Inaugural performance of the Orchestra Musica Romantica

Orchestra Musica Romantica
Cadogan Hall, 1 Dec 2012

Last night, 1 December, was the inaugural performance (or should I say debut) of the Orchestra Musca Romantica in aid of Action Medical Research at Cadogan Hall, Sloane Square. Dubbed a ‘super-orchestra’ by Classic FM, Orchestra Musica Romantica is the child of Jörg Hammann, who also plays violin with the London Symphony Orchestra and conducts the Orchestra of the Guildhall Music College. It is a project orchestra with the specific aspiration of giving back to the community. As he explains is his blog for Gramphone, it is ‘an orchestra for those in need’.

The Mikado at the London Coliseum

ENO - The Mikado
credit Chris Christodoulou

After a crisply sparkling account of the overture, from David Parry and the English National Opera orchestra, the curtain opened on Stefanos Lazarides dazzling white, Grand Hotel set. Jonathan Miller's production of Gilbert and Sullivan's The Mikado was back, with a strong cast which mixed innocence and experience. The production is 26 years old and looking as good as ever, and celebrating 25 years of Richard Suart's association with the role of Ko Ko. We saw the opening night (Saturday December 1), though the cast had already performed a matinee that afternoon.

I fagiolini - live in York

There is a fascinating film on YouTube of I Fagiolini's July 2012 performances of Striggio's Mass in 40 Parts done live in York Minster, with the audience free to move around within the circle of the performers. Looks as if it was magical. Further information from the I Fagiolini website. See the film after the jump.

Richard Strauss and the gay sensibility

What? Strauss is a composer known for his devotion to the female voice and a who used his own family life as the subject for his work. So where does gay sensibility come in? In 1897 Strauss wrote Vier Lieder Op. 27 as a wedding gift for his wife. The songs include Morgen and Heimlich Aufforderung, songs which have been beloved of sopranos ever since. The opening of Morgen with its long violin melody which is taken up by the soprano is just about perfect. Except of course that Strauss originally wrote it for piano, and when he recorded it himself (which he did twice) he used a male voice. Now, I once heard Dietrich Fischer Dieskau sing the song and frankly, was not completely convinced. So what is going on?

The Big Give - Gabrieli Young Singers' Scheme

Paul McCreesh and forces recording Elijah in 2011
© Ben Ealovega

The Gabrieli Consort and Players' project in this year's Big Give is their Young Singers' Scheme. The first fruits of this scheme were unveiled this year with the stupendous recording of Mendelssohn's Elijah (see my review on this blog), with a choir which included the Young Singers alongside Wroclaw Philharmonic Choir and Gabrieli. In January 2013 Paul McCreesh is going back into the studio to record Britten's War Requiem with the Young Singers and their Big Give project will help.

The basic financial facts are that Gabrieli already has money pledged, if they can raise £10,000 during the three days of the Big Give (6, 7, 8 December) then they will have a total of £20,000. Some of this will go towards the War Requiem recording, but the majority will go towards other activities with the Young Singers.

Bridging that gap

Many opera companies are seeking to help singers bridge the gap between post-graduate study and their full career. Some voice types require a long further period of work before the voice comes into its own, this is particularly true of dramatic sopranos, and also many male voice types. At Grange Park Opera they have a you artists scheme, the Rising Stars, who do a production each year. But in addition there is their Scholarship Fund, which helps singers with lessons and coachings for particular roles. Their website includes some fascinating testimonials about what can be achieved by such means. Now the website also includes a fascinating blog post from tenor Anthony Flaum who is studying at the National Opera studio, it gives a fascinating insight into a young singers world.

Singing for Lely - the Courtauld Community Choir

Peter Lely - The Concert

We attended one of the Courtauld Lates during the run of the Courtauld Gallery's previous exhibition, and had enjoyed the mixture of art, talks and music (see my blog entry), so had every intention of going along on the evening of Thursday 30 November for a similar event themed on their Peter Lely: A Lyrical Vision exhibition. Then an email arrived from someone I had sung with who works at the gallery, with information about a choir being formed to rehearse and perform music from Lely's time. All from scratch. So at 5pm yesterday (30 November) I found myself in the lecture theatre of the Courtauld Institute (which is in Somerset House, next door to the Courtauld Gallery) with a varied mix of people all who had come to sing.

Last night of the London Song Festival

Jonathan McGovern
credit Benjamin Ealovega

Admittedly there was no flag waving or ‘Land of Hope and Glory’ but nevertheless this was an evening the London Song Festival could be proud of. Now in its 6th year, the London Song Festival, founded by Nigel Foster aims to ‘halt the decline of the song recital’. A mixture of showcase concerts and masterclasses run throughout October and November. The showcase concerts feature young professional singers and the workshops are aimed at GCSE and A level students as well as singers from Music College.

Ruby Hughes
credit Camilo Echeverri

Last night’s concert (28 November) was billed as being built around the theme of ‘Songs of Wandering and of the Night’, but both ‘wandering’ and ‘night’ were very inventively interpreted. The singers were Ruby Hughes and Jonathan McGovern. Ruby studied at Chetham’s, Guildhall and Munich and is currently a New Generation Artist at BBC Radio 3. Jonathon studied at King’s College London, Royal Academy of Music and Royal Academy Opera, and is a Britten-Pears Young artist and an Associate artist with Classical Opera. Both have shining credentials, having won prizes galore before settling into recital and opera, and both have sung with the ENO and the BBC Philharmonic. The accompanist was Nigel Foster himself.

ENO Community Choir

If you are a Friend of English National Opera, then you probably received an e-mail recently about a carol concert next week. This is being given by the ENO Community Choir, a group which meets on Thursday evenings during term time. They sing a varied repertoire from pop to opera, world music and seasonal classics. They are directed by Rachel Dawson and are open to anyone, all they ask is that you work on your voice and commit to attending weekly rehearsals. More information from the group's page on the ENO website.

British Composer Awards celebrates 10 years

This year's British Composer Awards will be announced at an awards ceremony at the Goldsmith's Hall on Monday 3 December. Amazingly the awards are 10 years old. When they were first set up by the British Academy of Songwriters and Composers you wondered why no-one had thought of it earlier, and now it has become a brilliant part of the musical year. This year, to celebrate the 10th anniversary, there is also a concert on Wednesday 5th December at the Queen Elizabeth Hall on London's South Bank. This will feature 11 compositions from previous awards, performed by Endymion and the Vasari Singers.

I'Incoronazione di Poppea at the RCM

Louise Alder (Poppea) and Rannveig Karadottir (Nerone)
L'Incoronazione di Poppea at RCM

Monteverdi's operas are the earliest to have a regular place in the repertoire. Whilst his first opera Orfeo was written for the Mantuan Court, his final one L'Incoronazione di Poppea was written for the public theatre in Venice. The performances there were a commercial enterprise and the operas structured in a way which appealed to the Venetian public. This involved a mixture of comic and serious in the same work, something which was distinctive to Venetian opera. Such works were not, however, haphazard with the lower class characters being the comic ones and the upper class ones being the serious. You only have to compare Cavalli's Serse (written for Venice) and Handel's Serse (written for London) to see how time and distance had changed the way opera was structured. Handel's version drops all but one servant, and all the comic flirting and liaisons disappear. But the Venetian idea of a mixture of comic and serious continued into the 18th century when Goldoni wrote the librettos for a series of operas by Galuppi. These, with their serious masters and comic servants, were an important influence on Mozart.

Though Busenello's libretto for Monteveredi's L'Incoronazione di Poppea is quite tightly constructed, it still results in a rather diverse plot, a sprawling work with a substantial running time. It is also a style of opera which is entirely absent from our opera houses (early 19th century Italian operas such as Rossini's The Thieving Magpie use the semi-seria genre but few more recent ones do). So directors tend to go at it with a pair of shears, and no production is ever quite the same as the previous. The new production at the Royal College of Music directed by James Conway, designed by Samai Blak, which we saw on 28 November, uses a heavily cut version with emphasises the drama of Monteverdi's opera at the expense of other elements.

Cello Pilgrimage - over £50

The newsletter for the Friends of the National Churches Trust popped into my letterbox recently. Skimming through it, amongst the information about grants given to churches, was a note about Orlando Jopling and his Cello Pilgrimage. Orlando Jopling has now given over 75 recitals of Bach's Suites for solo cello, in an amazing variety of churches, from huge light-filled Wren masterpieces in city centres to intimate and atmospheric medieval churches on remote moorland. And so far raised over £50,000.

Challenging on all fronts - ETO's plans for 2013

English Touring Opera has confirmed its plans for 2013, and quite a programme it is too. As already announced, their spring tour involves Mozart's Cosi van tutte, Verdi's Simon Boccanegra, and Donizetti's L'assiedo di Calais; sponsorship from the Peter Moores Foundation meaning that they can tour the Verdi with a slightly bigger orchestra than would otherwise be possible. In the autumn, the trio of operas are equally challenging in different ways, Monteverdi's L'Incoronazione di Poppea, Cavalli's Giasone and Handel's Agrippina.

Merton College Choir - Choral at Cadogan

In its present incarnation, the choir of Merton College, Oxford has existed since 2008 when Benjamin Nicholas and Peter Phillips became the Reed Rubin Directors of Music. Consisting of undergraduates and post-graduates, many holding choral scholarships at Merton College, the choir has rapidly developed a fine reputation. 2014 will see the college's 750th anniversary celebrations and as a built up to this, the college has started commissioning music for the choir, starting with the Seven Magnificat Antiphons for the Merton Choirbook, which were premiered earlier this year. The choir brought these along with a programme of other Advent Music to Cadogan Hall on Tuesday 27 November.

The People's Orchestra - building on success

Following their successful debut concert in November at Birmingham's Adrian Boult Hall, the People's Orchestra have two further concerts in December. One, at Symphony Hall in Birmingham, is the Radio WM Christmas concert and the other, at Millennium Point, is the premiere of The Hobbit. Midlands based The People's Orchestra was set this year to be a new amateur orchestra filling in a gap in provision when students leave youth orchestras. The orchestra specialises in film music and their debut concert, Trailers combined the film music, with Indian Dance and Drumming, and two completely new pieces of music created by the members.

BBC joins South Bank Centre's Rest is Noise Festival

The South Bank Centre's ambitious The Rest is Noise festival runs for all of 2013 and aims to survey key moments in 20th century music (see my blog entry previewing the festival). The BBC has announced plans for a partnership with the South Bank Centre, with BBC Four and BBC Radio 3 offering complementary programming, plus the participation of the BBC Concert Orchestra in the festival itself.

Celebrating 10 years of support for young artists

You might not have actually heard of the Borletti Buitoni Trust, but you almost certainly have heard one of the artists supported by them. The Trust provides financial support to young artists at the beginning of their career and has an impressive roster of alumni. Now some of these are coming back to help the Trust celebrate its 10th birthday in May 2013 with a range of concerts and events at the South Bank.

CD review - Klassika

Richard Chapman is a classically trained guitarist who has decided to stretch the envelope and has released an EP (on digital download) of his own music, pop-folk in feel, but still with a challenging guitar part. If you have ever been dissatisfied with the finger-work and with the eternal strumming on popular guitar-led music, then this is for you.

Chelsea Opera Group - Don Quichotte

Poster for the first Paris
Don Quichotte in 1910

Most of Massenet's operas are about the female voice, not only does he seem to have been in love with it but many of his works were inspired by his love for particular singers. His infatuation with the soprano Sibyl Sanderson brought a clutch of works written for her in the 1880's and 1890's. Later mezzo-soprano Lucy Arbell would have roles in six of the composer's final operas. These later works were nearly all premiered at Monte Carlo rather than Paris; Massenet seems to have not been able to recapture the Parisian success of his early career. It is from this later period that Don Quichotte dates. Written for the great Russian bass Feodor Chalyiapin, with Lucy Arbell as Dulcinee. It was to prove successful in Monte Carlo and in Paris and would give the composer a late success.

The Director Speaks

Before last night's BBC Radio 3 broadcast of English National Opera's new production of Ralph Vaughan Williams's Pilgrims Progress, there was the usual introduction with an interview with Roland Wood (who sang Pilgrim and Bunyan) and with the director, Yoshi Oida. It was illuminating and fascinating as Oida had a quite distinctive take on Bunyan's story (he'd not read the book until asked to direct the opera). When we saw the opera live,  I had gathered a lot of what Oida seemed to be saying by the end of the opera. But I could not help feeling that to have heard (or read) Oida's short talk before seeing the production at the London Coliseum would have been helpful.