a joyous darkness?
The concert also includes music by Clara Schumann, and Robert Schumann, full details from the Copenhagen Philharmonic's website.
It was inevitable, I suppose, that singing competition launched in 2016 by Staatstheater Nürnberg would be called Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg! Running every two years, 2022 will see the third edition of the competition and applications are now open with an international jury to be chaired by the distinguished tenor Siegfried Jerusalem.
The focus of the 2022 competition is on the lower vocal ranges, with a special prize to be awarded for the lower vocal ranges Alto and Bass, as well as the Young Artist Prize. Singers that already have some professional experience or are enrolled students at a conservatoire are invited to apply by 31 January 2022.
In previous competitions, more than 700 singers applied and over half were heard live in preliminary rounds. For 2022, procedures will be somewhat different, with preliminary rounds being done via submitted recordings. The final three rounds of the competition (preliminary round, semi-final, final) will take place in July 2022 in Nuremberg. Winners will perform at the Meistersinger Open-Air concert in Nuremberg’s Hauptmarkt square on the 28 July 2022.
Poet, writer and visual artist Redell Olsen was announced as the winner of the 2020-21 DARE Art Prize in June last year. Awarded by the University of Leeds and Opera North, in association with the National Science and Media Museum and The Tetley, Leeds, the prize is a £15,000 award for artists and scientists to collaborate on new approaches to the creative process. For the past year Olsen has worked with scientists at the University and singers and music staff at Opera North, producing artworks ranging from collage and poetry to film and music. She has collaborated with scientists from the BioDAR unit at the University of Leeds, and though the pandemic prevented planned fieldwork, virtual access to objects in the Science Museum Group Collection in Bradford helped broaden the scope of her work.
Now the fruits of this collaboration are available online. Redell Olsen‘s DARE Art Prize commission Weather, Whether Radar: Plume of the Volants, which can now be experienced online at weatherwhetherradar.art. Scientists as the BioDAR unit use discarded data from weather radar to monitor insect biodiversity. The ‘plumes’ of insects that sometimes register on radar were at first dismissed as ‘noise’, being of no meteorological use, but the BioDAR initiative is finding new ways to map and identify insect abundance and diversity as distinct from the weather. Olsen's work revolves around discarded material: knowledge or culture that can be reused in different and unforeseen ways.
Many of the pieces employ an imaginative interpretation of scientific language, or conversely, a contemporary reclamation of historic texts or cultural artefacts. Her reworking of an aria from Handel's Acis and Galatea proposes an ‘inter-species opera’, the artist reimagines the character of the cyclops Polyphemus as the polyphemus moth (Antheraea polyphemus). Informed by current climate and environmental crises, as well as Virginia Woolf's essay The Death of The Moth, Olsen’s new libretto is performed by the Chorus of Opera North and bass-baritone Matthew Stiff.
Other works responding to the Science Group Collection available to view online include a poem inspired by a photograph of Hollywood actor and inventor Hedy Lamarr, and a fictional account of an encounter at a museum in which an 18th century wax vanitas is displayed.
Redell Olsen comments, "Throughout this strange year of remote sensing and distanced collaboration I have been attempting to situate my work somewhere between artistic, poetic and scientific research, a context which seems ever more important given the latest indications of planetary climate crisis."
Dai Fujikura Glorious Clouds; Minabel
Reviewed by Robert Hugill on 10 November 2021 Star rating: 4.0 (★★★★) From microorganisms to the philosophy of Kierkegaard, from a concerto for a traditional Japanese instrument to a contrabass clarinet solo, the inspirations of Japanese-born, UK-based composer Dai Fujikura are fascinating and dazzling
Dai Fujikura's latest album, Glorious Clouds might almost have the subtitle, 'recycle, re-use, re-think', as many of the works on the disc seem to evolve from Fujikura's other pieces. The disc also represents the composer's continuing engagement with Japanese traditional instruments, instruments that he didn't really listen to or know much about when growing up in Japan.
Glorious Clouds from Minabel / New Focus Recordings features Fujikura's Shamisen Concerto from Hidejiro Honjoh (shamisen), Ensemble Nomad, Norio Sato, new orchestral pieces from Nagoya Philharmonic Orchestra, Martyn Brabbins, and Chubu Philharmonic Orchestra, Yuko Tanaka, as well as solo and chamber pieces for a wide variety of instruments from koto to contrabass clarinet.
We begin with Glorious Clouds from Nagoya Philharmonic Orchestra and Martyn Brabbins (conductor), a work which arose out of Fujikura's time as artist in residence with the orchestra. It is not, as might be suspected from the title, a piece about clouds and the weather, but is an exploration of the world of microorganisms and microbiomes. The piece begins in intoxicating and dynamic fashion, all swirling lines, atmospheres and textures, and moves between Debussy-esque colours and shapes, and more dynamic rhythms. Brabbins and the orchestra give a terrific performance.
Our relationship to the great works of the past is complex, and the current challenge is to explore further than musical works by dead white men, but companies are also re-examining ways of presenting existing classical works. One such is the Canadian company, Sound The Alarm: Music Theatre (STA). STA's most recent project uses a Bach cantata to not only explore issues of mental health, but to do so in the context of recent Canadian colonial history, to challenge historically white, Christian, heteronormative narratives as it relates to personal and cultural identity.
The first fruit of this is a collaboration with Early Music Vancouver and their artist in residence, Cree-Metis baritone Jonathan Adams, performing Bach's Cantata BWV 82 "Ich habe genug", directed by Alan Corbishley with Alex Weimann conducting Pacific Baroque Orchestra, and video from Michael Heid, and recorded live on 5 August 2021. The performance also features a concert performance of BWV 56, which will be the subject of a companion video project.
Full details from the STA website, and the full performance is available on YouTube.
In the early 1980s I went to a performance in the Queen's Hall, Edinburgh where Roger Norrington conducted the London Classical Players in Heinrich Schütz's Musikalische Exequien. It was one of the defining performances of my early concert-going, and helped consolidate my love of historically informed performance. In London in the 1980s, Norrington's weekend experiences at the Queen Elizabeth Hall would be ways of exploring repertoire deeper, from Purcell's King Arthur to Mozart's The Magic Flute to Berlioz and Wagner (when the soprano booked to sing the Liebestod famously did not turn up!). Throughout these events, Norrington's was an engaging yet informed presence, his enthusiasm encouraging us to explore. This sense of exploration continued as he worked with other ensembles.
Now, Sir Roger Norrington has announced his final public concert. On 18 November 2021, he conducts the Royal Northern Sinfonia at the Sage Gateshead in Dr Haydn's London Academy, a recreation of one of Haydn's London concerts from the 1790s, where symphonic movements are broken up with songs and chamber music.
Joining Norrington and the orchestra in this evocation of 18th century concert going will be soprano Susan Gritton and forte-pianist Steven Devine, who will perform two sets of Haydn's Canzonettas, written in London during his visit. The movements of the ‘Drumroll’ Symphony will be broken up not only by songs, but also Haydn’s String Quartet Op.76 No.5 featuring players from the orchestra. Bringing the academy to a close will be one of the composer’s best loved symphonies, No.101 ‘The Clock’.
The concert will be streamed live and available for 48 hours following the broadcast. Full details from the Royal Northern Sinfonia website.
NMC Recordings is launching The Big Lockdown Music Survey. From 8 November 2021, music creators will be able to submit music and take part in a survey on NMC's website in order to create a snapshot in recorded music of a once-in-a-generation experience shared by the nation. The result will tell the story of the first national lockdown introduced in England on 23 March 2020 from the perspective of music creators, through recorded music and sound, data and testimony; an account of exceptional personal circumstances, of emotions engendered by enforced isolation (or enforced community), but also of creativity, technical innovation, personal resilience, and originality.
Six regional partners will select tracks to create album-length selections of music; there will be six music ‘albums’ in total representing music created all over England, to be selected by Psappha (North), Birmingham Record Company (Midlands), Spitalfields Music (Greater London), Stapleford Granary (East), October House Records (South East), and Bristol Beacon (South West).
The final 'albums' will be shared via the NMC website from March 2022.
Walton: The Bear - Opera Holland Park at Stone House (Photo Laima Arlauskaite)
William Walton The Bear; Clare Presland, Richard Burkhard, John Savournin, dir: John Wilkie, City of London Sinfonia, cond: John Andrews; Opera Holland Park at Stone House
Reviewed by Robert Hugill on 9 November 2021 Walton's comic masterpiece in a delightfully imaginative filmed production from Opera Holland Park
Given the wit and sophistication of his early music, it is curious that William Walton did not find his way to opera earlier, but his first essay in the genre was the large-scale romantic drama Troilus and Cressida. Premiered at Covent Garden in 1954, the rather tepid reaction to the piece perhaps led Walton to not consider a further opera until 1965 when he was commissioned by the Aldeburgh Festival. The result, his one act opera The Bear, premiered in 1967.
By the 1960s, Walton's output was slowing somewhat; never a fast composer, there is a feeling that by this period he was inhibited by being increasingly out of joint with the musical establishment. The Bear was based on a comic play by Chekhov with Walton collaborating on the libretto with screenwriter Paul Dehn (Goldfinger, Murder on the Orient Express). Dehn also wrote the librettos for two of Lennox Berkley's operas, The Dinner Engagement (1954) and Castaway (1967). Interestingly, Chekhov's play had already been the source of another opera, Dominick Argento's 1957 piece, The Boor, though I am unclear whether Walton would have been aware of this.
The Bear seems to be the opera that Walton ought to have written earlier, the music full of witty references to established operatic classics, helping to send-up the over-the-top attitudes of the protagonists. Perhaps, in a way, it could be seen as something of a riposte to Britten's send-up of romantic opera in the Pyramus and Thisbe episode of A Midsummer Night's Dream (1960). Walton never did write a companion piece to The Bear and for all the work's fun it does rather suffer from 'single one-act opera' syndrome, lacking a natural companion. When was the last time you saw it in the theatre?
Now, Opera Holland Park has brought together the cast and director of its 2019 production of Wolf-Ferrari's comic one-act opera Il Segreto di Susanna [see my review] for a filmed production of Walton's The Bear. Filmed at Stone House, Deptford over two days in April 2021, the film features Clare Presland as Yelena Popova, Richard Burkhard as Grigory Smirnov and John Savournin as Luka, directed by John Wilkie, designed by takis and filmed by Simon Wall.
Meditation, Op. 70 (In Flanders Fields) by New Zealand-born Canadian composer John Robertson. The piece features a narration of the famous poem by Canadian Lieutenant-Colonel John McCrae (1872-1918) written during his time as a physician during the war (he was a surgeon during the Second Battle of Ypres). Meditation features on a recent disc of Robertson's music performed by Bratislava Symphony Orchestra conductor Anthony Armoré on Navona Records, and the disc also includes Robertson's Symphonies Nos. 4 and 5.
Robertson was born and educated in New Zealand, moving to Canada in 1967 where he studied at the Royal Conservatory in Toronto whilst also pursuing a career in insurance.
Frederick Waxman conducting Figure at their inaugural concert, St John Passion, Sept 2021 (Photo Oliver Bowring and Musicarta Media)
Figure – a newly formed HP ensemble for the post-Covid era
Frederick Waxman, artistic director and founder of Figure, introduces the ethos behind his new ensemble in advance of the group's concert on 19 November 2021 performing Mozart's Gran Partita with oboist Leo Duarte at the church of St Bartholomew the great.
The past eighteen months have been challenging for musicians. The COVID-19 pandemic has forced most of us in the performing arts into a long sabbatical (and a year and a half is a very long time if you’re in your mid-twenties) with only the occasional moment of respite. On top of that, Brexit has made most of the traditional models of touring impossible. Emerging from lockdown, it seemed right to form a new group – a fresh start – and being a young musician myself, I wanted to create an ensemble that comprised performers of my own generation. Historical performance is without a doubt increasingly at the fore of contemporary music making and the rising fourth generation of historical musicians has a new legitimacy and centrality. Figure will explore a wide range of repertoire through the historical lens, music from the Renaissance to the beginning of Modernity, while championing talented up-and-coming musicians.
It is almost impossible to perform traditional concert repertoire today without acknowledging the historical movement. It used to be thought that there was an unbroken tradition of performance, that because we have not stopped playing Beethoven since Beethoven played Beethoven we know what he wanted, but we recognise now that the tradition is fallible. Each generation add a layer of unwritten interpretation onto a score and radical changes have happened to instruments and technique in the intervening time. Critical performance is now integrated into the conservatoires, where musicians are encouraged to modify their playing style according to repertoire even if they don’t go so far as to change what they’re playing on. The legacy of the earlier generations of historical performers – Hindemith, Harnoncourt – is to introduce historicity to music, the idea that composers of different eras wrote music with different instruments and performing conventions in mind. This comes with profound musical implications – as Bruce Haynes writes, “when you say something differently, you say something different”. On the other hand, the legacy of musicologists Richard Taruskin and John Butt is to undermine this historicity, to demonstrate that authenticity as an end in itself is unreachable. We reconstruct lost performance practices from unreliable sources and a few surviving original instruments, and we are forced to fill in the gaps in our findings with our own intuitions of what the music ought to sound like. Playing Bach like Jascha Heifetz is no longer an option for a young violinist, but playing Bach like Bach is not possible. We cannot play on modern instruments with an entirely clear conscience, even if we know that historical ones are a fudge. Music is by nature ephemeral, and no performance can be truer than another. Similarly, no interpretation is the correct one. At the same time, with the resources that we have in front of us, it would seem churlish not to make the effort to try to understand what the composer meant. They cannot be ignored – Willie Nelson sings, “what did you think all them saddles and boots was about?”
Rather than specialising on a particular repertoire, with Figure, I want to perform music by a range of composers from different places and periods. In a nutshell, historical performance is contextualisation – music is best understood by understanding its development, both in terms of instruments and ideas, across time and place. Beyond the material differences in instruments, music prior to the 19th century had a very different place in society and set of aesthetic principles to that which is currently has. In his 1767 Dictionnaire de musique, Rousseau quotes Fontenelle’s witty remark on abstract music – “Sonate, que me veux-tu?” (“Sonata, what do you want from me?”), but less than a century later, Schopenhauer describes it as a “direct expression of innermost being”. Our contemporary view (consider Sontag – music is the “most alive of all the arts”) is in many ways highly Romantic, and to get out of our own unexamined mindset is the essential task at hand. With an appreciation and understanding of the evolution of music as a whole we are better able to get inside the mind of any particular composer.
We launched the group with a concert of Bach’s St John Passion at our home St Bartholomew-the-Great. Bach is an icon for period performance, and the St John is a work which is the apotheosis of his style, dramatic and beautiful, and offering resurrection. Oboist Leo Duarte leads the ensemble in our second performance, Mozart’s Gran Partita, the composer at his most joyful and sublime, on the 19th of November.
Wimbledon International Music Festival starts on 13 November 2021, returning for a full programme, live in Wimbledon across two weeks, with everything from Sir Willard White, Imogen Cooper, and The Tallis Scholars, to a tribute to the pioneer of American swing, Benny Goodman, and an evening of tango with music by Astor Piazzolla.
One highlight is the premiere of I shall hear in heaven, Tama Matheson's musical play which brings to life Beethoven's with deafness and his own mortality. Directed and performed by Tama Matheson with Susie Kohane and Robert Maskell, the evening will include Beethoven's music performed by the London Mozart Players. This play is the latest in a series of collaborative musical plays on the subject of lives of the great composers by Matheson, who is artistic director of the Brisbane Shakespeare Festival.
I shall hear in heaven is at Trinity URC Church, Wimbledon, SW19 4AA, full details from the festival website.
Bartok: Bluebeard's Castle - Ildikó Komlósi, Edward Gardner, John Relyea, London Philharmonic Orchestra (Photo Mark Allan)
Haydn Symphony No. 90, Bartok Bluebeard's Castle; Ildikó Komlósi, John Relyea, London Philharmonic Orchestra, Edward Gardner; Royal Festival Hall
Reviewed by Robert Hugill on 6 November 2021 Star rating: 4.0 (★★★★) From the good humour of Haydn's symphony written for Paris to the dark intensity of Bartok's complex vision
The speaker in Béla Balázs's prologue to Béla Bartok's opera Bluebeard's Castle questions whether what we are seeing happens on stage before our eyes or behind our eyelids, in our imagination. There has been a tendency for recent small-scale productions of the opera in London to reinvent the piece dramatically, but there is a lot to be said for simply replying on Bartok, Balázs and our imagination, especially when presented with the full panoply of the London Philharmonic Orchestra filling the stage. Cast-wise, Bluebeard's Castle might seem the perfect pandemic opera, but Bartok's orchestration is anything but.
On Saturday 6 November 2021, Edward Gardner conducted the London Philharmonic Orchestra at the Royal Festival Hall in a programme which paired Haydn's Symphony No. 90 with Bartok's Bluebeard's Castle (A kékszakállú herceg vára), with Ildikó Komlósi and John Relyea. It was thus an evening of contrasts, from openness and blazing sunlight to darkness and secrets, from compact orchestral forces to large scale sonic opulence.
Clare O'Connell performing at Light Night in the Howard Assembly Rooms, Leeds, 2021 (Photo Tom Arber)
There is much talk at the moment about going local; the importance of being involved in and supporting your local community. The music world has, however, been as guilty as any other field for its fondness for distant travel. Cellist Clare O'Connell has been well ahead of the game in respect to concentrating on the local community, and for over ten years she has been running a highly regarded concert series in her home town of Berkhamsted. And it isn't just another classical concert series, Behind the Mirror includes a strong element of contemporary music allied to innovative programming. For the series, Clare has commissioned many new works from composers such as Alex Mills, Leonardo Margutti, Luke Bedford, David Bruce, Freya Waley Cohen and Rubens Askenar, as well as experimenting with varying instrumental line-ups, making her own arrangements of a vast array of music for unusual groups of instruments, and interweaving music poetry and storytelling to add another dimension to the concert experience.
Clare comments that as musicians we are now realising how relevant it is to be local, though her efforts have taken time and she does everything herself with the aid of 'a coterie of helpers'. As a cellist she performs with ensembles such as Lontano and Propellor, and recently released a solo album, The Isolated Cellist on Stone Records, containing solo music she had developed for performance locally during lockdown. So she now finds herself in an interesting place, yet in an artistic culture which expects you to be able to tick certain boxes to achieve certain things, Clare feels that her career has never really ticked any of the boxes, she has rather found her own way.
Matthew O’Keeffe - Conductor, photographed at Leys Court, Angell Town Estate by Michael Wharley Born and raised in Brixton, Matthew is the founder, director and conductor of Brixton Chamber Orchestra. There for the first gig to a crowd of 20 in 2018, this summer he conducted performances for audiences totalling more than 800. Previously part of a vocal group signed to Mercury Records, he’s no mean singer to boot, and on occasion will step behind the mic for a Sinatra standard.
My local orchestra, the Brixton Chamber Orchestra (BCO) has had a busy time of it in the last year. Under founder and artistic director Matthew O'Keeffe, the orchestra gave 24 performances, many of them outdoors. That is was able to do so was thanks to the local support the orchestra has and to thank supporters, as well as to launch a formal supporters scheme, the orchestra held and event at Downstairs at the Department Store in Brixton last night (4 November 2021). There was music, of course, ranging from Beethoven's Ode to Joy to Rap based on Stravinsky's The Rite of Spring (with rapper Megamikes), the usual imaginative and eclectic mix that we expect from the orchestra.
Events during the last year have included a series of pop up performances in and around the high street, courtesy of Brixton BID, as well as the orchestra's now annual tour of local estates. The Summer Estates Tour is often the way people come to discover the orchestra, and perhaps even hear a live orchestra for the first time.
The orchestra came about in 2018 because Matthew O'Keeffe, who lives in Brixton, realised that he and many other young colleagues were travelling in to the centre of London for work, and he decided to try and create an orchestra based in the area that he lives. Brixton Chamber Orchestra was born, it functions rather differently to many ensembles, performing everything from Rap and Grime to Blues and RnB to classical music. The players are young and many live in Brixton, and their performances bring thrilling live performances to areas that don't see a lot of orchestral action.
Teigan Hastings - Tuba, photographed on Cressingham Gardens Estate by Michael Wharley A self-taught player and remarkably assured young man, Teigan joined BCO for the Summer Estates Tour 2021, age just 15, after seeing the roving band performing down his street and asking to audition. He hopes to join the Navy and become an engineer.Teigan Hastings - Tuba, photographed on Cressingham Gardens Estate by Michael Wharley
There are big plans for group, they are about to start fundraising for their first disc, Grime Orchestrated, which will combine rappers with classical beats. Matthew O'Keeffe describes the inspiration, "When I was a kid people were freestyling over beats on the phones in the playground” If we do this right, millions of kids could be listening to Tchaikovsky, Beethoven and Handel in playgrounds up and down the country, bringing classical music into their lives on their terms."
The orchestra would also like to create a youth programme, so children and parents can get regular access to a live orchestra. There are other ideas too, from live music at films to secret garden concerts, all they need is
The photographs in this article are from a project by Michael Wharley, who describes his first encounter with the orchestra, on a marching band fundraiser in early 2021, "They were so talented and energetic as they passed down the street – people were coming out of their houses to watch them," he recalls. Lambeth is one of the most demographically diverse boroughs in the country, and, he adds, "the vision of this diverse group of musicians just seemed to fit Brixton streets - I immediately wanted to take a series of portraits."
On April 1st 2021, to celebrate the lockdown beginning to lift, the start of the Easter holidays, and to bring a bit of fun to the community for April Fools Day, Brixton Chamber Orchestra woke up the neighbourhood on Railton Road to the sound of a marching band.
At 8:30am, unbeknown to the local residents, BCO marched from Herne Hill Station to Brixton up Railton Road, bringing some much needed music, joy and entertainment to an otherwise quiet pedestrianised residential street.
The march was a huge success with people leaning out their windows and lining their doorsteps, many following the band all the way down the street, Brixton Chamber Orchestra raised some much needed funds for musicians, whilst raising everyone else's spirits.
Remix: Music for Youth Prom 2021; Royal Albert Hall
Remix: Music for Youth Prom 2021; Royal Albert Hall
Reviewed by Robert Hugill on 3 November 2021 In an astonishing display of creativity and enthusiasm, nearly 2000 young people gather to make music together at the Royal Albert Hall
Music for Youth's annual Prom at the Royal Albert Hall is usually a celebration of the past year's music-making, but the Prom on 3 November 2021 was the organisation's first large-scale live event for nearly two years. What was there to celebrate?
As it turned out, there was plenty to celebrate though perhaps not in the way we might have expected. Under the title Remix, Music for Youth's prom brought together several ensembles, Vocalize, Northamptonshire County Youth Orchestra, Rubik's Cube, Musica Youth Jazz,Youthsayers and Cornwall County Choirs, plus duo Shia & JK, along with children from the 38 schools that had been taking park in the National Creative Project, All the Hall's a Stage, led by composer Tim Steiner. That was around 2000 young people in the Royal Albert Hall and they all came ready to perform.
Remix: Music for Youth Prom 2021; Royal Albert Hall
Surrounding and linking the contributions from the individual groups were a series of mass participation events under the banner All the Hall's a Stage where the whole hall seemed to erupt with sound. This celebration was very much about the sheer joy of being able to make music together. There were brass groups, choirs, string groups and more, all sitting in the stalls and the choir - and yes, it is possible to sit in a stalls seat and play an instrument.
The son of the Scottish composer Thomas Wilson (1927-2001), Martin, is engaged in a frantic
search for his father's lifework which he recently discovered had been
removed from his father's home.
The composer's widow, Margaret, has previously attempted to give the
composer's manuscripts and archive belongings to others and this
disappearance follows the sale of the composer's home overseen by her
attorneys Stuart Harris-Logan, Brendan Wilson and Stephen Wilson - who
were left almost nothing by their father - and again done without
Martin's knowledge.
If anyone has any information about the whereabouts of the composer's life's work please get in touch. [Contact us at the blog in the first instance]
Two Voices - Thomas Morley, Tobias Hume, Henry Purcell, William Cornysh, Handel, Dowland, Fraser Wilson, Owain Park; Fair Oriana; Voces8 Records
Reviewed by Robert Hugill on 4 November 2021 Star rating: 4.0 (★★★★) A pair of light, silvery sopranos take Thomas Morley's canzonets as a starting point for a delightful programme
Fair Oriana is the duo of sopranos Angela Hicks and Penelope Appleyard and on this, their debut disc, Two Voiceson Voces8 Records, the duo mixes early music with leavening of more modern pieces, so there is Thomas Morley, Tobias Hume, Henry Purcell, William Cornysh, Handel, and Dowland, plus Fraser Wilson and Owain Park. For some the items the sopranos are joined by musicians Harry Buckoke (viola da gamba/lirone), Jonatan Bougt (theorbo), Sam Brown (lute), Alison Kinder (cello & recorder), Tom Gamble (guitar), Alexander Duggan (percussion) and Penelope Appleyard (flute).
The core of the disc is Thomas Morley's Twelve Canzonets to Two Voices (from 1595), these lovely duets weave their way through the whole disc. The music is arranged thematically, starting with happiness and love, featuring the most spirited of Morley's canzonets, then moving through intrigue and teasing in love, to passion and then finally loss. The canzonets are all unaccompanied and to vary the textures the duo welcomes various instrumentalists for the other pieces which are dotted about the disc.
Cante Interno - Bottesini, Koussevitzky, Schumann, Franck; Luis Cabrera, Justyna Maj, Sylvia Huang; trptk
Reviewed by Robert Hugill on 3 November 2021 Star rating: 5.0 (★★★★★) Moving from virtuosity to romanticism, double bass player Luis Cabrera shows that his instrument is capable of great expressivity and wonderful variety in this truly engaging recital
Luis Cabrera is a Spanish double bass player who studied in Madrid and in London at the Guildhall School of Music & Drama with Rinat Ibragimov, a teacher who has had a great influence on him. Cabrera became principal double bass of the Netherlands Philharmonic Orchestra at the age of 20 in 2006. Since then he has also played as guest with a wide range of ensembles, from the London Symphony Orchestra and Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra to Arcangelo, the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment and the London Sinfonietta.
For Cante Interno from the trptk label, Luis Cabrera (double bass) is joined by Justyna Maj (piano) and Sylvia Huang (violin) for a recital which begins with Giovanni Bottesini and Serge Koussevitzky both writing for the double bass, and then moves to transcriptions of music by Robert Schumann and Cesar Franck.
We start with a pair of showpieces, Bottesini's Introduzione e Variazioni sul "Carnevale di Venezia" for double bass and piano, and Gran Duo Concertante for violin, double bass and piano. Bottesini combined the careers of double bass virtuoso, conductor and composer, and he was selected by Verdi to conduct the first performance of Aida in Cairo. His skill as a virtuoso on the double bass helped revolutionise the playing technique of his instrument. The two works on the disc that Cabrera plays are amongst Bottesini's best known, and the composer's favourites. Both are truly delightful, and such is Cabrera's skill that he makes you forget the simple logistical challenge of being so virtuosic on such a large instrument, the distances that his left hand has to travel. But the playing is not just virtuoso, it radiates enjoyment and delight in the music.
Lucy Anderson, winner of the 2019 Bampton Classical Opera Young Singers' Competition in the role of Helena in Gluck's Paride ed Helena with the company in 2021
The final of this year's Bampton Classical Opera Young Singers’ Competition will take place on 28 November 2021 at the Holywell Music Room, Oxford. After a preliminary round via a recording and a live first round, six singers have been chosen to take part in the final, Jessica Cale soprano (winner of the 2020 Kathleen Ferrier Award), Frances Gregory mezzo-soprano [who sang Minskwoman in Royal Academy Opera's production of Jonathan Dove's Flight in 2018, see my review], Sophie Sparrow soprano, Shafali Jalota soprano [who sang Clori in Hampstead Garden Opera's production of Cavalli's L'Egisto, see my review], Dan D’Souza baritone [who performed in Handel's Semele with John Eliot Gardiner, see my review], and Cassandra Wright soprano.
Each singer will present a programme of around 20 minutes, and the jury will include tenor Bonaventura Bottone, Royal Academy of Music vocal teacher Jennifer Dakin, and the accompanist and conductor Phillip Thomas.
The competition was launched in 2013 to celebrate the company's 20th birthday and is open to UK resident singers aged 21 to 32 and their accompanists. The previous competition, in 2019, was won by soprano Lucy Anderson who sang the role of Helena in Bampton's production of Gluck's Paride ed Elena this year [see my review]. The 2019 accompanists prize went to Dylan Perez.
The Royal Welsh College of Music & Drama (RWCMD) is launching a new on-line course, Opera 360 in September 2022. Opera 360 will present short courses for anyone who has a deep love of opera and wants a strong connection with opera that goes beyond appreciation whatever their stage of life, as well as launching a full Opera 360 Masters, designed to develop the skills of those wanting to work in the industry in non-performance roles. The masters will incorporate all the modules in the shorter courses.
Opera 360 will be an industry-led, digital course that invites opera lovers, arts professionals and students alike to gain unrivalled, behind the scenes knowledge of the industry with expert guidance given by those who make opera. It will offer detailed investigation into both the artistic and administrative practices of the global opera business.
As an on-line initiative Opera 360 will be available to people from all over the UK and internationally. Opera 360 is in association with the David Seligman Opera School at RWCMD. It aims to provide a world-class training environment for those wishing to pursue a career in opera working in partnership with Welsh National Opera (WNO). Guest lecturers will include Aidan Lang, general director of WNO, David Jackson, artistic director of Cardiff Singer of the World, soprano Susan Bullock, and conductor Carlo Rizzi who is president of the David Seligman Opera School and conductor laureate at WNO.
Carlo Rizzi commented, "Opera is the most complex of art forms bringing live music, theatre, design and story-telling together. When audiences see and listen to an opera, few are aware what lies behind each performance and learning about this through first-hand experience is a wonderful new offer from RWCMD."
Liverpool Philharmonic Youth Orchestra side by side with members of the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra
When musicians from the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra (RLPO) perform side by side with the Liverpool Philharmonic Youth Orchestra, they will be joined by an extra violinist as the RLPO's chief conductor, Domingo Hindoyan will be swapping his baton for his violin and joining the orchestra. The concert, on 20 November 2021, is the start of the youth orchestra's new season and the evening will feature Simon Emery conducting music by Beethoven, Piazzolla and Malcolm Arnold, and then Hindoyan returns to the podium to conduct excerpts from Stravinsky's Firebird Suite.
The concert will also feature the first ever public performance by the Liverpool Philharmonic Youth Academy Orchestra, and ensemble for under-18 musicians. Conducted by the RLPO's sub-principal cellist, Gethyn Jones, the concert features Florence Price's Symphony No. 1 and excerpts from Tchaikovsky's The Nutcracker.
Domingo Hindoyan joined the RLPO as chief conductor in September 2021, he started his career as a violinist and member of the Venezuelan music education programme El Sistema, and then was a member of Daniel Barenboim’s West-Eastern Divan Orchestra. He later went on to study conducting and was the first assistant to Daniel Barenboim at the Deutsche Staatsoper Berlin between 2013 and 2016.
The Liverpool Philharmonic Youth Orchestra was founded in 1951 as the Merseyside Youth Orchestra, and is aimed at young people aged 13 to 23. It is one of a number of ensembles in the Liverpool Philharmonic Youth Company, which also encompasses youth choir, brass band and the Liverpool Philharmonic Youth Academy Orchestra, Over 73,000 young people participate in the Youth Company and associated ensembles, attend concerts, or take part in its In Harmony programme, which uses orchestral music making to improve the life chances of children, including from the most disadvantaged parts of the city. Over 14,000 people suffering from mental health problems have also benefitted from the Orchestra’s music and mental health programme over the last 13 years.
Coventry Cathedral after the Blitz in November 1940
I principally associate the name of Czech conductor and composer Vilém Tauský (1910-2004) with light music, as that is what he often conducted on the radio when I first started listening to BBC Radio 3, but as a conductor and composer he had a far wider range than that.
Born in Moravia, Tauský came from a musical family (his mother sang Mozart in Vienna under Mahler), and he studied with Leoš Janáček and later became a repetiteur at the Brno Opera. But being of Jewish ancestry he fled just before the Second World War and joined the Czech Free Army. After the war he stayed in the UK and introduced many Czech operas including Smetana's The Kiss, Janáček's Osud and Smetana's The Brandenburgers in Bohemia. In 1955 he also conducted all six symphonies by his friend Martinu in London, marking the composer's 65th birthday. But Tauský also conducted the premieres of British operas including Lennox Berkeley's A Dinner Engagement and Nelson, Malcolm Williamson's The Violins of St Jacques, and a recording of William Alwyn's Miss Julie.
Vilém Tauský came was in Leamington in the Autumn of 1940 with the Czech Free Army and went with a Czech Free Army ambulance into Coventry the day after the blitz which destroyed the cathedral on 14 November 1940. He quickly wrote Coventry: A Meditation for string quartet as a response and it was premiered at the National Gallery in London by the Menges Quartet in the lunchtime series organized by Dame Myra Hess. In November 2000 on the sixtieth anniversary of the destruction of Coventry cathedral, there was a performance of Coventry in Drapers’ Hall played by the Martinů String Quartet. The composer was present, as were the bishops of Dresden and Coventry.
On 12 November 2021, Tauský's Coventry: A Meditation returns to Coventry and Leamington as part of Leamington Music's contribution to the Coventry's year of City of Culture. The Jubilee Quartet will give a concert at 12.30pm in Drapers’ Hall in Coventry which includes the Tauský and Mendelssohn’s Quartet in A minor Op 13 and at 7.30pm will perform these two works and Schubert’s ‘Death and the Maiden’ Quartet in the Royal Pump Rooms in Leamington.
Beethoven Fidelio; Dorothea Herbert, Adam Smith, Gertrude Thoma, Callum Thorpe, Carrie-Ann Williams, Gavan Ring, dir: Frederic Wake-Walker, cond: Ben Glassberg; Glyndebourne on Tour at Glyndebourne
Reviewed by Tony Cooper on 29 October 2021 Star rating: 4.0 (★★★★) Strong performances and a radical rethink to the dramaturgy as Frederic Wake-Walker's production finally makes it to the stage
Originally entitled Leonore, oder Der Triumph der ehelichen Liebe (Leonore or The Triumph of Marital Love), Beethoven’s three-act opera Fidelio, set to a German libretto, was prepared by Joseph Sonnleithner from a text by French playwright, Jean-Nicolas Bouilly. Written at the time of the French Revolution, the première took place at Vienna's Theater an der Wien on 20th November 1805 during the French occupation of Beethoven’s beloved Austria.
A troublesome work for sure, Fidelio - a prime example of a ‘rescue opera’ - harbours a long complicated history of composition having gone through three versions while parts of the score were written for an earlier (but never-completed) opera. Beethoven also knocked out a total of four overtures and the last of which, commonly known as ‘Fidelio’, widely considered the best of the bunch, the chosen overture for this production directed with flair and imagination by Frederic Wake-Walker.
The Glyndebourne Tour’s Principal Conductor, Ben Glassberg - who, incidentally, made his BBC Proms début this year at the Royal Albert Hall conducting, not surprisingly, excerpts from Fidelio as well as the closing scene of Janáček’s Jenůfa - conducted the Glyndebourne Tour Orchestra, admirably led by Richard Milone, in a masterful, colourful and stirring rendering that dug deep into Beethoven’s richly-textured score setting the scene for the whole opera.
David Yardley The Lost Codex of Avalon; David Yardley, The Song Company, Sydney Chamber Choir, Sam Allchurch, Jess Ciampa, Pastance, Cristina Alís Raurich; Talisman
Reviewed by Robert Hugill on 1 November 2021 Star rating: 3.5 (★★★½) An intriguing mix of old and new as the Australian composer/performer David Yardley weaves old-style modern music around a mix of ancient and modern texts evoking the world of King Arthur
If you go to the website Australian government's Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade, there is a page for Mr David Yardley, currently High Commissioner to Kiribati and previously Counsellor at Australia’s Mission to the United Nations, New York. But David Yardley has a parallel career as musician and composer, mixing a love of Medieval and Renaissance music with a love of fantasy stories. His first disc was New Carols and Songs For Chaucer’s Pilgrims, taking existing texts which survive without music and giving them giving them an historically-informed vehicle to sing again.
With his latest disc, The Lost Codex of Avalon, David Yardley has taken a mix of Medieval and modern texts and created a new/old sound-world to evoke that of the Arthur of Sir Thomas Malory's 1485 poetic epic, Le Morte d'Arthur. Yardley sings to his own accompaniment on Medieval harp whilst other pieces are performed by The Song Company, Sydney Chamber Choir, conductor Sam Allchurch, period ensemble Pastance, percussionist Jess Ciampa, medieval keyboard player Cristina Alís Raurich. The texts move between Medieval ones which survive without their original music and more contemporary pieces by Anne Casey, Monique Bouchard, FC Leverett, and Clark Ashton Smith.
David Yardley
As something of a prelude, the disc begins with Yardley accompanying himself on the harp in a setting of words by the troubadour (and later a lawyer) Peire de Lunel (fl.1326-1384) in which the poet laments the plague of 1348, but with music written by Yardley in another plague year, 2020. The musical style is completely traditional, and to my relatively untutored ear, sounds both convincing and evocative.
Tŷ Cerdd’s arts & health initiative CoDi Grange, is a project whereby, music and sound installations were made for Aneurin Bevan University Health Board's new Grange University Hospital in Llanfrechfa, part of an extensive arts programme, supported by the Welsh Government and curated and commissioned by Studio Response.
Tŷ Cerdd in collaboration with Studio Response and health board staff commissioned artists from a range of genres to create the music and sound installations especially for the multi-faith chapel space in the hospital. The six works were designed to improve the well-being and experience of hospital patients and visitors as well as the NHS staff that work there each day. The response from people who have listened to the compositions at the critical care hospital has been extremely positive.
Now the works are being given wider release on a new album, Cynefin (a unique Welsh word meaning ‘habitat’, and so much more), which Tŷ Cerdd is issuing this month.
The lead music artist was award-winning electronic composer Jo Thomas, who, together with the Tŷ Cerdd team mentored the other participating music-creators through the unique creation process. The six resulting works are:
The Samling Institute is 25 and to celebrate six alumni of the Samling Artists Programme will be performing at the Wigmore Hall on 7 November 2021, with a programme which includes the premiere of Jonathan Dove's song-cycle Man, Woman, Child.
Commissioned to celebrate Samling's 25th birthday, Man, Woman, Child is a setting of poems by the Australian poet Judith Wright (1915-2000). It will be premiered by soprano Alexandra Lowe, tenor Filipe Manu and pianist James Baillieu. And they will joined in the concert by mezzo-soprano Kitty Whately, bass William Thomas and pianist Ian Tindale, for a programme of 20th century English song.
Samling began in a barn in Cumbria 25 years ago and since then the Samling Institute has grown to become a global family of singers, pianists and leaders. That first concert was given by Katarina Karnéus, who had just won Cardiff Singer of the World, and the poet Tony Harrison, and was the start of an ambitious plan to bring world-class coaching in song and opera to a region with no resident opera company or music college. The Samling Artist Programme provides week-long intensive residential masterclasses for the UK’s very best emerging singers and song pianists.
Robert Devereux, 2nd Earl of Essex after Marcus Gheeraerts the Younger.
Donizetti Roberto Devereux; Helena Dix, Catherine Carby, Eleazar Rodriguez, Julien Van Mellaerts, Gary Matthewman, Chelsea Opera Group
Reviewed by Robert Hugill on 31 October 2021 Star rating: 5.0 (★★★★★) Returning in terrific form, Helena Dix gives a stupendous account of Elisabetta in Chelsea Opera Group's welcome return in a vivid ensemble performance of Roberto Devereux
Chelsea Opera Group's plans for its 70th birthday in 2020 included a celebratory performance of Donizetti's Roberto Devereux with Australian soprano Helena Dix in the role of Elisabetta, following on from her triumphant performance as Bellini's Norma with the company in 2018 [see my review], and to say the road to finally performing the work was eventful, is something of an understatement. Not only did COVID cause the cancellation of the planned performance, but Helena Dix caught COVID (thankfully recovered, she made a triumphant return to Australia for performances of Vitellia in La Clemenza di Tito and Lady Macbeth in Verdi's Macbeth), the original conductor Andrew Greenwood, sadly, died in January 2021 and the original tenor, Chris Turner (who had sung Pollione in COG's 2018 performance of Norma) had to drop out at the very last minute owing to a bereavement. Thankfully replacements were found, Gary Matthewman took over conducting duties and Mexican-American tenor Eleazar Rodriguez stepped into the role of Roberto.
Donizetti's opera premiered in Naples in 1837 with a libretto by Salvatore Cammarano. Cammarano had already written the libretto for several operas for Donizetti including Lucia di Lammermoor (1835). The opera came at a time of personal turmoil for Donizetti, as both his wife and child died in 1837 and the production was delayed by an outbreak of cholera in the city. Donizetti's relations with the officials in Naples could also be problematic. An autocratic monarchy, Naples was subject to rather a repressive regime and the King kept a close watch on subjects that were allowed in the opera, so censorship was a repeated problem. This would come to a head in 1838 when the King's banning of Donizetti's Poliuto shortly before it was due to be premiered caused Donizetti to leave the city and vow never to return (he would turn Poliuto into Les Martyrs and premiere it at the Paris Opera).
This perhaps partly explains the fondness for British historical subjects in Italian operas of the period, Donizetti would write at least four operas involving various members of the Tudors. As Protestant monarchs, these characters were expected to behave badly which meant that censors would allow a great deal more leeway when dealing with dramas about Protestant monarchs than with Roman Catholic ones.
Like the majority of Donizetti's opera, Roberto Devereux seemed to drop out of the repertoire after the 1880s and was not revived until Leyla Gencer sang the role of Elisabetta in Naples in 1964. Since then the opera has managed to keep a grip on the fringes of the repertoire. Opera Holland Park performed it in 2009, and Welsh National Opera performed it in 2013 [see my review] as part of a Tudor Queens trilogy and it was revived in 2019 [see my review]. Covent Garden managed concert performances in 2002 [recorded for Opera Rara] but like many companies, when looking for serious Donizetti as an alternative to Lucia di Lammermoor, the company has generally reached for Maria Stuarda.
In three acts, but relatively compact, Roberto Devereux is based on a French play and features an ahistorical view of history. Though the opera is relatively true to its French source materials, we can also detect outlines of a previous Donizetti hit, Maria Stuarda (premiered at La Scala in 1835). Again we have a vengeful and jealous Elisabetta, a sympathetic and put-upon rival, a tenor torn between the two, prison and more. But where Maria Stuarda's focus is on Maria, the put-upon rival, in Roberto Devereux the focus is on Elisabetta. Though she does not get a huge amount of stage time, the final act is Elisabetta's; it is she who closes things. The tenor in the title role does get a climactic prison scene, but the soprano's final aria rather trumps this.
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