All opera is community opera: Lewisham Urban Opera launches its crowdfunding

When I chatted to director Thomas Guthrie last year [see my interview], one of the things that he talked about was Music and Theatre for All (MFTA) and its Urban Opera project and now the crowdfunding has launched from Lewisham Urban Opera. 

MFTA's Urban Opera project builds on the Royal Opera House’s iconic Write an Opera programme (1979-2015). The idea is that participants collaborate in every aspect of creating a community opera: composing music and scripts, designing sets, performing, managing and advertising every element. This process gives vulnerable communities a voice, builds confidence, strengthens communities, develops transferable skills and reduces isolation – needed now more than ever – in a big shout of ‘WE ARE HERE!’.

Lewisham Urban Opera will be led by a team of professional creatives, including Gwyneth Herbert as lyricist and composer, so that communities across Lewisham will come together to develop a spectacular show to celebrate the hope of a worldwide post-Covid resurgence during their 2022 Borough of Culture year.

Further information from MFTA's website, and do support them at CrowdFunder.

Getting WOAD on the road: Alastair White's fashion-opera debuts in film form at Goldsmiths' PureGold 2021

WOAD is the latest of composer Alastair White's fashion-operas [for more on fashion-opera and Alastair's distinctive take on music-theatre, see my recent interview with him], his previous operas in this trilogy were ROBE [which we saw at Tête à Tête: The Opera Festival in 2019, see my review] and WEAR, which was staged at the Opera in the City Festival. When I chatted to Alastair in February he had plans for the debut of WOAD but inevitably these have been disturbed by the recent restrictions.

Instead of a live performance, WOAD has been filmed and there is a debut screening at Goldsmiths, University of London SE14 6NW on 16 June 2021. The screening is free but ticketed via Eventbrite and is part of PureGold 2021 Festival, the annual eclectic, innovative and exciting work coming out of Goldsmith's Department of Music. The festival is running now until 17 June, live and on-line, so do check out their website.

WOAD is written for saxophone and soprano, and the film features soprano Kelly Poukens and saxophonist Suzy Vanderheiden, alongside fashion designed by Renli Su. The work is about metamorphosis and parallel worlds, taken the tradition Border ballad of Tam Lin as its basis, a young boy is bewitched - into the form of an ape, an adder, a speck of dust. But is it his shape that twists and churns, or that of the world around him?

Heart & Hereafter: Elizabeth Llewellyn & Simon Lepper's exploration of the songs of Samuel Coleridge-Taylor

Heart & Hereafter: collected songs of Samuel Coleridge-Taylor; Elizabeth Llewellyn, Simon Lepper; Orchid Classics
Reviewed by Robert Hugill on 6 May 2021 Star rating: 5.0 (★★★★★)
A lovely discovery, the English soprano makes her recital debut with an exploration of the songs of Coleridge-Taylor which makes you keen to hear more

Sir Charles Villiers Stanford's pupils were a varied group and whilst his own music was firmly in the tradition of Brahms, that written by his pupils moved in different directions. The English school of the 20th century as typified by RVW and Holst arose in part, perhaps, because the older composer's teaching gave them something to rebel against. However the list of his pupils is wider than this, including Edgar Bainton, Arthur Benjamin, Arthur Bliss, Rutland Boughton, Herbert Brewer, Frank Bridge, Rebecca Clarke, Walford Davies, Thomas Dunhill, George Dyson, Leslie Heward, Eugene Goosens, Ivor Gurney, Herbert Howells, William Hurlstone, John Ireland, Gordon Jacob, Arthur Somervell, Charles Wood and Leopold Stokowski.

There is one more name, Samuel Coleridge-Taylor who, despite being just three year younger than RVW and one year younger than Holst, created music which is quite firmly not in the mould of these two. When discussing Coleridge-Taylor three facts seem to predominate, his being mixed-race (a frankly remarkable factor at turn of the century Royal College of Music), his dying young and his writing of Hiawatha. We are exploring his music further, but when you look at his catalogue there are 83 opus numbers as well as works without opus (culled from Wikipedia). He was both talented young and apparently prolific.

When I heard soprano Elizabeth Llewellyn at Wigmore Hall last September (her debut recital with pianist Simon Lepper, see my review), I was surprised not only by the group of mature Coleridge-Taylor songs that she included, the Six Sorrow Songs, that they should be so completely unknown and, on doing some research, that there were so many other songs which are equally unknown.

For her debut recital on Orchid Classics, soprano Elizabeth Llewellyn has chosen to explore Samuel Coleridge-Taylor's song. Accompanied by pianist Simon Lepper, they perform 25 of the composer's songs including Six Sorrow Songs and African Romances plus songs from Southern Love Songs, Five Fairy Ballads, Songs from Sun and Shade and Six Songs.

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Family opera in Wales and young people's opera in Northern Ireland.

Will Todd: Alice's Adventures in Wonderland - Fflur Wyn at Opera Holland Park in 2017 (Photo Alex Brenner)

Welsh National Opera is returning to live performance this Summer with Will Todd's delightful family opera Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, whilst Northern Ireland Opera is commissioning a new teen/young adult opera from librettist Fionnuala Kennedy and composed by Neil Martin.

Welsh National Opera is performing Will Todd's Alice's Adventures in Wonderland from 25 June until 3 July at the National Trust’s Dyffryn Gardens near Cardiff in the Vale of Glamorgan. The work will be performed in Martin Duncan's production originally created for Opera Holland Park (who commissioned the opera in 2013, see my review from 2015). The cast includes guest artists Fflur Wyn as Alice (a role she created with Opera Holland Park), Benjamin Bevan, Feargal Mostyn-Williams, Aoife Miskelly, and Kelvin Thomas, along with members of WNO’s Chorus also taking centre stage in leading roles. WNO’s Talent Development programme has also continued online during the past year and the return to live performance will see WNO Associate Artists Aaron O’Hare and Adam Gilbert make their stage debuts in the production and new Weston Jerwood Directing Fellow, Gareth Chambers, joining the directing team. [Welsh National Opera]

Northern Ireland Opera's new opera is being created in collaboration with campaign groups led by young people (who are mostly between the ages of 13 and 19) experiencing housing stress across Northern Ireland. Northern Ireland Opera will perform this opera with the young musicians of the Ulster Youth Orchestra, which is another unique element to this project. As the piece is being created specifically for the 13-19 year old age group, it is important for this audience to see themselves reflected on stage in all facets of theatre-making. The work will be premiered in 2022, with workshop versions of the piece being performed at the Belfast Children’s Festival in 2022. 

The company is currently working with opera singer and educator Emma Morwoodon outreach programmes, both during the creating and the presentation stages of the work. These programmes will be open to all participants involved with the production, including collaborators, youth orchestra players and Northern Ireland Opera’s outreach partners in Belfast and beyond. They are also working closely with the Welcome Organisation to ensure that our interactions with young people experiencing housing stress are appropriately and sensitively managed.

The Ministry of Sound Classical at the De La Warr Pavilion

The Ministry of Sound Classical, 2019 (Photo  Sarah Koury)

The dance-music nightclub, and global phenomenon, the Ministry of Sound is perhaps not something you would expect to find on a classical music blog. But the Ministry of Sound is 30 this year and now they are getting together with the London Concert Orchestra for a classical-inspired re-invention with a show at the De La Warr Pavillion in Bexhill on 26 November 2021. The Ministry of Sound Classical is a rare move by the club into live music, something they've started doing in recent years (the image above is from a 2019 event)

November's conert will feature dance-music tracks reimagined for the London Concert Orchestra, guest vocalists, large-screen visuals, lasers and special effects, plus a live-scored documentary. All this plus a DJ set from Danny Rampling.

This may intrigue. If it does, then the Coastal Events website has more information.

Haunted by the past: Errollyn Wallen's new opera 'Dido's Ghost' wraps itself around Purcell's opera to create a powerfully intriguing new synthesis

Errollyn Wallen, Henry Purcell: Dido's Ghost - Henry Waddington, Allison Cook, John Butt, Dunedin Consort - Barbican Hall 2021
(Photo Mark Allan / Barbican)

Errollyn Wallen, Henry Purcell Dido's Ghost; Isabelle Peters, Nardus Williams, Allison Cook, Matthew Brook, Henry Waddington, Dunedin Consort, John Butt, Frederic Wake-Walker; Barbican Centre
Reviewed by Robert Hugill on 6 June 2021 Star rating: 4.5 (★★★★½)
A new opera which explores the boundaries between past and present as Wallen's opera interrogates Purcell's and creates an intriguing modern drama

Errollyn Wallen, Henry Purcell: Dido's Ghost
Nardus Williams, Isabelle  Peters
(Photo Mark Allan / Barbican)

Operatic composers have largely been uninterested in what happened to Aeneas and the Trojans refugees when they left Carthage and arrived in Italy. Errollyn Wallen and Wesley Stace's new opera does just that, showing us Aeneas now settled in Italy. The new opera Dido's Ghost is a sort of sequel to Purcell's Dido and Aeneas, but Wallen's opera is more than simply a companion piece. Just as Aeneas in Dido's Ghost is haunted by the past, so Wallen's opera is in dialogue with Purcell's with the 17th century opera being presented as a masque during the events of Dido's Ghost. There is another element of dialogue with the past here, as one of the major surviving manuscripts of Purcell's opera is a from a performance where it was used as a masque in a performance of Shakespeare's Measure for Measure.

Errollyn Wallen and Wesley Stace's new opera Dido's Ghost was premiered at the Barbican Centre on Sunday 6 June 2021 as part of the Live from the Barbican series and the event was also live-streamed (available to view until 8pm on Tuesday 8 June). Isabelle Peters played Dido and Anna and Matthew Brook played Aeneas, with Nardus Williams as Belinda, Allison Cook as Lavinia and the Spirit, Henry Waddington as Elymas and the Sorcerer, and David Lee as Ascanius, with John Butt conducting the Dunedin Consort. The opera was presented in a concert staging directed by Frederic Wake-Walker.

Stace's libretto takes place 18 months after Aeneas' arrival in Italy, and is inspired both by Henry Purcell and Nahum Tate's work and Virgil's Aeneid as well as the writings of Ursula le Guin. Aeneas (Matthew Brook) is married to Lavinia (Allison Cook) - most of the second part of the Aeneid is taken up with the wars resulting from the fact that Lavinia was originally betrothed to another man who violently objected to being overlooked. Dido's sister Anna (Isabelle Peters), a character in Berlioz' opera but not Purcell's, arrives as a refugee and it is apparent that Aeneas is still haunted by the past and by his encounter with Dido in the underworld (recounted in the Aeneid) when she would not speak to him. 

A youthful cast brings a lively wit to Mozart's Le nozze di Figaro in Opera Holland Park's reconfigured theatre

Mozart: Le nozze di Figaro - Elizabeth Karani, Ross Ramgobin - Opera Holland Park 2021 [Photo Ali Wright)

Mozart Le nozze di Figaro; Julien Van Mellaerts, Nardus Williams, Elizabeth Karani, Ross Ramgobin, Samantha Price, dir: Oliver Platt, cond: George Jackson; opera Holland Park
Reviewed by Robert Hugill on 4 June 2021 Star rating: 4.0 (★★★★)
A witty post-modern Bridgerton-inspired production which is wonderfully engaging yet serious too

Opera Holland Park's 2021 season has opened, with fewer seats, a modified layout to the auditorium and changes to the stage, but still the same energy, imagination and support for young artists. The opening production was Mozart's Le nozze di Figaro which we caught on Friday 4 June 2021, directed by Oliver Platt and conducted by George Jackson [see my interview with him, discussing the production]. The designs were by takis, but in an imaginative piece of cost-saving the basic structure of the set was that designed by Cordelia Chisolm for Verdi's La traviata (which is next up in the season). Julien Van Mellaerts and Nardus Williams were the Count and Countess, with Ross Ramgobin and Elizabeth Karani as Figaro and Susanna, plus Samantha Price as Cherubino, Victoria Simmonds as Marcellina, James Cleverton as Bartolo, Daniel Norman as Basilo and Don Curzio, Claire Lees as Barbarina and Henry Grant Kerswell as Antonio, with the City of London Sinfonia in the pit.

The production will form the basis for the company's 2021 Young Artist performances later this month, but the way the scheme has become part of the company ethos can be seen in the fact that director Oliver Platt and four cast members participated in past OHP Young Artist productions, whilst conductor George Jackson was associate conductor on the 2018 production of Cosi fan tutte, and four more cast members are graduates of OHP's wonderful family opera, Will Todd's Alice's Adventures in Wonderland.

With a smaller audience, the company has taken advantage of the changes to experiment. The canopy is the same, but the audience members are seated in chairs around a thrust stage so that the orchestra is in a pit surrounded by a runway with a small forestage in front of the conductor, an interestingly creative approach to the inherent problems with the wide Holland Park stage and thus giving director Oliver Platt the opportunity to bring the production closer to the audience. The layout also provided more of a challenge to conductor George Jackson, who satisfied the traffic-policeman requirements deftly and with lively attention.

Takis' adaptation of Chisholm's set provided a decorative (and flexible) arcade stage right, with a circular curtained area stage left which was the Countess' boudoir, whilst the fore-stage was decorated with occasional pieces of furniture brought on by uniformed flunkeys. The costumes were notionally 18th century, but the fabrics and the colours and styles of the wigs were very much post-modern. In the use of patterned fabrics for the costumes there was more than a hint of artist Yinka Shonibare, whilst the general approach with knowing modern takes on the period look and feel rather suggested that Netflix's Bridgerton had been something of an inspiration. Some of the ideas were perhaps a little too self-consciously witty, but giving the chorus cheer-leader pom-poms and party balloons was fun, and in the opening scene having Figaro measuring plans and Susanna reading a brides magazine was both comic and a deft solution to the scene's logistical challenges. 

Mozart: Le nozze di Figaro - Julien Van Mellaerts, Nardus Williams - Opera Holland Park 2021 [Photo Ali Wright)

However, I found choreographer Caitlin Frewell Walsh's rather self-conscious use of pop-choreography moves in the ensemble scenes rather annoying. This is a trope which soon gets wearing, and I certainly could do without Cherubino delivering 'Non so piu' with classic pop-song moves, luckily Samantha Price's performance rose above this.

This was a production which acknowledged that Mozart and Da Ponte were notionally writing a comic opera, many of the scenes were despatched with lively wit and an engaging speed, whilst the mechanics of the Act I and Act II finales were deftly done (after all, for all Mozart's glorious music, the finale to Act II is essentially a Whitehall farce and the mechanics are important). But there was a serious element too, these were characters with real emotions and as Mozart intended, the Countess and the Count were largely above the comic action.

Trying to make people unreasonable: I chat to composer Tim Benjamin about his opera The Fire of Olympus; or, On Sticking It To The Man

Tim Benjamin: The Fire of Olympus - Sophie Dicks as Prometheus

Composer Tim Benjamin's latest opera The Fire of Olympus; or, On Sticking It To The Man debuted in 2019 when Radius Opera, the company of which Tim is co-founder and artistic director, toured the work in a production which combined live singers and the digitally combined voices of over 1000 volunteers, taken from workshops held with choirs in and around the towns where the opera was performed. Tim has now collaborated with East View Film to create a film version of the opera, intended to be a film in its own right rather than a film record of a stage production, and this has now been released on Marquee TV. I caught up with Tim recently to find out more about The Fire of Olympus and how he came to turn an opera into a film.

Tim Benjamin

The Fire of Olympus re-tells the Greek myth of Prometheus and Pandora, re-worked as a contemporary tale with Zeus as a modern President. The opera features Tim's music and words by Anthony Peter. When I ask why turn it into a film, Tim turns the question round, saying it was more why turn a film into an opera, as the aim of the project from the start was to create a film.

Tim's background is in both film and opera, he has written eleven operas and a large scale oratorio, whilst also writing music for film, as well as directing films and for the stage, but until, The Fire of Olympus had never directed a filmed opera. With his company Radius Opera, Tim has staged a lot of operas and comments that there is usually not much to show for it at the end of a tour, except perhaps a recording of stage production. But Tim finds the sort of film unsatisfying where you simply point a camera at the stage.

So with The Fire of Olympus, the real goal was to create a film that would live on and continue to be seen by audiences, rather than hoping that audience members will make it on the day of the stage performance. Both opera and film are, however, expensive to create. With operas, you are very much dependent on grants and have to gamble on an audience, which makes it difficult to plan. With film, the BFI (British Film Insitute) has a relief scheme for new British made films. And once the film is made, if you distribute then every showing that there is, wherever it is, brings in a small amount of revenue.

Creating a staged production followed by a film meant that Tim had to direct the stage show with the film in mind. But he sees the film as being closer to his artistic vision, so the film uses multiple locations as well as special effects that cannot be done on stage. The film also uses a framing device with an older Prometheus telling the story. This is set in a post-apocalyptic landscape and Tim has used footage of Damascus destroyed after bombing in this sequence.

Nordic Reflections: The Carice Singers explore the choral songs of two contrasting 20th-century giants

Nordic Reflections - Elgar, Sibelius, Matthew Whittall; The Carice Singers, George Parris; Kings Place
Reviewed by Robert Hugill on 3 June 2021 Star rating: 4.0 (★★★★)
Choral songs by two contemporaries, contrasting 20th-century giants known more for their symphonic output

Jean Sibelius and Sir Edward Elgar were contemporaries, both known for their distinctive symphonic style, and yet the two seem to exist in rather different landscapes. They may have even met; in 1912 Sibelius conducted the British premiere of his Fourth Symphony in Birmingham and in the same concert Elgar conducted The Music Makers. Did they meet? We don't know, language would have been a problem, when RVW and Sibelius met they had to converse in French and schoolboy Latin! And certainly, there is no anecdote of the meeting.

For their concert Nordic Reflections at Kings Place on 3 June 2021, George Parris and The Carice Singers put together an intriguing programme of unaccompanied choral music by Elgar and Sibelius, a sequence of choral songs where each composer takes the part-song tradition from his own country and moves it into new and intriguing places. For both composers, the writing of choral songs runs alongside their larger-scale works throughout their careers, so that whilst Elgar was working on his Symphony No. 1 he produced his astonishing part-song Owls (An Epitaph).

As George Parris points out in his programme note, neither was very fond of explaining their music so having settings of words might give us hints, and in fact, both composers have a fondness for images of the natural world. But this wasn't an evening of purely atmospheric nature painting, both composers use images of the natural world and more to evoke more complex ideas. Works such as Elgar's Owls (setting his own text) and Sibelius' Venematka (The Boat Journey) move a long way from the purely descriptive, the Elgar is positively spooky (though the composer positively denied there was any subtext, whilst Sibelius' boat journey (setting a text from the Kalevala) is seems to be a metaphor for a deeper journey. 

Toutes Les Couleurs

Argentine-born actor, writer, and director Ben Cura is known for his work in film and TV, and on stage,  including Netflix’s Marcella, 15 Minutes of War, Gatecrash and his award-winning directorial debut Creditors which he adapted from the August Strindberg play. But he is also developing a reputation as a musician having released his debut single, Water earlier this year. He has now released a new neo-classical single Toutes Les Couleurs, and soon he will be releasing a debut EP, whilst later in the year, his original motion picture soundtrack features on the film Among The Beasts, directed by Matthew Newton.

Ben Cura was born in Buenos Aires, the son of Argentine tenor/conductor José Cura and his first acting role came at age nine, as a supernumerary in a production of Verdi's La Forza del Destino at the Opéra de Marseille, France.

Toutes Les Couleurs is about Ben Cura’s childhood in France where, at age 6, everything was exciting, scary, and full of potential. Further information from Ben Cura's Link Tree.

Cheltenham Music Festival returns for 2021 with 21 world premieres and free stage concerts

The Cheltenham Music Festival is returning to live music with a festival from 2 to 11 July 2021 which includes 21 world premieres and a number of free stage concerts. Large-scale concerts include Kirill Karabits and the Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra, and Martyn Brabbins and the BBC National Orchestra of Wales. Other performers include the Carice Singers, pianist Steven Osborne, mezzo-soprano Dame Sarah Connolly, cellist Matthew Barley, pianist Ivana Gavric, pianist Imogen Cooper, La Serenissima, saxophonist Jess Gillam, the Albion Quartet and 12 Ensemble.

There will be world premieres of Matthew Whittall's new choral settings of Robert Louis Stevenson's Songs of Travel, Luke Styles' new work performed alongside Britten's Canticles, plus premieres of music by Lillie Harris, Ayanna Witter-Johnson, Jonathan Woolgar, Sarah Nicolls and Maja Bugge, and a UK premiere from Alex Freeman.

The Cheltenham Composer Academy returns this year from 5-9 July. The scheme supports early-career composers (aged 18+), offering them professional advice and mentoring. This year will see 12 composers working with Daniel Kidane to workshop, perform and record their works with The Carice Singers and a chamber ensemble from Chineke!

The festival continues its partnership with the BBC Radio 3 New Generation Artists with four lunchtime recitals at Cheltenham Town Hall, all broadcast live on BBC Radio 3, from the Consone Quartet,  mezzo-soprano Ema Nikolovska with tenor Alessandro Fisher and pianist Sholto Kynoch,  jazz guitarist Rob Luft with his Quintet, and the Mithras Trio. Other young artists at the festival include the Maxwell Quartet who will be performing a work by Dutch composer Joey Roukens.

Celebrating the centenary of the birth of Oscar-award-winning film composer Sir Malcolm Arnold, the Festival presents two screenings of his most famous films, The Inn of the Sixth Happiness and Whistle Down the Wind, as well as including his Concerto for two violins and strings in the BBC Nagtional Orchestra of Wales concert.  

There will be two Music and Mindfulness sessions, led by composer and guitarist Will Crawford. The sessions will guide audiences through the use of music in meditation and mindfulness practices to help manage stress and aid relaxation in everyday life.  

For those wishing to enjoy the local surroundings, a guided tour takes audiences in the footsteps of Hubert Parry around the countryside of Highnam, where he grew up. Led by George Parris, Director of The Carice Singers and Parry scholar, the walk sheds light on the composer’s life, listening to his music in the very setting which inspired much of his writing.

The Free Stage mixes the Cheltenham Music Festival with the Cheltenham Jazz Festival, hosts some of the best up-and-coming performers from the worlds of classical, jazz, indie, folk, Americana and beyond.

Full details from the Cheltenham Music Festival website.

High ambitions: Edinburgh International Festival's classical music programme for 2021

Jenna Reid (fiddle), Su-a Lee (cello) and Iain Sandilands (percussion) perform in the Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh to celebrate the launch of the 2021 Edinburgh International Festival programme (Photo Ryan Buchanan)

How do you plan a festival when even the idea of a concert is uncertain? The Edinburgh International Festival has announced its plans for the Summer festival running from 7 to 29 August 2021. I spoke last week to Andrew Moore, the festival's Head of Music, about the festival's classical music programme for 2021 and he admits that the planning process has been a rollercoaster, going through various phases of planning over the Winter. However, despite the limits and restrictions, this year's festival features over 170 classical and contemporary music, theatre, opera, dance and spoken word performance, including 15 new commissions and premieres.

Early last year, there was hope that we might be back inside for concerts in Autumn 2020 but then reality dawned. The festival's director Fergus Linehan proposed the idea of outdoor performances for 2021. In September 2020 it seemed cautious indeed to consider we would not be back indoors until Autumn 2021, but now Linehan's ideas seem prescient. So the festival's classical music programme for 2021 will be taking place largely in the festival's new indoor/outdoor pavilions (at Old College Quad, Edinburgh Park and Edinburgh Academy Junior School).

In terms of programming, Andrew says that it has been a challenge but exciting as they had to unpick a lot of last year's cancelled programme, do some shuffling and re-work the original plans for 2021. The negotiating with artists about dates and programmes felt more like a normal year, but the repertoire had to be looked at from a different perspective. Social distancing on stage means that they had to consider smaller numbers of musicians, with no significant chorus (a maximum of 12), an orchestra of 45 maximum, and works with no interval. But for all the restrictions, Andrew says their ambition was high. 

Innovative drama: Georg Benda's melodrama Medea in its rarely-performed revised version

Benda Medea; Katharina Thalbach, Cappella Aquileia, Marcus Bosch; Coviello Classics
Reviewed by Robert Hugill on 29 May 2021 Star rating: 4.0 (★★★★)
Georg Benda's innovative melodrama given in the first recording of the composer's signficantly revised version

The idea of combining spoken text and music, so that the music heightens the spoken drama, became popular in the 18th century. The concept would have quite a long life both in 18th and 19th century theatre and opera. However, few theatres nowadays could afford the luxury of having a full orchestra in the pit for a play, and when was the last time you hear Mendelssohn's incidental music to A Midsummer Night's Dream complete with the melodrama. Often, it is this aspect of theatre and opera which is lost, we very rarely hear melodramas except for key ones such as those in operas by Mozart and Beethoven, whilst Schubert wrote a significant amount of melodrama, yet this is rarely performed. 

 

It was the success of Georg Benda's melodramas which showed Mozart how powerful they could be. Benda's use of the melodrama was not in the context of a play or an opera, but was as melodrama in its own right, a work created for just speaker and orchestra. This was a genre which seems to have sprung from Jean-Jacques Rousseau, but which developed a strong following in German-speaking countries.

Marcus Bosch and Cappella Aquileia with narrator Katharina Thalbach give us chance to explore Georg Benda's best-known melodrama, Medea, on Coviello Classics, and what is particularly important about this recording is that they perform Benda's significantly revised 1784 version rather than the 1775 original.

Bringing live music back to Brighton: BREMF's Midsummer Season

The Royal Spa, Queens Park (Photo Simon Carey)

In normal circumstances the Brighton Early Music Festival (BREMF) would take place in the Autumn, with perhaps a few events during the rest of the year, but this year is far from normal. So, to celebrate the relaxation of rules BREMF is holding a Midsummer Season of outdoor events. There will be eight events, taking place at the Royal Spa in Queen’s Park - a regency portico which is the only remaining part of the Royal Spa complex, now in the grounds of the Royal Spa Nursery School.

The season begins on Saturday 5 June 2021 with The Forest of Mythical Breezes, the duo Flaugissimo in a programme of French baroque music and dance based on classical myths and audience members are invited to bring picnic chairs or rugs and a picnic to enjoy during the performance. The season continues with North Indian dance and storytelling (6 June), renaissance polyphony from the BREMF Consort of Voices, conductor Deborah Roberts, celebrating the Josquin and Robert Fayrfax centenaries (12 June), music from 17th century London and Italy with Lux Musicae London and the Fieri Consort (13 June & 3 July), Pocket Sinfonia and Thomas Guthrie in A Midsummer Night's Dream combining Mendelssohn and Shakespeare (20 June), the Monteverdi String Band's Monteverdi Re-imagined (3 July) and highlights from the earliest opera by a female composer – Francesca Caccini’s La liberazione di Ruggiero (11 July).

Full details from the BREMF website.

Post-Beethoven Fest in Berlin and on-line: Beethoven, new music, Kraftwerk, Boards of Canada and more

Stargaze (Photo Maarit Kytoeharju)

Beethoven 250 was a somewhat quieter celebration that many ensembles intended and to remedy this, Beethoven 251 has become a cause to celebrate both Beethoven and live music. In Berlin, Andre de Ridder and his Stargaze ensemble are presenting a weekender at the Volksbühne in Berlin on 10 and 11 June 2021, which will be live-streamed.

The focus of the event is Beethoven and his legacy today. There will be premieres of music by Sarah Nemtsov, Nicole Lizée, Matthew Herbert and Aart Strootman based on music and ideas from Beethoven's symphonies alongside works by Stockhausen and Friedrich Nietzsche. Performers include Stargaze alongside Holger Hiller (from Palais Schaumburg), Boards of Canada and Kraftwerk, plus dancers Latisha Sparks, Zen Jefferson and Miriam Arnold, and Hamburg new-wave band 1000 Robota. Stargaze will perform their project based on Boards of Canada’s album Hi Scores for the first time in Germany, following their huge success at Edinburgh International Festival in 2019, featuring The Notwist’s Andi Haberl on drums. 

No, I don't know who half these names are either, but that is the event's appeal the mix of old and new, contemporary and traditional.

Further information from the festival website.

Liverpool Philharmonic’s Rushworth Composition Prize

Alex Papp winner of the Liverpool Philharmonic’s
2020 Rushworth Composition Prize

The Liverpool Philharmonic's Rushworth Composition Prize is now open for applications. The prize is open to early career composers, age 18 or over, who currently live, work or were born in the North West of England (Merseyside, Cheshire, Greater Manchester, Lancashire, Cumbria), or or are a student at a Northwest-based Higher Education institution. The competition represents not only a chance to write for one of the Liverpool Philharmonic's ensembles but to develop a relationship with the Liverpool Philharmonic; all of the previous Prize winners continue to work with Liverpool Philharmonic after their year has ended, and benefit from continued support, guidance and commission opportunities.

The winner of the prize will be received a cash prize, be commissioned to write a work for the Ensemble 10/10 (Liverpool Philharmonic’s contemporary music group) which will be performed in autumn 2022, and receive one year’s complimentary membership to The Ivors Academy (This is the UK’s leading professional association for music creators). The winner will also take part in a programme of workshops, masterclasses and mentoring sessions from composers, performers, conductors and other industry professionals associated with Liverpool Philharmonic, as well as a bespoke programme of activities and additional opportunities to produce new works and commissions for Liverpool Philharmonic and its associated ensembles.  

The composition prize was launched in 2015 (as the Christopher Brooks Composition Prize) and is currently supported by the Rushworth Foundation. Previous winners are Alex Papp (2020), Athanasia Kontou (2019), Carmel Smickersgill (2018), Grace Evangeline-Mason (2017), Richard Miller (2016) and Bethany Morgan-Williams (2015).

Further information from the Liverpool Philharmonic's website, applications are open until 30 June 2021.

On DSCH: Igor Levit recording Stevenson's Passacaglia with Shostakovich's Preludes & Fugues

Ronald Stevenson & Dmitri Shostakovich at 1962 Edinburgh Festival
with the score of Stevenson's Passacaglia

We caught the thrilling pianism of Igor Levit's performance of Ronald Stevenson's Passacaglia on DSCH at Wigmore Hall in May 2019 [see my review] so it is exciting to learn that Levit will be releasing a recording of the Passacaglia on Sony Classical in September. But Levit will be pairing the Passacaglia with another stupendous 20th century work, Dmitri Shostakovich's 24 Preludes and Fugues.

Dmitri Shostakovich (1906-1975) wrote his 24 Preludes and Fugues in 1951, Levit describes it as “a kind of musical diary”, noting: “There is something utterly unique about their combination of warmth, immediacy and pure loneliness. For me, it is a ritual of self-exploration and self-discovery that deals with the most intimate questions.” The work, lasting two and a half hours, consists of preludes and fugues in all the major and minor keys. There is apparently no extra-musical narrative, but is a response to Bach's 48. 

Ronald Stevenson (1928-2015) wrote his Passacaglia in 1963, a set of variations on the motif DSCH (based on Shostakovich's initials) and at 75 minutes long (or so) it is probably the longest single movement for solo piano. The work was dedicated to Shostakovich and Stevenson presented the Russian composer with a score when the two met at the 1962 Edinburgh Festival (when Shostakovich's Fourth Symphony received its UK premiere, and Benjamin Britten and Mstislav Rostropovich performed Shostakovich's Cello Sonata).

Igor Levit's new album, On DSCH will be released by Sony Classical on 10 September 2021 in a deluxe 3-CD limited edition as well as in digital formats. The Shostakovich cycle will also appear on vinyl on 10 September, with Stevenson's Passacaglia following in February 2022. 

The first track has been released today [Link Tree] and further information from Sony's website.

What they did next: music from L'Album des Six alongside song cycles written after the six composers went their separate ways

Les Six - Auric, Durey, Honegger, Milhaud, Poulenc, Tailleferre; Franziska Heinzen, Benjamin Mead; Solo Musica
Reviewed by Robert Hugill on 28 May 2021 Star rating: 4.0 (★★★★)
A soprano and piano duo look at the composers of Les Six through the mirror of what each got up to later

The grouping of composers known as Les Six was loose at best, five men and one woman who were roughly of an age and who knew each other and who, in 1920 in Paris, shared something of the era's Avant Garde. Darius Milhaud would later maintain that the grouping of the six was entirely arbitrary, but both Eric Satie and Jean Cocteau seem to have been godfathers, with the amazing melange of the arts, visual, aural and more, which characterised 1920s Paris.

All six composers, Georges Auric (1899–1983), Louis Durey (1888–1979), Arthur Honegger (1892–1955), Darius Milhaud (1892–1974), Francis Poulenc (1899–1963), and Germaine Tailleferre (1892–1983), only actually collaborated on one project, a group of piano pieces known as L'Album des Six in 1920. After that there would be other projects involving subgroupings, but each would rather go their own way. On this disc entitled Les Six on Solo Musica from The Duo (Franziska Heinzen, soprano and Benjamin Mead, piano) the six piano solos from L'Album des Six are paired with songs by the composers from later in their careers, and we also hear a group of piano pieces by Eric Satie from 1920, the year the album was published.

The result is an intriguing insight into the world of Les Six and the different attitudes of the composers. Darius Milhaud, writing in 1967, would describe their compositional approaches thus, "Auric and Poulenc followed ideas of Cocteau, Honegger followed German Romanticism, and myself, Mediterranean lyricism!"

We begin with Georges Auric's Prelude from L'Album des Six, perky and very much in a style which we can compare to the better-known piano music of Francis Poulenc, and perhaps also we should consider the influence of Eric Satie. Auric's songs, Trois poems de Léon-Paul Fargue date from 1940 and set verses by the French poet Léon-Paul Fargue (1876-1947). With the three short songs, Auric's style sometimes seem to evoke the music of 20 years earlier, but there is also a neo-classicism to the music with an edge to the harmony, and the final song 'Regrets' has an elegant simplicity.

The five members of Les Six who collaborated on Les Mariés, with Jean Cocteau at the Eiffel Tower (1921)
Germaine Tailleferre, Francis Poulenc, Arthur Honegger, Darius Milhaud, Jean Cocteau, Georges Auric (left to right), Louis Durey is absent

LIGHT: Chris Levine's immersive art installation at Durham Cathedral combines the latest technology with contemporary sacred music

Chris Levine: LIGHT (Photo Andy Atkinson)

Over a year ago, Durham Cathedral installed Chris Levine immersive art installation LIGHT in the cathedral's Galilee Chapel, but only now is the public able to experience this combination of a matrix of lasers directed through a crystal crucifix creating a wash of light inspired by St. Cuthbert’s pectoral cross (considered one of the great treasures of its time and on display in the cathedral’s museum) with a sound-track of sacred choral music in recordings by The Sixteen, conductor Harry Christophers, including music by Alissa Firsova, Joseph Phibbs, Roderick Williams, Stephen Hough, Sir James MacMillan and Among Angels by Will Todd (who was born in Durham). There is a Spotify playlist of the music.

Levine explains how the piece works using the latest technology, "For this piece I have used a remarkable new technology. At first glance it appears to be simply a vertical strip of oscillating light. However, when you look past it or shake your head, an image of the St Cuthbert Cross is projected into your peripheral vision. This is experienced in the present moment and if you try to hold onto the image it disappears. As in meditation, if you try to hold onto the present moment you loose the equanimity and benefit of the experience. Let go and let it be."

LIGHT was commissioned in 2010 by the Genesis Foundation for Holy Trinity Church, London and it has been adapted especially for Durham Cathedral and all the music was originally commissioned by the Genesis Foundation (which is celebrating its 20th anniversary this year).

Chris Levine is a light artist who works across many mediums in pursuit of an expanded state of perception and awareness through image and form. Levine’s work considers light not just as a core aspect of art, but of human experience more widely and a spiritual, meditative and philosophical edge permeates his work. Levine is perhaps best known for Lightness of Being, his image of Queen Elizabeth II which was displayed at the National Portrait Gallery.

Further information from the Durham Cathedral website.