Influence at Court: the sacred music of Pelham Humfrey explored in a new disc from the choir of Her Majesty's Chapel Royal on Delphian

Pelham Humfrey Sacred Choral Music; Alexander Chance, Nicholas Mulroy, Nick Pritchard, Ashley Riches, the choir of Her Majesty's Chapel Royal, Joseph McHardy; DELPHIAN
Reviewed by Robert Hugill on 20 January 2021 Star rating: 5.0 (★★★★★)
A terrific new disc which brings out the French and Italian influences at the court of King Charles II with an exploration of the music of the talented, but relatively neglected Pelham Humfrey

Pelham Humfrey is one of those tantalising figures in English musical history. Aged 13 when King Charles II was restored in 1660, he was one of the generation of young men who came to prominence at the new king's court. Clearly talented early, Humphrey's anthems were in use by the time he was 17 and the king sent him to France (and possibly Italy) to study. This prompted what has become the best known item in Humphrey's short history, Samuel Pepys wrote in his diary on Humphrey's return from France:

"Little Pelham Humphreys is an absolute monsieur as full of form and confidence and vanity, and disparages everybody's skill but his own. The truth is, every body says he is very able, but to hear how he laughs at all the King's musick here, as Blagrave and others, that they cannot keep time nor tune, nor understand anything; and that Grebus [Louis Grabu, Master of the King's Music], the Frenchman, the King's master of the musick, how he understands nothing, nor can play on any instrument, and so cannot compose: and that he will give him a lift out of his place; and that he and the King are mighty great! and that he hath already spoke to the King of Grebus would make a man piss".

By the age of 27, Humfrey was dead. His music had a huge influence on his contemporaries and he remains one of the great what ifs. But few discs explore the composer's surviving repertoire. On this new disc from Delphian, Joseph McHardy and the choir of Her Majesty's Chapel Royal, St James's Palace perform a selection of Humfrey's Sacred Choral Music including the Service in E minor and are joined by soloists Alexander Chance (counter-tenor), Nick Pritchard (tenor), Nicholas Mulroy (tenor), and Ashley Riches (bass) with a small instrumental ensemble led by Bojan Cicic. [Released 22 January 2021]

The Palace of Whitehall by Leonard Knijff,  c.1695 (20 years after Humfrey's death)
The Chapel Royal is in the centre block fronting the river, close to the great hall (click on the image to expand)

The disc combines Humfrey's Service in E minor (Morning Service, Communion Service, Evening Service) with three verse anthems, Ogive thanks unto the Lord, By the waters of Babylon and O Lord my God. When King Charles II returned to the English court he was very influenced by the court of his cousin, King Louis XIV and wanted a similar use of instruments in the verse anthems, so here we have the relatively new genre of verse anthem with instruments, combining elements from French and Italian music with the English tradition.

InsideOut Musician: Helping to mitigate the debilitating effects of isolation, and loss of motivation, that many musicians continue to face

The InsideOut Musician team

A new online community, InsideOut Musician, created by musicians, for musicians arose out of violist Sophie Renshaw's experience of lockdown and her desire to continue to play and to collaborate with other musicians. The result is InsideOut Musician created by Renshaw, composer Liz Dilnot Johnson, baroque and modern cellist Ruth Phillips, singer and violist Mairi Campbell, and baroque and modern violinist Lucy Russell, which is being launched on 28 January via a new website, offering courses, resources and an online performance space. While personal musical development is a key focus of InsideOut Musician, the ethos underlying the venture is that of helping to mitigate the debilitating effects of isolation, and loss of motivation, that many musicians continue to face, as well as to foster connections to share the love of music. 

Sessions and courses start from £10 for a ‘slow string’ drop in session, rising to £300 for a course of one-to-one instrumental tuition sessions, and courses include Preparing Orchestral Excerpts, Ways into Improvising and a Voice and Interplay course. But heart of InsideOut Musician is the IOM Ceilidh, a monthly online event for students, friends and fans hosted by Mairi Campbell. A ceilidh is a blend of ‘turns’ and chat from one home to another and is a powerful reminder of where music, song and story really belong. InsideOut Musician have taken this time-honoured tradition online. 

IOM arranged a pre-launch Ceilidh in December 2020 and violinist Rachel Podger was really impressed. She said:
"Every artist who is part of InsideOut Musician is a gem – their attitude is refreshing, freeing in its creativity, wholesome and enlightened. And there’s fun too. After a session with IOM my heart was full and free once more."

InsideOut Musician launches officially with a Ceilidh on Thursday 28 January to mark two important musical milestones – the birthdays of Robert Burns (25 January) and Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (27 January). 

Full details from the website, https://www.insideoutmusician.com

A snapshot of the time: Sound and Music (Vol. 1)

Sound and Music (vol 1); Supriya Nagarajan, Seán Clancy, Marc Yeats, Claudia Molitor, Jobina Tinnemans, Ailís Ní Ríain, Michael Betteridge, Jez riley French, Sam Salem; SOUND and MUSIC
Reviewed by Robert Hugill on 19 January 2021
Issued in support of Sound and Music, a disc which gives us a snap-shot of new music in 2020 from Summer School students to established composers

Sound and Music is the national organisation for new music in the UK, composers are its business. In support of its work developing musical talent in the country, the organisation has issued a disc, Sound and Music (Vol. 1) which features a wide range of tracks donated by alumni from its programmes, everyone from Summer School students to established composers, from choral music to sonic art and soundscapes. The composers featured are Supriya Nagarajan, Seán Clancy, Eleanor, Fernando, Marc Yeats, Claudia Molitor, Jobina Tinnemans, Ailís Ní Ríain, Kathleen, Michael Betteridge, Joshua, Maddie, Jez riley French, and Sam Salem.

We begin with Supriya Nagarajan;  Swaying in the wind created during lockdown by Nagarajan, Duncan Chapman, sound artist and arranger, and Satu Marita Sopanen, kantele, a multi-layered work which is a seductive mix of birdsong, an Indian instrument and Indian classical singer.  Seán Clancy's Schematic #3 is an electronic work, an intriguing mix of opposites; Clancy says that the piece is simply notated as a constellation of pitches and numbers. How these materials are used/structured/unfold in time, is entirely at the discretion of the performer(s) and here Clancy performs on synthesizer.

The Cumnock Tryst and Trinity College announce new ten-year partnership

Sir James MacMillan

Sir James MacMillan's Ayrshire-based festival The Cumnock Tryst is expanding its community engagement and music education work with a new partnership with Trinity College. 

James MacMillan founded the festival in 2014, bringing an array of international artists to Cumnock and since then the festival has developed with significant community engagement and music education initiatives such as A Musical Celebration of the Coalfields, as well as evolving from a four-day festival into a year-round arts organisation.

The festival and Trinity College first collaborated in 2019 with a project called Flow Gently when James MacMillan and Jennifer Martin mentored young composers from Auchinleck Academy over a three-month period in their writing of new works for clarinet quartet which were then incorporated into a specially written script celebrating the life of Robert Burns and performed by Mr McFall’s Chamber.

The new partnership is envisioned to be a 10-year one and aims to create a new centre of excellence in the learning and teaching of composition. This is beginning with a new project and a new book.

Build it Loud is a composition project for Advanced Higher Music Students at Cumnock’s Robert Burns Academy, whose new campus opened in late 2020, bringing together two secondary schools, two primary schools and a school for those with special needs, all under one roof for the first time. To celebrate the opening of the campus, the theme of Build it Loud is the connection between the creative processes in both music and architecture. James MacMillan and Jennifer Martin are mentoring young composers along with a composition student from the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland as they write a new piece for the Scottish Chamber Orchestra’s Brass Quintet. 

To build on this, Trinity College has commissioned a new book from James MacMillan and Jennifer Martin Martin to illustrate the compositional process and to support those teaching and learning composition in the upper years of secondary school. The book will be launched at the 2021 festival in October.

Full details from the Trinity College website.

Bach & the art of transcription: Benjamin Alard's survey of Bach's keyboard works reaches the late Weimar period and the composer's discovery of Vivaldi's concertos

Johann Sebastian Bach: The Complete Works for Keyboard, Volume 4: "Alla Veneziana" - Concerti Italiani; Benjamin Alard; Harmonia Mundi
Reviewed by Robert Hugill on 18 January 2021 Star rating: 5.0 (★★★★★)
Benjamin Alard's historical survey reaches the second half of Bach's Weimar period and his discovery of the music of Vivaldi with transcriptions of concertos for harpsichord and for organ

The French organist and harpsichordist Benjamin Alard has reached volume four of his astonishing 17 volume project to record all of Johann Sebastian Bach's keyboard works. Alard is proceeding on an historical basis, so that in each volume the works for harpsichord that Bach wrote at the period sit alongside the works for organ. Volume One, The Young Heir, covers Bach's early keyboard works alongside those of composers who influenced him, and Volume Two, Towards the North, takes us from 1706 to 1708 (when Bach arrived in Weimar) covering the influence of the North German school on the young composer with Bach's works alongside those of Buxtehude, Reinken and Pachelbel, composers from the Weimar Tablature (the earliest surviving Bach manuscript) and from anthologies compiled by Bach's elder brother. With Volume Three, In the French Style, Bach has reached Weimar and the volume looks at the influence of the French composers such as Couperin who were popular in German courts at the time. Each volume has three or four discs in it, and a notable feature is the way that Alard is playing the music on historical instruments.

With Volume Four of Benjamin Alard's complete survey of Johann Sebastian Bach's keyboard works, "Alla Veneziana" - Concerti Italiani on Harmonia Mundi, we reach the second part of Bach's time in Weimar with the rise of the influence of Vivaldi and Italian composers. Alard plays eight concertos for solo harpsichord after concertos by Vivaldi, the four concertos for solo organ after concertos by Vivaldi and others, and chorale preludes. Alard uses three instruments on the disc, a Roman harpsichord from 1702 now in the Museo Santa Caterina in Treviso (Italy) which has gut strings and an extraordinary variety of stops, the historic Silbermann organ from 1710 (restored in 2010) in Abbaye Saint-Étienne, Marmoutier (France) and, perhaps most intriguingly, a modern pedal harpsichord by Philippe Humeau, a type of domestic instrument which was fairly widespread in German-speaking countries. This means that some of the organ concertos are played on the pedal harpsichord, bringing out the personal, domestic nature of the works.

Can "High Art" Be Inclusive? American ensemble Imani Winds hosts two on-line panel discussions as part of the launch of its latest recording on Bright Shiny Things

On 5 February 2021, Bright Shiny Things will be releasing a new disc Bruits from Imani Winds (Brandon Patrick George, flute; Toyin Spellman-Diaz, oboe; Mark Dover, clarinet; Jeff Scott, French horn; and Monica Ellis, bassoon) which features three world-premiere recordings, Vijay Iyer's Bruits, Reena Esmail’s The Light is the Same and Frederic Rzewski’s Sometimes,

All three works deal with current social and political issues, and tell stories about people whose lives have made a difference in our world. Vijay Iyer's Bruits was written during the the trial of George Zimmerman for the killing of a young black man named Trayvon Martin, Reena Esmail's The Light Is The Same uses two contrasting Hindustani raags—Vachaspati (dark and brooding) and Yaman (light and innocent), which have almost identical notes, but when they are played sound very different and Esmail uses these two raags to symbolize “how we are so close to each other and are separated by so little".  The subject of Frederic Rzewski’s Sometimes is Dr. John Hope Franklin (1915-2009) a historian who wrote about the Reconstruction era of American history, the time right after the Civil War, “when people of color (particularly African-Americans) were first allowed to hold political offices, become judges, and had hitherto unknown economic and social freedom,”  

As part of the recording launch, Imani Winds is presenting two free Zoom discussions with panelists including members Imani Winds and composers Vijay Iyer and Reena Esmail. On 22 January 2020 the discussion is Can “High Art” Be Inclusive? and on 29 January the discussion is The Myth of “Other” in Classical Music. The discussions are at 7pm EST, which translates to 12pm UK time so they are for British night owls!

You can register for both free discussions at Zoom.

First four months of Barbara Hannigan's initiative Momentum - our future now, a huge success

Susie Allan, Kathryn Rudge, Edward Hawkins, Roderick Williams at Spotlight Chamber Concerts in December 2020 St John's Waterloo (Photo Matthew Johnson)

During last Summer, Barbara Hannigan launched Momentum - our future now, an initiative designed to support young artists at a time when opportunities for live performance and recording were diminishing rapidly and what few opportunities there were went to well established artists. The idea behind the project is that leading soloists and conductors support younger colleagues by bringing them onto main stage professional engagements. The scheme was launched at Snape Maltings on 29 August 2020 with concerts at Snape Maltings with Sir Antonio Pappano and young baritone Yuriy Yurchuk.

Since then there has been a remarkable take up, with a huge roster of top artists implementing the initiative into their schedules. In December, when Sir Bryn Terfel gave a concert at Brecon Cathedral as part of Met Stars Live, he invited two rising Welsh singers, soprano Natalya Romaniw and tenor Trystan Llŷr Griffiths to join him, and when I heard Roderick Williams and Susie Allan performing Schubert's Schwanengesang at Spotlight Chamber Concerts, the baritone was joined by two Momentum artists, Kathryn Rudge and Edward Hawkins [see my review]. In April 2021, Stone Records will be releasing a new album recorded by six Momentum artists alongside the distinguished accompanist Malcolm Martineau.

In all there have been over 35 events across the UK and Europe. Sweden, Austria, Germany, France, England and Wales, even up to the Arctic Circle in Rovaniemi, Finland. In 2021 Barbara Hannigan will be presented with her 2020 Léonie Sonning Music Prize, from which she has earmarked a substantial financial contribution towards Momentum.

Full details from the Momentum website.

Nonclassical launches fund to support fees for new commissions from Associate Composers

Nonclassical is about to start recruiting its four Associate Composers for 2021-22. The scheme is open to unsigned and unpublished artists who display exceptional ability and potential, emerging composers from any musical background and genre who would benefit from the support and development that the scheme offers. 

As well as taking part in workshops, being mentored by an industry professional and being part of a wider network of composers, artists and industry professionals, whilst on the scheme, the composers will be able to curate their own Nonclassical club night, have work included on Nonclassical's annual Outside the Lines EP, and receive at least one Nonclassical commission to be performed live.

Founded in 2004 by composer Gabriel Prokofiev, Nonclassical started as a clubnight focused on presenting new music in non-traditional performance spaces and has grown into  a music promoter, record label and events producer presenting the new classical, experimental and electronic music, crossing genres, supporting emerging artists and bringing new music to audiences'

This year's Associate Composers commissions will be for a new work for the Southbank Sinfonia. Orchestral commissions on this scale are rare for emerging composers, and they will get the chance to collaborate with instrumentalists from the orchestra and established conductors. Nonclassical wants to offer the composers a fee for the commission, so that they can give their time and energy to writing without financial burden. 

To help fund this, Nonclassical has set up an Associate Composer Commission Fund, anything you can give will go directly towards the composers’ fees. Full details from the Nonclassical website.

Sacred Ayres: Psalms, Hymns and Spirituals Songs by contemporary composer Paul Ayres from the chapel choir of Selwyn College on Regent Records

Sacred Ayres: Paul Ayres - Psalms, Hymns, Spiritual Songs; the chapel choir of Selwyn College, Cambridge, Sarah MacDonald; Regent Records
Reviewed by Robert Hugill on 16 January 2021
The contemporary composer Paul Ayres in sacred mode, lyrical and engaging music from hymn arrangements to anthems and spirituals

There is a balance to creating recording programmes devoted to a single, contemporary composer, particularly one that is not well represented in the recording catalogues. Composers want to include their best, their favourite, their unrecorded works, the performers need pieces which are performable in the time available, and the producer wants to keep costs down and not include anything too exotic. There is also the limitation of what the composer has actually written, a busy young composer with a number of other strings to their bow can find that their back catalogue is full of useful pieces, which do not always add up to a satisfying record programme.

For the new disc devoted to the music of Paul Ayres on Regent Records, Sarah MacDonald and the chapel choir of Selwyn College, Cambridge, with organists Shanna Hart and Dāvids Heinze, have put together a programme called Psalms, Hymns, Spiritual Songs, which showcases 22 of Ayres' smaller works, many written to commission and for particular performers, many fitting into the category of useful music, pieces that performers want to perform, that fit into existing performing traditions, but this is not to say that the music is without challenge.

First off, I have to admit a personal connection, I sang in one of Paul's choirs in the 1990s and he conducted my ensemble FifteenB for a number of years, giving the premieres of quite a few of my choral works at the Chelsea Festival and other places.

To solve the problem of too many smaller works, the programme is divided into sections, Psalms, Hymns, Spiritual Songs, Anthems, Carols. Some works are completely original, whilst others are arrangements and Paul's writing in these is never less than imaginative. As a conductor he has worked with a number of youth choirs and many of these pieces are beautifully written for voices, clearly making them singable yet something of a challenge, so ultimately satisfying for performers and audience.

Listening to these you can hear a variety of influences, some of the psalm settings seem to channel Arvo Part, but the lyrical voice and imaginative part writing in many of the pieces very much evokes John Rutter, a fine model for a practical composer. Yet a definite voice does arise, and I was particularly struck by his fondness for canon and for fitting melodies together.

A Life On-Line: Julia Child and Little Tich in music, Rossini's Armida at the Met

Lee Hoiby: Bon Appetit! - Jamie Barton as Julia Child

This week's listening has been quite varied, with Brahms, Mozart and Beethoven alongside 17th century music, 20th century Spanish and Latin American songs, and an operatic rendition of the television cook, Julia Child. We also managed to catch up with a 2010 performance of Rossini's (seriously rare) opera Armida at the Met, and ended the week with an intense pairing of Tippett and Shostakovich.

On Sunday, the Phacelia Ensemble (artistic director Elisabeth Streichert) gave an intriguing programme at Conway Hall, beginning with Stravinsky's Three Pieces for String Quartet and ending with Brahms' Piano Quintet in F minor, with Mozart's Piano Concerto No. 20 (in Streichert's own arrangement) in the middle. Stravinsky's piece (written 1914-1918) represents a distillation of his own ideas, with little reflection of the tradition of writing for string quartet. The players were hardly in dialogue, instead we had music which was up front and vigorously refreshing. The middle movement seems to have been inspired by the music hall artist Little Tich, both Diaghilev and Nijinsky were fond of his act and insisted on seeing him when they were in London! 

Clément-Maurice's film of Little Tich at the Phono-Cinéma-Théâtre performing his Big-Boot Dance in 1900

Hearing the Mozart concerto played by an ensemble of five strings and piano was rather striking, the performance intimate and stylish. This was a very collegial account of the work without the piano being too spotlit, and the clarity of the string playing meant there was plenty of space to allow Streichert's elegant playing through. The Brahms quintet started off with great sweep and impulse, with an intimate and surprisingly angst-free slow movement. Again there was a lovely clarity to the playing, bringing a classicism to Brahms' writing, though with plenty of muscular dramatic moments.

There was more Brahms at the latest concert on OAE Player. Recorded at Glyndebourne, the concert featured Sir Mark Elder conducting the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment in a suite from Beethoven's Fidelio, with soprano Emma Bell and tenor David Butt Philip, and Brahms' Violin Concerto with Alina Ibragimova. Elder's Beethoven was brisk and muscular, relishing the timbres and textures that the period instrument ensemble could bring to the music. The considerable excitement of the overture was followed by a thrilling account of 'Abscheulicher!' from Emma Bell whose gleaming soprano was really allowed to soar. Then David Butt Philip was equally thrilling and wonderfully impassioned in Florestan's great Act Two scene, with Butt Philip managing to bring great intensity to the performance and occasionally reminding me of the lovely open tone of Jon Vickers in the role. The two soloists then joined together for the final duet.

Alina Ibragimova gave an impassioned account of the Brahms' Violin Concerto, full of lovely sung lines but with an intensity and an impulsiveness to it.

The performer is a mirror who should serve the text and the composer: French pianist Vincent Larderet discusses his approach in the light of his recent Liszt recital 'Between Light and Darkness'

Vincent Larderet (Photo Karis Kennedy)

The French pianist Vincent Larderet's most recent discs have involved the music of his countrymen, notably a pair of discs of the music of Maurice Ravel. But for his latest recording he has turned to a rather different composer, Franz Liszt, and Vincent's recital, Between Light and Darkness on Piano Classics pairs some of Liszt's larger-scale mature works such as Après une Lecture de Dante and Ballade no. 2 with a selection of the more enigmatic late pieces. I spoke to Vincent by Zoom to find out more about the thinking behind the programme. Vincent is someone who thinks deeply about the music he is playing and the programmes he is constructing, and in person (or via Zoom) he is a charming conversationalist so that the results were a lively and thought-provoking hour. 

Earliest known photograph of Liszt (1843)

The original impulse for the recording was simply Vincent's desire to express himself through Liszt's music, and whilst Vincent has not recorded a disc of Liszt's music before, he has played Liszt for many years and the starting point of his programme was the works already in his repertoire such as Après une Lecture de Dante which he has had in his repertoire for over 20 years.

Regarding interpretation, Vincent describes himself as something of a perfectionist, he wants to take this time to develop his interpretation. He comments that performers are interpreters but not geniuses like the composer, so need time to think to get involved with the work's natural language. In an ideal situation, Vincent would practice a work, play it, put it on one side and repeat the process, each time his interpretation develops maturity, and then finally record. It is, he admits, a long process but one during which there is the possibility of reaching the meaning of the work and playing it at the highest level. He also admits that it is possible to play a work in a few months, but this is not a good strategy for him.

Whilst there are thematic links between the works on the recording relating to the light and darkness of the title, Vincent also wanted to put the great masterpieces alongside the shorter, late works which are more abstract, and Vincent found it fascinating to confront the two styles.

Our first image of Liszt is as the great virtuoso who invented the piano recital as a genre, but this is only one part of a multi-faceted composer, and Vincent sees in the late works a composer stripped of all artificiality. Thus the programme features a series of mirrored dualities, not just dark and light, but romanticism and aesthetic abstraction, passion and despair, sentimentality and religious mysticism.

Our image of Liszt the virtuoso is the composer in the first part of his life, lauded and feted, very much the modern-style superstar.

All is not happy in opera in the Land of Fire and Ice

Puccini: Tosca - Kristján Jóhannsson, Claire Rutter - Icelandic Opera 2017 (Photo Johanna Olafsdottir)

All is not happy in opera in the Land of Fire and Ice. A recent meeting of Klassís, the Professional Association of Classical Singers in Iceland, passed a vote of no confidence "in the board  and opera director of the Icelandic Opera, Steinunn Birna Ragnarsdóttir, due to the institution’s management practices in recent years."

Icelandic Opera was founded over 40 years ago from a grassroots of the community of Icelandic singers, with the aim of creating a professional platform for Icelandic opera singers and for operatic performance for the people of Iceland. Singers supported opera performances in Iceland, often performing for a fraction of what they are paid for their work abroad. Initially, singers played a large role in the management of the Icelandic Opera, but their level of participation has been steadily declining and is now non-existent.

The press release from Klassis says that "the board and opera director of the Icelandic Opera have repeatedly shown a lack of interest in listening to and addressing the views, complaints and suggestions from singers and other professionals in the field of opera". 

Icelandic Opera is practically the only available work venue for opera singers in Iceland, as it is the only publicly funded institution with a brief of performing opera (it is worth bearing in mind that the country has a population of around 350,000). Unfortunately members of Klassís believe that it has repeatedly been proven that the current opera director and board do not have the interests of opera singers at heart.

Iceland's government has appointed a working group to research the founding of a national opera company, and Klassís hopes that his might be turning point in relations between management and singers.

There is more background (in English) at Iceland Review. We saw Puccini's Tosca performed by Icelandic Opera, with Claire Rutter and Kristján Jóhannsson, in 2017 [see my review]
 

Northern Ireland Opera re-launches its Opera Studio, widening the range of those supported and trained

Rossini: Hidden Extras (La Cambiale di Matrimonio) - Northern Ireland Opera Studio 2018

Northern Ireland Opera set up its Young Artist Programme in 2011 and thirty-nine emerging opera singers from across the island of Ireland have benefited from vocal coaching, mentoring and performance opportunities from Northern Ireland Opera. Now, in a gesture of immense support for young artists, the scheme is being re-launched in March 2021 as Northern Ireland Opera Studio, and alongside the existing year-long programme of development opportunities for emerging opera singers, there will be new paid opportunities available for conductors, repetiteurs, directors, stage and costume designers, stage managers, choreographers and stage technicians.

Applicants need to be domiciled on the island of Ireland now and aged between 21 and 35 when the programme begins in April 2021.  Applications are invited by 29th January and successful applicants will be invited to auditions and/or interviews towards the end of February, public health restrictions allowing.

Northern Ireland Opera’s Artistic Director Cameron Menzies, said "Northern Ireland Opera understands that it takes an extremely diverse array of highly skilled artists across many specific disciplines to create an opera. To acknowledge this, we believe the NI Opera Studio should also reflect this in relation to the breadth of its training. We look forward to opening our doors and seeing what amazing talent comes our way."

Further information from the Northern Ireland Opera website.

City Music Foundation & Barts Heritage present concert series in Great Hall of St Bartholemew's Hospital

City Music Foundation’s Director Clare Taylor and Artist Manager Latana Phoung
From Emile Holba's The Hidden City

The City Music Foundation (CMF) has joined forces with Barts Heritage, an organisation dedicated to the restoration and preservation of the historic buildings at Barts Hospital so that for 2021 the lunchtime recitals from CMF artists will take place in the Great Hall of St Bartholemew's Hospital and be live streamed public and waiting areas in the hospital on the information screens, and available on patient held iPads which can be requested by in-patients. The importance of music and heritage in health and wellbeing is well known - and CMF and Barts Heritage will be collaborating to exploring this in more depth.

The first recital takes place on Wednesday 27 January 2021 with 2018 CMF artist, cellist Ariana Kashefi and guitarist Andrey Lebedev, 2015 CMF Artist (details from CMF website) and then run monthly throughout the year with pianist George Fu to come on 24 February. Full details of the season from the CMF website.

St Bartholomew's Hospital was founded in 1123, and the historic buildings on the site include the main square designed by James Gibbs in the 1730s with the North Wing (from 1732) which includes the Great Hall, which is accessed via the Hogarth Stair with its two huge Hogarth canvases (Hogarth was born in nearby Bartholemew Close and offered to decorate the stair free to prevent an Italian artist from doing so). Barts Heritage is currently undertaking a project to repair and conserve the Great Hall and the North Wing in time for the hospital's 900th anniversary in 2021.

Donizetti on the cusp: never a success in his lifetime, Opera Rara reveals much to enjoy in the composer's 1829 opera Il Paria

Donizetti Il Paria; Albina Shagimuratova, René Barbera, Misha Kiria, Marko Mimica, Britten Sinfonia, Sir Mark Elder; Opera Rara
Reviewed by Robert Hugill on 13 January 2021 Star rating: 4.5 (★★★★½)
Despite its weak dramaturgy, there is music of richness and daring in an opera written a year before Donizetti's first big success

12 January 1829 was a big day for Gaetano Donizetti. Aged 32, he was making his debut as Director of the Royal Theatres in Naples, a post previously held by Rossini (until 1822), with the premiere of Il Paria (something like his 29th opera). It wasn't Donizetti's first opera for Naples, but Il Paria would be the first one written as Director. Royal protocol ensured that the reaction to the first night was muted, but the opera only lasted for a few performances despite the starry cast (Adelaide Tosi, Giovanni Rubini and Luigi Lablache) and was never revived. Donizetti always intended to return to it, but never did, though he used the opera as a source for other operas in the 1830s.

Now we can hear for ourselves, as Opera Rara has released a new recording of Donizetti's Il Paria conducted by Sir Mark Elder, with Albina Shagimuratova, Misha Kiria, René Barbera, Marko Mimica, and the Britten Sinfonia. [The same forces performed the opera at the Barbican following the recording and you can read a review of the live performance at Classical Source.] The recording is the company's 26th Donizetti opera recording (and there are around 80 Donizetti operas in total).

The libretto for the opera was by Domenico Gilardoni, who wrote the librettos for many of Donizetti's Neapolitan operas (11 between 1827 and 1831!), but Donizetti's greatest operas of the period such as Anna Bolena and Lucrezia Borgia were with another librettist Felice Romani. The libretto for Il Paria is not poetic in the manner of Romani, but it is quite a sophisticated construction.

Donizetti: Il Paria - Thomas Atkins, Kathryn Rudge, Marko Mimica, Misha Kiria, René Barbera, Albina Shagimuratova, Sir Mark Elder
Britten Sinfonia, Opera Rara Chorus,  - Barbican 2019 (Photo Russell Duncan)

Unfortunately, to modern eyes and ears, the plot leaves something to be desired. The setting is exotic, taking place in and around a temple in Benares though the fashion for exoticism in music had not yet hit and Donizetti's music makes no attempt, thankfully, to set the scene with exotic-style music. The plot is something of a cross between Verdi's Aida and Delibes' Lakme.

All About Bach! - Only Stage's new on-line festival

Gabriel Prokofiev

The artist management company Only Stage has certainly been busy. Having recently announced a conducting competition, the company has also launched an on-line music programme. Entitled All About Bach!, it is a weekly series of recitals of Bach's music, sometimes given straight and sometimes Bach providing the inspiration for something new.

The series began last week with violinist Charlie Siem in music for unaccompanied violin (on YouTube) and Siem returns at the end of series (5/3/2021). To come we have cellist Luca Franzetti Cello Suites Nos. 2 & 3 (15/1/2021), pianist Jan Bartos in keyboard music (22/1/2021) and pianist Oliver Poole in the Goldberg Variations (12/2/2021).  

Different aural perspectives are provided by Massimo Mercelli flute and Nicoletta Sanzin harp in sonatas by JS Bach and CPE Bach (29/1/2021), Gabriel Prokofiev on electronics in a new version of The Musical Offering (5/2/2021), and Boris Andrianov cello and Dmitry Illarionov guitar in Cello Suite No. 5 (19/2/2021).

A particular highlight will be Maxim Rysanov on the viola in Cello Suite No. 1, plus two-part inventions with Barnabas Kelemen violin.

The concerts are available free on the OnlyStage Facebook page and YouTube channel. Full details from the Only Stage website.

A beguiling disc: Aberdene 1662 from Maria Valdmaa & Mikko Perkola on ERP explores songs from the only book of secular music published in Scotland in the 17th century

Aberdene 1662, Songs from John Forbes' Songs and Fancies; Maria Valdmaa, Mikko Perkola; ERP
Reviewed by Robert Hugill on 11 January 2021 Star rating: 5.0 (★★★★★)
Engagingly refreshing: An Estonian soprano and Finnish gamba player collaborate on performing a selection of songs from John Forbes Songs and Fancies, published in Aberdeen in 1662

Generally, music-making in 17th century Scotland rarely features very highly in music histories. Despite 17th-century Scots having a relatively high level of education, the combination of the Calvinist Church of Scotland's attitude to music making in church and the fact that King James VI of Scotland moved his court to London after being made King of England meant that there was neither elaborate church music nor significant domestic music making. But there were exceptions to this general view.

A new disc from Estonian Record Productions (ERP), Aberdene 1662 with soprano Maria Valdmaa and viola da gamba player Mikko Perkola features eleven songs from Song and Fancies a book published by John Forbes and son in Aberdeen in 1662. This was the first and only collection of secular music to be published in Scotland in the 17th century, and revised editions were published in 1666 and 1682, so it was clearly popular. We don't actually know which Forbes (elder or younger) was actually responsible for the book.

The Only Stage international Conducting Competition launches with an entirely on-line competition

A new conducting competition which is open to musicians of any nationality and with no age limit. The Only Stage International Conducting Competition has been created by Only Stage, a London-based artist management company, in cooperation with Classics Management Budapest, and with the support of Arts Council England. 

The competition seems to be the first conducting competition created by an artist management company. They will need to work hard to avoid the suggestion of favouritism (a problem which has dogged a number of competitions recently), but given the calibre of the jury members (see below), this is something that has hopefully been thought of.

Candidates can apply from 8 January 2021 to 15 April 2021, and the results will be announced in May. Judging will be done based on the candidates CV and submitted videos (both of performances and, for the final round, a presentation). 

The jury includes Andrea Amarante - Artistic Director or Luzerner Sinfonieorchester, conductors John Axelrod and Oleg Caetani, Zvonimir Hacko - Artistic Director of Oregon Music Festival, Ruben Jais - Artistic Director of LaVerdi Symphonic Orchestra, Milan, Michael Rosewell - Director of Opera at the Royal College of Music, György Lendvai, Managing Director of MÁV Symphony Orchestra Budapest, Piero Romano - Artistic Director of the Magna Grecia Orchestra.

Full details from the competition website.

Update: the closing date has been extended from 31 March to 15 April 2021.

Virtuosity and Protest: Frederic Rzewski's Songs of Insurrection receives its first recording

Frederic Rzewski Songs of Insurrection; Thomas Kotcheff; Coviello Classics
Reviewed by Robert Hugill on 8 January 2021 Star rating: 4.0 (★★★★)
The American pianist/composer applies his virtuoso technique to seven protest songs, musical meditations on protest transferred to the concert hall

American pianist and composer Frederic Rzewski's piano music often includes references to political matters. His best known work is perhaps the piano solo The People United Will Never Be Defeated!, which uses a song by Sergio Ortega inspired by socialist Chileans protesting the military takeover, whilst Coming Together, for narrator and ensemble, uses text by Samuel Melville—one of the leaders of the revolt against police brutality at Attica Prison in 1971. Often there can be an historical element to the work, so that  Four American Ballads [recorded by Adam Swayne on his disc (Speak to me), see my review] were inspired by the folk singer and social activist Pete Seeger, and Rzewski bases each ballad on an American popular, traditional work or protest song. But Rzewski combines these elements with music that requires a powerful virtuoso technique; Rzewski's own piano technique is evidently stupendous. It is as if Franz Liszt had applied his considerable piano technique to creating works based on the street songs from the Paris Commune.

On a recent disc from Coviello Contemporary, Los Angeles-based pianist and composer Thomas Kotcheff performs Frederic Rzewski's 2016 piano solo, Songs of Insurrection, a substantial seven-movement work based on a variety of songs associated with different protest movements in different eras. Amazingly this is the work's first recording.

The title comes from Walt Whitman's Songs of Insurrection, first published in the 1871 Leaves of Grass and the opening lines are:

STILL, though the one I sing, (One, yet of contradictions made,) I dedicate to Nation- ality, I leave in him Revolt, (O latent right of insurrection! O quenchless, indispensable fire!)

Given the date these lines link to the American Civil War, but perhaps also the continuing ferment of post-Revolutionary France and the European year of revolutions, 1848.

New Year, new sessions: the Benedetti Foundation continues to keep string players active

The Benedetti Foundation is continuing its campaign to keep string players active, despite lockdown, with a new series of virtual sessions. Beginning on 16 January 2021, the foundation has announced the New Year Sessions, a new programme of on-line sessions for children and young people of school age, music students and recent graduates, adult learners and teachers.

The programme starts with a weekend of sessions (16 and 17 January 2021) for beginner, intermediate and advanced string players of school age, all delivered live on Zoom. Beginner Strings will work on a new piece by Joelle Broad, and Intermediate Strings will work on a movement from Holst's Brook Green Suite. Advanced Strings will work on the first movement of Elgar's Serenade for Strings, participants will have the opportunity to work both together and in individual sections looking at ensemble skills, the structure and story of the piece, harmony, interpretation, and healthy playing, as well as the technical details within each instrumental part.

Full details from the Benedetti Foundation's website