Inside/Outside

Monika Pagneux

You might not have heard of Monika Pagneux and if you've seen her work, you probably were not aware of it. Her inspirational way of working allows actors to find a flow or unity between their inner psyche and its outer expression. Truth becomes the source of creativity; actions are a result of being, not thinking. Pagneux learned mime in post-war Berlin, studied with Jacques Lecoq in Paris and in Barcelona discovered the work of Moshe Feldenkrais. Feldenkrais's she appreciated for its ability to 'wake people up' and also because it is 'neutral' - you don’t see the training in the body on stage, unlike other training techniques such as classical ballet, acrobatics, or some martial arts where you can often spot someone trained in a particular style from their distinctive walk and stance. Actors need to be to find a dynamic, ready, available ‘neutral’ and from there, to do, create, express the fullest range of humanity, to be able to do whatever they want, effortlessly. Now Robert Golden has produced a book and a film about Pagneux's work.

Brandenburg Choral Festival

The Brandenburg Choral Festival opens tomorrow night (29 December) at St Martin in the Fields with a performance of Handel's Messiah from the Delphian Singers and the Brandenburg Baroque Soloists. Concerts run until 6 May 2013 and cover a number of venues, St Martin in the Fields, the Queens Chapel of the Savoy, the Chapel of Kings College, London, St. John's Waterloo, the National Portrait Gallery, St Clement Danes Church and the Temple Church. With a total of 66 concerts in all.

Privates on Parade

Simon Russell Beale in Privates on Parade
Photograph: Johan Persson

Peter Nichols play Privates on Parade was written for the Royal Shakespeare Company and first performed by them in 1977. Billed as a play with songs, rather than a musical, it is about a forces concert party in South East Asia in the 1950's, based on Nichols own experiences in Combined Services Entertainment, the postwar successor to ENSA. The show is entertaining, but with a serious edge, even when being extremely funny Nichols writing is quite pointed. Michael Grandage directed a revival of the play in 2001 (with Roger Allam) and it is this play with which Grandage opened his season at the Noel Coward Theatre. We saw the play, as Christmas treat, on Thursday 27 December 2012.

Spring in the colleges

Christopher Maltman
in Juan

London's music colleges are presenting fascinating array of works this spring, with opera ranging from Mozart and Handel to Tchaikovsky and Britten, and events commemorating Britten, Schubert and Poulenc. There is even the premiere of a film.

The Royal College of Music are screening Kaspar Holten's film Juan, based Mozart's Don Giovanni with Christopher Maltman in the title role. It will be followed by a Q&A with the director. (A less worthy reason for seeing it might be for the glimpse of Maltman naked in the shower!) Iain Burnside's Journeying Boys takes Benjamin Britten's Les Illuminations as its starting point and mixes music and words looking at the life of Rimbaud. We are promised that this might be rather spicy too! Other concerts celebrate the 100th anniversary of The Rite of Spring (with performances in orchestral version and the composer's two-piano version) and the 50th anniversary of Poulenc's death

Christmas music

Let's face it, Christmas is never a time when we anticipate sitting down to listen to or watch a great deal of high quality musical entertainment. For those of us with family and friends around, there just isn't time and the presence of people tends to reduce things to the lowest common denominator. Broadcasters tend to reflect this with a rather peculiar mix of classical music on TV. This year we had a drama about a musical scam, the Ring in pieces on Radio 3, Swan Lake, La Cenerentola, the usual Nine Lessons and Carols and even some plainchant on prime time TV!

Richard Rodney Bennett 1936 - 2012

Richard Rodney Bennett was a composer and performer who seemed to embody the multiplicity of musical styles inherent in post-war Britain. Whereas others wrote and performed in one or two styles or genres, Bennett seemed comfortable in a whole variety, performing jazz, studying at Darmstadt and with Boulez, writing accessible scores. This wasn't stylistic confusion, but a desire to communicate in a variety of genres.

He wrote a number of operas, notably The Mines of Sulphur,  A Penny for a Song and Victory. Though in the 70's he rather dropped the genre, which was a great loss. The Mines of Sulphur remains one of those operas which hang on the fringes, lacking major performances but always with the aura of something work reviving. Victory, based on Joseph Conrad, was premiered by Covent Garden in 1970.

Happy Christmas to our readers

A fitting end to Advent

After our difficulty finding sung Evensong in London, it was a pleasure to attend Evensong yesterday at All Saints Church, Margaret Street, for the last Sunday in Advent. We had Byrd's Fauxbourdons for the Magnificat and Nunc Dimittis, with the Magnificat antiphon O Emmanuel, plus the plainchant Alma Redemptoris Mater from Paul Brough and the choir of All Saints; along with a fine, thoughtful sermon from the Rector, Alan Moses. Then this afternoon we attended Solemn Pontifical First Vespers of Christmas at Westminster Cathedral, with Martin Baker and the Choir of Westminster Cathedral, with the Archbishop of Westminster officiating.

Cd review - Advent at Merton

The choir of Merton College, Oxford was established in its present form in October 2008 when Benjamin Nicholas and Peter Phillips became the Reed Rubin Directors of Music. It is made up of 30 graduate and post-graduates, many on choral scholarships, and it has quickly made a name for itself. This disc is of especial interest because it includes the first recording of the seven Advent Antiphons which were commissioned for the choir by the college and premiered in 2012. Each antiphon is written by a different composer and the disc extends this by including Advent music by a number of other contemporary British composer. All the music on the disc is Advent themed, being based on the Advent service performed at Merton College.

Interview with composer Nimrod Borenstein (part 1)

Composer Nimrod Borenstein has a number of performances coming up in the new year but perhaps the most significant are two being given by Vladimir Ashkenazy and the Philharmonia Orchestra. This February they are performing The Big Bang and the Creation of the Universe at De Montfort Hall in Leicester, then in June they will be premiering a new piece at the Royal Festival Hall. I met up with Borenstein to talk about his new works and his attitude to writing music. In the flesh Borenstein is lively and articulate, he regularly lectures about music and, unlike some composers, clearly enjoys talking about his music and the process of composition.

Where have all the Evensongs gone

Last Christmas we had my partner's mother staying with us and decided to go out one evening just before Christmas. We had intended to go to the ballet, but found that everyone (Royal Ballet, English National Ballet and Sadlers Wells) was doing The Nutcracker. This year, my partner and I are on our own so we decided to go to Evensong, only to find that there aren't any, everyone is doing carols.

Inspired by Flight - Open Orchestra initiative.

The BBC Symphony Orchestra and the Royal College of Music are extending their learning and participation programmes in collaboration with Drake Music and the Tri-Borough Music Hub of Westminster, Kensington & Chelsea and Hammersmith and Fulham. The new project, Open Orchestra, brings together schools from the three boroughs, both mainstream primary and special primary schools, with pupils from the schools using creative music technology to create new musical material. The resulting work will be played by the BBC Symphony Orchestra at a schools concert in May 2013.

New record label from Llandaff Cathedral

Jacob Epstein's Majestas in the nave
at Llandaff Cathedral

Llandaff Cathedral has launched its own label with a disc entitled Majestas, intended to showcase both the choir and the new Nicholson organ. The organ, which is described as 'the largest, wholly-new, British built organ to be commissioned in a UK cathedral for nearly half a century', had its first part installed in 2010 with the remainder (11 stops from the Solo organ and 4 from the Pedal) in 2013. The title of the disc refers to the Epstein sculpture which was commissioned as part of the renewal of the cathedral after the damage in the war.

Commissioning the new - interview with Matthew Barley (part 2)

The programme for Around Britten 2013, Matthew Barley's 2013 concert tour of the UK (see earlier post for the first part of my interview with Matthew Barley) is based on the third suite for solo Cello written by Benjamin Britten. Barley chose the third suite partly because he loves it so much, but partly because it offers so much in terms of programming works around it. Britten included fragments of Russian folksong and the Kontakion, the Russian Orthodox hymn for the dead, in the suite and Barley is building on this. He will be playing pieces by John Tavener and Gavin Bryars which echo the themes of spirituality and death. And in fact, all the music which Barley is recording for the CD which accompanies the project will meditate on these themes.

rough for opera again

Second Movement is presenting another rough for opera on 20 January 2013 at the Cockpit Theatre. This scratch night for new opera returns for a fourth instalment with an eclectic programme consisting of Danyal Dhondy's new version of Pergolesi's La Serva Padrona, a new staging of Peter Longworth's Pavane for an Invisible Princess and a new work by William Marsey based on a recipe for sourdough bread!

CD Review - A Flute Affair

When I lived in Scotland, some 30 years ago or more, I played the viola in a light orchestra and a couple of the older guys in it had actually had careers in light music before the war. A period when small ensembles, Palm Court trios, would play lighter classical pieces and pot-pourris of popular melodies, all arranged for the available forces. It is a style of playing which, if well done, can be full of charm.

This new disc from flautist Marlene Verwey reminds me of that era, in all the best ways. Verwey is joined by an instrumental group, Anne Marshal (piano), Evert van Niekerk (violin), Theuns Pienaar (violin), Ken Craig (viola), Carel Henn (cello) and Armandt Marais (double bass), and they play a selection of arrangements of popular classics and pot-pourris. Verwey is from North West South Africa and trained at the the Royal College of Music. This new CD has been produced on the South African record label, Salon Music.

Constant challenge - interview with Matthew Barley (part 1)

Matthew Barley (photo credit Nick White)

Next year, cellist Matthew Barley embarks on an amazing tour of Britain, taking a programme of solo cello music around a bewildering array of venues. Around Britten 2013 will feature concerts, workshops and special events in 100 different venues, with a programme based around Benjamin Britten's Third Cello Suite in celebration of the composer's centenary. I caught up with the cellist to talk about the tour suggested that the schedule was rather punishing. He happily agreed that it was a 'gigantic folly'. But Barley is a performer who constantly liked challenging himself in as many different ways as possible.

The Mystery of Edwin Drood! at the Music Hall Royal

Photography by David Sprecher

Last night’s performance (18 December 2012) of The Mystery of Edwin Drood!by Tower Theatre Company at Theatro Technis was perfect for getting into Christmas mood. This comedy musical written by Rupert Holmes, first shown in 1985 and the first play to have multiple ending decided by audience vote, has an excellent pedigree. It won for Holmes, Best Book, Best Original Score and five Tony Awards, including Best Musical.

Early Opera Company at Spitalfields Winter Festival

Christian Curnyn

The final concert at this year's Spitalfields Music Winter Festival was given by the Early Opera Company under their director Christian Curnyn. It was a programme of Vivaldi centring on the music that he wrote for the Pieta, the orphanage where he worked in a variety of capacities for many years, teaching violin and writing both sacred and secular music for the girls. The concert was centred on Vivald's Gloria, but Curnyn's programme had a twist, in that the singers for the Gloria were all women, and came from Women sing East, which was formed as part of Spitalfields Music's Learning and Participation programme.

Lost but not forgotten

Aria from BWV105

I read recently that when J.S.Bach died the manuscripts of his cantatas were divided up between W.F Bach and C.P.E.Bach. C.P.E. Bach carefully preserved his and it is those that form the basis of the cantatas that we known today.  The other batch were eventually auctioned off, and have never been seen since. Leaving us with the possibility that somewhere in a library there are a batch of uncatalogued unknown Bach cantatas. It is one of those fascinating things isn't it, the possibility of lost masterpieces being uncovered.

We have had works re-discovered recently, though none quite on the scale of an entirely unknown Bach cantata. There was the premiere of a piano work by Beethoven this year (see blog posting) and a Bach aria and some organ pieces were discovered a few years ago. Handel's Gloria was re-attributed to him and a batch of sonatas by Vivaldi were re-discovered in a Manchester Library.