Violinist Midori Komachi has not only recorded Vaughan Williams' Violin Sonata but is planning performances of the composer's music in Japan

Simon Callaghan & Midori Komachi recording their Vaughan Williams album

On 1 July, the London-based Japanese violinist Midori Komachi is releasing a disc of Vaughan Williams' Complete works for Violin and Piano, with Simon Callaghan on the MusiKaleido label including The Lark Ascending and the rarely performed Violin Sonata in A minor. Not only is Midori performing the music from the disc in the UK but she has a parallel project in Japan, performing Vaughan Williams' music alongside films and talks as well as the release of a new Japanese translation of Simon Heffer's biography of the composer. This builds on Midori's 2017 Delius Project, which included the publication of her Japanese translation of Eric Fenby’s Delius as I Knew Him. I caught up with Midori by Zoom from Japan, where she was doing research for her PhD, to chat about Vaughan Williams, his music for violin and how playing his music in Japan.

Midori Komachi

The centre-piece of the new disc is Vaughan Williams' Violin Sonata. Rarely performed, this work is late Vaughan Williams (from 1954), written for the violinist Frederick Grinke when the composer was 82. The first time that Midori played it was when she was learning it for the recording, and she subsequently learned more about the composer and the work. 

I was interested to know how well the sonata was written for the violin. Midori comments that Vaughan Williams learned the violin when younger and certainly The Lark Ascending (written in 1914 and premiered in 1920) is well written for the instrument, and though you might expect the same style for the sonata, it is completely different. Midori feels that you can sense Vaughan Williams' development as a composer in the way he expresses himself in the violin. The writing in the sonata is still melodic, with reminiscences of folksong but for Midori it is more expressive, coming from deep down.

The Violin Sonata was written between Symphonies Nos 7 and 8, and Midori sees Vaughan Williams' mind as being in symphonic sonorities. She did some research on the work, looking at the manuscript and Vaughan Williams' archive. In the first draft there are lots of notes on the page, and seemingly too many ideas. He presented the first draft to the dedicatee, Frederick Grinke, and they made notes on the music. Grinke said it was difficult and suggested reducing the number of notes as well as alternative versions for some passages. Vaughan Williams took in these ideas, and many of the more technical passages incorporate Grinke's suggestions making it a real work of collaboration. Midori feels that he wrote the original work for an ideal sound world rather than for practicality.

City Music Foundation celebrates 10 years with gala concert

The City Music Foundation (CMF) is celebrating its 10th anniversary with a gala concert at Wigmore Hall on 5 July 2022. Performers at the concert include CMF Alumni, violinist Emily Sun, mezzo-soprano Helen Charlston, pianist Samson Tsoy (performing with his duo partner Pavel Kolesnikov), and violinist Michael Foyle, performing with the Trio Balthasar which includes Iain Burnside (CMF Patron) and Tim McHugh. Other distinguished performers will include bass-baritone Christopher Purves, trumpeter David Blackadder and violinist Jennifer Pike (CMF Patron).

Music include Stravinsky's The Rite of Spring (in the version for piano four-hands), Mendelssohn's Piano Trio No. 2, Bach's Double Violin Concerto and arias from Handel's Ode for the Birthday of Queen Anne.

The City Music Foundation was co-founded by the late Sir Roger Gifford (1955-2021), who was the 685th Lord Mayor of London and was installed as Master of the Musician's Company in 2016. The CMF selects exceptional professional musicians at the start of their careers, when managing ‘the business of music’ can be a challenge, and supports them with a comprehensive career development programme. 

Full details from the CMF website.

Noh Reimagined 2022: Spirits of Flowers Festival

Noh Reimagined at Kings Place in 2018 (Photo mu:arts)

Noh Reimagined is a biennial festival at Kings Place that brings together Japanese Noh theatre with contemporary arts to create something intriguingly new. Hilary covered the 2018 festival for us [see Hilary's article] but the 2020 festival was cancelled. Now, Noh Reimagined is back with Noh Reimagined 2022: Spirits of Flowers Festival at Kings Place on 24 and 25 June 2022.

This year's festival explores how the natural world is celebrated and interpreted in one of Japan’s oldest theatrical traditions, alongside what it means to our lives today. Top-class Noh performers including celebrated Noh shite (the masked protagonist in a Noh) actor Sano Noboru and wildly inventive nohkan (lit. noh-pipe) flautist Isso Yukihiro will be performing, and there will be premieres of new Noh-inspired work by some of the UK’s top creative artists, including the remarkable contemporary artist Cerith Wyn Evans, acclaimed contemporary dance duo Thick & Tight, and a new interpretation of the Noh Sumida River combining music and gesture with sign language.

There are two days of performances and workshops, culminating in the final event when the Noh performers will come together with Thick & Tight and recorder player Piers Adams to perform Hengenka (meaning transformations), an exquisite Noh music drama, written by nohkan flautist Isso Yukihiro, which combines elements of traditional Noh repertories, baroque music and ancient divine dancing to create a dreamy music drama perfect for a high summer evening.

Full details from the Kings Place website.

Remembering two trailblazing women of the classical guitar

Paraguayan classical guitarist Berta Rojas has released a new album, Legado which celebrates two trailblazing women classical guitarists, Ida Presti and Maria Luisa Anido. The disc features music by Presti and Anido alongside tombeaux by John Duarte, Gilbert Biberian and Sergio Assad. The video features Rojas playing John Duarte's Idylle pour Ida

Born outside of Paris, Ida Presti (1924-1967) was a child prodigy, giving her first full concert at the age of 10. "When I listened to her, I was aware that heaven had bestowed to her the gift of musical communication", Segovia commented. Pushed by her father, success came early but his death in 1938 and the advent of World War II, limited widespread travel and exposure. In 1952, she married fellow guitarist Alexandre Lagoya and the pair became one of the most celebrated duos in classical guitar, perhaps overshadowing her solo accomplishments. 

Argentinian-born Maria Luisa Anido (1907-1996) drew inspiration for much of her music from the folk tunes and idioms of South America. "Maria Luisa Anido was for me a revelation. The impression it produced to me I’ll never be able to erase from my mind.…it is something that surpasses all that is imaginable", renowned guitar virtuoso Miguel Llobet said. Like Presti, her talents were recognized early, and her early career guided by her guitarist father. But it was only after the death of her parents that Anido was able to travel more extensively and perform in prominent venues worldwide. 

Rojas disc, Legado is available online [Link Tree]

A romantic woodland walk with Igor Levit and Simon Bode at Wigmore Hall

Igor Levit, Simon Bode (Photo Felix Broede)

Robert Schumann: Waldszenen & song, Bartok: Out of Doors, songs by Eisler, Schumann, Schubert, Wolf; Simon Bode, Igor Levit; Wigmore Hall
Reviewed 7 June 2022 (★★★★)

Interleaving short character pieces and songs, Simon Bode and Igor Levit explored Schumann's woodland wanderings, followed by an astonishing sequence which moved between Bartok's rarely performed suite and a series of complementing songs in performances that really fizzed

Pianist Igor Levit and tenor Simon Bode's concert at Wigmore Hall on Tuesday 7 June 2022 took as its premise the interleaving of short piano pieces by Schumann and Bartok with similarly themed song. Both piano suites, Schumann's Waldszenen and Bartok's Out of Doors, are underperformed in the concert hall and here Levit and Bode asked us to look again. In the first half of the concert the movements from Schumann's Waldszenen were interleaved with songs by Schumann echoing the themes of the piano solos. In the second half, Bartok's piano solos were paired with songs by Eisler, Schumann, Schubert and Wolf.

We began with Schumann. The song selection concentrated on songs from 1840, from Opus 51 and Opus 77, and 1850, from Opus 89 and Opus 96, and with Waldszenen, Opus 82 dating from 1848-49 we thus had a recital that veered towards late-Schumann. There was just one early song, Der Weinende (1827).

I have to admit that few of the songs were familiar to me and that I had never heard a complete performance of Waldszenen, In the piano pieces, Schumann seems almost to be reaching back to his earlier piano writing though Gavin Plumley's programme note also suggests that Schumann might have been influenced by Mendelssohn's songs without words as that composer's death was quite recent when Schumann started writing Waldszenen in 1848.

i bērzs, i smilgas... (and a birch and grasses...) - Latvian song across the generations from Emils Melngailis & Kristaps Pētersons

i bērzs, i smilgas... (and a birch and grasses...) - songs by Emils Melngailis, Kristaps Pētersons; Ieva Parša, Andrejs Osokins; SKANI
Reviewed 7 June 2022, (★★★½)

Best known as a folklorist and writer of choral music, Latvian composer Emils Melngailis was an early supporter of Mussorgsky, and this new disc pairs his intriguing songs with those of a younger generation Latvian composer

Emils Melngailis was a Latvian composer and folklorist, perhaps best known for his choral music and his involvement with the Latvian Song and Dance Festival. A new disc from Latvian label Skani, i bērzs, i smilgas... (and a birch and grasses...) brings out another side to the composer as mezzo-soprano Ieva Parša and pianist Andrejs Osokins perform a selection of songs by Emils Melngailis alongside music by contemporary composer Kristaps Pētersons.

Emils Melngailis is an intriguing figure. Born in Latvia (then part of the Russian Empire), he studied at the St Petersburg Conservatory. But as a student Melngailis came into conflict with his teacher Rimsky Korsakov as Melngailis condemned the way Rimsky Korsakov was adjusting (correcting) Mussorgsky's harmonic language in his ground-breaking edition of Mussorgsky's Boris Godunov. As a result Melngailis had to leave the conservatory and complete his studies privately. At the time, Mussorgsky's original orchestration was considered lost, and Melngailis would premiere his own orchestration in Riga in 1924, attempting to return the work to something like what the composer intended.

So, whilst folk-music and folk-idioms play a strong role in Melngailis' songs, there are also other elements. Some songs seem to shade into a style which is not that remote from folk-influenced English song of the early 20th century (and of course Melngailis belonged to the same generation as composers such as RVW). But whilst, the folk melodies weave their way around, it is often the words that we notice. Some are traditional but many are not, and clearly for Melngailis the words and the Latvian language are important.

Hear your city afresh: a new app, Geography, encourages you to explore Truro through Graham Fitkin's music

There are plenty of apps for your phone which encourage you to explore places in different ways, but an innovative new app, Geography, allows the user to experience the city centre of Truro as an immersive musical journey of their own making with music specially created by Cornwall-based composer Graham Fitkin (you can hear him talking about the project on his website), and the app produced in association with Hall for Cornwall. 

You can either walk around the city whilst connected to the app, and the soundtrack will change accordingly, or you can save and share the music, experiencing Truro remotely through the music and each person's soundtrack will be different, bringing city exploration to life in a very different way. Fitkin has composed different tracks for different ‘pathways’  - be that roads, footpaths or pavements - through the cityscape,  so the decisions taken by each listener as they make their journey, make these musical sections combine into a linked composition.

Further information from Graham Fitkin's website.

Guildhall School of Music's Chamber Music Festival

The Guildhall School of Music and Drama's Chamber Music Festival is taking place from 8 to 10 July 2022 across a variety of venues at the Guildhall School as well as the Charterhouse Chapel. There will be performances from some of the Guildhall School's most accomplished chamber groups, student-professor collaborations featuring major performers from the chamber music faculty as well as distinguished guests.

The festival's opening performance is intriguing, the Coalitio Quartet joins forces with Levon Chilingirian for a lecture-recital, What is Functional Analysis?, looking at the musical analysis system propounded by Hans Keller. The opening concert features students and professors in music by Malcolm Arnold, Shostakovich, Coleridge Taylor and Dvorak. At Charterhouse Chapel on the Saturday, a variety of student ensembles bring together music by Britten, including his divertimenti and String Quartet No. 2, and Purcell. The evening concert features guest ensembles and chamber music fellows, the Mithras Trio, the Consone Quartet and the Fibonacci Quartet in music by Tchaikovsky, Mendelssohn and Boccherini. Sunday includes masterclasses, music by Martinu, Debussy, Silvestrov, Kapustin, Tailleferre, Beethoven and Prokofiev, and a closing concert that features music by Mozart, Brahms, Roussel and Bridge.

Full details from the Guildhall School website.

Paul Melia: Before Moons

On the release of Paul Melia's 2013 album Hold Onto The Colours the Irish Independent wrote "trying to categorise Paul Melia is a fool’s errand". Now Melia has a new album coming, Moons Over Sleep, and he has released a lyric video, Before Moons in advance, [on Spotify or YouTube]

Legacy & Hope: Pegasus Opera's events for Windrush Day 2022

Pegasus Opera, artistic director Alison Buchanan, has several events planned around Windrush Day, 22 June 2022. The company is planning a new commission, a Windrush Opera, which will tour nationwide in 2023, and on 22 June 2022 there will be an on-line round-table [on YouTube] with composer Des Oliver, librettist Pat Cumper and Alison Buchanan talking about the creative process commissioning the work.

On 25 June, Pegasus Opera is performing a free concert at Brixton Library, in association with Lambeth Libraries. Entitled Legacy and Hope the evening will feature classical singers from African and Asian heritage singing a mix of classical music, musical theatre and traditional pieces inspired by their homelands, plus the Pegasus Community Choir will be singing Des Oliver's specially commissioned Lambeth Windrush Song.

The company is also launching its Windrush Travelling Songbook, bringing together the children and elders from our Lambeth Community to celebrate the Windrush generation through education and music-making. There will be a Windrush creative summit, a concert with repertoire inspired by the Caribbean diaspora, and a series of music meets history workshops for a primary school and elders groups, culminating in a digital songbook resource to then be shared nationwide.

Full information from the Pegasus Opera website

Precious Things: a lovely survey of Bernard Hughes' recent choral music from Epiphoni Consort on Delphian

Precious Things - choral music by Bernard Hughes; The Epiphoni Consort, Tim Reader; Delphian
Reviewed 30 May 2022 (★★★★)

Intelligently written contemporary choral music in beautifully crafted performances in a recital which proves a finely satisfying showcase for Hughes' recent choral music

This new disc Precious Things from Delphian features a selection of unaccompanied choral music by Bernard Hughes, performed by The Epiphoni Consort conducted by Tim Reader. Many of the works on the disc were written for the BBC Singers, and in fact Hughes was drawn to writing for vocal ensembles after a BBC Singers workshop at the Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival back in 2002. Since then he has developed a close relationship with the BBC Singers. 

The music is generally tonal and beautifully written for voices. I know from experience that Hughes music is both satisfying and challenging to sing, as well as being rewarding for both singer and audience. The music mainly dates from the period 2014 to 2021, and the pieces show a remarkable consistency of approach from Hughes. Whilst his music is tonal, it is never obvious; there is a sense of coming to tonality sideways and he never seems to take the easy way out. This is certainly not minimal music, nor is it boringly the same; within his chosen compass, Hughes provides us with remarkable variety. 

Hearing with new ears: Italian pianist Pina Napolitano wants her Conway Hall recital Tempo e Tempi to make the music of Carter more familiar and that of Beethoven more unfamiliar

Pina Napolitano

The Italian pianist, Pina Napolitano will be in London on 24 June 2022 for her recital Tempo e Tempi at Conway Hall. The recital, somewhat postponed, pairs Beethoven piano sonatas with music by Anton Webern and Elliott Carter, whilst Pina's most recent disc on Odradek Records, Brahms the Progressive, vol 2, pairs Brahms with Webern. The pairing of classic 19th century piano repertoire with the music of the Second Viennese School and contemporary composers is something that Pina has been exploring for the last few years, and something she feels passionate about. 

She feels that by performing classical repertoire alongside modern, she can highlight the relationship and show the continuity, the things they have in common. Her performances and recordings are currently somewhat mixed up, thanks to the pandemic so the Tempo e Tempi programme with Beethoven and Elliott Carter was originally planned for 2020 the Beethoven centenary, and performing it this year also highlights 10 years since Carter's death. Whilst the Brahms the Progressive programme of Brahms and Webern concertos, with the Lithuanian National Symphony Orchestra, conductor Modestas Pitrenas, was planned for 2021 with the recording coming as volume 2, following her 2018 disc of solo piano works. 

Pina Napolitano performing in Cagliari

The title of her 24 June recital, Tempo e Tempi, comes from a poem by Eugenio Montale (1896-1981), set to music by Carter in a song cycle of 1998-99 about the way streams of time overlap, and Pina feels that this is very apt for today, as since the pandemic there was been something strange with time, a sense of time being somehow short and extended simultaneously. She hopes that juxtaposition will make the music of Carter more familiar and that of Beethoven more unfamiliar, that we will hear it with new ears. After all, Beethoven's final piano sonatas were shocking for his first listeners, they represented a break with tradition that is akin to the effect of Carter's music now. She is playing music from Carter's Two Thoughts about the Piano which dates from 2005-6, so even this piece is old-ish yet it remains shocking. Just as Beethoven's contemporaries came to accept his late style, she wants to make people unafraid of modern music.

An engaging new Carmen from Opera Holland Park that adjusts tradition rather than reinventing it, returning the work to its Opera Comique roots

Bizet: Carmen - Oliver Johnston, Kezia Bienek - Opera Holland Park, 2022 (Photo Ali Wright)

Bizet: Carmen; Kezia Bienek, Oliver Johnston, Alison Langer, Thomas Mole, director: Cecilia Stinton, conductor: Lee Reynolds; Opera Holland Park
Reviewed 2 June 2022 (★★★★½) 

A production that went back to Carmen's Opera Comique roots and successfully combined tradition and innovation, with some strong performances all round

For all its rattling good tunes and iconic plot, Bizet's Carmen is an opera that is difficult to get right on the stage. For all the Spanish setting, this was a work created by four Frenchmen, and despite Carmen's robustly independent outlook, she is a heroine created as an idea in response to the male gaze. As the programme book for Opera Holland Park's new production of the opera points out, in the work Carmen makes few personal statements, she reveals little of herself and the men in the opera paint their fantasies on her.

For the second new production of the season, Cecilia Stinton directed Bizet's Carmen at Opera Holland Park (seen 2 June 2022), with Kezia Bienek as Carmen, Oliver Johnston as Don Jose, Thomas Mole as Escamillo, Alison Langer as Micaela, Natasha Agarwal as Frasquita, Ellie Edmonds as Mercedes, Jacob Phillips as Zuniga, Jevan McAuley as Morales, Themba Mvula as La Dancaire, and Mike Bradley as Le Remendado. Lee Reynolds conducted the City of London Sinfonia with Opera Holland Park Chorus and a children's chorus arranged through Cardinal Vaughan School. Designs were by takis, lighting by Johanne Jensen, and choreography by Isabel Baquero.

The production seems to be director Cecilia Stinton's first project with a major company, she has assisted on previous Opera Holland Park productions and was the associate director for the Young Artists performances of Verdi's La Traviata in 2018, which featured Alison Langer as Violetta. Thomas Mole is also a former OHP Young Artist (from Verdi's Un ballo in maschera in 2019), whilst Jacob Philips was the Count in last year's Young Artists performances of Mozart's Le nozze di Figaro. Kezia Bienek made her debut with OHP last year as Beppe in Mascagni's L'amico Fritz.

Bizet: Carmen - Oliver Johnston, Kezia Bienek, Ellie Edmonds - Opera Holland Park, 2022 (Photo Ali Wright)

The version used was what might be called the traditional Opera Comique one, spoken dialogue (heavily trimmed, but present), no modish modern accretions to the score and a small-ish orchestra using conductor Lee Reynolds own very effective orchestral reduction. The chorus was similarly compact (20 singers). Stinton and Reynolds were true to this Opera Comique element throughout the piece, there was rarely an element of grand opera manqué about the work, and this is an advantage to an opera which can easily suffer from companies desires to over egg things. Everything here was light and tight, with a mixture of humour and seriousness.

Will Todd's Migrations reaches the stage at Welsh National Opera later this month

The premiere of Will Todd's new opera Migrations has been a long time in coming. Planned for 2020, the project is finally coming to fruition at the end of this month when Welsh National Opera gives the work's premiere at the Millennium Centre on 29 June 2022. Conducted by Matthew Kofi Waldren and directed by David Pountney, Migrations is a complex, large-scale work which looks at stories of migration by weaving together six different narratives, each told by a different librettist and each inspired by real life experiences.

Sir David Pountney worked with writers Shreya Sen Handley, Edson Burton and Miles Chambers, Eric Ngalle Charles, and Sarah Woods to create the libretto, each writer or writing partnership responsible for one strand. The migration stories told are diverse, the Pilgrims on The Mayflower settling in America, the 'first nation' Cree people, Afro-Caribbean slaves in the 18th century, the migration of birds, refugees attending an English lesson and Indian doctors in the NHS in the 1960s.

Will Todd's music will reflect this diversity of stories with a mix of musical styles to tell each story, from classical music to epic cinema and musical theatre styles and a collaboration with sitar player Jasdeep Singh Degun on the music for story of the Indian doctors in the NHS. 

But the opera is not just a selection of engaging narratives. The desire to broaden our horizons is a natural one, but for many, it is a necessity to improve on circumstances, and the stories explore how the result of such migrations often have unintended consequences.

Migrations is an ambitious, large-scale piece involving over 100 performers including Tom Randle, Meeta Raval, David Shipley and Peter Brathwaite amongst other artists, along with the Bristol-based Renewal Choir Community Chorus, a Bollywood Ensemble and a children’s chorus including members of WNO’s Youth Opera, joining the forces of Welsh National Opera’s Orchestra and Chorus. 

The opera is also part of a five-year partnership with the Welsh Refugee Council working with groups in the community through composition, music and performance projects.

After its performances in Cardiff in June and July 2022, there are further performances in Cardiff, Llandudno, Plymouth, Birmingham and Southampton in the Autumn.

Full details from the WNO website.

Emotional atmospheres: a wonderfully lucid production of Tchaikovsky's Eugene Onegin opens Opera Holland Park's 2022 season

Tchaikovsky: Eugene Onegin - Samuel Dale Johnson - Opera Holland Park, 2022 (Photo Ali Wright)

Tchaikovsky: Eugene Onegin; Samuel Dale Johnson, Anush Hovhannisyan, Thomas Atkins, Emma  Stannard, director: Julia Burbach, conductor: Lada Valešová, City of London Sinfonia; Opera Holland Park

An engaging young cast in a wonderfully lucid account of Tchaikovky's lyric scenes that used the stage to its utmost and illuminated both characters' thoughts and actions 

The 2022 Opera Holland Park season opened with a production of Eugene Onegin originally scheduled for 2020. Then, the Young Artist performance was due to be conducted by Lada Valešová, but since that cancellation she showed her conducting chops at the 2021 Young Artist performance of Mozart's Le nozze di Figaro [see my review] as well as conducting Eugene Onegin in West Green House Opera's 2021 season [see my interview with Lada]. Julia Burbach, who directed Eugene Onegin, was in charge of last year's production of Mascagni's L'amico Fritz [see my review], as well as Wagner's The Valkyrie at the 2021 Grimeborn Festival [see my review], both of these productions created in response to the prevailing pandemic [see my interview with Julia]. So, this new production has quite a long history, but Burbach and Valešová's Lucid account of the work certainly stood up on its own terms, from the first notes were were drawn into the story.

We caught the opening night of Opera Holland Park's season, 31 May 2022, when Julia Burbach's new production of Tchaikovsky's Eugene Onegin featured Samuel Dale Johnson as Onegin, Anush Hovhannisyan as Tatyana and Thomas Atkins as Lensky and Emma Stannard as Olga, with Amanda Roocroft, Kathleen Wilkinson and Matthew Stiff. Lada Valešová conducted the City of London Sinfonia.  Designs were by takis, lighting by Robert Price and choreography by Jo Meredith.

Tchaikovsky: Eugene Onegin - Anush Hovhannisyan, Samuel Dale Johnson - Opera Holland Park, 2022 (Photo Ali Wright)

The casting meant that the four protagonists were sung by singers young enough to be believable as the young people of the tale; it is important to remember that Onegin and Tatyana, Lensky and Olga are young, their responses heightened and over intense, and the five-year gap between the fifth and seventh scene makes an important point.

Real music-making of the highest standards: the Swiss youth orchestra "il mosaico" is caught on tour in Italy by composer Edward Lambert

Jugendorchester Il Mosaico

Beethoven: Egmont Overture, Brahms' Piano Concerto No 2; Liu Pinxin, Jugendorchester Il Mosaico, Hermann Ostendarp; Auditorium Sant’Agostino, Cortona, Italy

Reviewed 28 May 2022, by Edward Lambert

Composer Edward Lambert catches the Swiss youth orchestra, il mosaico, on tour in Italy with some impressive music making from the young players

A shout out to the Youth Orchestra "il mosaico” from the St. Gallen area of Switzerland. It’s been in existence for many years and by 2000 it was acknowledged as the leading youth symphony orchestra in the country. I caught them at a recent concert in Cortona, Italy (28 May 2022) in the beautiful surroundings of the deconsecrated church of Sant’Agostino as part of an Italian tour that had been arranged to replace one to Ukraine. 

A little video to celebrate the completion of Dario Salvi and my new operetta, Ademdai - or The Necessary and the Superfluous

Dario Salvi and I have finished the first draft of our new operetta, Ademdai - or the Necessary and the Superfluous, and to celebrate Dario has produced this fun little video [on YouTube], pairing music from the beginning of the opera (in a computer synthesisation) with a charming old cartoon. Our story is based on one from The Thousand and One Nights, based on a story by the Austrian dramatist Ignaz Castelli (1781-1862).

Our operetta is in two acts with five solo roles (Scheherazade - spoken, Ademdai - tenor, Caliph - baritone, Jaffar - bass-baritone, Naima - soprano), chorus and orchestra and follows the adventures of our hero Ademdai, a poor young man from  Baghdad who wishes nothing more than what is essential for his simple life!

The score includes pantomime, melodrama, narration and dance episodes alongside songs and ensembles, with plenty of good tunes. Find out more on my website.

Premiered in Norwich in 1936, the Norfolk & Norwich Festival give a celebratory performance of Vaughan Williams' Five Tudor Portraits

Vaughan Williams in the 1930s

Mozart: Divertimento in D major, K.136; Vaughan Williams: Norfolk Rhapsody No.1; Five Tudor Portraits; Rebecca Afonwy-Jones, Dominic Sedgwick, Britten Sinfonia, Clio Gould, Norwich Philharmonic Chorus, William Vann; Norfolk & Norwich Festival at St Andrew's Hall
Reviewed 29 May 2022 by Tony Cooper

The Norfolk & Norwich Festival not only celebrated its 250th anniversary this year but also marked the 150th anniversary of Ralph Vaughan Williams, so closely involved with the festival in the 1930s, with a rare performance of his Five Tudor Portraits. 

It was celebration time throughout this year’s Norfolk & Norwich Festival on its 250th anniversary but the final concert marking Ralph Vaughan Williams’ 150th anniversary featuring a performance of the composer’s Five Tudor Portraits by the Norwich Philharmonic Chorus and Britten Sinfonia, conducted by William Vann with soloists Rebecca Afonwy-Jones and Dominic Sedgwick, put the icing on the cake. The performance was truly favoured by the packed house in St Andrew’s Hall, ‘home’ to the festival since its founding as a Triennial event in 1824. 

However, the festival’s roots can be traced back to the late 18th century when in 1772 (listed as such in the Oxford Dictionary of Music) a series of concerts were held on an ad hoc basis in St Andrew’s Hall while an annual performance of an oratorio took place in Norwich Cathedral. 

Pairing the Britten Sinfonia with the Norwich Philharmonic Chorus, so well drilled by David Dunnett, Norwich Cathedral’s organist, proved a good call as they delivered a masterful reading of Five Tudor Portraits set to a text by Tudor poet, John Skelton, known as a ‘Skeltonic line’, embodying a short erratic rhyming verse probably descending from medieval Latin rhyming prose. 

By the way, Skelton, tutor to Prince Henry, afterwards King Henry VIII, was a ‘local’ born around 1460 probably in Diss in the last decade of the 15th century. He was appointed Rector of St Mary the Virgin in this important south Norfolk town in 1504 preaching the gospel here until his death in 1529. Highly regarded by Caxton he found great favour with Erasmus, too, but critical reception places him firmly in the ‘rougher foothills’ of English poetry. But I’m not so sure about that. His text for Five Tudor Portraits certainly found favour with me. 

A forgotten voice from an earlier era: Mr Onion's Serenade - Mandolin Music of the Edwardian Era

Mr Onion's Serenade - Mandolin Music of the Edwardian era: Matt Norman
Reviewed 23 May 2022

A delightful disc where mandolin-player Matt Norman recreates the forgotten sound of the Edwardian era with music for the mandolin ensemble

The mandolin was created in Naples in the early eighteenth century and had a large surge in popularity, particularly amongst the French aristocracy, but by the end of the century it had a rapid decline matching that of the aristocracy. But the instrument had a second wind, from the 1880s to the First World War, when there were mandolin orchestras all over Europe, the USA and Japan. A huge amount of music was written for these ensembles, and most was subsequently lost and forgotten.

This charming new disc from mandolin player Matt Norman, Mr Onion's Serenade, revisits much of the forgotten late 19th and early 20th century repertoire for mandolin ensemble with composers such as Angelo Ciglia, Mario Maciocchi, Alfonso Cipollone, Will D Moyer, Raffaele Calace, Giuseppe Sgallari, Emile Grimshaw, Luigi Canora, Samuel Siegel and Ant H Claassens. Many are Italian but there are two Americans and one Englishman, which indicates something of the spread of enthusiasm for the instrument in the Edwardian period.

Roland Barthes, Monteverdi and a new score by Pippa Murphy: the Dunedin Consort's first cross-arts project, A Lover's Discourse

A Lover's Discourse - The Dunedin Consort (Photo Arms & Legs)

Like many ensembles, the Dunedin Consort released several filmed, on-line events during the last two years when public concerts were more problematic. Now, for their latest project the ensemble is looking to fully integrate film within the performance itself. A Lover's Discourse, the Dunedin Consort's first cross-artform collaboration, pairs modern translations of Roland Barthes' A Lover’s Discourse with madrigals by Monteverdi, Gesualdo and Marenzio, a new score by composer & sound designer Pippa Murphy and a specially commissioned film shot in locations across Edinburgh by the Leith based production studio Arms & Legs.

Directed by tenor Nicholas Mulroy, the Dunedin Consort will present A Lover's Discourse in live performances at Assembly Roxy, Edinburgh (31 May 2022) and Platform, Glasgow (1 June), and a free to view screening online.

Full details from the Dunedin Consort website.

Two weeks of fine music in historic venues: Cambridge Summer Music 2022

Cambridge Summer Music, artistic director David Hill, runs from 15 to 31 July 2022, presenting 23 concerts in and around Cambridge, including  college chapels, city churches, concert halls and the Cambridge University Botanic Garden.

The festival opens on 15 July when Orlando Jopling's Wild Arts Ensemble presents their new production of Mozart's Cosi fan Tutte in the gardens of Childerley Hall in West Drayton. Other large-scale events include Mendelssohn's Elijah in Ely Cathedral with 200 young singers from Gabrieli Roar plus Gabrieli Consort & Players, conductor Paul McCreesh with soloists Francesca Chienjina, Helen Charlston, Andrew Staples, and Morgan Pearse. The festival concludes on 31 July with Aurora Orchestra performing Beethoven's Symphony No. 5 from memory.

Tenor Robert Murray joins violinist Benjamin Baker and the Echea Quartet for RVW's On Wenlock Edge and The Lark Ascending, plus songs by Gurney and Elgar's Violin Sonata. Baritone Marcus Farnsworth and pianist James Cheung takes us to Vienna with songs by Gustav and Alma Mahler, Schoenberg and Beethoven.

Visitors to the festival include pianist Imogen Cooper in Schubert and Ravel, pianist Artur Pizarro in Albeniz's Iberia, accordionist Ryan Corbett, cellist Guy Johnston and pianist Tom Poster in Beethoven, Poulenc and Brahms, violinist Tai Murray and pianist Martin Roscoe in Clara & Robert Schumann, trumpeter Crispian Steele-Perkins and organist David Hill, the Mithras Trio in Beethoven, Faure and Lili Boulanger, horn player Alec Frank Gemmill and the Perks Ensemble in music for horn and quartet including Gemmill's arrangement of Dvorak's String Quintet in E flat, Connaught Brass, and the Wigmore Soloists in Beethoven's Septet and Schubert's Octet.

The festival's outdoor concerts at the Botanic Gardens, Sounds Green, return every Wednesday evening throughout July with a wide variety of performers.

Full details from the festival website

What a lovely night: an evening inspired by Jenny Lind's charity concerts in Norwich

Daguerrotype of Jenny Lind from 1850
around the time she sang in Norwich

Fairytales and Nightingales - Robert Schumann, Felix Mendelssohn, Clara Schumann, Fanny Mendelssohn, Adolf Fredrik Lindblad, Brahms, Grieg, Gounod, Haydn Wood; Carolyn Sampson, Simon Crawford-Philips, Lawrence Power; Norfolk & Norwich Festival at St Andrew's Hall
Reviewed 23 May 2022 by Tony Cooper

The well-loved Swedish opera singer, Jenny Lind gave a series of concerts in St Andrew’s Hall, Norwich, to raise money for an infirmary for sick children that opened in the city in April 1854. For the 2022 Norfolk & Norwich Festival, soprano Carolyn Sampson, pianist Simon Crawford-Philips and violinist Lawrence Power performed a programme inspired by Jenny Lind.

An artist and humanitarian of distinction Jenny Lind (affectionally known as the ‘Swedish Nightingale’) enjoyed a special relationship with the citizens of Norwich which resonates to this very day thanks to her generosity and goodwill through the concerts she willingly gave at St Andrew’s Hall, Norwich, to raise funds for an infirmary for sick children in the city. Norwich, incidentally, was only the second city in the realm to have such a hospital. London’s Great Ormond Street Hospital for Children opened two years earlier.  

Enjoyment and discovery: Paul McCreesh and Gabrieli Consort & Players in Bach's Ascension Oratorio

Bach: Mass in A, Ascension Oratorio; Mary Bevan, Tim Mead, Thomas Walker, Malachy Frame, Gabrieli Consort & Players, Paul McCreesh; Wigmore Hall
Reviewed 27 May 2022 (★★★★★)

A wonderful evening of rarer Bach for the Feast of the Ascension, brimming with imagination and in terrific performances

For their last Wigmore Hall concert this season (27 May 2022), Paul McCreesh and Gabrieli Consort & Players performed a programme of Bach suitable for the season, the Feast of the Ascension (which was on 26 May 2022). With soprano Mary Bevan, counter-tenor Tim Mead, tenor Thomas Walker, and baritone Malachy Frame with an instrumental ensemble of 18 led by violinist Catherine Martin, they performed Bach's Sinfonia from Wir danken dir, Gott, wir danken dir BWV 29, Mass in A BWV 234, Sinfonia in D BWV 1045 and Lobet Gott in seinen Reichen BWV 11 'Ascension Oratorio'.

Whilst the music technically dates from the 1730s and 1740s, one of the fascinating things about the pieces was the way Bach had recycled music from earlier (often occasional) works, and in the case of the counter-tenor aria from the Ascension Oratorio would reuse them again as he based the Agnus Dei from the Mass in B minor on the aria.

Adventurous and exciting: Sō Percussion and Caroline Shaw at the Norfolk & Norwich Festival

So Percussion, Caroline Shaw (Photo Shervin Lainez)

Angelica Negron: Gone, Go Back, Bryce Dessner: Music for Wood and Strings Caroline Shaw: Let the Soil Play its Simple Part; Sō Percussion, Caroline Shaw; St Andrew’s Hall, Norfolk & Norwich Festival.
Reviewed, 18 May 2022 by Tony Cooper

Sō Percussion, a percussion-based music group from Brooklyn, New York, deployed a deep kit of rhythmic tools for a trio of new and exciting works teaming up with fellow American, Pulitzer Prize composer, Caroline Shaw

Deploying a vast kit of rhythmic tools and joined in the second half by Caroline Shaw, Sō Percussion - a virtuoso four-man percussion chamber group from Brooklyn, New York - presented a trio of new works by Angelica Negron, Bryce Dessner and Caroline Shaw to an adventurous and appreciative but, nonetheless, curious audience at the Norfolk & Norwich Festival on 18 May 2022.

A winner all the way, it seems, North Carolina-born composer/violinist/singer, Caroline Shaw, was the youngest recipient of the Pulitzer Prize for Music in 2013 for her a-cappella piece Partita for 8 Voices and was duly awarded the Grammy Award for Best Contemporary Classical Composition in 2017 for Narrow Sea. A calming and tranquil-sounding piece, it drew inspiration from shifting tides and centuries-old hymns underlying the pain and unease of feeling adrift in the universe.

Time corkscrews inwards: Tom Coult on clocks, time & humanity in Alice Birch & his opera Violet

Tom Coult: Violet in rehearsal with Frances Gregory, Anna Dennis, Richard Burkhard (Photo Patrick Young / Britten Pears Arts) 

To have the premiere cancelled is not the best way to launch your first opera, but that happened to Tom Coult and Alice Birch's opera Violet thanks to the recent pandemic. Thankfully, things were rescheduled and Violet, with music by Tom Coult and text by Alice Birch, is being premiered at the Aldeburgh Festival on 3 June 2022, with further performances in Aldeburgh and elsewhere [see Tom's website]. Tom is currently resident composer with the BBC Philharmonic, whilst Alice is an acclaimed playwright known for her powerful female-centred writing (her screenwriting has included the recent film adaptation of the Graham Swift novel Mothering Sunday and her play [Blank] premiered at the Donmar Warehouse in 2019). Violet has an intriguing premise; the heroine, Violet, is stuck in a stultifying marriage when time starts to quicken and each day is an hour shorter. I recently met up with Tom, during a break in rehearsals, to find out more.

Having decided 'let's make an opera' there was a question of now what?

Writing an opera has always been an aspiration for Tom. He is from a family of theatre people and has always enjoyed reading plays, and he always wanted to find something where he could get really excited by the words and then set them to music. He first met Alice in 2014 and she sent him some of her plays, then he saw her play Revolt. She said. Revolt again (which premiered at the Royal Shakespeare Company as a part of the Midsummer Mischief Festival in June 2014) and was blown away. They both became excited by the idea of creating an opera, but having decided 'let's make an opera' there was a question of now what?

Tom Coult (Photo Tim Lutton)

Min-Jung Kym's Concert for Ukraine

Today (27 May 2022), pianist Min-Jung Kym is releasing a new digital-only charity album on Signum Classics to raise money for the Foundation of France’s Ukraine fund. The album features a live recording of Kym’s Concert for Ukraine which took place in Paris last month, which also raised money for the fund. All revenues from the recording will be donated directly to the Foundation

The programme constitutes a journey across Europe through Germany, Poland and France with music by Bach, Chopin, Schumann and Brahms, before arriving in Ukraine with Mussorgsky’s Great Gate of Kiev from Pictures at an Exhibition.

 

Streaming details - Link Tree

Young Composers and Young Concert Artists

Adam Possener winner of 19 to 25 years category NCEM Young Composers Award for 2022

The final of the 15th National Centre for Early Music Young Composers Award took place last week at the National Centre for Early Music (NCEM) in York, whilst the Young Classical Artists Trust (YCAT) held its first public auditions for two years.

The NCEM Young Composers Award for 2022, presented in partnership with BBC Radio 3, was live-streamed on 19 May 2022. The winner in the 19 to 25 years category was Adam Possener with 52°N 20.5° E and the 18 years and under category winner was Christopher Churcher with Arborescent.

Compositions by the young eight finalists at the Awards were played by former BBC Radio 3 New Generation Artists Consone Quartet – who specialise in performances with period instruments using gut strings. The programme for the concert also included String Quartet in D, op 71 no.2 by Franz Josef Haydn. 

Christopher Churcher’s Arborescent and Adam Possener’s 52°N 20.5° E will be premiered by the Consone Quartet at Stour Music festival on Friday 24 June 2022 and recorded for broadcast on BBC Radio 3's Early Music Show.

Full details from the Young Composers Award website

The Young Classical Artists Trust (YCAT) held its first live public auditions finals for two years at Wigmore Hall on 19 May 2022. Eight finalists had been chosen from over 150 applicants and the winner was Israeli clarinet player Jonathan Leibovitz, who is currently completing his studies at the Music Academy in Basel with François Benda, and who will now join the YCAT roster.

Jonathan Leibovitz

Full details from the YCAT website.

Cruel Ecstasy: Exaudi in Gesualdo at Norfolk & Norwich Festival

Carlo Gesualdo

Carlo Gesualdo: Madrigals from Books V and VI, Sylvia Lim, Joanna Ward; Exaudi, James Weeks; Norfolk & Norwich Festival at St Andrew's Hall
Reviewed 22 May 2022 by Tony Cooper

Gesualdo madrigals, punctuated by the two fulfilling contemporary works by Sylvia Lim and Joanna Ward, made a perfect programme for Exaudi's Norwich début

Exaudi Vocal Ensemble has been exploring the enigmatic and challenging madrigals of Carlo Gesualdo, Prince of Venosa, Count of Conza, for over a decade and, not surprisingly, their 2019 album Gesualdo: Madrigali received rave reviews and awards from around the world for the ‘emotional wisdom and beauty’ of their performance. 

The emotional wisdom and beauty of their performance for this Norfolk & Norwich Festival concert shone through, too, featuring as it did a host of well-loved madrigals from Gesualdo’s Fifth and Sixth Books published in 1611. Basically, they can be seen as musical ‘twins’ concluding with a collection of madrigals by a composer whose boundless invention and creativity was unrestrained by his employer’s demands or to the constraints of courtly convention. In these respective Books, Gesualdo returns to such topical themes as love and rejection, joy and sorrow, life and death, thus creating music which has the power to surprise and enthral the listener.

Musical treats: Richard Jones' production of Saint-Saens' Samson et Dalila fails to convince, but there is much to listen to

Saint-Saens: Samson et Dalila - Royal Opera House (Photo ROH / Clive Barda)

Saint-Saens: Samson et Dalila: Elīna Garanča, SeokJong Baek, Łukasz Goliński, director Richard Jones, conductor Antonio Pappano; Royal Opera House

Reviewed 26 May 2022, (★★★★)

Well worth experiencing for fine performances from the principals, Covent Garden's new production ultimately fails to convince dramatically

The Royal Opera House's decision to replace its 1981 production of Saint-Saens' Samson et Dalila seems somewhat strange given that production's iconic designs by Sir Sidney Nolan. But offering the new production to Richard Jones might seem an interesting way of providing a new slant on Saint-Saens' problematic work. Full of good tunes and moments of drama, the work is extremely static at times and if you don't take the plot at face value then it seems to offer directors few opportunities for imaginative subtext, at least modern productions of the work seem to struggle. Add to this, the fact that Nicky Spence had to withdraw from the production following his accident earlier this year, and you have a number of factors that lent interest to the new production's debut.

Saint-Saens: Samson et Dalila
Elīna Garanča, SeokJong Baek
Royal Opera House (Photo ROH / Clive Barda)

Saint-Saens' Samson et Dalila opened at the Royal Opera House last night (26 May 2022) directed by Richard Jones and conducted by Antonio Pappano, with Elīna Garanča as Dalila, SeokJong Baek as Samson, and Łukasz Goliński as the High Priest. Sets were by Hyemi Shin and costumes were by Nicky Gillibrand, lighting by Andreas Fuchs and choreography by Lucy Burge.

Designs were clean, spare and abstract so that Hyemi Shin's sets created some intriguing shapes. We were in some sort of totalitarian regime. Nothing was specific, though the Hebrews were clearly a Jewish community in the 20th century and during the prelude, we saw orange clad soldiers terrorising the Hebrew people. This modernisation apart, Jones has kept to the opera's plot but with a couple of extra twists to the dramaturgy. In Act One, Dalila's appearance was alone, not with a chorus of girls (this music is sung by the Hebrew women making offerings of thanks to Samson) and she did a seductive solo, and the production rather worked at setting Dalila apart from the Philistines. Her behaviour in Act Two was partly explained by having the High Priest (here a rather sinister General), show her Abimelech's body whilst at the end of that act, Samson's final cry was not in response to having his hair cut but to seeing the body of his beloved Rabbi (the Old Hebrew in the original).

This all worked and by the interval (after Act Two), thanks to some fine performances, we were hooked and intrigued. Jones' Big Idea for Act Three was to re-run the staging of Act One but with roles reversed and gaudier costumes; the opening scene with Samson mirrored the High Priest's scene, then the lead in to the Bacchanal was the same as Dalila's scene in Act One except this time Dalila was having offerings made to her, and the 'seductive' dance was done by the male dancers and then the whole chorus. At this point, the production lost me. 

Intensely evocative: Arun Ghosh's spiritual jazz re-imagining of St Francis of Assisi's The Canticle of the Sun premieres in Norwich

Arun Ghosh: The Canticle of the Sun; Arun Ghosh, Irini Arabatzi, Seaming To, Camilla George, Ruth Goller, Sarathy Korwar, Huw Bennett, Mieko Shimizu; St Peter Mancroft Church, Norfolk & Norwich Festival
Reviewed, 21 May 2022 by Tony Cooper

The audience didn't want the show to end: Arun Ghosh's eclectic re-imagining of St Francis' sublime and mystical prayer

The splendid 15th-century church of St Peter Mancroft nestling by the side of Norwich’s centuries-old marketplace, proved a perfect setting for Arun Ghosh’s new work, The Canticle of the Sun, a spiritual jazz re-imagining of St Francis of Assisi’s devout and mystical prayer, at the Norfolk & Norwich Festival on 21 May 2022.

Award-winning British-Asian clarinettist, composer, music educator, Arun Ghosh (who grew up in Bolton to first-generation Indian parents) is all over the show when it comes to musical styles as he incorporates in his work a wide range of musical genres from jazz, Indian and western classical to hip-hop, rock and experimental sounds.

His latest work, The Canticle of the Sun (co-commissioned by Sound UK and Norfolk & Norwich Festival) proved an eclectic and electric-driven jazz setting of St Francis of Assisi’s sublime and mystical prayer dating from the 13th century telling of the heavens filled with the glory of God and all creation is shouting for joy!