Wind, Sand and Stars: OOTS' new digital concert explores the early days of aviation in the person of French aviator Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

This evening, 11 January 2020, the Orchestra of the Swan (OOTS), artistic director David Le Page, releases the latest in its series of Night Owl digital concerts. Entitled Wind, Sand and Stars the filmed concert explores the early days of aviation in the person of French aviator Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, author of Le Petit Prince. OOTS interweaves music by  Ravel, Satie, Debussy, Saint-Saëns, Piazzolla, and Charles Trenet with passages from Saint-Exupéry's autobiography, Wind, Sand and Stars read by Graham Padden.

The first concert in the series, Luna, was inspired by planet Earth’s mysterious neighbour – the moon, combining words by James Joyce, Buzz Aldrin, and Neil Armstrong with music by Haydn, Beethoven, Debussy, Paul Simon, and Schoenberg.

Full details from the Orchestra of the Swan website.

Re-inventing Kurt Weill: How Lotte Lenya's performances of her husband's music in the 1950s, born of expediency, came to define how the songs were performed

Bertolt Brecht, Lotte Lenya and Kurt Weill in 1928

Lotte Lenya's recordings of her husband, Kurt Weill's music effectively defined the performance style for a generation or more. Lenya's low, almost gravelly voice, the prominence of the text defined our way of think about Weill's Berlin works. Yet if you listen to Lenya's few pre-war recordings made in Berlin, [see the excerpt from the 1931 film of Die Dreigroschenoper on YouTube, or the recordings re-issued on Warner Classics], then the style is very different indeed, she has almost a soprano, soubrette voice, however still the same attention to the text. In order for her to perform Weill's music after his death in 1950, roles were transposed down to suit Lenya's voice at the time, giving rise to a Kurt Weill performance style which owed a lot to the changes in his wife's voice.

Kurt Weill & Bertolt Brecht: Die Dreigroschenoper
Lotte Lenya in the 1931 film

Lotte Lenya (1898-1981) was an Austrian actress working in Berlin, and she sang the role of Jessie in Kurt Weill and Bertholt Brecht's first collaboration, Mahoganny Songspiel (1927), though by this time Lenya and Weill were already married having been introduced in 1924 by the playwright Georg Kaiser with whom Weill was collaborating on the operas Der Protagonist (1926) and Der Zar lässt sich photographieren (1928). The rest of the singers in Mahoganny Songspiel were trained operatically, which meant that Lenya's voice set her apart and it was not until she was cast as Jenny in Kurt Weill and Bertholt Brecht's Die Dreigroschenoper, which premiered at Berlin's Theater am Schiffbauerdamm in 1928, that she achieved a secure place in Berlin's theatre scene. Though she is associated with her husband's work, she appeared in quite a number of major theatre productions. 

After Brecht and Weill's opera Aufstieg und Fall der Stadt Mahagonny premiered in Leipzig in 1930, it was rejected by all the opera houses in Berlin and Weill simplified the role of Jenny so that Lenya could sing it in the production at the Theater am Kurfürstendamm.

It is important to remember that Weill's work in Berlin extended beyond his iconic collaborations with Bertholt Brecht, and in fact the two rather diverged over politics and Weill's final major Berlin stage works are the opera Die Bürgschaft, with a libretto by Caspar Neher which premiered in Berlin in 1932 with Lenya as the protagonist's wife, and the play with music, Der Silbersee, with Georg Kaiser.

With the Nazi seizure of power following the Reichstag fire of 27 February 1933, Weill (as a Jew) and Brecht both left Germany. Despite being estranged and soon to be divorced (in 1933), Weill wrote the title role of Anna I for Lenya in his ballet chanté Die sieben Todsünden. Written in exile in Paris, this was also his final work with Brecht. The result of a commission from the dancer Boris Kochno and the patron Edward James (best known for his support of the Surrealist movement), exile seems to have brought about a change to Brecht and Weill's relationship, leading to some sort of reconciliation and the work on Die sieben Todsünden. Anna I would be another role that was re-created in a lower key for Lenya's post-war performances.

A Life On-Line: Britten and John Donne, Rossini and Sir Walter Scott, Bach for Christmas

Britten: The Holy Sonnets of John Donne - Bernadette Iglich, Richard Dowling
(Photo Beki Smith/Britten Pears Arts)

This week the twelve days of Christmas came to an end and Paul McCreesh and Gabrieli's performances of the six parts of Bach's Christmas Oratorio reached a triumphant conclusion. I have to confess that, like a lot of people, I am rather less familiar with the second half of Bach's work (too often performances seem to concentrated on parts one to three, and possibly six). 

So it was great to have the second half in such engaging and engrossing performances, not only stunning singing from Anna Dennis, Carolyn Sampson, Helen Charlston, Tim Mead, Hugo Hymas, Jeremy Budd, Roderick Williams and Ashley Riches but a superb commitment to the text and a great sense of collegiality in the performance rather than a sequence of solo moments linked by recitative. And the instrumentalists were part of the group too, making the whole something to treasure. I also enjoyed the chorale performances from the various schools, and can't help but admire the commitment of staff and pupils to getting the music out and videoed at this challenging time.

Perhaps we could do the same for Bach's St Matthew Passion at Easter? [Voces8's Live from London]

We made two virtual visits to Wigmore Hall this week. On Monday, Macedonian mezzo-soprano Ema Nikolovska, a BBC Radio 3 New Generation Artist, was joined by pianist Malcolm Martineau for an eclectic recital (one that we were supposed to be seeing live) which included two composers (both women) who were new to me. We moved from Schubert to Vítězslava Kaprálová (1915-1940) to Dvořák (his In Folk Tone, which I also did not know), to Ana Sokolovic (b.1968) to Nadia Boulanger (1887-1979) to Britten, ending with Five Advertising Songs by Nicolas Slonimsky (1894-1995). It was a selection of songs which showed great imagination and demonstrated how to be creative in bringing out music which has been undeservedly neglected. [Wigmore Hall]

We went back to the hall at the end of the week for the debut of Wigmore Soloists in Schubert's joyous Octet. The ensemble, led by violinist Isabelle van Keulen and clarinettist Michael Collins, also featured Laura Samuel violin, Timothy Ridout viola, Kristina Blaumane cello, Tim Gibbs double bass, Robin O'Neill bassoon, and Alberto Menéndez Escribano horn. Schubert's Octet was commissioned in 1824 specifically as a companion work for Beethoven's popular Septet from 1802 and in fact a number of the musicians who premiered Schubert's work had given the premiere of the Beethoven, including violinist Ignaz Schuppanzigh. Schubert follows Beethoven's structure and many of the key relationships, and creates a serenade which is both bubblingly joyous and sublime. [Wigmore Hall]

Rossini's opera La donna del lago, inspired by Sir Walter Scott's poem The Lady of the Lake, is a tricky piece. Rossini wrote it for the Teatro San Carlo in Naples where he was director of music, and where the opera company received lavish support from the King. This mean that Rossini was able to write complex music for a crack ensemble of singers and instrumentalists, and also to experiment. La donna del lago has many features that we now take for granted in 19th century opera, so that the finale to Act One features orchestra, soloists and three separate choruses (which were expected to move around the stage), whilst musically Rossini brings multiple tunes together. The result is exhilarating, and is the sort of dramatic writing which came to define Italian opera in the 19th century.

And yet. What are we to make on stage of a story about warring Scots dressed in anachronistic kilts, and there is even a chorus of bards! No wonder directors struggle. I still remember the laugh that the entrance of Marilyn Horne received at Covent Garden when she made her entry in doublet and hose in Frank Corsaro's 1985 production, whilst John Fulljames' 2013 at Covent Garden successfully mined the idea of the 19th century re-inventing history [see my review]. The Metropolitan Opera's video offerings this week featured Paul Curran's 2015 production there (the work's premiere run at the Met). Curran took a relatively traditional view, we had kilts  and blue daubed bards. The result, particularly when seen in close-up on film, highlighted the anachronism a bit too much and you felt that fewer realistic details would have been helpful. There were, however, terrific performances from Joyce DiDonato as Elena, Daniella Barcellona as Malcolm, Juan Diego Florez as Giacomo and John Osborn as Rodrigo, conducted by Michele Mariotti. [Met Opera]

English Touring Opera released the second of its films on Marquee TV, taken from the company's Autumn programme at Hackney Empire. For this film, Bernadette Iglich directed and danced, whilst Richard Dowling (tenor) and Ian Tindale (pianist) performed Britten's The Holy Sonnets of John Donne. Britten seems to have written the cycle in response to seeing the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp. Britten had stood in at the last moment as pianist for violinst Yehudi Menuhin's 1945 post-war tour of Germany where they gave a concert at Bergen-Belsen to the survivors who were waiting there to be repatriated. In the audience was cellist Anita Lasker-Wallfisch, who had been imprisoned in Auschwitz and Bergen-Belsen.

Britten's solution to dealing with the horrors of Bergen-Belsen was to set a sequence of John Donne's Holy Sonnets in which the poet deals with personal distress and the texts seem to move between Donne's struggles with sexual tensions and his relationship to God. The result is not comfortable music, and Richard Dowling gave an astonishing performance, intense yet often lyrical, creating a clear arc through the nine songs, making them a personal experience. Was it about his relationship with the dancer (Bernadette Iglich), we were never sure but that tension kept us on the edge of our seats. [English Touring Opera]

Mysteries: Luxembourg-born pianist Sabine Weyer on how combining music by a Soviet Russian composer and contemporary French one made a satisfying new disc

Sabine Weyer

The Luxembourg-born pianist Sabine Weyer is releasing a disc this month on the ARS Produktion label, entitled Mysteries, combines the music of Russian / Soviet composer Nikolai Myaskovsky (1881-1950), celebrating his 140th anniversary, and the contemporary French composer Nicolas Bacri (born 1961), celebrating his 60th birthday. It is not an obvious pairing of composers, though neither is perhaps as well known as they ought to be and in fact it was Bacri who introduced Sabine to Mysaskovsky's music (Bacri dedicated one of his piano sonatas to Myaskovsky's memory). I caught up with Sabine by Skype to find out more.

Along with many other works (his work-list is most impressive), Nicolas Bacri has written nine piano sonatas, and when Sabine first came across his music she listened to it and liked it, finding the piano sonatas fascinating. She started studying Bacri's music and travelled to Brussels to play for him. During this meeting he told her about the music of Nikolai Myaskovsky, whom Bacri regarded as his favourite composer. Bacri dedicated his Sonata No.3, Opus 122 ‘Sonata impetuosa’, which Sabine includes on her disc, to Myaskovsky's memory and Sabine found a number of links between the music of the two composers. Combining them on a disc seemed obvious.

Part of the attraction of Myaskovsky for Sabine is the way his music evolved over time, at first Romantic and then becoming more expressionistic, but later on because of the rigours of the Soviet regime his music become more Romantic again. She finds that he was always struggling to be true to himself, fighting against the Soviet regime. She sees Myaskovsky as always taking care of his inner voice in his music, and a great example of what an artist should be. 

The missing link: romances by Alexander Dargomyzhshky, a friend of Glinka and an influence on a later generation of Russian composers

Alexander Dargomyzhshky Romances; Anastasia Prokofieva, Sergey Rybin; Stone Records
Reviewed by Robert Hugill on 6 January 2021 Star rating: 4.0 (★★★★)
A chance to explore songs by a composer who is an important link between Glinka and the Russian composers of the later 19th century

When we think of Russian song in recital, it tends to be songs by Mussorgsky (1839-1881), Tchaikovsky (1840-1893), and Rachmaninov (1873-1943) that performers reach for first, and even then, quite a small group of songs by each composer. But on disc, things are starting to get more interesting, in 2016 Katherine Broderick and Sergey Rybin recorded a disc of Mussorgsky songs which explored the links between the composer and French Impressionism [see my review], then in 2018, Anush Hovhannisyan, Yuriy Yurchuk, and Sergey Rybin recorded a disc of Romances by Rimsky-Korsakov (1844-1908) [see my review], and now pianist Sergei Rybin is joined by soprano Anastasia Prokofieva on Stone Records for The Secret Garden, Romances by Alexander Dargomyzhshky, a selection of 26 of the composer's songs.

Alexander Dargomyzhshky (1813-1869) is one of the missing links between Mikhail Glinka (1804-1857) and the composers of Mussorgsky and Tchaikovsky's generation. Dargomyzhshky's father was the illegitimate son of a nobleman, and the young Alexander was musically talented early and his teachers would include one of Hummel's pupils. In 1833, Dargomyzhshky met Glinka who encouraged the young man and Glinka would be a mentor and friend for 22 years. It was Glinka's influence that encouraged Dargomyzhshky to consider composing as a profession, rather than simply something for the salon. Though like the composers born in the 1830s and 1840s, Dargomyzhshky also had a day job in the civil service.

Whilst he was heavily influenced by French Grand Opera, and spent six months during 1844 travelling to Berlin, Brussels, Paris and Vienna when it came to Russian music Dargomyzhshky was looking for a deeper truth. He was interested in the way words were set, would experiment with declamatory, recitative-like writing which would heavily influence later generations of Russian composers. Perhaps because he didn't write 'ear flattering melodies', his music never quite got the attention that it deserved. He wrote almost exclusively for the voice, leaving four complete operas, two incomplete operas and nearly 100 Romances. His songs trace his stylistic evolution from classical through Romantic towards Realism, first songs for the salon, then Russian folk songs, larger-scale ballades and realistic, satirical scenes.

If Haydn went to Scotland: the Maxwell Quartet continues its exploration of Haydn's London quartets alongside 18th century Scots traditional tunes

Haydn String Quartets Op.74, Folk music from Scotland; Maxwell Quartet; Linn Records
Reviewed by Robert Hugill on 31 December 2020 Star rating: 5.0 (★★★★★)
The young Scottish quartet continues its engaging exploration of Haydn's later quartets, imaginatively paired with folk music from Scotland

The Maxwell Quartet's previous disc on Linn Records combined Haydn's String Quartets Opus 71 with folk music from Scotland, and the quartet's new (released 8/1/2021) generously filled disc for Linn follows this up with Haydn's String Quartets Opus 74 and further folk music from Scotland, including music by Niel Gow, Nathaniel Gow, Isaac Cooper, William Marshall and Sine NicFhionnlaigh.

The two discs make a neat pairing because Haydn wrote his Opus 71 and Opus 74 quartets as a set of six, it was the publisher who split them up. The quartets arise directly from Haydn's changing circumstances. In 1790 his employer of nearly 30 years, Prince Nikolaus Esterházy, died and the Prince's successor drastically reduced the musical establishment. Haydn was now free and in 1791 he accepted an invitation from the impresario Johann Peter Salomon for a visit to London to perform his music at Salmon's concert series there.

Thanks to the music publishing industry Haydn was famous. He might have been marooned for much of the time in the Prince's palaces, but his music was published and disseminated, and since the late 1770 thanks to a revised contract with the Prince, Haydn could directly benefit from sales of his music. The visit to London had another effect on Haydn, he heard his quartets performed at public concerts. In Vienna, the string quartet was an intimate medium, played to a small group, but in London virtuoso instrumentalists played them to a public audience. So when the composer returned from London in 1792, he wrote his sequence of six quartets full of brilliance and energy, orchestral textures and dramatic effects.

The Maxwell Quartet say in the programme note that Haydn never went to Scotland, but of course he did have a relationship with Scottish music. During the late 18th century there was a movement to collect and publish Scottish folk-songs in versions suitable for performing in the parlour. Between 1791 and 1804 Haydn created hundreds of arrangements of folk songs for George Thomson, the Edinburgh folksong collector, and for other publishers in London and in Edinburgh.

A weekend of genre-bending events inspired by Baroque music - Baroque at the Edge returns on-line

This weekend the Baroque at the Edge festival is planning to give us another blast of its genre-bending Baroque music inspired events. Running on-line from 7 to 10 January 2021, the festival will be featuring a mixture of concerts recorded at LSO St Lukes and live Zoom events.

So there will be Bach on the Moog synthesizer, guitarist and lutenist Sean Shibe mixing 17th century dance tunes with music by Ravel and Poulenc, recorder player Eliza Haskins joining forces with percussionist Toril Azzalini-Machecler, violinist Rachel Podger on the use of classical rhetoric in Baroque music, performance poets Abena-Essah Bediako and Isaiah Hull presenting poems in response to Baroque music, Nicholas Mulroy on the musical affinities between the giants of 1960s Latin-American song-writing and the composers of 17th-century Europe, and for the finale Lucy Crowe, Tom Moore and La Nuova Musica explore the role folk song and dance has played in European art music.

Full details from the Baroque at the Edge website.

A surprisingly complex work: Puccini's late Verismo classic, Il Tabarro, in a new studio recording from Dresden

Puccini Il Tabarro; Melody Moore, Brian Jagde, Lester Lynch, Dresdner Philharmonie, Marek Janowski; PENTATONE
Reviewed by Robert Hugill on 4 January 2021 Star rating: 3.5 (★★★½)
A new studio recording continues Marek Janowski and his Dresden orchestra's series of Verismo operas with a young American cast

During the 1880s and 1890s, Italian publishers were making a concerted effort to find a successor to Giuseppe Verdi who, however, remained a towering force in Italian operatic life. The major publishing house of Ricordi supported several younger composers, notable amongst whom was Giacomo Puccini, but his first two operas Le Villi (1884) and Edgar (1889) failed to make a strong impression, and it was Ricordi's rivals, Sonzogno, which seemed to have the biggest success. As a result of Sonzogno's one-act opera competitions, Mascagni's Cavalleria Rusticana ushered in a new style, Verismo, and the success of Leoncavallo's Pagliacci seemed to confirm this new style.
 

Puccini viewed Leoncavallo and Mascagni's success enviously, but when he did reach the heights with La Boheme in 1896, it was not quite in the Verismo vein. Whilst Puccini would use elements of this new style, with dramatic plots, melodramatic effects, an emphasis on through-composed dialogue, fast pacing, and big soaring melodies, he would also learn lessons from composers like Massenet and thread his orchestral writing with leitmotifs which brought a richness and complexity to the scores.

By 1904, Puccini had the idea for three one-act operas (perhaps inspired by the success of Cavalleria Rusticana and Pagliacci as a double bill), but his publishers were not keen, partly because of the expense of staging three operas and partly because the genre was inextricably linked to rivals Sonzogno and their competitions.

When Giulio Ricordi died in 1912, Puccini managed to get his way and Il Trittico premiered in 1918, three contrasting operas, one melodramatic with gritty realism, Il Tabarro, one sentimental and religious, Suor Angelica, and one comic, Gianni Schicchi. For Il Tabarro, Puccini looked back to Verismo, which by the 1910s was something of a past phase, none of the Verismo composers from the 1890s was writing in the style. But Puccini wrapped this Veristic style in his own technique, to create a deceptively complex work.

For years, the only way to see Il Tabarro was in tandem with one or all of the operas from Il Trittico but now have learned to love it for its own sake. This new recording of Puccini's Il Tabarro from Pentatone features Marek Janowski conducting the Dresdner Philharmonie (of which he is the chief conductor), with Melody Moore, Brian Jagde and Lester Lynch. The set is a follow up to the same team's recording of Mascagni's Cavalleria Rusticana which was released on Pentatone last year.

Love's Fever: Written after the Black Death in Florence, this 14th century song proves remarkably prescient.

Deh Lassa La Mia Vita

This new film from opera and theatre director Eric Fraad, Love's Fever, takes a text from the end of Day Seven of The Decameron by Giovanni Boccaccio (1313-1375) in a contemporary setting by Lorenzo da Firenze (died 1372/73) and gives it a modern twist performed by Caitríona O’Leary, an Irish singer known both for her performances of early music and of Irish traditional music. 

Boccaccio wrote The Decameron after the Black Death hit Florence in 1348, and the 100 tales in the book are structured around a group of people in a villa who have fled Florence and the plague. The song, rather aptly, refers to the fear of never being able to return to life as we once knew it.

Alas, my life’s forlorn!
Oh, shall it ever be that I’ll regain
The place from which I had to part in grief

Dowland transmuted: Time Stands Still from Portuguese composer Nuno Côrte-Real

John Dowland, Nuno Côrte-Real Time Stands Still; Ana Quintans, Ensemble Darcos, Nuno Côrte-Real; Artway Records
Reviewed by Robert Hugill on 29 December 2020 Star rating: 3.5 (★★★½)
An intriguing synthesis of contemporary and Renaissance as Portuguese composer Nuno Côrte-Real interweaves the music of John Dowland with his own voice

This new disc from Portuguese composer Nuno Côrte-Real on Artway Records features a mixture of Côrte-Real's music and that of Renaissance composer John Dowland performed by soprano Ana Quintans with Ensemble Darcos. But the disc is not so much a selection of music by Côrte-Real and by Dowland as a synthesis.

Nuno Côrte-Real has taken seven songs by John Dowland, orchestrated them and interwoven them with his own interludes to create what he sees as an integrated work which he calls Time Stands Still. The Dowland songs are 'Come again sweet love', 'Flow, my tears', 'Awake, sweet love', 'I saw my lady weep', 'Shall sue', 'Weep no more, sad fountains', and 'Time stands still', and around these have been wrapped eight movements by Côrte-Real, 'Mr. Sérgio Azevedo’s Prelude', 'Mr. António Pinho Vargas his Pavan', 'Mr. Artur Ribeiro’s Air', 'Mr. Mats Lidstrom his Fantasia', 'Sir Christopher Bochmann his atonal transition', 'Mr. Eurico Carrapatoso’s Fugue', 'Lady Maria João’s Improvisation', and 'I know not what tomorrow will bring'

The original impetus for the work was an invitation to Côrte-Real to write a new piece for a Shakespeare festival in Lisbon (the work was commissioned by Centro Cultural de Belém for Dias da Música em Belém 2019 Festival). Côrte-Real thought of Dowland partly because the composer was a contemporary of Shakespeare, and partly because as a former lutenist Côrte-Real knew Dowland's songs. He describes Time Stands Still as 'a tribute to Dowland’s songs, also to my past and my relation to this music, which had a strong influence in what I became as a musician and a composer'. The Dowland pieces on the disc are all somewhat nostalgic and melancholy, and the whole work has a sense of looking back, Côrte-Real describes it as 'a sort of revisitation and getting back to my own past, remembering beautiful times which of course will never return'.

Calling all young composers: Conway Hall announces the Clements Prize for Composers

Conway Hall Sunday Concerts has announced the Clements Prize for Composers, inviting young composers (35 or under) to submit works for string trio (violin, viola, cello) with up to eight works to be selected to be performed at the final on 16 May 2021 by members of the Piatti Quartet.

Alfred J Clements (1858-1938) was the organiser and secretary of the South Place Sunday Concerts (predecessor of Conway Hall Sunday Concerts) from their inception in 1887 until his death. In the first half of the twentieth century the competition bearing his name encouraged the composition of new chamber works, establishing a tradition which set Conway Hall right at the centre of British contemporary music.

In order to support young composers and new music after the disaster wrought on the music industry by the coronavirus in 2020, Conway Hall Sunday Concerts has re-launched the Clements Prize. As well as the competition itself, scores from the original competitions in the 20th century will be available for the first time via the Conway Hall website, and a selection exhibited before the final round of the competition. The project is supported by  Cockayne – Grants for the Arts and to The London Community Foundation.

The deadline for submission is Friday 26 February 2021, 5pm, full details from the Conway Hall website.

The pocket watch and the news periodical: how the public concert developed in 17th and 18th century London

Hanover Square Rooms

In 1672 John Banister, a former violinist at the court of King Charles II, set up a concert room in his house and started giving what seem to be some of the first public concerts in Britain. Given that classical music has been part of Western European culture since the Middle Ages, it is perhaps surprising that that public concerts, something that we rather take for granted as an essential part of contemporary classical music, are such a relatively recent phenomenon.

Classical music at this period was very much in the hands of patrons, whether kings, princes or aristocrats, performances were often invitation events, whether they be a grand display as part of a prince's magnificence, or a simpler salon. To hold a public concert series, you need the confluence of at least four notable features  - sufficient musicians of a calibre that people might want to hear them, an audience interested and affluent enough to pay, a method of communicating to people the when, what and where of the concerts, and accurate enough timekeeping so that people can assemble at the correct time.

These latter two are necessary indeed. The fact that public concerts developed in London in the late 17th century is partly because the production of newspapers gave a means of advertising the concerts, and the increasing availability of pocket watches meant that people had a means of telling the time accurately enough. Portable watches developed considerably in the 17th century, intially as pendants and by the 1670s Charles II's introduction of the waistcoat into Britain is said to have led to men keeping watches in pockets. Whilst, regular news periodicals developed in late 17th century Britain partly because of changes to controls in the right to print, and the London Gazette (published from 1665) became the first official journal of record, thus offering regular place for advertising.

Of course, these contitions predispose that you have persons of a certain quality; early concerts were certainly not mass entertainment and the history of mass entertainment in classical music is an entirely different story.

That London satisfied my first two criteria is partly down to politics and partly to its size and its increasing commercial success.

A Life On-Line: Christmas with Bach and Rossini, plus a New Year's Day in the Roaring 20s

 

Tippett: The Heart's Assurance - Tom Elwin, English Touring Opera

The week leading up to Christmas Day got off to a great musical start with the final two concerts from Wigmore Hall. First off was Stile Antico in music for Christmas from the Spanish Golden Age, mixing the sacred and the secular. To avoid the usual Christmas salmagundi, the ensemble wove the programme together via a complete performance of Alonso Lobo's richly textured six-voice Missa Beata Dei Genitrix,  and interspersed within this were motets by Francisco Guerrero (Lobo's teacher) and Christobal del Morales, plus lighter Christmas songs in Spanish by Guerrero and Matteo Flecha.  The concert is still available to watch on the Wigmore Hall website, and if you want a more permanent reminder, the ensemble's programme was based on its 2019 disc, A Spanish Nativity.

The Cardinall's Musick, director Andrew Carwood, then rounded off the Wigmore Hall season nicely a programme of Italian and German sacred music for Christmas. Like Stile Antico, The Cardinall's Musick centred the programme around a single mass, Palestrina's Missa O Magnum Misterium, performed as a single work, interspersed with plainsong, and preceded by the composer's motet on which the mass was based. Then the focus moved to Germany for two works by Heinrich Schütz, setting German texts and written for Lutheran worship but still managing to evoke Italy, where Schütz had trained. The programme was rounded off by a Christmas magnificat by Heinrich Praetorius, where the movements of the magnificat were interspersed with two popular Christmas songs, Josef lieber, Josef mein, and In dulci jubilo, given in an arrangement by JS Bach. The concert is still available to watch on the Wigmore Hall website.   

Glyndebourne released the video of its 2005 production of Rossini's La Cenerentola as a Christmas treat for us all, with it free to watch on the Glyndebourne website until 4 January 2021. Directed by Peter Hall and conducted by Vladimir Jurowski, the production feature Ruxandra Donose as Cenerentola, Maxim Mironov as the Prince, Simone Alberghini as Dandini, Luciano Di Pasquale as Don Magnifico, Nathan Berg as Alidoro, and Raquela Sheeran and Lucia Cirillo as the Ugly Sisters. Hall took the work quite seriously, but both he and Jurowski brought out the character of the piece, not looking for laughs that were not there; it was in the ensembles, crisply sung and imaginatively staged, that the comedy really came out. Donose was poised, charming and elegant as Cenerentola, and Mironov made a handsome and personable prince, the two conveyed the young lovers' growing relationship beautifully, yet perhaps I would have liked a smack of temperament in this. Alberghini made a terrific Dandini, hamming it up something rotten whilst Cenerentola's family were all characterfully drawn.

There was more Schütz on 28 December, when James Way and the Assembled Company (including Elizabeth Karani, Thomas Elwin and Trevor Eliot Bowe) performed The Christmas Story. As far as I am concerned you can never have too much Schütz, and it was lovely to get this intimate, small-scale performance of his fine telling of the story of Christmas, put together thanks to Equilibrium Young Artists and Harrison Parrott's Virtual Circle. Unfortunately it was only live-streamed, so you can't watch it on-line.

Throughout Christmas, we have been treating ourselves to the large-scale musical re-telling of Christmas with Bach's Christmas Oratorio performed by Paul McCreesh and the Gabrieli Consort and Players as part of Voces8's Live from London Christmas Festival. A terrific way of being able to hear the work as Bach originally intended, six cantatas spread over the 12 days of Christmas. McCreesh uses an ensemble of eight solo singers, Carolyn Sampson, Anna Dennis, Tim Mead, Helen Charlston, Hugo Hymas, Jeremy Budd, Roderick Williams and Ashley Riches, with four singing in each cantata and of course no chorus. The result flows beautifully, and with just four singers providing solos, duets, choruses and chorales, Bach's flexible use of his forces makes a lot more sense, particularly with such fine, communicative performers. Each cantata is preceded by a chorale recorded by members of Gabrieli with contributions from young singers from Gabrieli Roar patched in, a brilliant way to incorporate the young singers' performances into the event. As I write we have heard four cantatas, and I look forward to the final two. [Voces8's Live from London]

As readers of this blog may have gathered, I am a bit of an unbeliever when it comes to Johann Strauss's waltzes and always give the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra's New Year's Day concert a miss, if I can. So it was a delight this year to be able to stream Kenneth Woods and the English Symphony Orchestra's imaginative concert (released on New Year's Eve) which juxtaposed music from the 1920s, both jazz and ragtime alongside music inspired by jazz from Erwin Schulhoff and Darius Milhaud. The orchestra seemed as if they were having fun, and it made an engaging and thoughtful programme. [English Symphony Orchestra].

It was a great delight to discover that having been deprived of a live performance of English Touring Opera's imaginative Autumn programme, the company had managed to record the performances at Hackney Empire and were releasing them as three videos on Marquee TV, each is free to view for the first week.  On Friday we had Tom Elwin in Michael Tippett's The Heart's Assurance and Katie Stevenson in Benjamin Britten's A Charm of Lullabies, both accompanied by pianist Ian Tindale. These were staged song cycles, imaginatively directed by Bernadette Iglich. I was particularly taken with the Tippett, which received a terrific performance from Elwin and Tindale. It is not an easy piece, either technically or emotionally as it is full of Tippett's melismatic, rhapsodic complexity (he wrote it whilst working on A Midsummer Marriage) and the text mixes love and war in a difficult way. Britten's work is, perhaps, even odder being a group of lullabies, none of which you would really want to sing to a baby. Here Stevenson was haunting, hinting at darker concerns. Catch it while you can, the second programme is next Friday. [English Touring Opera]

Researching the mathematics of emotions: composer Arash Safaian on his recent fantasy about Beethoven's music, 'This is (Not) Beethoven'

Arash Safaian (Photo Gregor Hohenberg)

Iranian-born German composer Arash Safaian has a new disc out. On Modern Recordings the provocatively titled This is (not) Beethoven is performed by pianist Sebastian Knauer and the Zürcher Kammerorchester. Writing in a somewhat neo-Classical style, Arash Safian's music encompasses orchestra, chamber, opera as well as film, whilst this latest disc is a concertante work for piano and orchestra inspired by themes from Beethoven's music. I caught up with Arash via Zoom to find out more.

Arash was born in Iran son of the Iranian artist Ali Akbar Safaian who emigrated to Germany when Arash was a child, and he grew up in Bayreuth. Arash studied painting at the Academy of Fine Arts in Nürnberg and showed his paintings in solo and group exhibitions, before moving to the Academy for Music and Theatre in Munich to study composition with Jan Müller-Wieland and Pascal Dusapin, and film music with Enjott Schneider. He won the ECHO:KLASSIK 2017 prize for his piano concerto cycle ÜberBach and the Bavarian Film Prize 2019 for Best Film Music for his music for the film Lara, directed by Jan-Ole Gerster.

This is (not) Beethoven takes the form of a 15-movement work for piano and orchestra. Arash describes it as a fantasy about Beethoven's music and likens the form to Mussorgsky's multi-movement Pictures at an Exhibition. The work uses themes from Beethoven's music and Arash regards it as a reflection on Beethoven of today's music. At its core is a set of 12 variations inspired by Beethoven's Symphony No. 7, interspersed with a cycle of other movements. The inspiration for these moves from Beethoven to other composers and images. In talking about the work, Arash refers to Beethoven as a planet with him constructing satellites around.

Arash Safaian: This is (not) Beethoven - recording session with Sebastian Knauer and the Zürcher Kammerorchester.

Happy New Year

 A Happy New Year from All at Planet Hugill

Beethoven: Fidelio - Jonas Kaufmann - Royal Opera (Photo ROH/Bill Cooper)

This year we have posted 744 articles, beginning with my preview of the Britten Sinfonia's Spring season and ending with my preview of the English Symphony Orchestra's New Year's Eve concert, and along the way we have managed to produced 145 record reviews. 

Our top performing articles this year have been my review of Beethoven's Fidelio at Covent Garden with Lise Davidsen and Jonas Kauffmann, my article about the new 2020/21 cohort of young artists at the National Opera Studio, my review of English Touring Opera's staging of Bach's St John Passion, my article about Birmingham Opera Company's plans to stage Wagner's Das Rheingold in a disused metalworks, my article on London Mozart Player's returning to performing in July, and my article on the Rodolfus Foundation's virtual evensong. Our top performing record review was Pierre Hantaï's disc of Handel's keyboard suites (which also made it onto our top 20 list of discs for 2020).

If you have missed out on anything over the year then our archive lists Opera and Concert Reviews, Record Reviews and Interviews are now up to date and well worth a browse.

Don't forget that you can also sign up for my mailing list with gives you our e-Newsletter, This month on Planet Hugill direct into your inbox. You can get a preview of our forthcoming e-Newsletter, December on Planet Hugill: Pagliacci at The Grange, chamber music in spotlight, Thom Gunn-inspired premiere here at MadMimi.

See the New Year in with a celebration of the Roaring 20s

If, like me, you want to listen to something other than the music of Johann Strauss at New Year, then the English Symphony Orchestra, conductor Kenneth Woods, has the answer. The latest in the orchestra's Music from Wyastone - Studio Concert Series is released tonight, 31 December 2020. Entitled The Roaring 20s - Decade of Melody and Mayhem the performance features American jazz and ragtime alongside works by European composers influenced by these styles.

So we have the Charlston Rag by Eubie Blake, a creator of ragtime whose performing career virtually spanned the 20th century, and a 1925 work by jazz composer and pianist Jelly Roll Morton, Black Bottom Stomp. 

Then we move to Europe for the jazz-inspired Suite for Chamber Orchestra by Czech composer Erwin Schulhoff (1894-1942). Encouraged by Dvorak, having studies with Claude Debussy and Max Reger, Schulhoff was one of the first European composers to embrace jazz, but his political sympathies and his Jewish heritage caused problems with the Nazis and he died in a concentration camp in 1942.

Ernst Krenek (1900-1991) was Austrian of Czech heritage and he studied in Vienna. He had a long career, but is virtually only known for his jazz-influenced opera Johnny spielt auf, but the extreme success of this did not sit easily with him and he changed his composing style radically. ESO will be playing Emil Bauer's Fantasie on Jonny spielt auf. 

The concert ends with one of the most iconic jazz-age classical works, Le boeuf sur le toit by French composer Darius Milhaud (1892-1974). Originally a surrealist ballet, Milhaud based the music around songs which he had learned in Brazil where from 1917 to 1919, he served as secretary to Paul Claudel, the eminent poet and dramatist who was then the French ambassador to Brazil, the work had originally been intended as the accompaniment to a silent film, and Milhaud re-worked the music into a virtuosic violin concerto, Le boeuf sur le toit, Cinéma-fantaisie for Violin and Orchestra, which is played here with soloist Zoe Beyers, leader of the ESO.

Full details from the ESO website.

The only live performances of The Nutcracker in the UK?

The Nutcracker Re-imagined - Alexandra Dariescu, Nicky Henshall, Barry Drummond, Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra - dress rehearsal

For a reason that I've never really been able to fathom, Tchaikovsky's 1892 ballet The Nutcracker (with original choreography by Marius Petipa and Lev Ivanov) has become a firm Christmas favourite. The original ballet was not a great success in Imperial Russia, but once Ninette de Valois' Vic-Wells Ballet gave the first performance outside Russia in 1934, it steadily grew in popularity, despite the work's poor dramaturgy. Perhaps it's the Kingdom of the Sweets and all that snow!

But this year is different, and ballet companies all over have cancelled Nutcrackers, so that a brave and imaginative venture in Liverpool seems to be the only live performance of The Nutcracker in the UK. Pianist Alexandra Dariescu was originally due to perform her imaginative theatre piece, The Nutcracker and I [see my review] in Liverpool, but this has imaginatively been re-thought and expanded. 

So for The Nutcrakcer re-imagined Alexandra Dariescu is joined by the brass and percussion ensemble of the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra and dancers Nicky Henshall and Barry Drummond, narrator Lucy Drever to perform an adaptation of the original story by Jessica Duchen with choreography by Jenna Lee. 

The Nutcracker Re-imagined - Alexandra Dariescu, Nicky Henshall, Barry Drummond, Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra - dress rehearsal

Full details from the Liverpool Philharmonic website.

2020 in reviews: diary of a strange year

Meyerbeer: Le prophète - Deutsche Oper Berlin (Photo Bettina Stöß)

Usually, at this time of the year I produce a list of our top 20 operas and concerts that we reviewed during the year. But this has been such a strange year indeed, I am just looking back and being thankful for those that kept the music going. So top of this year's list must be all those who kept live music going, in some shape or form, at a time when it seemed as if music had ceased, notable among these being Wigmore Hall which brought live music back (without an audience) in June. Music took many strange and imaginative forms, and my weekly A Life On-Line column covered as many of these as possible.

Opera Holland Park brought live opera back to the park with a short season of socially distanced outdoor concerts performed by a fine array of artists; for many, the first opportunity since lockdown to hear live music. Having cancelled their planned festival, Waterperry Opera Festival impressively brought together a semi-staged performance of Mozart's Cosi fan Tutte, a truly memorable evening.

Anthony Friend's Bandstand Chamber Festival imaginatively brought live chamber music to the bandstand in Battersea Park where we heard the Maggini Quartet, and the Solem Quartet. And the festival returned as Spotlight Chamber Festival with indoor concerts in December, including Roderick Williams in Schubert's Schwanengesang.

Our first indoor concert following lockdown was the Heath Quartet in fine form at Wigmore Hall, and Elizabeth Llewellyn made her recital debut at the hall with a terrific programme of late romantic songs. At St John's Smith Square, Mark Bebbington, the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra and Jan Latham Koenig showed wit and imagination in a programme of Poulenc and Satie which responded to the restrictions on numbers, whilst the English Concert's fine Purcell programme even managed a premiere!

Tête à Tête: The Opera Festival brought opera audiences indoors with the festival at the Cockpit Theatre in September, where we caught two varied and memorable programmes. And having performed outdoors during the Summer, Glyndebourne Opera brought its Offenbach production indoors, providing an evening of great fun, and the composer's debut at the festival.

In October, I returned to the Conway Hall for a live-streamed pre-concert talk, which meant that I was part of the privileged live audience of five people for Mithras Trio's terrific live-streamed concert which included Tchaikovsky's Piano Trio. At Kings Place, we caught the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment in Bach's Cantata BWV 60 'O Ewigkeit, du Donnerwort' as part of Bach, the Universe and Everything.

Mozart: Cosi fan tutte - Zoe Drummond, Damian Arnold, Nicholas Morton - Waterperry Opera Festival

Some events such as Guildhall School of Music's triple bill stayed on-line, whilst Covent Garden's performance of Handel's Ariodante and Opera North's semi-staging of Beethoven's Fidelio had to do without live audiences. Other companies such as Opera Sunderland, Grange Park Opera, and Northern Opera Group produced specially filmed operas. For our final opera of the year, we were able to visit The Grange Festival, where Christopher Luscombe's imaginative, small-scale production of Leoncavallo's Pagliacci made an appearance.

Nigel Foster's London Song Festival carried on impressively, and still managed to give the world premiere of Iain Bell's Thom Gun song cycle, The Man with Night Sweats. We ended the year back at Wigmore Hall, with a superb account of Handel's Nine German Arias from Iestyn Davies and Arcangelo.

There was, of course music making in the earlier part of the year. Tony caught some Beethoven concerts in Paris, François-Frédéric Guy in the piano concertos, Daniel Barenboim in the piano sonatas, whilst I caught the Orchestre National de Lille's first visit to the UK in 20 years. Ermonela Jaho helped Opera Rara celebrate its 50th birthday, and the Portuguese ensemble, Cupertinos, made its UK debut at the Cadogan Hall.

Operatically, the year began in strong form with Opera North's new production of Kurt Weill's Street Scene. There was also a pair of Verdi rarities, Welsh National Opera in Les vêpres Siciliennes and English National Opera in Luisa Miller. We made a welcome trip to Berlin to catch the Deutsche Oper's revivals of its productions of Meyerbeer's Le prophete and Les Huguenots.

English Touring Opera's Spring season included a moving staging of Bach's St John Passion, and a return to the company's production of Handel's Giulio Cesare. And our last opera before lockdown was Joe Hill-Gibbins memorable new production of Mozart's Le nozze di Figaro at English National Opera.

Mozart: The Marriage of Figaro - Rowan Pierce, Hanna Hipp, Louise Alder, chorus - English National Opera 2020
(Photo © Marc Brenner)

2020 in CD reviews

My top CD this year must be the world premiere recording of Ethel Smyth's late masterwork The Prison, an amazing discovery and a terrific recording. Other discoveries this year include William Vann's fine revival of Hubert Parry's oratorio Judith and the first recording of Malcolm Arnold's unjustly neglected opera The Dancing Master. Not so much a discovery, but still rare on disc is Massenet's Thais from Sir Andrew Davis. For non-Estonians the music of Cyrillus Kreek music certainly be a discovery, particularly in the performances from Vox Clamantis. And we think we know Handel's keyboard music, but Pierre Hantaï's disc makes them anew, whilst Boxwood & Brass bring us contemporary Viennese transformations of Beethoven's music.

Contemporary music on disc included two fine sets of Thomas Adès conducting his own music (In Seven Days and Adès conducts Adès) whilst Andrew Nethsingha and the choir of St John's College gave us a terrific documentation of Michael Finnissy's residency there. Works by James MacMillan appear on two discs, a fine contemporary recital from the Choir of Clare College, and ORA Singers' disc of 40-part music with MacMillan writing a response to Thomas Tallis' Spem in Alium. Returning to Estonia, Erkki-Sven Tüür's symphony Mythos, commissioned for the centenary of the Republic of Estonia, has now appeared on disc, conducted by Paavo Jarvi. Not quite contemporary but still challenging, Sorabji's eight-hour solo piano masterpiece Sequentia cyclica finally made it to disc. Also, worthy of exploration, Rory MacDonald and the RSNO's account of Thomas Wilson's symphonies.

• Beethoven transformed: the second volume of Boxwood & Brass' series brings three bravura Harmoniemusik arrangements created in Beethoven's Vienna
• Rediscovering Handel's keyboard music for a new generation: Pierre Hantaï's disc of the 1720 Suites de Pièces
• Closely worked arguments: Rory MacDonald & the RSNO in Thomas Wilson's Symphonies No. 3 & 4 
• More than a curiosity: Malcolm Arnold's forgotten opera The Dancing Master
  
• An eight-hour solo piano masterpiece: Sorabji's Sequentia cyclica receives its premiere performance 
• A distinct voice: a new disc from Resonus explores Florent Schmitt's Mélodies, a wide-ranging survey of song by an under-rated composer
• Thomas Tallis' 40-part motet and James MacMillan's contemporary reflection on the latest disc from Suzi Digby and ORA Singers
• Taking us on a remarkable journey: the choir of St John's College, Cambridge in Pious Anthems and Voluntaries, a programme of Michael Finnissy premieres 
• On disc at last: Ethel Smyth's late masterwork, The Prison, receives its premiere recording in a fine performance from American forces
• Zest and relish: Handel's comic masterpiece Semele directed by John Eliot Gardiner with a young cast enjoying every minute
• A picture of a musical collaboration: In Seven Days from Thomas Adès and Kirill Gerstein
• Thaïs: Massenet's lyric drama gets a rare outing on disc in a stylish performance with Canadian forces conducted by Sir Andrew Davis
• Uncompromising large-scale drama: composer and performers on thrilling form in Adès conducts Adès from Deutsche Grammophon
• A disc that I never wanted to end: Scottish guitarist Sean Shibe displays clarity, structure and an innate sense of elegance in Bach's solo lute music on Delphian
• Essential listening for anyone interested in Estonian music: Vox Clamantis' profoundly beautiful account of the music of Cyrillus Kreek, The suspended harp of Babel
• Arion: Voyage of a Slavic soul - Natalya Romaniw & Lada Valesova in Rimsky-Korskov, Tchaikovsky, Rachmaninov, Dvorak, Janacek, & Novak 
• Completely magical: music by Arvo Pärt, Peteris Vasks, James MacMillan on this new disc from Graham Ross and the Choir of Clare College, Cambridge
• I can think of no finer way to enjoy the music than to listen to this lovely disc: Purcell's The Fairy Queen from Paul McCreesh & the Gabrieli Consort & Players
• A major addition to the symphonic repertoire: Erkki-Sven Tüür's Mythos, commissioned for the centenary of the Republic of Estonia
• Juditha resurgens: Hubert Parry's oratorio gets its first recording
  

Berlioz and the creation of Gluck's Orphée et Eurydice as a 19th century masterpiece

Kathleen Ferrier as Gluck's Orfeo in the Netherlands in 1949

Whilst the versions of Gluck's operatic re-telling of the tale of Orpheus and Eurydice with a male counter-tenor or tenor as the hero have been explored quite extensively in the last 25 years, the abiding image of the opera remains, at least in English speaking countries, that of a female mezzo-soprano as Orpheus thanks to the powerful performances of singers such as Kathleen Ferrier and Janet Baker. In fact, this standard version of the opera is one that Gluck never knew, and both the opera and the idea of the mezzo-soprano as hero are very much 19th-century creations, the result of a combination of circumstances in 1820s Paris, a story which includes pitch inflation, the composer Berlioz' hero-worship of an unfashionable composer, and a great operatic dynasty, as well as a walk-on role for the painter Eugene Delacroix.

Adolphe Nourrit in the title role
of Tarare by Antonio Salieri

In 1824, the young tenor Adolphe Nourrit (1802-1839) was due to sing the role of Orphée in Gluck's opera Orphée et Eurydice, which was created for the Paris Opera in 1774 with a high-tenor in the role of Orphée. Nourrit had made his operatic debut in 1821 as Pylade in Gluck's Iphigénie en Tauride (written for the Paris Opera in 1779), and his father was principal tenor at the opera (a position Adolphe would take over in 1826). Adolphe Nourrit would go on to create the principal tenor roles in all of Rossini's French operas from Néocles in Le siège de Corinthe (1826) to Arnold in William Tell (1829), he also performed in Daniel Auber's La muette de Portici (1828), Giacomo Meyerbeer's Robert le Diable (1831), Fromenthal Halévy's La Juive (1835), and Meyerbeer's Les Huguenots (1836). Nourrit's technique was distinctively French, using a lot of head voice so that he could extend his upper range to high D (high E in private) using falsetto. But this was the period when Italian tenors were using a more open-throated style, using so-called chest voice and Nourrit's rival, Gilbert Duprez (1806-1896) would become master of the high C sung in chest voice, the style of singing that we accept today.

Nourrit's technique linked back to the original French haut-contre, a high tenor role which developed in the 17th century as the French operatic establishment sought to replace the use of castratos as male heroes in opera, because the sound of the voice was disliked, or the operation was viewed as barbaric or simply anti-Italian prejudice. Whilst French 17th and early 18th century operas by Rameau and Lully were no longer in the early 19th century Paris Opera's repertoire, those of Gluck were. And so it was quite obvious that a leading young tenor should sing the role of Orphée. The problem was that the role was too high for Nourrit and transpositions had to be made.

This wasn't Nourrit's fault. Roles written for the haut-contre sit high in the tenor register with occasional excursions to the top of the range. Unfortunately for Nourrit, the pitch level in Paris had been rising. Pitch had been a constant battlefield between singers and instrumentalists, with rising pitch often coming about because of the desire for a brighter tone. In Germany, for much of the 18th century, there were two standards, one for voices and organ and the other for chamber music. In Paris, we can map the rise in pitch thanks to the survival of a series of tuning forks so that in the Paris Opera an 1810 tuning fork gives A = 423 Hz, an 1822 fork gives A = 432 Hz, and an 1855 fork gives A = 449 Hz (which is a rise of about a semi-tone from 1810 to 1855). These sort of rises make a big difference in roles like Orphée, designed to sit at the top of the tenor's range. But it would be only in 1859 that the French government set a standard pitch.

Gluck created multiple versions of his telling of the story of Orpheus and Eurydice, not so much to improve the work as to respond to circumstances. The composer never created his ideal version, and to a practical 18th-century composer like Gluck, the concept of an ideal version would be foreign.