Brodsky Quartet at 40: Angels and Maidens

Brodsky Quartet

As part of their 40 year celebrations last night the Brodsky Quartet performed Franz Schubert’s (1797-1828) Death and the Maiden and GeorgeCrumb’s (b1929) Black Angels at King’sPlace.

Schubert’s string quartet (no. 14) in D minor D810, also known as ‘Death and the Maiden’, was written in 1824 when Schubert had just been hospitalised with syphilis. As one of his last three string quartets ever written Schubert must have been feeling his mortality – and it is his struggle with impending death which fills this poignant piece.

The name ‘Death and the Maiden’ comes from the song which Schubert wrote seven years earlier, based on a poem by Matthias Claudius. This tune forms the basis of the second movement, and is the theme borrowed by Crumb in Black Angels.

New Lamps for Old - Chapelle du Roi

Last night, 7 December, Chapelle du Roi and Alistair Dixon performed their New Lamps for Old programme at St. John's Smith Square. The programme paired renaissance music with contemporary settings of the same texts with music by Tallis, Guerrero, Palestrina, Sheppard, Victoria and Daniel Burgess, Nicholas O'Neil, David Braid, Anthony Mudge Antony Pitts, Roxanna Panufnik and myself, Robert Hugill.

Rena Harms and Anyssa Neumann in recital

Rena Harms

American soprano Rena Harms is best known to UK audiences from her performances as Amelia in ENO's recent production of Simon Boccanegra. She will be appearing with Florentine opera as Michaela and with Staatstheater Braunschweig as Fiordiligi and we caught her and accompanist Anyssa Neumann at a private recital in London on Thursday, 6 December, at the end of a run recitals that the two have been doing in the UK.

NMC appeal - new operas

NMC Recordings celebrates its 25th anniversary in 2014 and as part of this they have launched an appeal to raise funds to issue recordings of three significant contemporary operas, by Sir Harrison Birtwistle, Judith Weir and Gerald Barry. Amazingly, NMC is a charity run as a not-for-profit and started with substantial support of the Holst Foundation. This means, of course, that they can take a long view and issue recordings which a commercial organisation would not. So far they have recorded over a dozen contemporary British operas to-date. The new appeal needs to raise £43,0000 to support Birtwistle's Gawain, Weir's The Vanishing Bridegroom and Barry's The Importance of Being Earnest.

Jonathan Harvey

Jonathan Harvey, who died this week at the age of 73, was one of those quiet souls who become eminent without you quite noticing. He studied at St. John's College, Cambridge, and was advised by Britten to take lessons with Erwin Stein. (Stein, formerly Schoenberg's assistant, was an editor for Boosey and Hawkes where he worked with Britten). But Harvey's influences developed quite widely; on a Harkness Scholarship at Princeton, Harvey would meet Milton Babbitt, he discovered Stockhausen and was invited by Pierre Boulez to work at IRCAM.

New Music 20x12 now on-line

The PRS for Music Foundation's New Music 20x12 project involved commissioning 20 works, each 12 minutes long, to be performed in the UK in 2012. The composers and partner organisations were highly diverse, including Sally Beamish writing for the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment, Howard Skempton writing for the Central Council of Bell Ringers, Graham Fitkin writing for the London Chamber Orchestra, Luke Carver Goss for the Black Dyke Band, Gavin Higgins writing for the Rambert Dance Company.  Now you can view the works on-line.

Last month on Planet Hugill

Vanity Fair scene from Pilgrims Progress

at ENO (c) Mike Hoban

Just in case you missed it! November opened with the launch of this year's London Song Festival and the tragic news of Robert Poulton's death. We closed with a guest review of the last night of the festival and I participated in the Courtauld Community Choir.

Guildhall School of Music and Drama presented an enterprising triple bill of operas by Massenet and Martinu, ENO were equally enterprising with their production of Vaughan Williams's Pilgrims Progress and Chelsea Opera Group performed Massenet's Don Quichotte with Robert Lloyd.

Cool poster - cool concert

I couldn't resist featuring this concert because of the rather striking flyer design. The London Gay Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Christopher Braime are performing their Christmas themed programme on Sunday 9 December, at St. Sepulchre without Newgate. The programme consists of Dvorak's Slavonic Dances,  Sibelius's Finlandia, Tchaikovsky's Nutcracker Suite and a suite from Rimsky Korsakov's The Snow Maiden. It is the last item, taking music from Rimsky Korsakov's rarely performed opera which rather lifts the programme out of the ordinary.

Motets from Tempus per Annum in London this month

Two motets from my collection Tempus per annum will be performed this month. On Thursday 13 December London Concord Singers, conductor Malcolm Cottle, will be giving the premiere of the Advent motet Propre es tu and on Friday 7 December, La Chapelle du Roi, conductor Alistair Dixon, will be performing Puer natus est nobis which they premiered in 2009.

British Composer Awards

The winners of this year's British Composer awards were announced this week, and the full list can be seen on the British Composer Awards website. Sir Harrison Birtwistle's Concerto for Violin and Orchestra won the orchestral category. The work was premiered by Christian Tetzlaff with the Boston Symphony Orchestra in Boston, and received its UK premiere at the Proms with Tetzlaff, this time with the BBC Symphony Orchestra. The stage awards went, for the second year running, to a non-operatic work. This time DESH, Jocelyn Pook's evocative score for Akram Khan's astonishing stage work. DESH means homeland in Bangladeshi, and the piece is a journey with Khan discovering his roots. Pook's score mixes in found material from trips to Bangladesh. You can buy a disc of the piece from Pook's website.

Universe of Sound - The Planets Remix

The Universe of Sound was a brilliant installation/exhibition which enabled visitors to experience what it was like to be really inside an orchestra whilst it was playing Holst's The Planets (see my review of the exhibition at the Science Museum). At the centre of the installation was an HD recording made by Esa-Pekka Salonen and the Philharmonia with films being made from various points of view within the orchestra. Now these are available on-line at The Space, the Arts Council's digital download site.

Big Give: The English Concert

The English Concert's Big Give project is to raise £52,000 to support a week-long Master Class on Handel's Radamisto for young singers and players at the Centre for Early Music Performance and Research in Birmingham. There will also be public showcases of excerpts from the opera at the Barbican and at Birmingham Town Hall. Their 2011 Big Give project was a residency at the Foundling Museum which included a master class for young harpsichordist directors. Further information, and donations, from their Big Give project page

CD review - Open your eyes

For her recital disc with Malcolm Martineau, Open your eyes, soprano Katherine Broderick has chosen lieder from the turn of the 19th century, with Richard Strauss's Acht Gedichte aus 'Letzte Blätter' Op 10, Alban Berg's Sieben frühe Lieder and Arnold Schoenberg's Brettl Lieder. The Strauss songs include Zueignung, his first published song. The songs illustrate the way that the lied was changing at this period. Rather neatly, Strauss was 10 years older then Schoenberg, whilst Schoenberg was 9 years older than Berg. There are other linkings, with Schoenberg's songs related to the Überbrettl cabaret, founded by the librettist of Richard Strauss's early opera Feuersnot.

Soane by candle light

To the Soane Museum on Monday 4 December, for a candle-lit evening event for patrons and supporters of Grange Park Opera. The library on the ground floor and the yellow drawing room were lit as normal, but the remainder of the ground floor and the magical basements were all lit by candles. This, of course, is how Soane's visitors would have seen the rooms if they visited him in the evening. I believe that Soane himself used to take visitors round with a candle. It is, in fact, an amazing experience; to wander round the basements full of antiquities just by candle light. There were, of course, plenty of room stewards to keep their eye on us, but there were all highly knowledgeable as well. And then there was the music.

O Magnum Mysterium

The Choir of Queens' College Cambridge, director Silas Wollston celebrates the release of its CD.

Thursday 6 December sees the choir of Queens' College Cambridge performing under their director Silas Wollston at the Dutch Church in the City of London. They will be celebrating the release of their CD And comes the Day on the Orchid Classics label. The concert includes an eclectic mix of music for Christmas and Advent, including Bob Chilcott's Advent Antiphons and carols by Britten, Howells and Wollston. There is also the opportunity for the audience to compare and contrast, with settings of O Magnum Mysterium by Gabrieli, Poulenc and Morten Lauridsen. The concert is being repeated on 7 December at Queens' College Chapel, Cambridge, and on Sunday 9 December at L'eglise de la Madeleine, Paris.

Out with a bang

The Peter Moores Foundation has announced that it is winding down its activities, but it is going out with a bang. The foundation's Swansong Project will mark the end of the foundation and celebrate 50 years of philanthropy (the foundation was set up by Sir Peter Moores in 1964). They will be supporting projects at 8 of the companies with which they have been closely associated, Birmingham Opera, English Touring Opera, Opera North, Scottish Opera, Welsh National Opera, English National Opera, Covent Garden and Glyndebourne. There will also be one final opera for Chandos's Opera in English series.

Christmas on the BBC

The BBC has published information about what delights we have to look forward to during the Christmas season, a period which usually frankly has me running for the digi-box and our back-log of recorded programmes. We have the usual suspects, there is Carols from Kings, and we revisit the Military Wives Choir. The Archbishop of Canterbury gives his New Year's message and, in a separate programme muses on his departure from Canterbury. The present Queen's message is, of course, a staple of Christmas Day. There is also a three part programme on Queen Victoria's fraught relationships with her children, and BBC 4 has a Screen Goddesses season.

CD review - Cantata for the Children of Terezin

Mary Ann Joyce-Walter's Cantata for the Children of Terezin sets poems written by the children who were incarcerated in the Terezin concentration camp. Joyce-Walter says that the work was composed with the intention of evoking compassion for the most innocent and vulnerable. This disc on the  Ravello label includes the cantata as well as Joyce-Walter's orchestra piece Aceldama, recorded by the Kiev Philharmonic Orchestra and the King Singers of Kiev conducted by Robert Ian Winstin.

Whitgift School music competition

The Royal Philharmonic Orchestra
and the Whitgift Chamber Orchestra
at Cadogan Hall in April 2012
(photo: Danny Fitzpatrick)

The Whitgift School in Croydon has launched an International Music Competition for young players. There are three categories, (12-13, 14-15 and 16-17) and entry is initially via YouTube video! The prizes include £150,000 in scholarships as well as opportunities to perform with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra. The winners will be selected from live performances in June and July next year with a jury which includes cellist Guy Johnston, Remus Azoitei (professor of violin at the Royal Academy), journalist Jessica Duchen and a member of the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra. Further information from the Whitgift School website; the closing date is 1 March 2013.

Lost and Found - a Brodsky Quartet Adventure

The Brodsky Quartet is currently celebrating their 40th anniversary (see our blog post) with a series of concerts which includes their Wheel of 4Tunes, where the audience gets to choose the programme from 40 different string quartets. Whilst touring the Netherlands, their car was broken into, a laptop stolen along with a bag containing all the viola and cello parts for all the 40 quartets being offered. A devastating loss.