A Life On-Line: Tchaikovsky in Scotland, Rossini in Wexford and RVW in Gateshead

This week's A Life On-Line column is in two parts. In an earlier column, you can read about my Beethoven explorations including a Opera North's terrific live-stream of Fidelio. But this week hasn't just been about Beethoven.

The Scottish Chamber Orchestra's on-line concerts continue to delight. On Thursday they were joined by principal conductor Maxim Emelyanychev for Schubert and Tchaikovsky at Perth Concert Hall. A lithe and melodious account of Schubert's Symphony No. 5 (written when he was just 19) was followed by Tchaikovky's Variations on a Rococo Theme with the orchestra's principal cellist as soloist, Philip Higham. Both performances benefited from the orchestra's chamber approach, with attention to sprung rhythms and a sense of line, whilst Higham brought elegance to the solo part. [Scottish Chamber Orchestra] (And contrary to my initial thoughts, the performance used Tchaikovsky's original version of the work rather than the first soloists own arrangement which was commonly used)

On BBC Radio  3, we had the delight of hearing Shirley Thompson's Wildfire in a concert from Anna-Maria Helsing and the BBC Concert Orchestra, with tenor Alessandro Fisher, which also included music by Jocelyn Pook, Rautavaara, Finzi and John McCabe. An apt demonstration of the orchestra's versatility. [BBC Sounds]. Thompson's piece comes from a longer work, an opera Sacred Mountain: Incidents in the Life of Queen Nanny of the Maroons which was performed at the 2015 Tête à Tête: The Opera Festival.

This year's Wexford Festival took place largely on-line, and there is still time to catch its highlights. This year's festival opened with a live-stream of Rossini's Petite Messe Solennelle given in the original version for soloists, choir, two pianos and harmonium. But it was also given with the sort of forces that Rossini expected. At the premiere there were no more than 12 singers all told, rather than the huge choral forces sometimes used. Here we have a top line-up of soloists, Claudia Boyle, Tara Erraught, Pietro Adaini, John Molloy with the Wexford Factory Ensemble (13 young professional singers), Finghin Collins and Carmen Santoro (pianos), Andrew Synnott (harmonium), conducted by Kenneth Montgomery, all in the intimate acoustic of the opera house in Wexford. [Wexford Festival]

If you have ever been on a Zoom call where someone else is completely unaware that their camera is on, then Bastard Assignments' recent lockdown jam will appeal. They perform Jennifer Walshe's zusammen iii, do try it [Bastard Assignments]. With The World How Wide, Timothy Burke has reworked RVW's Tallis Fantasia as a choral piece! Recorded as a lockdown project for the Sage Gateshead by the chorus of the Royal Northern Sinfonia along with Quay Voices, The World How Wide Community Chorus and a string quartet from Royal Northern Sinfonia.  The result is a striking choral challenge, though I still prefer the original! [YouTube]

I have to admit to being unfamiliar with Vladimiro Ermolenko's but was struck by a recent video by pianist Vladimir Mogolevsky of Ermolenko's Separation [YouTube]

And as a reminder of the season, we finish with Paul Ayres' arrangement of The Coventry Carol recorded (thrice) by Crossley Hawn.

Pagliacci: A powerful stripped back staging of the Verismo classic reveals the work's integral strengths

Leoncavallo Pagliacci; Peter Auty, Elin Pritchard, Robert Hayward, Nicholas Lester, Aled Hall, dir: Christopher Luscombe, cond: John Andrews; The Grange Festival
Reviewed by Robert Hugill on 13 December 2020 Star rating: 4.0 (★★★★)
Christopher Luscombe's stripped-back production returns with a guest spot at the Grange Festival, revealing that less can be more

Stripping an opera back to its essentials can have an interesting effect on the piece, particularly one that we know well. So the performance of Christopher Luscombe's production of Ruggero Leoncavallo's Pagliacci at the Grange Festival on Sunday 13 December 2020 was both a welcome chance to catch a production which I missed when it was new and a way to experience Pagliacci anew. John Andrews conducted, with Peter Auty as Canio, Elin Pritchard as Nedda, Robert Hayward as Tonio, Aled Hall as Beppe and Nicholas Lester as Silvio, accompanied by an instrumental ensemble of Berrak Dyer (piano), Fenella Humphreys & Alexandra Lomeiko (violin), Lisa Bucknell (viola) and Sophie Gledhill (cello).

The production arose as an admirably crazy enterprise in an Islington church in October (see my article), and even transferred to the rather grander stage of The Grange, the staging retained its sense of being stripped back to essentials. There was fine lighting from Tim Mitchell, and a chorus of eight at the back, but our attention was focused on the five soloists, the clowns of the title. Leoncavallo's 1892 opera was a deliberate attempt to capitalise on the Verismo success of Pietro Mascagni's Cavalleria Rusticana in 1890. Mascagni based his opera on a play by Giovanni Verga, a Sicilian writer who had created the genre of Italian realist writing (Verismo). Leoncavallo built on this by claiming Pagliacci was based on a real-life court case tried by his judge father, but modern scholarship has put this in doubt as the opera has significant parallels with a number of earlier French works which the young composer would have had ample chance to see in Paris during his six-year stay there.

Whatever the origins of the story, the resulting opera is a powerful examination of the intersection of life and art, as Canio's real-life jealousy breaks through the fourth wall during the clowns on-stage performance. Though, of course, the opera is no more realistic than, say Mozart's Cosi fan tutte.

A Life On-Line: Beethoven's Fidelo from Opera North

Beethoven: Fidelio - Rachel Nicholls, Toby Spence - Opera North 2020
(Photo Richard H Smith)

Beethoven Fidelio; Toby Spence, Rachel Nicholls, Fflur Wyn, Oliver Johnston, Brindley Sherratt, Robert Hayward, Matthew Stiff, cond: Mark Wigglesworth, dir: Matthew Eberhardt; Opera North
Reviewed by Robert Hugill on 12 December 2020 Star rating: 4.0 (★★★★)
A company achievement, fielding its largest stage ensemble for quite some time, Beethoven's opera from Opera North at Leeds Town Hall

Inevitably, Beethoven is looming large this week as in a few days' time we celebrate his 250th birthday; though as with many aspects of this great composer, even this is a bit of a mystery. We know the date of Beethoven's baptism, so the date of birth has had to be presumed to be the day before. I previewed a fascinating programme which looks at the Scottish Gaelic connections of Beethoven's folksong arrangements [to be broadcast on BBC ALBA on 16/12/2020], and I am looking forward to Donald Macleod's final week of his year-long exploration of Beethoven in Composer of the Week on BBC Radio 3. As live concerts have resumed, I was lucky enough to hear the Solem Quartet in one of Beethoven's late quartets at the Spotlight Chamber Concerts.

But the notable event this week as Beethoven's Fidelio live-streamed on Saturday 12 December 2020, by Opera North from Leeds Town Hall. The company fielded an orchestra of 33 and a chorus of 24, its largest stage-ensemble since COVID-19. Mark Wigglesworth conducted, Matthew Eberhardt directed with Toby Spence as Florestan, Rachel Nicholls as Leonore, Fflur Wyn as Marzelline, Oliver Johnston as Jaquino, Brindley Sherratt as Rocco, Robert Hayward as Don Pizarro and Matthew Stiff as Don Fernando.

Beethoven: Fidelio - Rachel Nicholls, Brindley Sherratt, Fflur Wyn - Opera North 2020
(Photo Richard H Smith)

The opera was performed in German with the spoken dialogue replaced by a narration (written by David Pountney) given to Matthew Stiff. This latter was very effective indeed, but I still missed the dialogue or rather I missed the transitions from spoken text to music, the use of melodrama and certain key phrases such as Leonore's 'Ich habe Mut und Kraft'. The staging was discreetly effective, and with no sets and no costumes (though I did notice that amidst the all black ensembles, Brindley Sherratt's Rocco was wearing a magnificent black cardigan) we focused on the characters. 

Late Beethoven alongside Thomas Adès from the Solem Quartet at the latest of the imaginative concert series from Spotlight Chamber Concerts at St John's Waterloo

Solem Quartet (Amy Tress, William Newell, Stephen Upshaw, Stephanie Tress) at Spotlight Chamber Concerts at St John's Waterloo (Photo Matthew Johnson)

Thomas Adès The Four Quarters, Beethoven String Quartet in B flat major, Op. 130; Solem Quartet; Spotlight Chamber Concerts at St John's Waterloo
Reviewed by Robert Hugill on 12 December 2020 Star rating: 4.0 (★★★★)
The questing intelligence of late Beethoven alongside the superb contemporary maturity of Thomas Adès in the latest of this imaginative concert series

It is not surprising that Beethoven has featured in performances this year, but of the live performances since Spring it is interesting the Beethoven's late quartets seem to have featured. The Brodsky Quartet gave an interrupted series at Kings Place [I caught them in the Opus 135 quartet and Grosse Fugue], and the Solem Quartet is planning a Beethoven Bartok Now series combining late Beethoven with Bartok and contemporary pieces.

For the Solem Quartet's concert as part of the Spotlight Chamber Concerts at St John's Waterloo on Friday 11 December 2020, the quartet combined Beethoven's String Quartet in B flat major, Op. 130 with Thomas Adès' The Four Quarters.

Solem Quartet (Amy Tress, William Newell, Stephen Upshaw, Stephanie Tress) at Spotlight Chamber Concerts at St John's Waterloo (Photo Matthew Johnson)

The Solem Quartet (Amy Tress, William Newell, Stephen Upshaw, Stephanie Tress) was founded at the University of Manchester in 2011, and the quartet's name comes from the university’s motto arduus ad solem – ‘striving towards the sun’.

Flexibility is her mantra: I chat to soprano Claire Booth about her recent film of Francis Poulenc's opera 'La voix humaine'

Poulenc: La voix humaine - Claire Booth - Welsh National Opera in 2016 (Photo Polly Thomas)

Soprano Claire Booth features in a new video of Francis Poulenc's La voix humaine produced by Welsh National Opera (WNO), directed by David Pountney with Christopher Glynn (piano) and filmed in the soprano's own home. But Claire isn't just known for her 20th century opera, in the past we have caught her in Handel and in contemporary opera, and last she and Christopher Glynn issued a disc of Edvard Grieg's lyric music on Avie. We recently chatted over Zoom about Poulenc, what it's like to have an opera filmed in your house, and about roles and voices.

Poulenc's opera is one that Claire has a long history with as she performed in David Pountney's original intimate live production for WNO in 2016, and more recently as part of Grange Park Opera's 2020 Found Season. The opera is very much a piece for our time and fits the Zeitgeist extraordinarily, with its strong themes of loneliness, isolation, vulnerability and love, as well as the need to communicate via a less than perfect device.

Claire Booth

Claire's first experience of the work was performing it in 2007 when she was seven months pregnant, which rather added pathos to the storyline. Claire also covered the work with Opera North, perhaps the most traditional production that she has been involved in, complete with a telephone with a wire (the work's original stage directions call for the protagonist to wrap the telephone's cord around her neck). As telephones rarely have cords any more, there is always the challenge as to how to re-visit it and make the piece modern. A production directed by Netia Jones in 2010 used Skype with multiple video screens.

Poulenc's opera (written in 1958) is based on a play by Jean Cocteau (which premiered in 1930), featuring a single protagonist, Elle, struggling both with her doomed relationship with her unseen lover and with a faulty telephone as the only medium in which to communicate with him. Though Claire has never seen the play live she has enjoyed many filmed performances, as a vehicle for incredible actresses such as Ingrid Bergman and Isabella Rossellini, and she is waiting with bated breath for the new film of the play directed by Pedro Almodovar with Tilda Swinton.

Cocteau's play gives the actor the extraordinary ability to use time as you see fit, whilst in the opera, Poulenc effectively directs this with the way he sets the words. So, when performing the opera you have to deal with whether to go with Poulenc or not. But Claire sees him as a genius, there is no need to subvert him.

With a performance like that of Ingrid Bergman, there is the reminder that it is possible to deliver the work in a relatively low-key manner, even in the heightened moments. But on the main stage of an opera house, the performance cannot be so intimate but Bergman is a reminder that you have to find light and shade in a work which people tend to make melodramatic and has been called 'a rant by a fish wife for 40 minutes'.

A Baroque Christmas at Wimpole Church

Arts organisations are having to come up with innovative ways around the Christmas concert conundrum this year. Usually, Eboracum Baroque, artistic director Chris Parsons, would be planning festive performances in Wimpole Church and Wimpole Hall, but this year they are going on-line which means that for those of us not able to travel to Cambridgeshire there is a chance to enjoy some Baroque jollity.

Filmed in Wimpole Church in October, Eboracum Baroque's A Baroque Christmas debuts tomorrow (Saturday 7 December 2020) on YouTube and on Facebook. The concert features arias from Bach’s Christmas Oratorio and Magnificat, a trumpet concerto by Torelli, Winter for Vivaldi’s Four Seasons, music by Charpentier and other works from across 17th and 18th century Europe.

The concert is a chance to help support freelance musicians through these challenging times, as well as avoiding the wall-to-wall Christmas carols which are a feature of the season. And there is an interval feature from York Gin!

Òrain Ghàidhlig Beethoven - on the trail of the Scottish Gaelic origins of Beethoven's folk-song arrangements

Mairi MacInnes and Michael Klevenhaus performing at Celtic Connections

Òrain Ghàidhlig Beethoven; BBC ALBA (16 December 2020)
Reviewed by Robert Hugill on 11 December 2020
Tracing the Scottish Gaelic links of songs arranged by Beethoven, looking at why these links were overlooked and the politics which lay behind it.

That Beethoven wrote quite a number (47 of them in fact) of arrangements of Scottish folk-songs is well known, but less attention has been paid to the tunes themselves, what were they, where did they come from? A new documentary, Òrain Ghàidhlig Beethoven, on BBC ALBA (the Scottish Gaelic-language television channel) looks at the fascinating background to these songs with their interweaving of music and politics.

The film, Òrain Ghàidhlig Beethoven, follows the German musicologist and Gaelic scholar Dr Michael Klevenhaus in his research to uncover the origins of the songs that Beethoven arranged.

Dr Klevenhaus is a fascinating character in his own right. As a young man he became entranced by the language and culture of Gaelic Scotland, learned the language and how to sing the ancient songs and founded the German Center for Gaelic Language and Culture - a Gaelic teaching institute, in Bonn. The programme is presented by Dr Klevenhaus in Gaelic, and he seemingly effortlessly switches between Gaelic, English and German depending on who he is talking to.

George Thomson (1757–1851) by Henry Raeburn

The background to the songs is relatively simple, the Edinburgh-based publisher George Thomson was publishing a series of volumes in a sort of national songbook, with Scottish songs arranged by major composers. Haydn and Pleyel had created arrangements, and between 1809 and 1818 Thomson would send batches of melodies to Beethoven who would send back arrangements for Thomson's publications. His A Select Collection of Original Scottish Airs for the Voice came out in five volumes between 1799 and 1818. This was part of a wider movement which started in the 18th century of bringing folk-culture into the drawing room, but tidying it up in the process. Thomson bowdlerised the words, or even commissioned new words altogether.

Dr Klevenhaus' interest was piqued in 2015 when he was reading a scholarly work by piper Allan MacDonald who had written a footnote stating that the song Enchantress Farewell, arranged by Beethoven with words by Sir Walter Scott, was based on Mhnathan a’ Ghlinne Seo (Women of the Glen). So Dr Klevenhaus set off on a journey to find out more.

His explorations take him to Bonn (Beethoven's birthplace) and Vienna (where the majority of the composer's musical career took place) as well as to various places in Scotland. There are three strands to his explorations. The first is the Beethovenian background, as he talks to other musicologists and historians in Germany and Austria about Beethoven and what else the composer was doing. He also eaves drops on a project to record all of Beethoven's arrangements [now available on Amazon]. There was also the complexities of Beethoven's relations with Thomson, at one point in a letter Beethoven complains to Thomson about being sent melodies without texts, not to mention the problems of getting correspondence between Edinburgh to Vienna during the Napoleonic Wars.

Cinderella in Leeds: Pauline Viardot's chamber opera in a new film from Northern Opera Group

Pauline Viardot: Cendrillon (Cinderella) - Nicholas Watts - Northern Opera Group

Pauline Viardot Cendrillon (Cinderella); Claire Wild, Rachel Duckett, Naomi Rogers, Louise Wayman, James Cleverton, Nicholas Watts, Robert Anthony Gardiner, dir: Sophie Gilpin, cond: Chris Pelly; Northern Opera Group
Reviewed by Robert Hugill on 10 December 2020 Star rating: 4.0 (★★★★)
Viardot's Parisian chamber opera transported to Leeds in an imaginative new film

Pauline Viardot (1821-1910) was the scion of a distinguished vocal dynasty. Her father, Manuel Garcia (tenor, impresario, teacher) took part in the premieres of Rossini’s Elisabetta, Regina d’Inghilterra and Il barbiere di Siviglia and was a notable exponent of the title role of Rossini’s Otello. Her elder sister (by 13 years) was the distinguished soprano Maria Malibran and her brother, Manuel Garcia became a leading vocal pedagogue and invented the laryngoscope. When Viardot was small, the whole family (father, mother, brother, sister) took part in the American premiere of Mozart's Don Giovanni in New York, in the presence of the opera's librettist Lorenzo da Ponte. 

 

Viardot was herself a fine mezzo-soprano who created the title role in Gounod’s opera Sapho, Fidès in Meyerbeer’s Le prophète and for whom Berlioz created the role of Orphée in his influential version of Gluck’s Orphée et Eurydice, as well as singing in the first public performance of Brahms’ Alto Rhapsody.

In Paris in retirement, she presided over a salon and had a close relationship with the Russian writer Ivan Turgenev, with whom she wrote a number of small-scale operas for her pupils to perform at her salon. Most of Viardot’s compositions were written for pupils, and in 1904 at the age of 83, she premiered her final opera Cendrillon, a re-telling of the story of Cinderella for a cast of seven, small chorus and piano. The date of composition of the work is unclear, but it is presumed to date from after 1883 when Turgenev died as he did not write the libretto. Whilst Viardot’s first four operas still somewhat languish, her songs (which include vocal adaptations of Chopin’s piano music) and Cendrillon are receiving something of a revival.

The Northern Opera Group (NOG), artistic director David Ward, is a Leeds-based group dedicated to reviving forgotten operas and their previous productions have included Thomas Arne’s Thomas and Sally (performed in the open-air this Summer) and Alfred, and Charles Villiers Stanford’s Much Ado About Nothing. For its Christmas production, Northern Opera Group has chosen Pauline Viardot’s Cendrillon creating a film project produced under social distancing. Directed by Sophie Gilpin, conducted by Chris Pelly and sung in Rachel M Harris’ English translation, Cinderella features Claire Wild as Cinderella, Rachel Duckett as the Fairy Godmother, Naomi Rogers and Louise Wayman as Cinderella’s step-sisters Armelinde and Maguelonne, James Cleverton as Cinderella's father, Baron de Pictordu, Nicholas Watts as the Prince, and      as Barigoule, the Prince’s valet. The pianist is Jenny Martins.

Creating Change - new films from WNO exploring social inequality and injustice

This Autumn, Welsh National Opera (WNO) was due to premiere the hugely ambitious new opera Migrations, commissioned to coincide with the 400th anniversary of the sailing of the Mayflower. The music is by Will Todd and the libretto was created by five writers, Sarah Woods, Eric Ngalle Charles, Shreya Sen Handley, Edson Burton and Miles Chambers, influenced by their own personal experiences. The opera has been postponed until 2021, when it will open the season for the company's 75th anniversary year.

But the five writers have been working on a new project. WNO has just released a series of films, Creating Change, in which each of the writers contemplates the issues of social inequality and injustice which have been deepened through the Covid-19 crisis and asks what we as individuals and collectively as society can do to create real change.

Eric Ngalle Charles' poems explore art’s role in societal transformation, whilst Shreya Sen-Handley is inspired by the legend of a Hindu goddess who rebuilds our world after every catastrophe. Shreya has also illustrated her poem, The Pledge. Miles Chambers' A Change Gon Come reflects the way Black movements continue to highlight and react to atrocities, calling them out and articulating the world we need to see. Sarah Woods is a writer who works with story across all sorts of media and with all sorts of people, for her changing the stories we tell - and those we believe in - can change the world. Edson Burton's piece, Death of a Fool, is intended to serve as a warning to artists past and present to better understand the sacrifices they will make for art. The lyrics of the eulogy to the fool don't hold back.

Two of the works have been set to music by sisters Eädyth Crawford and Kizzy Crawford, young singer-songwriters from Merthyr Tydfil in the South Wales valleys. Eädyth has composed music to accompany The Pledge which includes dance and song performed by British-Indian soprano Natasha Agarwal who is trained in Bharatanatyam (a form of Classical Indian dance).  Kizzy has composed the music to accompany Death of a Fool, using Vaudeville music suggested by Edson Burton as inspiration, with words sung by tenor Ronald Samm. Both pieces are accompanied by musicians from WNO Orchestra, and tabla player Pritam Singh of Drumatised (an organisation which promotes world music) also joins the team of musicians for The Pledge.

Full details at the WNO website.

Highways and Byways of the Piano Trio

In October, I gave a pre-concert talk for Conway Hall's Sunday Concerts series, delivered to an audience of four in the hall but streamed live, in advance of a concert by the Mithras Trio. The talk is now on YouTube - a look at how the piano trio moved from genre for talented amateurs to something more complex, and remained surprisingly popular with 19th century composers from Fauré and César Franck, to Dvorak, Tchaikovsky, and Borodin. 

Enjoy!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CM-vlnWbUc0

Beethoven Bartók Now: Solem Quartet in Camberwell

The Solem Quartet

The Solem Quartet (Amy Tress, William Newell, Stephanie Tress, Stephen Upshaw) is launching a new series of concerts in Camberwell bringing together the late quartets of Beethoven and the six quartets of Béla Bartók, alongside music from composers of today. Beethoven Bartók Now will also see a wealth of digital content and educational activity, providing a rich resource for a network of composers and an access point for new audiences.

The series takes place at St Giles' Church, Camberwell, SE8 8RB and the first concert on 17 December 2020, Night Music will feature Beethoven's Quartet no. 13 op. 130, Bartok's Quartet no. 5 (which has two slow movements, each superb examples of the composer's night music style) and a new work by Aaron Parker, batózeyal. Parker studied composition at the Royal Northern College of Music, and did a Masters in Experimental Music at Brunel University.

The quartet is running a series of free on-line workshops for composers, you can sign up for the first one on 28 January 2021 at EventBrite. Writing for Quartet is aimed at composers of all ages, levels and backgrounds, and will be delivered via Zoom.

The quartet is also planning a call for scores which will result in a performance for the chosen work during 2021.

Full details from EventBrite.

Back to its origins: Grange Park Opera returns Britten's television opera, Owen Wingrave, to its film roots in this darkly comic modern version

Britten: Owen Wingrave - Ross Ramgobin, Kitty Whately, James Way, Janis Kelly, Madeleine Pierard, Susan Bullock, Richard Berkeley Steele, William Dazeley - Grange Park Opera (video screen grab)

Britten Owen Wingrave; Ross Ramgobin, Richard Berkeley Steele, William Dazeley, Janis Kelly, James Way, Susan Bullock, Madeleine Pierard, Kitty Whately, dir:Stephen Medcalf, cond; James Henshaw; Grange Park Opera
Reviewed by Robert Hugill on 9 December 2020 Star rating: 4.0 (★★★★)
Grange Park Opera returns Britten's penultimate opera to the television medium for which it was written, in a striking, blackly comic modern version.

Benjamin Britten's penultimate opera, Owen Wingrave is a strange and tricksy piece. Written for television in 1971, Britten intended it both for that medium and the stage. But following a small flurry of performances in the early 1970s, the work lay fallow until Glyndebourne's performance in the late 1990s (first on tour, with William Dazeley as Owen, and then on the main stage where the title role was taken by Gerald Finley). This production demonstrated that Britten's 'lame duck' opera could work, and productions multiplied in the 21st century, partly thanks to a reduced orchestration from David Matthews. Recent London productions have included two [British Youth Opera, see my review, and Guildhall School of Music and Drama, see my review] where the young men in the opera were played by singers of the correct age which is a nice idea, but Britten's quite substantial orchestration can require a mature baritone to carry the role.

The opera, however, remains awkward. The characters are generally unlikeable, whilst Owen can too often seem a prig. And then there is the ghost story aspect; Britten simply shies away from that. We never see what happens in the room, and the power of the ghosts in The Turn of the Screw is entirely absent (both operas are based on stories by Henry James). Dramaturgically, I have always felt that the opera would work better if librettist Myfanwy Piper had replaced the ghost episode with a more down to earth dare-devil stunt.

There have been television production since that 1971 production, there was one in Germany in 2005 again with Gerald Finley [available from Amazon]. But it remains a brave decision for Grange Park Opera, faced with no live opera in 2020, to create a new televised version of Britten's Owen Wingrave. Stephen Medcalf directs [see my 2018 interview with Stephen Medcalf], with Ross Ramgobin as Owen, Susan Bullock as Miss Wingrave, Richard Berkeley Steele as Sir Philip Wingrave, William Dazeley as Mr Coyle, Janis Kelly as Mrs Coyle, James Way as Letchmere, Madeleine Pierard as Mrs Julian, and Kitty Whately as Kate with Richard Berkeley Steele singing the ballad singer/narrator. The conductor was James Henshaw, with accompaniment from Chris Hopkins (piano) and Craig Apps (percussion), plus trumpet for Act Two.

Britten: Owen Wingrave - Ross Ramgobin - Grange Park Opera

Medcalf sets the work in the near present day (press coverage in advance of the premiere of the film refers to it as being set just after the Afghanistan war in 2001). It is largely shot in black and white (there were touches of colour such as the blood-red wine glasses in the terrible dinner scene which concludes Act One). He makes it very much a film, there is a lot of intercutting of close-ups. The women's ensemble which precedes Owen's entry into the house is done with each at her own window, creating a real sense of three intertwining monologues. Other ensembles are similar, and Medcalf successfully banishes any real sense of the stage. 

Change is Coming: Alastair Penman's 'Do You Hear Me?'

 

Alastair Penman is a young saxophonist and composer whose debut CD, Electric Dawn, I reviewed in 2015. His latest EP, on Sospiro Records, Do You Hear Me? has a distinct point to it and is a reflection on the environmental catastrophes which are engulfing the planet. Penman's statement, on the EP's home page, concludes with a declaration of intent, 'This EP reflects on the climate emergency we are living through and the changes we must make to prevent the end of life on earth. In the words of Greta Thunberg, “Our house is on fire,” so we must do everything we can to halt and reverse this disaster.' and 50% of the of proceeds from the album will be donated to two environmental charities, Clean Air Task Force and Coalition for Rainforest Nations.

There are four tracks on the album, Do You Hear Me?, Our House is on Fire,  Ignorant Complicity and Change is Coming. All four are written by Penman and feature the composer on saxophones (soprano, alto, tenor, baritone), clarinet, bass clarinet and keyboards as well as midi programming. Track one, includes the voice of Annabelle Broad set against a driving musical backdrop which combines saxophones and electronics in a striking way. The second track explores similar ideas, driving rhythms, intense textures and a rather catchy way of combining everything, whilst the third, Ignorant Complicity is sparer and somewhat disturbing with hints of modern jazz in the mix. The last movement is more relaxed, with a lounge-jazz style riff yet still with that sense of impulse in the rhythms underneath, so the result is nowhere near as comfortable as you might expect. With this, and in other places, Penman builds his layers to gradually assemble a striking structure.

This is music that I enjoyed, whilst being aware that the jazz and rock influences which seem to permeate it are things that rather go over my head. It is music which might have an important point to make, but seeks also to entertain rather than knocking you over the head with politics.

The title track is released on 11 December 2020, with the full album on 18 December 2020. There will be videos from Tom Gimson to accompany them, so keep an eye on the album website. The album is available to pre-order from the Proper Music website.

Immersive and intense: Schubert's Swan Song from Roderick Williams and friends at Spotlight Chamber Concerts

Schubert: Schwanengesang - Susie Allan, Roderick Williams
Spotlight Chamber Concerts at St John's Waterloo (Photo Matthew Johnson)

Schubert Schwanengesang; Roderick Williams, Susie Allan, Kathryn Rudge, Edward Hawkins; Spotlight Chamber Concerts at St John's Waterloo
Reviewed by Robert Hugill on 7 December 2020 Star rating: 5.0 (★★★★★)
The distinguished baritone shared the platform with two younger singers to give a quietly intense and concentrated account of Schubert's great Swan Song

Bandstand Chamber Festival, artistic director Anthony Friend, which presented a memorable series of concerts in the bandstand at Battersea Park this Summer, has returned with a Winter series. Joining forces with St John's Waterloo, they are presenting Spotlight Chamber Concerts at St John's. The festival was planned to start in November, but lockdown forced a postponement of the initial concerts and the Spotlight Chamber Festival opened on Monday 7 December 2020 with a programme of Schubert song, Schwanengesang plus two extra songs, Fahrt zum Hades and Auf dem See, performed by baritone Roderick Williams and pianist Susie Allan with Momentum artists Kathryn Rudge, mezzo-soprano and Edward Hawkins, bass.

Momentum is a collective of classical artists created by soprano Barbara Hannigan. Recognising that the present climate, with far fewer engagements, will favour well-established artists Momentum aims to support the younger generation of artists by having a leading artist share their main-stage performance opportunities with younger artists.

So on Monday, Roderick Williams shared the platform with Kathryn Rudge and Edward Hawkins. Williams aligns to the prevailing view of Schubert's Schwanengesang as simply a collection of songs assembled after the composer's death by his publisher (I have heard the opposite view, that it is a coherent cycle, argued appositely by tenor Mark Padmore, that is part of the work's fascination). This means that splitting Schwanengesang between three singers works, and whilst Williams sang the majority of the songs, Rudge and Hawkins took one each as well as adding an extra song each.

Schubert: Schwanengesang - Susie Allan, Roderick Williams
Spotlight Chamber Concerts at St John's Waterloo (Photo Matthew Johnson)

Presentation at the concert was highly dramatic, they are not called Spotlight Chamber Concerts for nothing. The audience, suitably distanced, surrounded the performers on three sides, the singers and pianist were dramatically lit with audience members in near darkness. The result was intended to be immersive and dramatic, which it was. That there were no printed programmes was, of course, something of a bonus, we were able to follow the words on our phones so that to the singers the audience must have looked like assembled shadows with just spots of light.

Celebrating the premiere of The Lark Ascending

The Lark Ascending violin part with Frederick Grinke’s notes
(photo by Janice Graham)

Tuesday 15 December 2020 is the exact centenary of the premiere of RVW's The Lark Ascending. For those of us who cannot get down to the original venue, Shirehampton Public Hall, where Jennifer Pike is playing in a centenary concert [see my article], then help is at hand. 

Four musicians from the English Sinfonia (Janice Graham, violin, Nick Bootiman, viola, Julia Graham, cello, Chris Hopkins, piano) are giving TWO concerts at St John's Smith Square on 15 December. Chris Hopkins, is the English Sinfonia's newly appointed principal conductor.

RVW's The Lark Ascending will be performed in the violin and piano version which RVW created for the premiere, and alongside this there will be Frank Bridge's Miniatures for Piano Trio,  Samuel Coleridge-Taylor's Piano Trio in E Minor, Gustav Holst's String Trio in G Minor (a work still little known, and not yet recorded) and Arnold Bax's Piano Quartet, in one movement.

There is a personal tie in too, the violinist Frederick Grinke (1911-1987), who was one of the early exponents of The Lark Ascending and had a close and enduring relationship with RVW, taught Janice Graham and also both of Graham’s parents (and the cellist in the concert is Janice's sister).  From around 1930 to 1936, Grinke was second violin of the Kutcher String Quartet (in which John Barbirolli was for a time the 'cellist), and then became leader of the Boyd Neel Orchestra. His first performance with them was at the Salzburg Festival in 1937, giving the premiere of Britten's Variations on a Theme of Frank Bridge.

Further details from the St John's Smith Square website, and the performance will be available on the venue's digital platform in January 2021.

Give the gift of a choral Christmas - the 12 Days of Christmas project

You can look at the 12 Days of Christmas project in (at least) two different ways, it could be an imaginative way to keep a group of talented musicians working at a time when there few live concerts, or it could be the solution to that awkward Christmas present problem for that musical person who has everything. Or it could be both.

Three of the UK’s brightest choral ensembles, Echo Vocal Ensemble, The Gesualdo Six and The Swan Consort have got together with the Ryedale Festival to film a series of short musical films, and these are being offered as a set of 12, one each in the recipients in-box during the 12 days of Christmas - Christmas Day to Epiphany (25 December to 6 January). All filmed in the splendour of Castle Howard.

The results are eco-friendly and responsibly produced, in line with the Ryedale Festival’s sustainability commitment for 2021. And there are options for bespoke gift packages. There is also a 12 Days Composition Challenge (run via the groups’ social media) which invites aspiring composers to devise a cadence to feature in the production’s title sequence. The twelve winning entries will be recorded professionally as part of the project.

Full details from the project website, and the prices start at £12.

A Life on Line - Being Black in America, A Voice of One's Own from Positive Note and Telling Tales at the Wigmore Hall

Tyshawn Sorey: Cycles of my being - Lawrence Brownlee, Opera Philadelpha (taken from video stream)

This week was something of a catch-up week, viewing work which had appeared in the last few weeks but which we had not had a chance to listen to yet. 

Cycles of my being is a song cycle by American composer Tyshawn Sorey with words by Terrance Hayes which was commissioned by Opera Philadelphia and premiered by tenor Lawrence Brownlee in 2018 [see the review of the 2018 premiere on The Philadelphia Inquirer website]. The work returned to Opera Philadelphia in September this year, when it was recorded and broadcast on-line. Brownlee returned to the solo role, with the composer conducting an ensemble of piano, violin, clarinet and cello. 

It is a strong piece about the experience of being a Black man in America today, a work full of darkness and rage and with few lighter moments. Sorey has something of a jazz background, but his music has a remarkable richness and depth which leaves a particular genre behind. Cycles of my being is not an easy work, and though it is not 50 minutes of rage there were few lighter moments. But it was clear that it had been written with Brownlee in mind, as well as the tenor's strong middle register there were moments where his bel canto experience and sheer technical control were to the fore. The website seemed to lack a printed copy of Terrance Hayes' words, which was a shame as the text seemed to warrant some consideration. [Opera Philadelphia]

I was pleased to be able to catch mezzo-soprano Diana Moore and pianist John Reid's recital, A Voice of One's Own for the Positive Note Autumn Sessions filmed at Radley College, as it chimed in with my interest in the songs of Rebecca Clarke (1886-1979). Mitchell sang two of Clarke's striking songs in a programme which was entirely devoted to 20th century British women composers, including Liza Lehmann, Rebecca Clarke, Muriel Herbert, Ethel Smyth, Phyllis Tate and many more. Embarrassingly, some were little more than names to me. Not only had Moore put together a terrific recital, but the visuals included quotes from and about the composers, which helped illuminate the music. [Positive Note]

Mezzo-soprano Kitty Whately and pianist Simon Lepper's concert at Wigmore Hall was a last-minute replacement for another programme cancelled owing to travel restrictions and a delightful evening it proved. The programme, Careful the tale you tell... was something of a family affair as Kitty Whately was joined by her parents, actors Kevin Whately and Madelaine Newton, whilst Simon Lepper's page turner was his husband.

The first published Black composer: the Marian Consort performs Vicente Lusitano's Inviolata as part of its Advent programme at Kings Place

The Marian Consort

We know very little about Vicente Lusitano. He was born in Olivença in Portugal and in 1561 published an important musical treatise. And that is about it. He is seems to be of African descent (he is described in contemporary sources as a "pardo", the Portuguese for mulatto), and whilst in Rome he published not only his treatises but a book of motets, making him almost certainly the first published Black composer. Much of what we know about him comes from an 18th century biography which is full of now unverifiable information, and of course there seems to be no surviving image of him.

His music (motets and a madrigal) is woefully ignored as compared to his contemporaries. There will be a chance to remedy that when the Marian Consort performs their programme All Creation Waits at Kings Place on 15 December 2020. Their Advent sequence will include Lusitano's Inviolata, written in homage to his predecessor Josquin.

Also in the programme will be music by Palestrina, Josquin, and Jehan L’Heritier (a 16th century composer who was probably a pupil of Josquin), alongside works by Poulenc, MacMillan and Benjamin Britten (his amazing Hymn to the Virgin, written when he was just 17).

Full details from the Kings Place website.

NW Live Arts' Music & Renewal concert returns

Kuljit Bhamra MBE performing at NW Live Arts' Music & Renewal concert

Having performed its programme Music & Renewal live and streamed at the Bloomsbury Festival in October, NW Live Arts will be performing the programme again at a live concert on 11 December 2020 at St James' Church, Islington and the concert will be available on-line from 16 December 2020. 

Music & Renewal explores different concepts of renewal in a dynamic mix of music from Europe, India and South America, and the programme will feature the Alkyona String Quartet and tabla player Kuljit Bhamra MBE. The performance marks Bhamra's first performance with NW Live Arts since it was recently announced that he is to become the organisation's patron.

The Music & Renewal programme includes quartets by Mozart, Ravel and Bartok alongside new works for string quartet and percussion by Kuljit Bhamra and South American percussionist Andres Ticino. The concert also features improvisations from Ticino and Bhamra, music for solo cello by Ligeti and a new quartet by Caroline Heslop, artistic director of NW Live Arts. There will also be video art created by participants of a community workshop led by artist, Antonia Attwood.

Full details from the NW Live website.

In the depths of deep despair: James Cleverton and Nigel Foster premiere Iain Bell's song cycle based on Thom Gunn's collection 'The Man with Night Sweats'

Thom Gunn in 1960

Liebestod - Hugo Wolf, Iain Bell, Franz Schubert, Gustav Mahler; James Cleverton, Nigel Foster; London Song Festival at Hinde Street Methodist Church
Reviewed by Robert Hugill on 4 December 2020 Star rating: 4.0 (★★★★)
With an audience once again, London Song Festival premieres Iain Bell's darkly dramatic song cycle based on Thom Gunn's poems

Hurrah for a return to live music making! Who knows for how long, but Nigel Foster and the London Song Festival made their concert Liebestod happen live at the Hinde Street Methodist Church on Friday 4 December 2020. The challenges included baritone James Cleverton standing in a relatively short notice when the planned singer was unable to travel due to restrictions. The centrepiece of this challenging concert was the premiere of Iain Bell's new song cycle, The Man with Night Sweats, setting poems by Thom Gunn from the eponymous collection. Around this were placed songs of love and of death, with Hugo Wolf's Michelangelo Lieder, three Heine settings from Schubert's Schwanengesang and Mahler's Lieder eines fahrenden Gesellen.

We began with Wolf's Michelangelo Lieder, setting three German translations of Michelangelo's originals by Walter Heinrich Robert-tornow (1852-1895). Wolf set the songs in 1897, originally writing four and discarding one. After writing them Wolf wrote to a friend 'I'm literally afraid of this composition, because it makes me apprehensive of my own sanity', and six months later he had a mental breakdown as a result of syphilis, tried to commit suicide and was committed to an asylum. These were the last songs he wrote.