Recent CD Reviews

My review of the excellent new Judith Bingham disc from Naxos is here, on MusicWeb International.
Judith Bingham has not always been well represented on disc and it is good to hear such a generous selection of her choral music in these fine performances. ...

And my review of Alan Curtis's reconstruction of Handel's Fernando, Re di Castiglia, (the original version of Sosarme) is here, also on MusicWeb International.
If you are looking for a disc of perfect Handel singing, then look elsewhere, but if you want a highly dramatic presentation of one of Handel's more underrated operas then look no further. ...

Edington Festival

The programme for this year's Edington Festival has been published, it is here. As ever Julian Thomas has organised a tempting array of music ranging from Palestrina's Missa Tu Es Petrus to Arvo Part's Magnificat. The more contemporary side is ranges from Part and MacMillan to Colin Mawby, Matthew Martin, Grayston Ives and Sigurbjornsson. This latter is an Icelandic composer and I have a treasured recording of his Skalholt Mass. Late Romantics get a good look-in with music by Bairstow, Stanford, Villette and Howells.

I'm not sure if we are going this year, logistics, holidays and a performance of St. Matthew Passion at Glyndebourne mean that it is difficult. But you never know, the programme is very tempting.

Review of Tridentine mass

This is a rather belated post. Here is an amusing review of last August's Tridentine Mass at St. Mary's Roman Catholic Church where I sing in the Latin Mass Choir. I should point out that the review is under the misapprehension that the mass was organised by the Latin Mass Society when it was actually organised by congregation members of St. Mary.

Recent CD Review

My review of the pasticcio oratorio Tobit, by Handel and Smith is here, on MusicWeb International.
Think of this as a recital disc. Just put it on and enjoy some of Handel’s finest music in attractive performances. ...

Rostropovitch

I sang under Rostropovitch a couple of times in the 1980's, most notably when he conducted Britten's War Requiem at the Royal Festival Hall. I was in the London Philharmonic Choir at the time and it was interesting how different conductors dealt with the amateur chorus. Some virtually ignored us, Rostropovitch told funny stories, especially notable ones were relating incidents in his early tours of the West during the height of the cold war. His choral rehearsals seemed to have a lot of talking in them but he enthused the choir and got a good performance out of them.

He had a very good ear. I remember one passage in the brass which simply sounded like a vague flourish. Rostropovich insisted on taking it apart, player by player and when re-assembled it was no longer vague, but a precise fanfare emerged; quite remarkable. Whether it endeared him to the brass players or not, I don't know.

The soprano at the performance was, of course, Vishnevskaya, then getting towards the end of her career. Before the first rehearsal she was sitting at the piano, amidst all the chaos of chorus and orchestra assembling, playing odd notes and doing vocalises to some remarkable Russian sounding vowels - nothing Italianate there!

For the performance, Rostropovich had a copy of Singer Sargent's Gassed. I'm not sure how many of the audience could really make out the picture, but it was a remarkable attempt to bring visual imagery to the work.

Recent CD Review

My review of the Somm disc of Beecham conducting Wagner, with Kirsten Flagstad, is here on MusicWeb International.
SOMM give us, in the best possible condition, some of Sir Thomas Beecham’s last Wagner performances. ...

Recent CD Review

My review of the new Bach St. Matthew Passion from Naxos is here on MusicWeb International.
A well modulated and mellifluous but dramatically involving Evangelist but a performance overall that takes few risks. ...

Review!

I'm actually on holiday - normal posts resume next week. In the meanwhile, the FifteenB consort concert at All Saints Margaret St. in March, has just been reviewed by Roderick Dunnett, the review is here on Music and Vision.

Ballet Triple Bill

Last night we went to the new triple bill at the Royal Ballet. The opening work was Kurt Weill's Seven Deadly Sins with new choreography by Will Tuckett. The singing role of Anna was performed by Martha Wainwright; she was miked and sang the Auden/Kalman translation. Her diction was pretty good so we could follow things clearly (no surtitles!). The dancing Anna was Zenaida Yanowsky.

Tuckett and his designer Lez Brotherston set the piece in the sixties (beehive hair do's for the women). Tuckett presents the story quite straightforwardly, creating an involving narrative. There were moments when his use of standard ballet language seemed a little at odds with the music. There were some fine, sexy performances from some of the men.

The quartet of singers stood on a walkway above the stage, viewing the proceedings and adding their comments. The singers were Roderick Earle, Paul Goodwin-Groen, Philip O'Brien, Christopher Steele. They sounded good but their diction was a little occluded at times, perhaps because of their placing. Either Goodwin-Groen was chosen partly for his extreme height, or he was on stilts, but Mother was by far the tallest person on stage!

This was followed by Glen Tetley's Pierrot Lunaire, with Linda Hurst performing the solo vocal line. This was the first time I'd seen the ballet and heard the music live. I found Tetley's dance work entertaining and involving and rather poignant, with superb performances from Alexander Zaitsev (Pierrot), Mara Galeazzi (Columbine) and Edward Watson (Brighella). The costumes, by Rouben Ter-Arutunian, included some superb ones for Columbine.

For some strange, but presumably logical reason, Martin Yates conducted the Seven Deadly Sins, and Richard Bernas conducted the remaining works. It cannot be easy doing concert works like the Schoenberg and the Ravel as ballet scores, but Bernas did very well.

Then finally, La Fin du Jour, MacMillan's ballet to Ravel's Piano Concerto in G (with beteran Royal Ballet pianist Philip Gammon giving a superb account of the solo role). MacMillan's quirkly 30's inspired ballet has some difficult choreography and in the first 2 movements the dancers, particularly the soloists, were unable to make light of it. Thus instead of the piece being free, light and jazzy, it had moments which were too careful and studied. Let us hope that this performance heralds its return to the repertoire so that the dancers can bed it in properly. The final, Fred and Ginger type dance seemed to fit the dancers better and had the requisite fun and lightness.

The final

Review of Solomon

The closing concert of this year's London Handel Festival was a performance of Solomon. Written in 1748, Solomon is the first in the final sequence of great oratorios Solomon, Susanna, Theodora, Jephtha.

Solomon and Susanna were written almost simultaneously and probably had the same, unknown, librettist. Rather than any sort of dramatic plot, the oratorio presents a series of episodes from Solomon's reign. The work is quite expansive in the forces used, many of the choruses are for double choir, and the orchestra includes oboes and flutes at times playing simultaneously, bassoons, horns, trumpets and timpani. This expansiveness is not just a result of some sort of economic ease, Susanna uses smaller forces; thus implying that Handel wanted the work to be expansive.

The festival performs in St. George's Church, Hanover Square which was Handel's parish church. But, of course, the oratorios were not written for church performance, but for Handel's theatre. And the playing space at St. Georges is highly restrictive. The performance used a choir of 18 hard-working singers and an orchestra with a mere 13 strings. The singers and musicians in the London Handel Chorus and Orchestra are both extremely hard-working and very talented. So, some moments of raw, exposed string tone apart, the results were extremely creditable. But there is no doubt that we were hearing a performance with slightly too few forces.

Space also meant that the soloists were rather crammed in. Though the decision to place Nathan Vale (singing the High Priest, Zadok) in the pulpit was an imaginative one.

Solomon was written for a female contralto. Though Handel had written a number of major tenor parts in his oratorios, he seems to have though of Solomon as a young, romantic hero in operatic terms and so wrote for him in the vocal range associated with this type of role in Italian opera.

The role seems to suit the counter-tenor voice, but this is one area where I have usually preferred female contraltos. The planned singer, Iestyn Davies, was ill so we were lucky to have Christopher Ainslie stand in for him. Ainslie sang the title role in Poro which was presented earlier in the festival at the Britten Theatre. He had also just gained second place in the Handel Singing Competition held in the church 3 days earlier.

Ainslie's Solomon was beautifully toned, well supported and nicely phrased. Ainslie is a very musical singer. I would have like more of a sense of drama and more of a feeling of letting go at the crucial moments, but given the last-minute nature of his substitution we must wait for a further opportunity to hear what he can do in this role. But there is no sense of short change, Ainslie's was a highly effective and affecting performance.

In Act 1, his Queen was Mona Julsrud. Julsrud is a stylish Handelian singer, but I did find that there were moments of hardness of tone in her voice. More worryingly, I did not find here contributions to the end of Act 1 either sexy or erotic. Solomon was a theatre piece and the close of the first act is about the joys of married love; the libretto makes it perfectly clear what Solomon and his Queen get up to. Unfortunately Ainslie and Julsrud sounded a little to chaste.

They were well supported by the choir who turned in a beautiful account of the nightingale chorus, complete with antiphonal flute players in the balcony.

In Act 2, Julsrud and soprano Elisabeth Atherton were the 2 Harlots. This seems to be the new orthodoxy with regard to casting this piece, using just 2 sopranos and having the 2nd soprano play the Queen of Sheba and the mezzo-soprano Harlot. Julsrud and Atherton were superb as the Harlots and here we got some real drama. Ainslie's understated performance worked well as Solomon's reserve when in judgement. Atherton was also a lovely Queen of Sheba in Act 3.

Nathan Vale was a fine Zadok, producing some lovely tone and very fine passage work. Zadok's contributions are not strictly dramatic, but they are very fine arias so it was lovely to hear them all.

The part of the Levite is rather less involving; Njal Sparbo did what he could and contributed some very imaginative and elaborate ornaments, but he did have a tendency to bluster.

The choir worked overtime and sang superbly. Inevitably there were moments when one would have liked more singers, but the results were always focussed and clear. The tone rarely felt pressed in the bigger choruses and the smaller numbers brought a fine sense of crisp ensemble.

The orchestra were similarly impressive. Director Lawrence Cummings balanced his forces well and the great orchestral moments came over as expected.

All in all, a highly involving performance that more than made up for the uncomfortable seats and bad sight-lines that St. George's provides.

Gleanings from this month's Opera magazine:

There is an interview with Ian Bostridge, centred on his Britten roles because he's doing Aschenbach with ENO. Its curious that interviews rarely mention, or skate round, the fact that Bostridge's distinctive physique (very tall and very thin) combined with his perceived physical fragility (a reputation for cancelling due to illness) mean that there is an otherworldliness about his persona which works well in some roles. I imagine Aschenbach will be one of them, but frankly I can't imagine him as Essex and Bostridge says in the interview that regarding Peter Grimes 'I go on and off that one'.

There's also an interesting interview with Harry Bickett, one of those big-house friendly Baroque conductors who crop up in all sorts of place - though of course there is a lot more to him than that. He evidently got his big break at Munich when Mackerras famously objected to the production, I think it was one of the wackier Richard Jones ones.

I'm going to skip over the review of Norman Lebrecht's obituary to the classical record industry. But don't miss the obituary to Julian Budden, even though it leaves you doing a lot of reading between the lines.

Meanwhile in Italy, they've been doing Candide in Naples, the production looks fabulous but I'm still suffering the aftershock of the Carsen version from Paris. And in Savona, Anna Caterina Antonacci was doing her first Charlotte, at the Teatro Chiabrera. An institution which gives young artists important opportunities and manages to retain them as they get more well known.

Erica Jeal was in Kazan (!) for a new production of Il Trovatore which is shortly going to be touring (the Netherlands). It definitely sounds something worth seeking out and may be a cut above the usual Eastern European touring production.

Barcelona saw the premiere of Peter Konwitschny's Don Carlos in French - now I definitely do wish I'd been there for that. Robert Carsen's Carmelites has made it to Chicago. We saw the production in Amsterdam, with Susan Chilcott; I found it shattering, particularly the ending though D. was less convinced.

Transferring David Fielding's distinctive view of Strauss Egyptian Helen from Garsington to the Met does not seem to have worked very well. Fielding's ironic whimsy does not seem to have transferred to the larger stage. Also in New York, the Basil Hood/Arthur Sullivan Rose of Persia made a very rare outing; Martin Yates was sufficiently impressed as to hope for a UK production some time - he suggested that the ENO's Kismet sets could perhaps do double duty. Now there's an idea.

Back in the UK, Hugh Canning found Francisco Negrin's production of Orlando at Covent Garden an essentially facetious, patronizing response to the magic of Handel's theatre. Amazing how different people can have such varied responses to the same piece of theatre, but than that's the magic of it I suppose. Still, we both agree on the amazing Sir Charles Mackerras.

The London Sinfonietta have been touring Benedict Mason's ChaplinOperas, amazing short theatre pieces which play as accompaniment to Chaplin Films. Annoyingly I managed to miss it. The Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment have just done Donizetti's Imelda di Lambertazzi, which was recorded for Opera Rara - their first such collaboration. And the review of Opera Rara's latest offering, Donizetti's Dom Sebastian makes me want to dash out and buy it.

Recent CD Review

My review of the new disc of Stephen Goss's music is here, on Music Web International.
Contemporary music which manages to be approachable but does not talk down to its listeners. Supported by a fine group of performers. ...

What I've been listening to

My most recent reviewer's log has been posted on Music Web International, here.

Review of Ravel/Puccini double bill

My review of the Royal Opera's Ravel/Puccini double bill is here, on Music and Vision.

Catch-up

I've spent the last 2 days at All Saints Church, East Finchley, doing recording sessions for a new disc of my music. In 4 sessions over 2 days we managed to record The Testament of Dr. Cranmer, a group of motets plus some works for tenor and string orchestra including by Blake setting What is Man?. So naturally, I've not had time to devote attention to many other things.

On Sunday we went to Sadlers Wells to see Akram Khan and Sylvie Guillem's programme. I found much of it disappointing and not a little pretentious. I could have done without the pseudo ad-libs where Guillem and Khan talked to the audience. And some of the early choreography was a little un-inspiring. It was only towards the end, when Khan and Guillem did a series of duets that things took off. I enjoyed the music, but can't comment much on it as there was no actual music list so I have no idea what I was listening to at any one time. The programme lasted 75 minutes and was frankly quite long enough.

Tomorrow we are off to hear Solomon at the London Handel Festival and then on Friday its the new triple bill by the Royal Ballet with Will Tuckett's Seven Deadly Sins, with Martha Wainwright singing - can't wait.

Review of Ravel/Puccini double bill

My review of the Ravel/Puccini double bill at Covent Garden is here, on Music and Vision.

Recent CD Review

My review of Veronika Winter's disc of Handel cantatas is http://www.musicweb-international.com/classrev/2007/Apr07/Handel_71083.htmon MusicWeb International.
In many ways an interesting disc, well programmed and performed with a soloist possessed of a lovely voice but rather understated and lacking the necessary bravura and drama. ...

Plans

Tonight is the orchestral rehearsal for the Recording Session on Monday, the first time I get to hear my Blake settings - very scary. So, of course, I have a bag weighed down with string parts and other emergency supplies.

Then on Saturday we're off to Covent Garden to see the Ravel/Puccini double bill - the first time I've managed to see L'Heure Espagnole. And on Sunday its the Akhram Khan/Sylvie Guillem programme at Sadlers Wells.

Quite a busy weekend, all in all.

In case you were wondering..

The Houston Chronicle has recently posted a review of the Zandra Rhodes designed Aida, the review is here.

The Opera Critic has pictures, but you have to be a member to see them; worth it though!

Recent CD Review

My review of Lotti's Vesper Psalms is here, on MusicWeb International.

Not quite up to the sophistication of the top-flight early music groups but an attractive programme given with charm, poise and a lively immediacy. ...