A striking voice revealed: piano music by Janet Graham spanning nearly 40 years

Janet Graham Piano Music; Aleksander Szram; Prima Facie
Reviewed by Robert Hugill on 16 December 2019 Star rating: 4.0 (★★★★)
A striking voice revealed on this disc of piano music spanning nearly 40 years from contemporary composer Janet Graham

Janet Graham is not a well known name, and the music on the disc of piano music may well be entirely unfamiliar to listeners, but is well worth getting to know. Under the title North East Hauntings on the Prima Facie label, pianist Aleksander Szram has put together a programme of Graham's music spanning nearly 40 years from Persephone from 1980 to Sonata from 2017.

Graham is a further example of a woman composer whose career changes mid-life, and then who comes back to composition and you think of other women composers like Erika Fox [see my review] whose music has been rediscovered recently.

Janet Graham studied composition with James Iliff at the Royal Academy of Music (1966-1971), and with Elizabeth Lutyens, and then had a promising career as a young composer. In 1989, after working voluntarily in a psychiatric hospital, she re-trained as a music therapist. It was only after retiring from music therapy in 2013 that she started to compose regularly again. In an article in the CD booklet, Graham talks about the way, in music therapy, she was encouraged to explore music beyond the standard syllabus and to improvise, so that other influences have crept into her more recent work. That said, Graham's music remains atonal and remarkably bold and confident.

Many of the pieces on the disc were written for the pianist Anthony Green, who played Graham's music regularly since the mid-1970s and in fact Aleksander Szram is a former student of Green's. Szram, who is a senior teaching fellow at Trinity Laban Conservatoire of Music and Dance, makes something of a speciality of contemporary repertoire, having recorded music by Daryl Runswick, Douglas Finch [see my review], Kenneth Hesketh [see my review], Edward Gregson [with recorder player Jill Kemp, see my review] and David Lumsdaine [see my review].

Listening to the disc, despite the wide time span covered by the music, we can hear a consistency of approach from Graham. She thinks that her more recent work has become 'softer-edged' and indeed the Sonata of 2017 includes a folk-song from the North-East (Graham was born in County Durham and currently lives there).

Writ large: a remarkably satisfying performance of Handel's masterpiece at the Royal Albert Hall, demonstrating that large-scale accounts of Messiah work well in the right hands.

Grand opening of the Royal Albert Hall in 1871

Handel Messiah; Natalya Romaniw, Marta Fontanals Simmons, Egan Llŷr Thomas, William Thomas, Christoph Altstaedt, Philharmonia Chorus, Royal Philharmonic Orchestra; Royal Albert Hall Reviewed by Robert Hugill on 18 December 2019 Star rating: 3.5 (★★★½)
A large scale Messiah with a young cast of soloists proves full of surprises

For those of us who live in a metropolitan bubble, where performances of Handel's Messiah by small professional ensembles are common, it is easy to forget that for many people, Handel's masterpiece remains a large-scale choral work. My own experiences of Messiah include singing the work in a choir of 150 at the Royal Albert Hall, and the venue's tradition of performing the work annually dates back to the 19th century.

Perhaps, somewhat in the spirit of inquiry we went along to this year's performance of Handel's Messiah at the Royal Albert Hall on Wednesday 18 December 2019. Christoph Altstaedt conducted the Philharmonia Chorus and Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, with soloists Natalya Romaniw, Marta Fontanals Simmons (replacing an ailing Katie Bray), Egan Llŷr Thomas and William Thomas.

The chorus numbered some 130, and the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra fielded only a moderate size team, with just two oboes and one bassoon, with continuo provided by a portative organ and harpsichord. The fine team of young soloists are perhaps best known for their operatic roles,  Natalya Romaniw recently made her debut as Puccini's Tosca with Scottish Opera and will be appearing as Puccini's Madama Butterfly with English National Opera in 2020. Marta Fontanals Simmons sang the lead role of Hel in Gavin Higgins new opera The Monstrous Child at the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden [see my review], Egan Llŷr Thomas is currently a Harewood Artist at English National Opera, and despite still being on the opera course at Guildhall School of Music and Drama, William Thomas has already made his debut with Vienna State Opera.

Conductor Christoph Altstaedt [whom we heard in 2017, conducting Opera North's Hansel and Gretel], took a modern, period-performance inspired view of the work. The days seem long gone when modern orchestras could completely ignore the historically informed approach, and nowadays performing Baroque music requires the delicate navigation through a tricky field. The Royal Philharmonic Orchestra played with admirable crispness and lightness, and I very much enjoyed their performances throughout the evening. Their two solo spots, the overture and the Pifa, were finely done with plenty to enjoy. Altstaedt's tempos were on the fast side, and he certainly took no prisoners, yet his performers, both soloists and choir, we well up to the task and throughout the evening we had some admirably fleet passage work.

In the early 1980s, I worked with a veteran choral conductor in Edinburgh who commented that the overall timing of Messiah could be gauged from the speed at which the choir could sing the semi-quaver passages. In the case of the wonderfully admirable Philharmonia Chorus that seemed to be at whatever speed Altstaedt wanted, and sung with a nice lightness and unanimity too.

What let the performance down, for me, was the issue of balance, which is an area where many modern instrument performances go wrong.

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Mass for Christmas Morning: the richly imaginative music of Michael Praetorius performed by an ensemble ranging from nine-year-olds to seasoned professionals

Schloss Wolfenbüttel, where Michael Praetorius lived and worked; copperplate engraving by Matthäus Merian, 1654

Michael Praetorius Mass for Christmas Morning; Gabrieli Consort & Players, DREt Youth Choir, DRET Primary All Stars, Paul McCreesh; St John's Smith Square
Reviewed by Robert Hugill on 17 December 2019 Star rating: 5.0 (★★★★★)
Venetian poly-choral techniques combined with Lutheran chorales in Praetorius' richly imaginative music in a reconstruction performed by Gabrieli and young singers from the David Ross Educational Trust

Michael Praetorius

The richly inventive choral music of the German composer Michael Praetorius (1571-1621) is not as well known as it deserves to be. Yet Gabrieli's 1994 recording of Mass for Christmas Morning, based on Praetorius' music, remains the group's best-selling disc. I have to confess that it is recording that I have long treasured, so it was a great pleasure to be able to appreciate the music live as Paul McCreesh and Gabrieli performed their reconstruction. They are undertaking a tour, and their Polish performance was broadcast on BBC Radio 3 on Sunday, and they will be off to Versailles and Rotterdam.

But lucky for us, on Tuesday 17 December 2019, Paul McCreesh conducted the Gabrieli Consort and Players, the DRET Youth Choir and DRET Primary All Stars (two groups drawn from the David Ross Educational Trust) in Mass for Christmas Morning at St John's Smith Square as part of the Christmas Festival. The reconstruction featured music by Michael Praetorius including the Kyrie and Gloria from his Missa ganz Teudsch in the 1619 publication Polyhymnia caduceatrix et panegyrics, with other material coming from the same publication and also from Praetorius' Musae Sioniae V and Urania.  The Creed was in a version by Samuel Scheidt (1587-1654), whilst we also heard the Padouana a 5 by Johann Hermann Schein (1586-1630)

Michael Praetorius spent most of his working life at Wolfenbüttel, working for the Duke of Brunswick-Lüneburg. But a great influence in Praetorius' music in later life was the period that he spent in Dresden between 1613 and 1615, when he met Heinrich Schütz and was introduced to Venetian poly-choral music. Praetorius was notable for the way he developed musical forms based on Protestant hymns, and his earlier music had had a strong Italian influence and the most elaborate works from his later period include spectacular poly-choral works. Yet Lutheran congregational singing was also a significant factor in the music and most of Praetorius pieces, even the most elaborate, are skilfully written so that various groups can be included, the Town Waits, the school children, the Collegium Musicum of amateur musicians as well as the professional Kantorei. This was real inclusive music making, on a grand scale as befitted the Ducal court, yet allowing full congregational participation.

At St John's Smith Square we heard a reconstruction of a Lutheran mass as it might have been staged in Wolfenbüttel in around 1620, using the 1595 Wolfenbüttel Order of Service, which owes much to Martin Luther's Wittenberg liturgies. This is a communion service, with Kyrie, Gloria, Creed and Sanctus (though the texts are not necessarily literal translations of the Latin), with the usual consecration, interspersed with the congregational hymns, four in all, and motets during communion. Around 80 minutes of music in all, and what impressed was the way the Praetorius could move from a gloriously elaborate poly-choral, multi-instrumental piece such as the four-choir version in In dulci jubilo with its use of trumpeters and drums (where McCreesh took advantage of Praetorius' suggestion that the material be re-arranged to suit performance needs, and here included all his performers in a final flourish), to profoundly simple pieces such as the touching (and still well-known) harmonisation of Es is ein Ros entsprungen.

The Sixteen at Christmas: A Ceremony of Carols

Harry Christophers, The Sixteen

Britten A Ceremony of Carols, William Walton, Elizabeth Poston, Gustav Holst, Matthew Martin, Jan Sandstrom, James Burton, Cecilia McDowall, Medieval carols; The Sixteen, Harry Christophers; Cadogan Hall
Reviewed by Robert Hugill on 5 November 2019 Star rating: 5.0 (★★★★★)
Britten's glorious carol sequence complemented by ancient and modern settings of related Medieval texts

A remarkable number of early English carols survive, giving us a window onto a form which underwent significant changes in the 19th century. And these texts have provided an endless source of inspiration to 20th century and contemporary composers as the contemporary carol has developed a lively new life. In fact, new carols were very much the thing in the first half of the 20th century, Peter Warlock's Bethlehem Down (from 1927) was published by the Daily Telegraph, and William Walton's Make we joy now in this fest (from 1931) by the Daily Despatch.

Benjamin Britten's A Ceremony of Carols (from 1942) had no such direct inception, it was inspired by a book of medieval carol texts which he bought in Nova Scotia on the journey back to wartime Britain from voluntary exile in America that he and Peter Pears made in 1942, uncertain of their reception on arriving. The work is a 20th century masterpiece, but what to programme with it?

For The Sixteen at Christmas: A Ceremony of Carols at Cadogan Hall on Monday 16 December 2019, Harry Christophers and The Sixteen performed a sequence of carols (some for Christmas, some for other times of the year) all based on Medieval texts, giving us surviving Medieval carols alongside carols to Medieval texts by 20th century composers, William Walton, Elizabeth Poston, Gustav Holst, and contemporary composers Matthew Martin, Jan Sandstrom, James Burton and Cecilia McDowall, all culminating in Britten's A Ceremony of Carols, performed with harpist Frances Kelly.

We started with Walton's 1931 Make we joy now in this fest, a setting of a macaronic text which was somewhat unfamiliar, and for all its liveliness has subtle moments too.

There followed a sequence of Medieval carols, the trick with these is how to present them. Christophers chose to give the carols quite plainly without too much additional arrangement, which made them all the more effective with their bold harmonies.

Barbican Presents: Beethoven, Bach, contemporary opera and more

Not surprisingly, Beethoven looms large in the Barbican's programme for the first half of 2020 in Barbican Presents, its curated classical music season. Sir Andras Schiff will be completing his performances of the Beethoven Piano Concertos with the Budapest Festival Orchestra, conductor Ivan Fischer, whilst Sir John Eliot Gardiner will be presenting the complete Beethoven symphonies with his Orchestra Revolutionnaire et Romantique and Anne-Sophie Mutter will be performing violin sonatas, accompanied by Lambert Orkis

The Beethoven Weekender will present a whole weekend of Beethoven-related events, with the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra, Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra, City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra, Royal Northern Sinfonia and Halle Orchestra sharing the symphonies, the Carducci Quartet in the quartets, plus chamber music and more. The Beethoven-Haus Bonn's exhibition BTHVN on Tour will be at the Barbican in the Spring, combining artefacts from the composer's life with contemporary views of the composers

Bach is also a feature, and Mahan Esfahani will be exploring Bach's The Musical Offering, whilst Accademia Bizantina will be performing The Art of Fugue, baritone Benjamin Appl joins the Academy of Ancient Music for Bach cantatas, Masaaki Suzuki conducts Bach Collegium Japan in Bach's St John Passion, Jeremy Denk performs Book One of The Well Tempered Clavier and Lang Lang performs the Goldberg Variations. Cellist Jean-Guihen Queyras will perform Bach's cello suites alongside contemporary responses by Ivan Fedele, Jonathan Harvey, György Kurtág, Gilbert Amy, Misato Mochizuki and Ichiro Nodaira.

David Lang's new opera prisoner of state, a contemporary re-working of the story from Beethoven's Fidelio, will receive its premiere when Ilan Volkov conducts the BBC Symphony Orchestra, with Claron McFadden, Jarrett Ott, Alan Oke and Davone Tines. Max Richter's new piece Voices, co-commissioned by the Barbican, will receive its world premiere by 'an orchestra featuring a radically reimagined instrumentation'. We are intrigued already. The BBC Symphony Orchestra is also presenting Joby Talbot's 2015 opera Everest, with Nicole Paiment conducting.

Handel's Rodelinda receives a concert performance from the English Concert, conductor Harry Bickett, with Lucy Crowe, Iestyn Davies and Joshua Ellicott. Whilst Arcangelo, conductor Jonathan Cohen, will be performing Haydn's Creation with Lucia Richter, Toby Spence and Thomas Bauer.

Trumpeter Alison Balsom will be Milton Court Artist in Residence, exploring a repertoire which varies from Miles Davis' Sketches of Spain (arranged by Gil Evans) with the Guildhall Jazz Orchestra, director Scott Stroman, to John Woolrich's Hark! The Echoing Air with the Britten Sinfonia.

The third visiting orchestra is the New York Philharmonic which, under music director Jaap van Zweden, will be performing Mahler's Symphonies No. 1 & 2, and the orchestra's relationship with the composer goes right back to when Mahler was music director in the early 20th century.

Other artists featured include Yuja Wang, who will be performing chamber music with cellist Gautier Capucon and also giving a solo recital. And Igor Levitt will be performing Shostakovich's 24 Preludes and Fugues, rarely played as a full set, and then will be joined by friends for Messiaen's Visions de l'Amen, a chamber version of Shostkovich's Symphony no. 15, Beethoven's piano duet version of the Grosse Fuge, and Bartok's Sonata for Two Pianos and Percussion. Soprano Lise Davidsen will be giving a recital performing lieder accompanied by James Baillieu, in Brahms, Strauss, Sibelius, Grieg and Schumann.

Richard King's book The Lark Ascending, about the relationships between the people, the music and the landscape of Great Britain, comes out in paperback in the Spring and to coincide with this there is a special evening which will feature a seamless blend of music, specially-commissioned audio-visual content, spoken word and dance and will offer Barbican audiences an opportunity to experience an alternative reimagining of the book’s narrative, including appearances by many of the artists mentioned in the text. If you have enjoyed the recent performances of Britten's Death in Venice at Covent Garden [see my review], then Internationaal Theater Amsterdam's presentation of a dramatic version of Thomas Mann's novella may appeal. Adapted by former Dutch poet laureate Ramsey Nasr, who performs the role of Aschenbach, the work is based both on the novella and on Mann's live, and the performance features music by Nico Muhly alongside Strauss and Schoenberg, performed by the Britten Sinfonia.

Full details from the Barbican website.

An intriguing journey: with Soledad, baroque violinist Jorge Jimenez takes us from Biber's intense Catholicism, through Bach to the vibrancy of Spanish baroque

Soledad - Biber, Bach, Lorca, Scarlatti; Jorge Jimenez
Reviewed by Robert Hugill on 11 December 2019 Star rating: 4.0 (★★★★)
Baroque violinist takes us on an intriguing journey from the Catholic intensity of Biber, through Lutheran Bach to vibrant Baroque Spain

The Spanish violinist Jorge Jimenez might be a name known to British listeners as his Baroque violin playing some times pops up with period instrument groups in the UK (he was recently performing Beethoven with the Hanover Band). Jimenez has released a new disc Soledad on his own label, which is available on CD, as a download or via a limited edition vinyl. The word Soledad means loneliness in Spanish, though Jimenez disc does not give much away as to how we might apply this to the music. Perhaps it refers to the loneliness of the violinist, playing music unaccompanied, or perhaps to the feelings engendered by the music on the disc, much of it soulful and melancholy.

The programme takes us on an intriguing journey from Heinrich Ignaz Franz von Biber, through Johann Sebastian Bach to Domenico Scarlatti, via Federico Garcia Lorca. Not all the music was originally for solo violin, but then again much Baroque music existed and can exist in multiple versions. Jimenez' programme includes an organ work by JS Bach, which may not be by Bach and may not originally have been written for organ!

On Bethlehem Down: Chamber Choir of London & Dominic Ellis-Peckham at St George's Church, Bloomsbury

Chamber Choir of London, Dominic Peckham - St George's Church, London

On Bethlehem Down; The Chamber Choir of London, Dominic Ellis-Peckham; St George's Church, Bloomsbury
Reviewed by Robert Hugill on 13 December 2019 Star rating: 4.0 (★★★★)
Christmas music old and new in engaging performances from this young chamber choir

Chamber Choir of London, Dominic Peckham - St George's Church, London

The Chamber Choir of London is a relatively new ensemble under the artistic directorship of Dominic Ellis-Peckham. A group of 18 young professional singers who finished a busy 2019 with a Christmas concert on Friday at St George's Church, Bloomsbury.

Now, I have to confess that I am somewhat resistant to the traditional Christmas concert, and the prospect of traditional carols is not one that delights. But the combination of intelligent programming (including a significant number of contemporary pieces and many unfamiliar works) and a freshness of approach from the singers was enough to weaken the heart of the grumpiest of critics.

Bethlehem Down at St George's Church, Bloomsbury on Friday 13 December 2019 featured music by Cecilia McDowall, Richard Allain, Kerry Andrew, Jonathan Rathbone, Adrian Peacock, Peter Wishart, Judith Weir, Bob Chilcott, Toby Young, Sally Beamish, John Rutter, Sir William Walton, Imogen Holst and Herbert Howells, as well as arrangements by Sir David Willcocks, Andrew Carter, Henry Walford Davies, Charles Wood and Wolfgang Lindner.

The concert was billed as being by candlelight and so lights were low and there was a stylish arrangement of candles on the floor. The singers generally performed in a single arc or two lines, but for some items they surrounded the audience in a single arc, and in others they made full use of the many different spaces of the church.

Rule-breaking music that inspires you and empowers you: Tamsin Waley-Cohen and James Baillieu on CPE Bach's sonatas for violin and keyboard.

Tamsin Waley-Cohen & James Baillieu recording CPE Bach at Snape

Violinist Tamsin Waley-Cohen and pianist James Baillieu have just recorded CPE Bach's complete works for violin and keyboard, a set 10 sonatas and fantasias which span a significant portion of the composer's life. And the disc has just been released on Signum Classics. Whilst CPE Bach's keyboard works are moderately well known, his music for violin and keyboard is less so, and for both artists it was very much an exploration of new territory. I recently met up with Tamsin and James to find out more.

Born in 1714, Carl Philipp Emmanuel Bach was the fifth child and second (surviving) son of Johann Sebastian Bach and his first wife Maria Barbara Bach, and the composer Georg Philipp Telemann was the child's godfather. Having studied with his father, in 1738, CPE Bach entered the service of Crown Prince Frederick of Prussia (later King Frederick the Great),  becoming a member of the royal orchestra on Frederick's accession, and CPE Bach remained in post in Berlin until 1768 when he succeeded his godfather, Telemann, as music director in Hamburg. It is from these Berlin years that the sonatas for violin and keyboard date, covering a period of 30 years up to the 1760s. The earliest ones pre-date the composer's time in Berlin, but he revised them in the 1740s. And we can imagine CPE Bach performing them with a member of the court orchestra.

For Tamsin, a lot about CPE Bach is interesting, whilst his music is affectionate and human. She started to come across his music more and was intrigued by his influence on Mozart and later composers, Mozart said of him, "Bach is the father, we are the children." He was a noted keyboard player, and James pointed out that Beethoven was heavily influenced by CPE Bach's notable treatise on keyboard technique. This sparked their interest in CPE Bach's own music.  The solo piano music is well-known and there are some lovely flute pieces, but much of his output is beautiful yet not recorded much.

They found it valuable to put him into historical context, as the sonatas date from the most liberal years of the Enlightenment and CPE Bach was involved with key writers and thinkers such as Friedrich Gottlieb Klopstock, Moses Mendelssohn and Gotthold Ephraim Lessing. This was a period which put great value on the individual and on free will, all of which can be detected in CPE Bach's music, and which still felt pretty relevant to our own world.

A Place to Call Home: Sing for Shelter

The young composer Alex Woolf (the premiere of whose Requiem we noted in 2018) has created a new song A Place to Call Home as part of the Sing for Shelter project, to bring awareness of Shelter and is work in helping to combat the widespread problem of bad housing and homelessness in the UK. In October, 2000 singers from across the country descended on English National Opera and joined the ENO Chorus and Orchestra, as well as such luminaries as Sir Bryn Terfel, Lesley Garratt and Alice Coote (who attended with her brother, who has himself experience homelessness) to record the single. Choirs included Fire Service personnel, Shelter service users, schoolchildren and signing choirs for deaf and hearing singers.

There is a taster video above, but the resulting single is available now from all major digital retailers, including Spotify, Apple Music, Amazon Music, Deezer, Google Store, YouTube Music and more. All proceeds from the single will go to supporting Shelter’s work over this winter period, fighting homelessness and helping families get back to living in safe housing with ongoing support.

Debut with BBC Now, the London premiere of Judith Weir's Oboe Concerto - Gergely Madaras' week

Gergely Madaras (Photo Marco Borggreve)

This is a busy week for conductor Gergely Madaras, as on Tuesday (10 December 2019) he made his debut with the BBC National Orchestra of Wales, conducting Tchaikovsky’s First Symphony ‘Winter Daydreams’ and Variations on a Rococo Theme, with Anastasia Kobekina as soloist, and 'A Winter Landscape' from Glazunov’s The Seasons. Then tonight (Friday 13 December 2019) he conducts the BBC Symphony Orchestra at the Barbican Centre (replacing Rafael Payare) in the London premiere of Judith Weir's Oboe Concerto with Nicholas Daniel as soloist, Brett Dean's Amphitheatre and Mahler's Symphony No. 1. (further details from the Barbican website).


Judith Weir's Oboe Concerto was premiered in 2018 by soloist Celia Craig with the Adelaide Symphony Orchestra, conductor Douglas Boyd. Craig gave the UK premiere of the work in September 2019 when she performed it in Cardiff with the BBC National Orchestra of Wales, conductor Andrew Gourlay. In her programme note, Judith Weir says of the work, 'Having played the oboe myself as a young person (for about 20 years, starting at age 11) the composition of an Oboe Concerto had an almost autobiographical significance for me. It was also a memory exercise, as I recalled in detail some of the music I had learned so carefully during those years. One important work, the Strauss Concerto, was helpful with my choice of accompanying instruments; just a wind octet plus strings.'

In 2012, Gergely Madaras was the inaugural Sir Charles Mackerras Fellow at English National Opera, a relationship which culminated in Madaras conducting Simon Burney's new production of Mozart's The Magic Flute. In September 2019, Madaras took over as music director of the Orchestre Philharmonique Royal de Liège in Belgium, with concert series in Liège and in Brussels. On 26 January 2020 he conducts them in Bach, Kurtag and Haydn's Symphony No. 104 'London' (further details from the orchestra's website)

A bleakly haunted journey: Alice Coote and Julius Drake in Schubert's Winterreise at Wigmore Hall

Franz Schubert: Winterreise - autograph manuscript courtesy of The Morgan Library & Museum

Schubert Winterreise; Alice Coote, Julius Drake; Wigmore Hall
Reviewed by Robert Hugill on 12 December 2019 Star rating: 5.0 (★★★★★)
A performance of mesmerising intensity, as we experience the disintegration of the haunted protagonist in the superb partnership of Alice Coote and Julius Drake

We heard mezzo-soprano Alice Coote and pianist Julius Drake performing Schubert's Winterreise at the Wigmore Hall in 2012 [a performance issued on Wigmore Live, see my review]. The two returned on Thursday 12 December 2019 for a repeat performance which was also being recorded by BBC Radio 3 for future broadcast.

In fact, the programme was radically different from that first advertised for the concert, which had been billed as including Beethoven's An die ferne Geliebte, a selection from Schoneberg's Das Buch der hangenden Garten and songs by Berg and Weill. But encountering Alice Coote and Julius Drake in Winterreise is always a mesmerising experience, and there was certainly noting stale or repetitive about Coote and Drake's performance, quite the opposite. This was very much a performance in the moment, as Coote brought a haunted intensity to Schubert's great song-cycle. Throughout Coote showed superb technical control and was brilliantly partnered by Drake, so that the two charted a very distinct path through the Wanderer's journey. Speeds were on the slower side, Coote took her time and allowed herself moments to savour the intensity of the emotion, but it never felt over done.

Throughout there was a sense of intense emotion bottled up, and for all the eruptions of climaxes it was a very tense, interior performance. Not so much a young man living his experiences as an older protagonist recalling strong emotions. Perhaps a key to the musical and emotional arc was that Der Wegweiser (The Signpost) felt the emotional heart of the work, starting with haunted melancholy and moving towards bleak intensity. Yet there were moments of real power, as the Wanderer girded themself up, so that the simple melancholy of the opening of Das Wirtshaus (The Inn) grew into a powerful conclusion which led directly into Mut! (Courage).

Migrating Sounds: Rebecca Saunders, Richard Causton, Vito Žuraj, and Shiori Usui at BCMG

Rebecca Saunders

On Sunday (15 December 2019) the Birmingham Contemporary Music Group (BCMG) will be presenting a pair of new works by Rebecca Saunders and by Richard Causton as part of its Migrating Sounds programme at the CBSO Centre in Birmingham. The concert features the UK premiere of Rebecca Saunders' Scar and the world premiere of Richard Causton's Transients, both works commissioned via the BCMG Sound Investment scheme, plus Tension by Vito Žuraj, and Shiori Usui’s Deep.

Saunders' Scar is inspired by the idea of residual marks and the way in which paper is physically marked, left to right, by annotated music. Written for 15 soloists, the work is based on a left/right-hand axis of two grand pianos, two percussionists, a button accordion and electric guitar. The rest of the ensemble is added to this, bass clarinet, trumpet, horn, trombone, violin, viola, cello and 5-string double bass. In the video below, Stephan Meier, BCMG's artistic director, introduces Saunders' manuscript.

Scar is the latest in the on-going relationship between Saunders and BCMG which began in 2017 (including a piece by Saunders at BCMG's 30th birthday concert) and Scar will be the fifth work by Saunders that BCMG has performed this year, though in fact BCMG first performed a work by Saunders back in 2010! And in November this year, BCMG gave a repeat performance of Stirrings Still at Conservatoire à rayonnement regional de Paris.

Vito Žuraj's Tension will be performed in a new version for two ensembles with NEXT musicians side-by-side. Shiori Usui’s Deep was written in 2014 as part of BCMG’s Apprentice Composer-in-Residence Scheme run in partnership with Sound and Music. The work takes the listener on a musical journey to the very bottom of the ocean, and was inspired by the BBC TV series, Blue Planet

Rebecca Saunders is the recent recipient of the Ernst Von Siemens Music Prize, an award sometimes known as the ‘Nobel Prize for Music’; previous recipients include Yehudi Menuhin, Leonard Bernstein and Daniel Barenboim. Richard Causton is Reader in Composition at the University of Cambridge and recently became an Honorary Patron of the Centre for Young Musicians.

BCMG's NEXT Music Study Programme in Contemporary Performance, created in partnership with the Royal Birmingham Conservatoire supports early career musicians who want to dedicate their professional career to contemporary music. It is the only programme in the UK providing intensive, year-long training in contemporary music performance practice.

BCMG's Sound Investment scheme is an innovative way of supporting the commissioning of new music by giving BCMG's patrons and supporters the ability to become part of the commissioning process for a modest investment. Thus making the audience members the real owners of new pieces.



Full details from the BCMG website.

Christmas CD Round up

This year's Christmas round-up has carols old and new, alongside music from the Spanish golden age, Bach's Christmas Oratorio, a disc of contemporary music by Ben Parry, and even arrangements by Rick Wakeman. A poignant tribute to Sir Stephen Cleobury is King's College, Cambridge's recording of the Centenary Service of Nine Lessons & Carols. Young voices are particularly prominent, not only the trebles at King's, but the girls choir from Ely Cathedral, and the choirs of both Westminster School and Benenden School, plus of course the Thomanerchor Leipzig.

Christmas Oratorio: This has a nicely balanced lyric quartet of young soloists (Dorothee Mields, soprano, Elvira Bill, alto, Markus Schafer tenor arias, Klaus Hager - bass) plus Patrick Grahl as the Evangelist, with some admirably straight toned singing but what strikes most is the performance of the boys (or rather young men and boys) of the Thomanerchor Leipzig. A large, all male-voice group which gives a distinctive sound to Bach's choral writing, complemented by a stylish performance from the Leipzig Gewandhuasorchester, all recorded live under the direction of Gotthold Schwarz, the current Thomaskantor. Whilst not period style, Schwarz keeps things moving and keeps textures light, often with a lovely sense of joy in the choruses. Also on DVD.

Johann Sebastian Bach (1685-1750) - Christmas Oratorio
Dorothee Mields, Elivra Bill, Patrick Grahl, Markus Schafer, Klaus Hager, Thomanerchor Leipzig, Gewandhuasorchester Leipzig, Gotthold Schwarz
ACCENTUS MUSIC ACC 30469 2CDs

O Magnum Mysterium: Christmas music old and new from Londinium

If you enjoy concerts which celebrate Christmas but want to avoid the standard carols and the usual Christmas repertoire, then Friday's concert from Londinium and conductor Andrew Griffiths might be for you. The choir is presenting O Magnum Mysterium at St John's Church, Waterloo on 13 December 2019, and it features a nice selection of seasonal music, old and new, with few if any hackneyed favourites.

The new music includes works by Matthew Martin, John McCabe, Morten Lauridsen (his O Magnum Mysterium which is now ubiquitous enough to be a modern classic), Cecilia McDowall, Frances Pott, Cheryl Frances Hoad, Gabriel Jackson and Giles Swayne. Not quite so modern, but certainly deserving of being better known are Kenneth Leighton's Three Carols (from 1948) and his Nativitie. Older composers in the mix include Sweelinck, Hieronymus Praetorius, Richard Dering, Palestrina, Byrd, Rachmaninov, and Lassus.

Full details from the Londinium website.

Reviving Ethel Smyth's dance dream: Fete Galante from Restrospect Opera

Ethel Smyth Fete Galante, Liza Lehmann The Happy Prince; Charmian Bedford, Carolyn Dobbin, Felix Kemp, Simon Wallfisch, Mark Milhofer, Alessandro Fisher, Lontano Ensemble, Odaline de la Martinez, Felicity Lott, Valerie Langfield; Retrospect Opera
Reviewed by Robert Hugill on 9 December 2019 Star rating: 4.5 (★★★★½)
Perhaps Smyth's best opera, the intriguingly small-scale fruit of her post-World War I re-invention

The First World War had a devastating effect on Ethel Smyth's operatic career. Though English born (her father was a General), she was German trained and much of her musical career was focused on Europe, at the time hostilities were declared she had a number of major European performances lined up for her operas. These, of course, never happened. Smyth would continue to write operas, but her career refocused on Britain, and she never again returned to the large-scale romantic opera of The Wreckers (1902-4). In fact, she had already moved to other types of opera and in 1913 and 1914 had written a two-act comedy The Boatswain's Mate.

Whilst hardly well-known, Smyth's opera The Wreckers is available on disc and does achieve occasional performances, and chamber versions of The Boatswain's Mate are becoming increasingly common. But we have little knowledge of much else of Smyth's later, post-World War One output. Neither of her final operas Fete Galante (1921-22) and Entente Cordiale (1923) is well-known, nor is her oratorio The Prison (1929-30). But things are beginning to change, an American group has successfully crowdfunded a recording of The Prison, and now Retrospect Opera, having recorded The Boatswain's Mate [see my review], has committed Fete Galante to disc.

The new recording of Ethel Smyth's Fete Galante on Retrospect Opera features the Lontano Ensemble, conducted by Odaline de la Martinez with Charmian Bedford as Columbine, Carolyn Dobbin as The Queen, Felix Kemp as Pierrot, Simon Wallfisch as The King, Mark Milhofer as The Lover and Alessandro Fisher as Harlequin. The disc also features Liza Lehmann's The Happy Prince for reciter (Felicity Lott) and piano (Valerie Langfield), plus three short orchestral excerpts from Smyth's operas recorded in 1939 by Adrian Boult and the Light Orchestra.

Smyth called Fete Galante a Dance-Dream in One Act and it uses a libretto by Edward Shanks based on a tiny (seven pages) short story by Smyth's friend Maurice Baring. The work was premiered in 1923, with Sir Thomas Beecham conducting his recently formed (and short-lived) British National Opera Company. Smyth would create an orchestra suite from it in 1924, and expand it as a ballet (1932) with designs by Vanessa Bell!

Spring at Conway Hall: pre-concert talks, Beethoven, premieres and more at the Sunday concert series

The Spring 2020 Sunday concert series at Conway Hall has been launched, with an impressive array of concerts from 12 January to 7 June 2020. I will be giving four pre-concert talks during the season, Breaking new Ground looking at Beethoven's Violin Sonatas (19 January 2020), Cello sonatas by Beethoven, Brahms and Shostakovich (23 February 2020), A tale of two friendships on the relationships between Brahms and the Schumanns, and Shostakovich and Weinberg (5 April 2020) and In search of Bach on Bach's cello suites (10 May 2020).

Beethoven is, of course, very much a focus of the concerts with the artistic director of the series Simon Callaghan performing Beethoven's complete Piano Trios with Ben Gilmore, and Ashok Klouda, and Simon will join the Galliard Ensemble to perform Beethoven's Quintet in E flat for piano and winds alongside music by Richard Strauss's pupil Ludwig Thuille and Poulenc's Sextet, and Simon will also join the United Strings of Europe, directed by Julian Azkoul, for Beethoven's Piano Concerto No. 4.

Besides the focus on core 19th century chamber music, there are some interesting forays into the 20th century with Messiaen's Quartet for the End of Time and Hindemith's Clarinet Quartet (one of the few works for the same line-up as the Messiaen), Webern's Langsamer Satz, Korngold's Trio in D, Ravel and Debussy's Quartets, Ravel's Trio in A minor, Stravinsky's Three pieces for Quartet, Shostakovich's Trio no. 1 and Weinberg's Trio Op.24.

The series includes premieres of works by Freya Waley Cohen (a new piece for soprano Heloise Werner and the Tippett Quartet), Camden Reeves (Quartet No. 5 from the Solem Quartet) and Jasmin Kent Rodgman (a new work for the United Strings of Europe).

The series opens with musicians from the Highgate Festival in a programme which includes Clara Schumann's masterpiece, her Piano Trio in G minor and the penultimate concert in the series concludes with Trio Sora playing Fanny Mendelssohn's Trio in D minor, a contemporary work to the Clara Schumann but one not so well known.

In the salon of Mlle de Guise: Solomon's Knot take us to 17th century France with a pair of Christmas pastorals by Marc-Antoine Charpentier

Solmon's Knot (Photo Alexander Barnes / Apple and Biscuit.)

Marc-Antoine Charpentier In nativitatem Domini canticum H.416 and Pastorale sur la naissance de Notre Seigneur Jesus-Christ H.483; Solomon's Knot; St John's Smith Square
Reviewed by Robert Hugill on 9 December 2019 Star rating: 4.0 (★★★★)
Two rarely performed Christmas pieces evoke 17th century France in highly engaging performances

Marie of Lorraine, Duchess of Guise,
Charpentier's patronness
(Balthazar Moncornet)

Having in previous year's explored Christmas in Leipzig via the music of J.S. Bach and his predecessors at St Thomas's Church, Solomon's Knot returned to St John's Smith Square's Christmas Festival on Monday 9 December 2019 with a pair of Christmas pieces by Marc-Antoine Charpentier, In nativitatem Domini canticum H.416 and Pastorale sur la naissance de Notre Seigneur Jesus-Christ H.483. The works were performed by the singers, Clare Lloyd-Griffiths, Zoe Brookshaw, Kate Symonds-Joy, Peter Davoren, Thomas Herford, Marcus Farnsworth, Jonathan Sells & Alex Ashworth, with an instrumental ensemble of Eva Caballero and Marta Goncalves (flutes), Naomi Burrell and Beatrice Scaldini (violins), Joanna Miller (viola), Jonathan Rees (viola da gamba), Carina Cosgrave (violine), Jamie Akers (Theorbo/Lute), and William Whitehead (harpsichord/organ).

Famously Italian trained (he studied in Rome with Carissimi), Marc-Antoine Charpentier's style combined the French and the Italian rather too freely for the taste of some of his contemporaries. Coming up against the operatic monopoly of Jean-Baptiste Lully, Charpentier found a sympathetic home in the highly musical establishment of Mademoiselle de Guise, where even the servants sang and performed. And after her death, he moved to a nearby Jesuit Church.

In nativitatem Domini canticum is thought to date from this latter period of Charpentier's musical life. Setting various texts from the Bible in Latin, it starts by looking forward to Christ's birth with a group of voices imploring God to remembers his promise of salvation, an instrumental movement 'Nuit' follows invoking Christ's birth, and then the second part is devoted to the Shepherds and the Angels, whilst after a lively march for the Shepherds' journey to Jerusalem, the final part ends in general rejoicing.

From Dvorak to Reich: the Arcis Saxophone Quartet in American Dreams at Conway Hall

Arcis Saxophone Quartet
(Jure Knez, Claus Hierluksch, Richarda Fuss, Edoardo Zotti)
Photo Harald Hoffmann

American Dreams - Reich, Dvorak, Bernstein, Barber, Gershwin; Arcis Saxophone Quartet; Conway Hall
Reviewed by Robert Hugill on 8 December 2019 Star rating: 4.0 (★★★★)
A young saxophone quartet brings an engagingly fresh approach to a century of music written by composers in America

Compared to most of the other classical instruments, the saxophone is quite a young instrument with a fascinating history, and whilst it has become synonymous with jazz, a separate classical tradition has grown up during the 20th and 21st centuries. On Sunday 8 December 2019, the Arcis Saxophone Quartet gave a concert, American Dreams, as part of the Conway Hall's Sunday concerts and beforehand I gave a preconcert talk on the curious history of the saxophone.

The Arcis Saxophone Quartet is a young group, founded in 2009 at the University of Music and Performing Arts, Munich. We heard, Claus Hierluksch, soprano, Richarda Fuss, alto, Edoardo Zotti, tenor and Jure Knez, baritone in a programme which brought an interesting freshness to the idea of repertoire, with Steve Reich's New York Counterpoint (from 1985, originally for clarinet and tape or 11 clarinets and bass clarinet), Antonin Dvorak's String Quartet No. 12 'American' (from 1893, originally for string quartet), Leonard Bernstein's West Side Story Suite (originally from 1957, heard in the group's own arrangement for saxophone quartet), Samuel Barber's Adagio (from 1936, originally for string quartet) and George Gershwin' s Porgy and Bess Suite, arranged by Sylvain Dedenon.

For the Steve Reich, we had four saxophones and tape, with the live players stood in front of the stage and the speakers playing the pre-recorded sections on the stage. Sitting in the balcony of the Conway Hall it was at times difficult to tell what was live and what was recorded. The result started with a seductive throbbing, before moving into a series of interestingly rhythmically complex sections where the different lines interlaced with each other. This might not have been Reich's intended instrumental line-up for the piece, but in a performance as dramatic and as technically poised as this, the result was a very New York sort of sound.

Messiah round up

The Handel Festival at The Crystal Palace, 1857

As ever, Handel's Messiah seems to be a Christmas essential for most concert hall and music venues. The work's ubiquity might not have surprised the composer, but its association with Christmas might have. When first performed, Messiah was a Lenten and Easter work and Charles Jennens' selection of texts from the Bible takes us from Christ's birth, through his Passion to his Resurrection. But nowadays, it seems to be Part One that sticks. So we have 10 or so performances of Messiah in an around London (that is not counting those which took place earlier in December or those I have missed).

Most performances look set to use a fairly standard version of the score, none this year seem to explore more rarefied versions, no-one offers five soloists and no-one promises a version based on a particular year. But there is plenty of variety. In terms of size, you can opt for the positively chamber-sized performances right up to a promised 350 choristers at the Royal Festival Hall and the full Philharmonia Chorus at the Royal Albert Hall. Large-scale performances of Handel are nothing new, they came in at the end of the 18th century (probably after the Handel commemoration performances at Westminster Abbey in 1784) and it is via large choral society performances in the 19th century that the work's popularity burgeoned.

There are a number of period instrument performances, that at St John's Smith Square is a regular Christmas fixture, but this year we have a visit from the Freiburg Baroque Orchestra under Trevor Pinnock which promises to be something of a breath of fresh air.

Soloists are similarly varied, with a selection of distinguished operatic singers including Natalya Romaniw, Sarah Tynan, Renata Pokupic and Katie Bray, right through to talented young professionals who are bound to bring an element of youth and freshness to their performances. And at Southwark Cathedral, there is the chance to hear Messiah sung by the boys and gentlemen of the cathedral choir.