A different part of the soul: Nicolas Hodges on recording the music of Sir Harrison Birtwistle and Beethoven for his latest disc

Nicolas Hodges and Sir Harrison Birtwistle at the recording session for A Bag of Bagatelles

On 6 November 2020, pianist Nicolas Hodges had a new disc out on Wergo. Called A Bag of Bagatelles it intriguingly pairs the music of Sir Harrison Birtwistle with music by Beethoven including the Bagatelles Op. 126, Fantasy Op. 77 and Allegretto WoO 61. Nicolas enjoys a close relationship with Birtwistle and on the disc, Birtwistle's Variations from the Golden Mountain, Gigue Machine and Dance of the metro-gnome were all recorded in the presence of the composer. I caught up with Nicolas by Zoom to find out more about the programme and about his strong relationship to contemporary music.

Nicolas has already recorded a disc of Birtwistle's solo piano music (The Axe Manual), and this new disc includes the three remaining solo piano pieces that he had not recorded which meant that the Birtwistle had to be paired with something as there is not enough for a complete disc. Beethoven's Bagatelles Op.126 seemed an obvious choice, for one thing Birtwistle said that he modelled his Variations from the Golden Mountain on Beethoven's Bagatelles. Also, as well as fitting, Nicolas had played the Bagatelles recently and he describes the Beethoven Allegretto, also on the disc, as a strange piece! 

Nicolas did not really think of the Beethoven centenary, the plan was in fact for the disc to be issued in 2018 but unfortunately it took rather longer. But having programmed the Beethoven, Nicolas found it refreshing to be able to use that classical part of his repertoire alongside the contemporary, as the two are usually separated on disc. In live concerts he likes to mix and match, but on CD this is not usually possible as record companies prefer single composer discs. But because the new disc contains only music by one living composer, and because of the Beethoven centenary, A Bag of Bagatelles seems to have slipped through the net, and Nicolas hopes to do more such mixes in the future.

As ABO's Sirens Fund awards 2020 funding to seven orchestras, applications open for fifth round of funding

Anna Amalia von Sachsen-Weimar-Eisenach

The Association of British Orchestra's (ABO) Sirens Fund was founded by Diane Ambache in 2016 to support for projects to raise the awareness and appreciation of music written by historic women composers from around the world. 

For the 2020 round, seven orchestras have received funding including Bath Philharmonia, Manchester Camerata, Royal Liverpool Philharmonic, Royal Northern Sinfonia, Scottish Chamber Orchestra, Southbank Sinfonia and Ulster Orchestra who will give performances of music by Grazyna Bacewicz (1909-1969), Anna Amalia von Sachsen-Weimar-Eisenach (1739-1807), Amy Beach (1867-1944), Helena Munktell (1852-1919), Clara Schumann(1819-1896), Grace Williams (1906-1977) and Elizabeth Maconchy (1907-1994).

Applications have now opened for the ABO’s latest round of grants from its Sirens Fund which offers UK orchestras with financial support for projects to raise the awareness and appreciation of music written by historic women composers from around the world. Open to full and associate members of the ABO, the deadline for receipt of applications is 1 March 2021. 

For more information on how to apply visit https://abo.org.uk/what-we-do/developing/development-projects/sirens

I am Here: broadcast of Mozart's Requiem from ENO on BBC Two will also showcase ENO Baylis digital photography project

ENO Baylis I am Here creative photography installation © Karla Gowlett, courtesy ENO

On 14 November 2020, BBC Two will be broadcasting English National Opera's performance of Mozart's Requiem, a replacement for a pair of live performances due to be happening this weekend. When viewers see the television programme they will also see the fruits of ENO Baylis' creative photography project, I am Here. The seats of the London Coliseum will be emblazoned with 700 self-portraits created by Year 7 pupils from schools across London and Liverpool.

ENO Baylis I am Here
image from Ark Elvin School

This year has been an especially challenging time for young people making the transition from Primary to Secondary School. I am Here provides an opportunity for these Year 7 students to create their own self-portrait at this transition point - offering an optimistic way of introducing themselves to their new school, peers and teachers.

Each of the digital works was created in response to resources and lesson plans developed by ENO Baylis in conjunction with artist and educator Chris Webb and delivered by teachers, as part of ENO Baylis’ commitment to developing skills in young people across the creative arts.

Mozart's Requiem filmed at the London Coliseum with Elizabeth Llewellyn (soprano), Dame Sarah Connolly (mezzo soprano), Ed Lyon (tenor) and Gerald Finley (bass), chorus and orchestra of English National Opera conducted by Mark Wigglesworth will be broadcast on BBC Two on 14 November 2020 at 7pm. 

Full details from the ENO website.

Remarkably prescient: Songspiel releases its film of William Marsey's Austerity Songs

Songspiel - Dominic Sedgwick, James Way, Felicity Turner, Claire Lees at the Red House
(Photo from video stream)

Last year Songspiel, the song collective run by pianist Natalie Burch and tenor James Way, applied for funding for a project based around the premise that classical music had been slow to adapt to online formats but when it did its reach was measurably incredibly large. We therefore hoped to embark on a project that began to make song repertoire, both new and old, available online with the aim of attracting new audiences, through social media.

The result was Austerity Songs, a cycle of eight songs for four solo voices (SATB) and piano by William Marsey setting poems from Sam Riviere's book 81 Austerities.  Having performed it live on a number of occasions, the group did a video recording at the Red House in Aldeburgh in September 2019, with Claire Lees (soprano), Felicity Turner (mezzo-soprano), James Way (tenor), Dominic Sedgwick (baritone) and Natalie Burch (piano), with video by Sam Stadlen and produced by Rosanna Goodall. It has recently been released on YouTube and there is a playlist [YouTube] so you can watch all the way through.

With the passing of a year between recording and release, so much has changed and the project now seems remarkably prescient. As James Way comments 'How times have changed! Between the filming and the release I feel classical music has gone through several stages of development when it comes to online content in a very short space of time.'

The poems are about the mundanities of daily life, but Marsey takes each and turns it into something musically intriguing. There are eight songs, with solo ones alternating with duets and ending with a quartet. Marsey is very fond of strong vocal lines, with singers often in unison, and a piano which supports and colours, and part of the cycle's charm is the disjunct between music and words. So that a break up song becomes more like a chorale, a poem about getting arts funding is almost a love duet, and a very sober baritone line with only discreet piano support is used for a song about a young man getting distracted by three women in a bar. Riviere's writing is intriguingly down to earth, racy even, but you are never quite sure where the poems are going and Marsey highlights this by the way that he sets them. So Dominic Sedgwick is wonderfully dead-pan as the distracted young man, breaking off in the middle of sentences and leaving us hanging, Claire Lees makes her daily worries into something more than that, whilst Felicity Turner and James way are so beautifully tender you wonder where the arts funding duet might be going!

Between them Marsey and Riviere take the quotidien and turn it into something intriguing and perhaps even philosophical. The cycle receives strong performances from the young singers and pianist; this is not a filmed recital but a film, and Sam Stadlen's video engagingly captures the performance with a repertoire of striking images.

William Marsey - Austerity Songs (text Sam Riviere)
Songspiel: Claire Lees (soprano), Felicity Turner (mezzo-soprano), James Way (tenor), Dominic Sedgwick (baritone), Natalie Burch (piano)
Recorded at the Red House in September 2019
Available on YouTube

Engaging breath of fresh air and, frankly, fun: Messe de... Carmina Burana from the Estonian ensemble, Hortus Musicus

Messe de... Carmina Burana; Hortus Musicus; ERP
Reviewed by Robert Hugill on 6 November 2020 Star rating: 3.5 (★★★½)
The Estonian Early Music ensemble takes an engagingly free-wheeling approach to sacred and secular music from the 14th century

This disc is such an engaging breath of fresh air and, frankly, fun. The Estonian early music ensemble, Hortus Musicus presents Messe de... Carmina Burana on ERP (Estonian Record Productions). The ensemble, artistic director Andres Mustonen, performs the 14th century Tournai Mass interleaved with songs from Carmina Burana.

Hortus Musicus was founded in Tallinn by Andres Mustonen in 1972 (in Soviet era Estonia), thus making it the oldest ensemble in Eastern Europein its field and one of the few so long-lived in the world. Their approach is freewheeling and whilst they are an Early Music ensemble they perform contemporary music too (their previous disc was of music by contemporary Estonian composer Peeter Vähi, see my review), with repertoire from 8th to 21st century, and from classical music to traditional music from across the globe. 

On this disc the music is performed by Andres Mustonen (violin), Anto Onnis (tenor, percussion), Tonis Kaumann (baritone, percussion), Riho Ridbeck (bass, percussion), Olev Ainomae (shawm, schalmei, recorders, crumhorn), Tonis Kuurme (curtal, rauschpfeiff, recorders, crumhorn), Valter Jurgenson (trombone), Imre Eenma (viola da gamba), Taavo Remmel (double bass) and Ivo Sillamaa (organ). And their approach is colourful, imaginative and engaging. They bring a whole range of colour and movement to the pieces, particularly the songs from Carmina Burana in a way which has somewhat gone out of fashion in Western performance practice. The intention is not so much careful recreation (whatever that might be, given how little we know of the originals) but to bring the music alive. And that they certainly do.

Hortus Musicus

The intention of the disc is to emphasise the way the distinction between sacred and secular music was blurred at the time, despite the best efforts of the Medieval church. Not only did the music from different spheres influence each other, but there is a large body of sacred music based on secular melodies. And of course, sacred repertoire could vary from polyphony to lively pilgrims' songs.

Imaginative and engaging: Guildhall School's live streamed opera triple bill of Italian rarities

Wolf-Ferrari: Susanna’s Secret - Olivia Boen
Guildhall School (Photo © Mihaela Bodlovic)

Triple Bill: Wolf-Ferrari, Mascagni, Donizetti; Stephen Medcalf, Dominic Wheeler; Guildhall School of Music and Drama
Reviewed by Robert Hugill on 4 November 2020
Three Italian on-act rarities in this live-streamed triple bill from the students of the Guildhall School

The Guildhall School of Music and Drama's opera production this term was an imaginative solution to the current restrictions. Performed live in a socially distanced manner and live-streamed from its Silk Street Theatre, the Guildhall School presented a triple bill of Italian operas, Wolf-Ferrari's Il segreto di Susanna, Mascagni's Zanetto and Donizetti's Rita in productions directed by Stephen Medcalf, conducted by Dominic Wheeler and designed by Cordelia Chisholm. We caught the second of four performances on 4 November 2020 with Olivia Boen, Adam Maxey, Brenton Spiteri, Ella de Jongh, Siân Griffiths, Laura Lolita Perešivana and Chuma Sijeqa.

It is perhaps a reflection of the rarity of the three operas that the only time I have seen Wolf-Ferrari's 1909 comedy and Mascagni's 1896 scena lirica was at Opera Holland Park, and that this was my first live encounter with Donizetti's 1841 comedy.

Wolf-Ferrari: Susanna’s Secret - Brenton Spiteri, Adam Maxey
Guildhall School (Photo © Mihaela Bodlovic)

Medcalf's productions took each work at face value, setting the pieces in the present day and utilising Chilsolm's striking single set with evocative videos setting the scene at the beginning of each work. This approach is not without problems. Wolf-Ferrari's comedy hinges on the ludicrous attempts of Susanna (Olivia Boen) to hide the fact that she smokes from her husband Gil (Adam Maxey), though with the modern disapproval of smoking perhaps the comedy is coming back into period. Donizetti's comedy is about spouse-beating, Rita (Laura Lolita Perešivana) beats her second husband, Beppe (Brenton Spiteri) whilst her first husband Gaspar (Chuma Sijeqa) has a delightful aria about the benefits and joys of wife beating! This is definitely a case of autre temps, autre moeurs.

The production involved even more of the production arts students as the technical crew handled the sound, video and broadcast as well as the usual production teams required in opera. And it was a live broadcast too with a real attempt to introduce some interestingly filmic camera work rather than simply pointing at the stage. The result was an evening of imaginative and engaging opera which came as close as possible to a live experience.

The social distance requirements meant that Medcalf's production kept the protagonists apart, but all concerned made it work and this was not something I really noticed. Perhaps more significantly, in order to have a live orchestra there just wasn't room for a full string complement in the theatre but the results were strong and vivid, the character of the playing in the Wolf-Ferrari more than made up for the lack of lushness in the string sound.

L’Île du rêve: Reynaldo Hahn's first opera proves to be a charming lyrical interlude

Reynaldo Hahn L’Île du rêve ; Hélène Guilmette, Cyrille Dubois, Münchner Rundfunkorchester, Hervé Niquet
Reviewed by Robert Hugill on 3 November 2020 Star rating: 3.5 (★★★½)
Hahn's first opera, premiered at the Opera Comique, proves to be full of lyrical charm and effortless style

Reynaldo Hahn's larger scale works are still not very well known and it is on his songs that performers concentrate, though his operetta Ciboulette gets an occasional outing. A child prodigy and relatively long-lived (1874 to 1947) he remained conservative, his music did not seem to keep up with the times. L’Île du rêve is his first opera, begun when he was 18. On this disc from Palazzetto Bru Zane, Hahn's L’Île du rêve gets its first recording with Hélène Guilmette and Cyrille Dubois, the Münchner Rundfunkorchester, conductor Hervé Niquet.

Born in Caracas of a German-Jewish father and a Venezuelan mother, Reynaldo Hahn's foreign nationality barred him from entering the Prix de Rome, even though he was a protégé of Massenet's. L’Île du rêve was something of a consolation prize, and when Hahn completed it in 1894, Massenet was sufficiently impressed to try and get it staged. Some nifty manoeuvring on Massenet's part led to the work's premiered in 1898 at the Opéra comique. Though there was a strong cast, the work failed to make an impression and though there were further performances during Hahn's lifetime, it was hardly a roaring success.

It is a short piece, lasting around an hour yet it is in three acts and concerns  a deep topic. The effect of visiting naval officers on the inhabitants of exotic lands, in this case a Polynesian island. There are clear links to Puccini's Madama Butterfly and Delibes' Lakme here, and in the fascination with things exotic to Bizet's Les pecheurs de Perles. These links are clear because the libretto to L’Île du rêve is based on the writings of Pierre Loti, the pseudonym of Louis Marie-Julien Viaud (1850 – 1923), a French naval officer whose exotic novels were a key element in the popularity of orientalism at the time.

Two very different ways of seeing into the soul: Tabea Zimmerman in music for unaccompanied viola by Bach and György Kurtág

Solo II - Bach Unaccompanied cello suites, Kurtag Signs, Games and Messages; Tabea Zimmerman; Myrios Classics
Reviewed by Robert Hugill on 3 November 2020 Star rating: 4.0 (★★★★)
The German viola player pairs music by Bach with contemporary miniatures by Kurtág to striking effect

Ten years after recording Bach's first two cello suites for her album Solo, viola player Tabea Zimmerman returns to Bach with a new disc Solo II on the Myrios Classics label in which she pairs Bach's Suite No. 3 in C major for violoncello solo, BWV 1009 and Suite No. 4 in E-flat major for violoncello solo, BWV 1010 with six movements from György Kurtág's Signs, Games and Messages.

Bach on the viola? Well it works harmonically, because the strings of the viola are tuned the same as the cello, just an octave higher, which means that the player can perform the music in the same keys as the cello and take advantage of the same harmonic resonances of the open strings.

In fact, we don't know what instrument the suites were written for, and we don't have Bach's original manuscript. They may, in fact, have been written for a small cello, such as the violoncello piccolo, or the viola da spalla which was a curious half-way house, a small cello/large viola attached in front of the body by a strap. In fact Zimmerman does not attempt anything in the way of historical re-creation, she simply plays the music on her 1980 Vatelot viola with a classical bow.

Replacing the audience by avatars: InsideOut Digital brings an innovative approach to digital concert giving

David Bernard and the Park Avenue Chamber Symphony prepare for November's interactive digital concert; they were the first New York City orchestra to return to rehearsal post-lockdown

Conductor David Bernard's InsideOut concerts in New York have typically involved putting the audience in the orchestra, sitting them side by side with the musicians and allowing them to ask questions. With the on-set of social distancing and other restrictions, such innovations become difficult. InsideOut and the Park Avenue Chamber Symphony (of which Bernard is music director) have extended their existing partnership into the digital realm to create InsideOut Digital.

For the digital experience, Bernard wants to create a way to make the audience at home still feel part of the concert, to still relate to the musicians. Part of this is high quality sound, being Inside the event, but at InsideOut concerts audience members could ask questions of conductor and players.

So for InsideOut Digital, cameras will be placed inside the orchestra, and two humans seated amidst the orchestra will act as 'avatars' for the watching audience - spectators will send messages to the avatars, who will then read the questions and comments, for Bernard and his musicians to respond.

Bernard believes that InsideOut Digital serves and improves the immediate digital necessity, giving viewers a richer concert experience, and works - as the industry must - to maintain the primacy of the 'real thing'. "We have to give a real flavour of it," he concludes, "or we all risk having a much-diminished audience when we return. This way, instead of diminishing that audience, I believe we can even grow it."

The first InsideOut Digital is on 22 November 2020 at 3pm Eastern Time and will the program will illustrate the shock and brilliance of Beethoven's Symphony No. 3 'Eroica' through comparisons to Mozart’s Symphony No. 39. The event will be streamed on Facebook, further details from the Facebook event page.

 

A young man's response to the world today: Alex Woolf's Requiem released on Delphian

Alex Woolf Requiem; Nicky Spence, Iain Burnside, Philip Higham, Anthony Gray, Vox Luna, Alex Woolf; Delphian
Reviewed by Robert Hugill on 30 October 2020 Star rating: 4.0 (★★★★)
A young man's response to the world today in all its complexity, by turns questioning, solacing and deeply responsive.

Alex Woolf's Requiem was premiered in 2018 with the composer conducting the choir Vox Luna and soloist tenor Nicky Spence, for whom Woolf had already written a song cycle in 2012. Now the work has just come out on disc, following hot on the heels of the on-line premiere Woolf's opera A Feast in the Time of Plague, commissioned by Grange Park Opera and written during lockdown [see my interview with Alex].

Alex Woolf's Requiem is on Delphian with the composer conducting Vox Luna, with tenor Nicky Spence, cellist Philip Higham, pianist Iain Burnside and organist Anthony Gray.

In terms of structure, Woolf opts for something like the influential Requiem of Gabriel Fauré, setting the same movements except that Woolf misses out in 'Libera me' and reduces the 'Introit' to a single line. In the forces he writes for, choir, solo cello and organ, Woolf also nods to another influential French Requiem, that of Maurice Duruflé (which exists in a chamber version for choir, cello and organ). But structurally Woolf adds another dimension by including settings of poetry by the Welsh poet Gillian Clarke for solo tenor (Nicky Spence) and piano (Iain Burnside).

And this points to another, very different requiem, the War Requiem of Benjamin Britten. But whereas Britten almost seems to co-opt the settings of the Latin text as commentary on Wilfred Owen's war poetry (this is after all a War requiem), Woolf has his two worlds more in dialogue. Gillian Clarke's poem The Fall, the setting of which Woolf places in lieu of the missing 'Dies Irae', refers to the events of 11 September 2001 (9/11) but obliquely and instead of being 'about' something in particular, the result is to make the piece a very human work, with the Clarke settings acting as a counter-weight to the liturgical texts.

O Ewigkeit, du Donnerwort: Music, neuroscience and fear of death in OAE's Bach, the Universe and Everything

Johann Rist, author of the hymn
use in Bach's Cantata BWV 60

Bach, the Universe and Everything - Bach Cantata BWV 60 'O Ewigkeit, du Donnerwort'; Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment; Kings Place
Reviewed by Robert Hugill on 1 November 2020 Star rating: 4.5 (★★★★½)
A vivid performance of Bach's dialogue cantata about fear of death at the centre of this engaging programme

On Sunday 1 November 2020, the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment's Bach, the Universe & Everything series returned to Kings Place with Bach on the Brain: Exploring the Brain Dynamics of Music. Directed from the organ by Steven Devine, the ensemble performed Bach's Cantata BWV 60 'O Ewigkeit, du Donnerwort' with soloists Helen Charlston, Hugo Hymas and Dominic Sedgwick, plus Johann Gottfried Walther's chorale prelude O Ewigkeit, du Donnerwort, Byrd's motet Beati mundo corde and the 'Allegro' from Johann Georg Pisendel's Sonata in C minor. Professor Morten Kringelbach, professor of neuroscience at the University of Oxford talked about the neuroscience of music.

We began with an organ chorale prelude,  O Ewigkeit, du Donnerwort by Johann Gottfried Walter, a relative of JS Bach's who is known for his Musikalisches Lexicon, one of the first musical reference books written in German. The concerts in this series always follow an established pattern, so the chorale prelude led to a piece of unaccompanied polyphony, William Byrd's Beati mundo corde. A communion motet for All Saints from volume one of Byrd's Gradualia of 1605. Sung without a conductor by the eight voices of the vocal ensemble, this was quite a strong sound, with rather a sculptural feel to the slowly unfolding phrases. 

Late Beethoven from the Brodsky Quartet at Kings Place

The Brodsky Quartet

Beethoven String Quartet No. 16 in F, Op. 135, Grosse Fuge, Op. 133; Brodsky Quartet; Kings Place
Reviewed by Robert Hugill on 31 October 2020 Star rating: 4.0 (★★★★)
A sampling of the Brodsky Quartet's valuable rush-hour series devoted to Beethoven's last string quartet

The Brodsky Quartet's recordings of Beethoven's late quartets were issued on Chandos [Amazon] in January this year, but a planned series of associated rush-hour concerts had to be suspended. On 31 October 2020, the Brodsky Quartet (Gina McCormack, Ian Belton, Paul Cassidy, Jacqueline Thomas) returned to Kings Place for performances of Beethoven's String Quartet No. 16 in F, Op. 135 and Grosse Fuge, Op. 133, plus Mendelssohn's Fugue for String Quartet, Op.81 No. 4, and I caught their 4pm program (the second of three).

Beethoven's Op. 135 quartet was almost his last major work, written in 1826 and premiered the year after Beethoven's death.  After the complex weight of the other late quartets, this one is surprisingly classical and in a short spoken introduction, viola player Paul Cassidy talked about how much humour the Brodsky Quartet found in these late quartets.

A Life On-Line: Lawrence Brownlee & friends in Philadelphia, Diana Damrau & Joseph Calleja in Caserta, Goldberg Variations in Brecon

Beethoven: Fidelio - Toby Spence - Garsington Opera

Like many opera companies, Opera Philadelphia has started its 2020/21 season on-line and the opening event was Lawrence Brownlee and Friends in Philadelphia when the tenor was joined by sopranos Lindsey Reynolds, Karen Slack and Sarah Shafer and pianist Myra Huang. The format was one that Brownlee has done with other companies, he chats to the singers, and they perform a selection of arias, song, spirituals and lighter items. The three sopranos all had links to Philadelphia, Sarah Shafer has performed with the company, Lindsey Reynolds is currently studying the Curtis Institute and Karen Slack is Philadelphia native. The repertoire was engagingly varied, and certainly moved away from the 'popular arias' type of programme. 

Shafer gave an impressive, quite operatic performance of the 'Laudamus te' from Mozart's Mass in C minor, then an ardent account of one of Amy Beach's Three Browning Songs. Reynolds made a vibrant and delightfully engaging Manon in 'Je suis encore' from Massenet's opera (certainly making you keen to see her in the full role), following it with a passionate version of Nadia Boulanger's song La mer est plus belle.  Slack sang Salome's aria 'Il est doux' from Massenet's Herodiade with wonderfully rich tone and flexible line, and gave a powerful account of Alma Mahler's Die stille Stadt.  Brownlee started with 'Allegro io son' from Donizetti's Rita; despite the curious plot, about wife-beating, this was light-hearted coloratura, then followed it up with Clara Schumann's lovely song Liebest du um Schoenheit sung with an impressive combination of clarity of word and beauty of line. A group of spirituals followed, then a group of lighter numbers including songs by Victor Herbert, George Gershwin, Irvin Berlin and Isham Jones' It had to be you. [Opera Philadelhia]

The latest in the Met Stars Live was an altogether grander affair.

The smallest ditty can feel like a marathon if it does not fit the voice: following his appearance with Blackheath Halls Opera, I chat to tenor Nicky Spence about his career and planning roles

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Stravinsky: The Rake's Progress - Ashley Riches, Nicky Spence, Francesca Chiejina
Blackheath Halls Opera

Tenor Nicky Spence is patron of Blackheath Halls Opera, the community opera company based at Blackheath Halls and in ordinary circumstances this year would have found him in his advisory role as an 'enthusiasm machine' whilst the company prepared and performed. Instead, he has headlined an imaginative short film, released by the company last month, a digested version of Stravinsky's The Rakes Progress directed by James Hurley [A Journey through 'The Rake's Progress' on YouTube], as well as producing a regular on-line series for the company, Thursday Nights in with Nicky Spence. The fact that Nicky and I live within easy cycling distance of each other meant that we were able to meet up recently for a socially distanced coffee and chat about his work with Blackheath Halls Opera and The Rakes Progress as well as catching up on his plans, singing more dramatic roles, the importance of diction and his love of recitals.

Nicky has sung the role of Tom Rakewell in Stravinsky's opera twice before, once with British Youth Opera in 2009 (when George Hall in The Guardian described his Tom as having 'an almost indecent willingness to fall from grace') and then in concert with Scottish Opera. Now for Blackheath Halls Opera it was done as a 30-minute film. In fact, having to do it as a film was an advantage as the company would not usually be able to perform a work like The Rakes Progress because there would not be enough time to learn the complex staging needed for the chorus scenes. And having an on-line project this year meant that the members of the chorus could get something of what they were missing with live rehearsals and performances cancelled, being part of a gang and the experience of learning as group. The soloists were filmed in a socially distanced manner, though the project had contingencies on contingencies in case things changed. But in the film, this social distancing is not noticeable as the filming disguises it. In fact, they were lucky, because it turns out the opera director James Hurley has a past as a film maker, so he was able to direct the work for film.

Wagner: Parsifal - Nicky Spence, the Hallé, Sir Mark Elder - York Minster

The resulting work A Journey through The Rake's Progress is very definitely a film, rather than a film of a stage performance, which has many advantages. Whilst film is not a replacement for live performance, Nicky feels that the project was a great opportunity to get people together in the present circumstances, not just the members of the chorus but the professionals too.

Half-lights and misty streetscapes: Melissa Parmenter's Messapica

Melissa Parmenter is something of a polymath, combining careers as film producer and a composer, sometimes overlapping them when she writes film scores. I interviewed her in 2017 when her EP Scandinavia was released, and now Melissa Parmenter has a new mini-album, Messapica released on Globe Soundtrack and Score which features eight tracks performed by Parmenter herself on piano and cellist Harry Escott.

Parmenter was born in Italy, and spent much of her childhood there, and it is this country which has influenced the new album as Parmenter has created eight evocative sound pictures based around her own piano technique.

The music is often gentle and thoughtful, blending in and out of sound-scapes so that the opening 'Mezzogiorno' starts with the tolling of a bell and the sounds of a town, and 'Bosco Verde' starts with the sound of the sea. Other tracks such as 'Martina Franca' include Harry Escott's soulful cello. Escott is an artist with whom Parmenter has worked before, and her 2017 EP Scandinavia included a track with Escott. 

Parmenter's film background comes through in some pieces, so that 'Locorotondo' sounds like we are watching an unseen film as does the highly evocative 'Cisternino', and sometimes you wish that Parmenter could break free both of film and of the idea of writing a 'track' (the pieces on the new album are all under 4:30) and write something a little more extended, and occasionally move away from the sense of Mozartian Alberti-bass and Philip Glass noodling with an evocative line above. She has, however, a real ability to capture an atmosphere. Those on the disc are by turns evocative and melancholy; this is not an Italy of bright colours and vibrant noise, but one of half-lights and misty streetscapes.

Helen Walker's Trio for Clarinet, Cello and Piano

Helen Walker is a musician, composer, songwriter and record producer based in Bolton, and she has composed music, across genres, for concert, film, stage, television and radio; her Suite for Alto Flute & Piano and Two Pieces for Piccolo and Piano were commissioned the Animo Flute & Piano Duo who will be premiering and recording them. 

Her Trio for Clarinet, Cello and Piano was composed during lockdown and also recorded remotely. So that on this premiere recording of the work Helen Walker was joined by Stasys Makštutis, a Lithuanian clarinettist based in Lyon, France and cellist Avigail Arad from Israel.

The score can be purchased from Helen's website,  and the recording was recently released on Everyday Records and is available from iTunes, Amazon, Spotify and other streaming service.

Eboracum Baroque: from Crowdfunding Messiah to Christmas at Wimpole

Handel: Messiah - Eboracum Baroque at Great St Mary's Church, Cambridge in 2019.

When I chatted to Chris Parsons, artistic director of Eboracum Baroque, back in July [see my interview], it wasn't clear quite what shape the end of the year would take but the chances of the group being able to put on their usual large-scale concerts of Handel's Messiah were looking pretty slim. The group has decided to take advantage of this change of pace and plan to do a recording of Messiah. The recording will help provide valuable income for the freelance musicians who make up Eboracum Baroque and, as their usual Christmas performances of Messiah support Cancer Research UK, a charity which members of Eboracum Baroque hold close to their hearts, they are donating 5% from the sale of every Messiah CD we sell, to Cancer Research UK. 

The recording is planned for 17-19 December 2020 at Horningsea Church near Cambridge, with 21 singers and instrumentalists. Do think about supporting their Crowdfunding.

Before then the group has a new collaboration with the Palisander recorder quartet, Above the Stars a programme of music from Elizabethan England including works by Byrd, Tallis, Tomkins and Dowland in new arrangements, from Elizabethan dances to The Cryes of London to Byrd's Mass for Four Voices. The programme will be filmed in Peterborough Cathedral and streamed live on 21 November 2020. Full details from the Eboracum Baroque website.

And of course, Christmas isn't cancelled it's just a bit different this year! The group will be presenting a festive programme of seasonal music filmed in Wimpole Church and Wimpole Hall on Saturday 12 December 2020, including arias from Bach's Magnificat, music by Vivaldi and Nicola Porpora, and Noels by Charpentier. Further details from the group's website.

 

'I know that my Redeemer liveth' from Handel's Messiah
Eboracum Baroque at Handel & Hendrix in London in October 2020
Charlotte Bowden (soprano), Miri Nohl (cello) and Sebastian Gillot (Harpsichord)

Echoes of Essex, exploring women composers, scientists and many more with Electric Voice Theatre's ambitious project

During lockdown Electric Voice Theatre, artistic director Frances M Lynch, and its sister company Minerva Scientifica have been working on an ambitious Echoes of Essex project the results of which are gradually going on-line with everything launching live on 30 October at the Echoes from Essex website. Whilst the project has involved exploring the work of Essex-based women composers past and present (of which there are quite a few), the project has stretched far beyond music into science as well.

Amongst the women from Essex that they have been researching and highlighting are Margaret Cavendish (1623-1673, Natural Philosopher, wrote the first science fiction novel), Elisabeth Tollet (1694-1754, lived in the Tower of London, communicated Isaac Newton's science through her poetry), Florence Attridge (1901-1975, worked at Marconi's during World War 2 and made secret spy radios) and many more. Through weekly Zoom events, many contemporary women joined the project as well.

Imogen Holst at her home in Aldeburgh, 1975
(© Nigel Luckhurst 1975, Image provided
by Britten–Pears Arts, Ref: HOL/2/11/10/7)

Musically, the project has been exploring a whole range of composers. Imogen Holst (1907-1984) had strong links with the Thaxted Festival as well as Benjamin Britten's Aldeburgh. Through the Holst Foundation and Britten Pears Arts the project was able to record three of Imogen Holst's unpublished a capella vocal works. Further information from the website. 

Contemporary composer, and Essex girl, Cheryl Frances Hoad has been commissioned for a new mini-opera, Thinking I Hear thee Call created specifically to work live on Zoom. The piece explores the life of Florence Attridge and the spy radios she made, with Frances M Lynch and Margaret Cameron plus an evocative electronic track which resounds with codes, voices, typewriters and electronic interference.

Other composers the project has been working with include Frances M Lynch, whose new work The superposition of state was recorded, Ethel Smyth (1858-1944), Nicola Lefanu, Elizabeth Maconchy (1907-1994), Eliza Flower (1803-1846), Elspeth Manders, and Avril Coleridge-Taylor (1903-1998, daughter of composer Samuel Coleridge-Taylor).

Do explore the Echoes from Essex website.

A timely reminder of what we are missing: The Crimson Bird, orchestral works by Nicola Lefanu on new disc from NMC

Nicola Lefanu The Crimson Bird and other orchestral works; Rachel Nicholls, BBC Symphony Orchestra, RTE National Symphony Orchestra, Norman del Mar, Colman Pearce, Gavin Maloney, Ilan Volkov; NMC
Reviewed by Robert Hugill on 28 October 2020 Star rating: 4.0 (★★★★)
A survey of works spanning over 40 years in terrific live performances makes a fine portrait disc

When I interviewed composer Nicola Lefanu in 2017, the celebrations for her 70th birthday were going to include the premiere of her new piece The Crimson Bird. At the time, this was her first symphonic scale piece for 30 years. It was premiered by soprano Rachel Nichols, the BBC Symphony Orchestra, conductor Ilan Volkov and a live recording of that first performance is at the centre of a new disc of Lefanu's work.

NMC's new disc, The Crimson Bird and other orchestral works is something of a portrait of composer Nicola Lefanu as it features The Crimson Bird from 2017, alongside two orchestral works from the 1970s, The Hidden Landscape and Columbia Falls  and a shorter work from 2014. The performers are the BBC Symphony Orchestra under conductors Norman del Mar (1919-1994) and Ilan Volkov, the RTE Symphony Orchestra under conductors Colman Pearce and Gavin Maloney, and soprano Rachel Nicholls. All the performances are live recordings.

The disc is arranged chronologically, so we start in 1973 with The Hidden Landscape which is Lefanu's first substantial orchestral work and it was first performed by Norman del Mar and the BBC Symphony Orchestra at the BBC Proms and that is the performance we hear. Though Lefanu describes the work as being in two sections, framed by a prologue and epilogue, it plays continuously with a sense of gradually unfolding. We open in darkness, a slow emerging of timbre and texture. Throughout this work, and Columbia Falls (from 1975) the music seems to be something of a mosaic or collage, with myriad fragments coming together into one. Lefanu writes for each instrument individually, and the wind are to the fore here, so that we hear lots of small phrases which gradually coalesce. There are two shattering climaxes, with spareness and space between, and always that sense of colour and texture. Individual lines can be very virtuosic, but there is nothing for its own sake.

World Stroke Day: debut Orlando Gough's new film opera with Garsington Opera, Rosetta Life and stroke survivors

Today (29 October 2020) is World Stroke Day and later today a new filmed opera by Orlando Gough, I look for the think, will receive its debut for staff and patients at the Royal Berkshire Hospital. Made by Garsington Opera and their partners Rosetta Life with stroke survivors, Garsington's adult community company and professional singers during lockdown, the work is about love after stroke. sixty stroke survivors, supported by pioneering arts-health organisation Rosetta Life and by their carers, worked to overcome the physical and neurological difficulties that prevent them from using tools that most take for granted: keyboards, microphones, headphones and the internet. Together with professional musicians, soloists Robert Gildon and Melanie Pappenheim, and the Adult Community Company from Garsington Opera, the participants from Bristol, Berkshire and London rehearsed and filmed a twelve-minute opera, I Look For The Think, based on the lived experience of participant Kim Fraser and his wife and carer, Sarah.

The film will be screened on Rosetta Life's Facebook page at 6pm tonight, when there will be a live Q&A with the practitioners, alongside the launch of Recovering Hope, the handbook for Stroke Odysseys, the arts health intervention that I Look For The Think is part of.

The film will be available on OperaVision.