Birmingham bound: concerts in Symphony Hall and Town Hall as part of B:Music and Ex Cathedra's new seasons

Birmingham Town Hall

B:Music, the Birmingham-based music charity, has announced its 2023/24 season at Symphony Hall and Town Hall, whilst the choir Ex Cathedra, artistic director Jeffrey Skidmore, has also announced its 2023/24 season which includes concerts at Symphony Hall and Town Hall as part of Ex Cathedra’s long-established residency, plus in venues across the Midlands and London.

B:Music's season kicks off on 6 October with Thomas Trotter celebrating 40 years as Birmingham City Organist, and the season includes Lang Lang in Bach's Goldberg Variations, one of just three UK recital venues he is playing this this Autumn. Other performers include Boris Giltburg in Rachmaninov, Rachel Podger and the Armonico Consort in Scarlatti, Paul Lewis in Schubert, Julian Bliss with the Royal Northern Sinfonia and Dinis Sousa, as well as orchestras including the Symphony Orchestra of India, conductor Alpesh Chauhan (when all tickets are £10), the National Symphony Orchestra of Ukraine and the Strasbourg Philharmonic Orchestra. Symphony Hall’s Jennifer Blackwell Performance Space continues to host the ECHO Rising Stars hour-long recitals on Sunday mornings.

Full details from the B:Music website.

Ex Cathedra's season begins with Rachmaninoff's Vespers, celebrating the composer's 150th anniversary.  Recent discoveries from the original 1915 poster inform the performance of this powerful work, and bells, so dear to Rachmaninoff, will sound the chants between the movements – chants drawn from the Znamenny tradition, Greece and, poignantly, from the Ukrainian capital Kyiv. Other events during the season include Baroque Passion with music by Purcell, Loti, Monteverdi, Carissimi, Bach and Scarlatti, Bach’s St John Passion at Symphony Hall on Good Friday, and Handel's Messiah featuring soloists from the choir.

Byrd to Bacharach and Bach celebrates Ex Cathedra’s Student Scholarship scheme, created in partnership with the Royal Birmingham Conservatoire, now in its 5th year. The programme contains music by Charpentier and Purcell, as well as the programme’s three eponymous Bs: Byrd, Bacharach and Bach. Performed on the eve of St Cecilia’s Day, it also includes iconic works from two of the giants of 20th century British music: Britten’s Hymn to St Cecilia and Howells’ Take him earth for cherishing – dedicated to John F. Kennedy, who was assassinated on St Cecilia’s Day 60 years ago.

Full details from the Ex Cathedra website.

One of the towering masterpieces of the chamber music repertoire: violinist Simon Blendis introduces Enescu's Octet

Simon Blendis

As the Guildhall School prepares for its Chamber Music Festival, Simon Blendis, professor of violin at the Guildhall School, introduces George Enescu's Octet which features in the festival.

Each year Guildhall School of Music & Drama hosts a wonderful Chamber Music Festival in which groups are formed from a mixture of postgraduate students and teaching professors, giving students the opportunity to work alongside experienced chamber musicians and showcasing some of the great talent in the school. As a Professor of Violin at Guildhall School, this year I’m particularly excited to be performing one of the towering masterpieces of the chamber music repertoire, Enescu’s magnificent Octet, together with three other string professors and four students (on Sunday 9 July 2023).

Enescu was one of the great musical geniuses of the 20th Century, and yet somehow he has never been embraced by the mainstream, his name and his music usually pushed towards the rather specialised margins. Perhaps his problem was to have excelled at too many things - as a performer he was one of the world’s leading violinists (he was Menuhin’s teacher and mentor) as well as being a useful pianist and cellist. At the same time, he was a renowned conductor, a famous teacher, and of course the greatest composer Romania has produced. 

In his early works such as this Octet (written when he was just 18), one can hear influences of the music he was surrounded by, such as Debussy, Wagner, Richard Strauss, Chausson and Franck, but his own thumbprints are already easy to hear, such as his individual approach to tonality and modality, and the integration of Romanian folk music into his language. 

Although structurally the Octet is very complex, in fact the listening experience is surprisingly straightforward, thanks largely to the huge paragraphs of almost endless melody that comprise the work. The influence of Romanian folk music is never far away, and subtly reveals itself both melodically and harmonically in various ways. Some of the themes are clearly derived from the folk tradition, in particular those in the first movement, played by the first violin alone, that sound like a folk fiddler gently improvising. Within the themes, there are frequent modal inflections, such as flattened seconds and sevenths of the scale, that give a strong folky flavour, and these modal inflections also find their way into the harmonies. In particular, Enescu enjoys blurring the distinction between major and minor, so that sometimes within the same tune we find both major and minor chords in quick succession, turning us this way and that and leaving a strangely suspended, equivocal feel to the modality that is extremely beautiful.

Leamington Music brings the Royal Birmingham Conservatoire's production of Jonathan Dove's The Enchanted Pig to Warwick

Jonathan Dove: The Enchanted Pig - Royal Birmingham Conservatoire (Photo Greg Milner)

Jonathan Dove's operas are popular with conservatoires, so it is no surprise to find that earlier this month, the Royal Birmingham Conservatoire presented a new production of Dove's The Enchanted Pig. Described as "a magical family show for children aged 8 to 80!",  Dove's musical tale, with words by Alasdair Middleton (based on Romanian and Norwegian folk tales), has delighted audiences since its premiere in 2006 and I well remember being delighted myself when I saw the work during its first run at the Young Vic.

The Royal Birmingham Conservatoire's production, conducted by Anthony Kraus and directed by Stuart Barker, is travelling to Warwick where it is being performed (with 10 soloists, chorus and orchestra) at the Dream Factory (Playbox Theatre’s highly valued venue on the Stratford Road in Warwick) on Sunday 25 June, presented by the enterprising Leamington Music.

As part of Leamington Music’s Education Programme, student teams will be visited schools in Warwick and Leamington on Thursday 15 June to give participatory workshops to introduce opera to children, with children and students able to attend the performance on Sunday 25 June with tickets for just £1 (An offer is available for all Leamington Music events).  

The audience for 25 June is invited to come early with picnics from 5.30pm. This is encouraged by Playbox Theatre as there is a special area with benches outside the foyer and ideal in good weather to start the evening in style. The foyer is spacious enough to use if the weather is not so good.

Leamington Music was launched in July 2006, and aims to maintain Leamington and district as a musical centre dedicated to promoting excellent music. The 2023/24 Leamington Music Winter Season starts on Friday 6 October with the Leonkoro Quartet (winners of the 2022 London International String Quartet Competition) in the Royal Pump Rooms Leamington, and on Tuesday 10 October with Ex Cathedra performing the Rachmaninoff Vespers in St Mary’s Warwick. 

Full details from the Leamington Music website.

The first orchestral interpretation of Allama Muhammad Iqbal’s poem, Shikwa (Complaint): Manchester Camerata at the Bradford Literature Festival

On Friday 23 June, Manchester Camerata will premiere Rushil Ranjan's Shikwa - Symphonic Poem at the Bradford Literature Festival. It is the first orchestral interpretation of Allama Muhammad Iqbal’s poem, Shikwa (Complaint), the work was composed by multi-disciplinary and genre-defying Rushil Ranjan, and the premiere will feature vocalist Abi Sampa.

Written in 1909, Shikwa is an Urdu poem renowned for its powerful imagery and pathos, expressing the collective disillusion of the Muslim world with its internal conflicts at the beginning of the 20th century. Iqbal himself became known as the spiritual architect of Pakistan through his prolific poetry and philosophy that inspired resistance to the British Raj and eventually led to Pakistan’s independence in the 1940s.

Fusing classical, contemporary and Sufi influences, Rushil Ranjan has a unique style and has earned the reputation of one of the most distinctive and exciting musical voices in the UK today. As well as Manchester Camerata, his music has been performed by the Scottish Chamber Orchestra, AR Rahman’s Firdaus Orchestra, Rahat Fateh Ali Khan and other acclaimed classical artists from both the East and West.

Full details from the Bradford Literature Festival website.

A Phoenix Rising: Wigmore Hall's Pride event with the Fourth Choir and a new disc of songs by LGBT composers

Pride news. Unusually there is a flurry of classical music activity around Pride this year. Unusual, because habitually LGBT classical musicians have tended to keep a lower profile. Tenor Brian Smith Walters has a debut recital disc out which features works by LGBT composers, many in the classical canon but others less well known. A single from the disc, by Angela Morley, is out on Friday 23 June, on which date, you can also go to see Nicholas Chalmers conducting the Fourth Choir at Wigmore Hall's Pride event! And on 7 July, there is a Classical Pride event at the Barbican with Oliver Zeffmann conducting the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra (see my article)

Tenor Brian Smith Walters, who recently sang the role of Siegmund in Regents Opera's production of Wagner's Die Walküre [see Florence's review for Planet Hugill], is releasing a recital album on Navona Records with pianist Adam Johnson. Titled A Phoenix Rising: An LGBT Song Chronology it features an array of songs by LGBT composers including Britten (arranging Purcell), Schubert, Saint-Saens, Tchaikovsky, Maude Valérie White,  Reynaldo Hahn, Roger Quilter, Karol Szymanowski, Charles T. Griffes, Aaron Copland, Samuel Barber. and Amanda Ira Aldridge. 

British-born Amanda Ira Aldridge (1866-1958) was the daughter of African-American actor Frederick Aldridge. A singer and teacher, she also composed, often under the name Montague Ring. There are two more contemporary composers on the album, Angela Morley and ANOHNI.

Angela Morley (1924-2009) was an English composer who became familiar to BBC Radio listeners in the 1950s under the name of Wally Stott, providing incidental music for The Goon Show and Hancock's Half Hour. Morley transitioned in 1972 and thereafter lived openly as a transgender woman. Later in life, she lived in Scottsdale, Arizona, Smith Walters' home town and the two met there during the 1990s. 

The album features a song by Morley with words by her widow, Christine Parker. It is a world premiere recording. The tune itself was the theme tune to the made-for-TV movie Madame X, yet after Angela passed, Christine arranged the tune for voice and piano and penned the words. The song, Don’t Ever Try (To Make My Heart Understand), is being issued as a single on 23 June. 

Full details from the Navona Records website.

The Fourth Choir, which celebrates its 10th birthday in 2023, makes its debut at Wigmore Hall on Friday 23 June with a late-night concert featuring music written exclusively by queer composers. The concert, titled Love, Loss & the Whole Damn Thing, takes place during Pride month and is conducted by Nicholas Chalmers (BBC Singers, Nevill Holt Opera) and presented by BBC Radio 3’s Petroc Trelawny. 

The evening features music by Samuel Barber, a celebration of a lifelong queer relationship by the Canadian composer, Stuart Beatch, which sets a poem written as a queer riposte to a well-known piece by Eric Whitacre. There is Jennifer Higdon’s witty Telegram which references both Elvis and Emily Dickinson, the motet Help Us O Lord by Aaron Copland and Michael Tippett’s setting of the spiritual Deep River, plus music by Benjamin Britten, Meredith Monk, Michael Bussewitz-Quarm, Peter Maxwell Davies, Kerry Andrew, William Linthicum-Blackhorse and Leonard Bernstein. 

Full details from the Wigmore Hall website.

Summer Love: Isabelle Aboulker, Max Reger and Granville Bantock at London Song Festival

The title-page of the first edition of Oscar Wilde's The Sphinx
with decorations by Charles Ricketts

Nigel Foster's London Song Festival is having a Summer season, three concerts under the umbrella title of Summer Love celebrating songs by Isabelle Aboulker, Max Reger and Granville Bantock at Hinde Street Methodist Church.

Isabelle Aboulker is considered to be France’s greatest living art-song composer. Born in Paris in 1938, her father was Algerian-born film director and writer Marcel Aboulker and her maternal grandfather was the composer Henry Février. She studied composition and keyboard at the Conservatoire National Supérieur de Musique in Paris, subsequently working there too. Whether setting Jean de la Fontaine’s fables, sections of a Belle Epoque etiquette book, or evoking Brazilian dance music, her songs are never atonal, never hard on the ear or mind, and always an absolute delight. The popularity of Isabelle Aboulker's songs has exploded in France in recent years, but they are still largely unknown in this country. On Friday 11 August, soprano Julia Cogan and pianist Nigel Foster present Songs of Love and Enchantment, a programme of Aboulker's songs.

Max Reger wrote nearly 300 songs, yet they remain relatively unknown. To celebrate the 150th anniversary of his birth, tenor Marcus Swietlicki, baritone Felix Gygli and Nigel Foster present Max and Elsa, telling the story of the love between Reger and Elsa von Bagenski, through Reger’s songs and readings from his letters. His songs remain the undiscovered gems of German Romanticism, unfairly overshadowed by those of his contemporaries Mahler, Richard Strauss, and Hugo Wolf. Often incredibly atmospheric and harmonically luscious. Max and Elsa is on Saturday 12 August.

Sir Granville Bantock's song cycle The Sphinx was written in the 1940s but unperformed until now. On Friday 18 August the London Song Festival presents the premiere of Bantock's The Sphinx with baritone Arthur Bruce, bass-baritone Edward Jowle and Nigel Foster. Passionate, erotic and salacious, Bantock's The Sphinx sets Oscar Wilde's poem of the same name.

Wilde began writing The Sphinx in the 1870s and spent 20 years tinkering with it. Written from the point of view of a young man, he questions the Sphinx in lurid detail on the history of her sexual adventures, before finally renouncing her attractions and turning to his crucifix. The prime influence on the poem is the French Decadent movement, Huysmans' A rebours, Baudelaire's Les Fleurs du mal and Maurice Rollinat's poems.

Bantock's setting is almost unique in English song, being a significant treatment of Wilde's work and preceded by few musical settings of the writer's work. The work also suggests that Bantock, at quite a late period in his career, was experimenting with tonality in way that was otherwise alien to him.

Full details from the London Song Festival website.

Support emerging young artists, whose commitment is unparalleled, literally realise their dream in front of your eyes: Longhope Opera stages Rossini's La Cenerentola

Longhope Summer Opera (Photo Tom Lovatt)

On 1 and 2 July 2023, Longhope Opera will be presenting Rossini's La cenerentola on the Longhope Estate in Newton Valence on the South Downs. Matt O'Keeffe, founder of Longhope Opera, conducts the Scherzo Ensemble and Rosie Kat directs, with a cast of young and emerging artists including Alexandra Meier in the title role, with Jorge Carlo Mariani, Jake Muffett, James Quilligan, Meilir Jones, Daniella Sicari, and Beca Davies. There is also a free performance for local children on 30 June.

Founded in 2019, Longhope Opera is made up entirely of early young, early career professionals in the opera industry - singers, orchestral musicians, creatives, crew, and management staff. They aim to provide a much less commercialised and more intimate version of the bigger opera festivals, because of their remote location and smaller capacity. 

With audiences of 350 people, guests can soak up the beautiful surroundings with ease and enjoy first-rate opera in a much more intimate setting.  The company's mission is to bring the joy and beauty of opera to audiences while creating professional opportunities for talented young professional singers, orchestral musicians, creatives, crew, and management staff in the opera industry.  

Guests are invited to take walks around the grounds, enjoy the various outdoor chamber recitals and attend a drinks reception before taking their seats for the main event. After the first act, there is a long dining interval where guests can enjoy their picnic hampers or catered dinners while overlooking the rolling hills of the South Downs as the sun sets. 

Of course, all is not sweetness and sun. 

The company epitomises the ‘squeezed middle’ in arts funding. Its mission is to bring opera to audiences in a more intimate way and at more reasonable prices than more commercialised opera festivals and to create paid professional opportunities for those trying to break into the opera industry. Due the competitive nature and financial implications of arts professions, many who spend up to nine years in training often have to take supplementary jobs which can easily mean falling out of the circuit altogether. As a medium-sized opera company, Longhope Opera finds itself in an interesting position – not big enough to boast a sizable development team or long lists of donors, yet too large to function like fringe opera groups which mount small productions without orchestras, sets or crew, and survive off of ticket revenue and small donations, whilst often not paying their musicians well enough. 

Stephanie Waldren, the company's general manager comments, "To keep companies like ours going, we need music enthusiasts to take a punt on the company they’ve not heard of before. Don’t go to the same festival again and again – shop around! You might find you prefer something more home-grown and intimate. Support emerging young artists, whose commitment is unparalleled, literally realise their dream in front of your eyes." 

Full details from Longhope Opera's website.

Captivating melodies, sparkling humour and a timeless tale of love sums up Donizetti’s comic opera, L’elisir d’amore, in repertoire at Longborough Festival Opera

Donizetti: L'elisir d'amore - Longborough Festival Opera in rehearsal (Photo: Craig Fuller)

British-Swiss director, Max Hoehn's production of Donizetti's L'elisir d'amore opens at Longborough Festival Opera on 20 June. Here, he talks about his comic inspirations and the challenge of organising scenes of total chaos. 

You've set this opera in the British countryside. As a Swiss citizen, what drew you to that location?  

I’m a mishmash, really, born in London to Swiss-Hungarian parents and now living in Berlin married to a Portuguese singer. As an opera director you need to be a ‘citizen of the world’ because wherever you’re directing the local cultural context does play a role in how you can form an engaging dialogue between the opera and the audience. 

The atmosphere of the countryside, therefore, is important in the opera but Donizetti and Romani never give it a very specific location. It’s a fantasy pastoral idyll that corresponds nicely with the established, romanticised ideas we have about English rural life today.  

Class difference and money are two important elements of the plot of L'elisir. What do you find interesting about looking at this through a distinctly British (perhaps English) prism? 

We are used to a picture-perfect, nostalgic idea of the English countryside. But, of course, that’s not the whole story. I would say that this production is deliberately playing with those archetypal images and ideas that British audiences are already so familiar with but undercutting them as well with a narrative that has class difference at its heart. The result should feel very true to Donizetti and that Italian comic tradition but quite modern at the same time.  

Do you think it’s harder to direct a comedy or a tragedy? 

It depends on the score. For instance, L’elisir has a perfectly crafted score that is extremely approachable for a cast. The comic beats are all there in the music. The danger is always trying to make sure the comedy is not too broad or predictable. I have a feeling that British opera singers take to comedy and irreverence very quickly and easily because of the cultural importance of British comedy such as Monty Python, Fawlty Towers and so forth. 

What are your comedic inspirations? 

A lot come from childhood: the extensive operatic excerpts used in Bugs Bunny cartoons, the village in Postman Pat. And there’s one character in L’elisir, Belcore, who reminds me very much of Lord Flashheart in the Blackadder TV series. 

What have been your influences for L'elisir d'amore?  

I have worked on several Italian comic operas and the libretto for L’elisir by Romani shares the love of wordplay and verbal jousting that characterises the Da Ponte-Mozart collaborations and Ferretti’s brilliant version of Cinderella for Rossini.  

What makes opera funny? 

Italian comic opera is at its best when depicting scenes of total chaos through heavily organised and carefully crafted musical ensembles. These scenes manage to reach a heightened, exhilarating state that’s irresistible for an audience. 

Are there any edges of satire in your take? 

I can’t imagine comedy without some element of satire. But it’s very light and gentle in our case. Heavy-handedness is death in this kind of repertoire.  

What are you enjoying most about this process? 

I’m able to indulge in the eccentricity of some of the characters, as well as my own. 

Donizetti: L'elisir d'amore - Jennifer Witton, Thando Mjandana, Emyr Wyn Jones, Arthur Bruce, director: Max Hoehn, conductor: Alice Farnham - in repertoire at Longborough Festival Opera from 20 June to 1 July 2023. Tickets are available now at Longborough's website.  

Donizetti: L'elisir d'amore - Max Hoehn & cast members in rehearsal, Longborough Festival Opera(Photo Craig Fuller)

Max Hoehn began his career assisting directors such as Graham Vick, David Pountney and Johannes Erath and in 2015 won the Independent Opera Directing Fellowship. He staged the UK première of Simon Vosecek’s Biedermann and the Arsonists at Sadler’s Wells [see Robert's review] which led to his nomination for Best Young Director at the International Opera Awards. 

Recent productions include The Consul (Welsh National Opera) and La Cenerentola (Stadttheater Bremerhaven) while new productions this year include The Flying Dutchman (Teatro Nacional de São Carlos, Lisbon) and Four Sisters (Royal Conservatoire of Scotland). 

Future productions include Così fan tutte (Welsh National Opera) and Die Fledermaus (Theater Neubrandenburg Neustrelitz) while his opera translations include Khovanshchina for Birmingham Opera Company. Hoehn’s also the founding artistic director of Opera21, a laboratory for new work, whose current commissions are The Last Castrato for Torsten Rasch and Sonata for Broken Fingers for Joe Cutler. [see Robert's 2022 interview with Max Hoehn, talking about Opera21]

Stylish performances all round in a winning account of Mozart's Cosi fan tutte at The Grange Festival that engages as well as questions

Mozart: Cosi fan tutte - Nicholas Lester, Kitty Whately, Samantha Clarke, Alessandro Fisher - The Grange Festival (Photo Craig Fuller)

Mozart: Cosi fan tutte; Samantha Clarke, Kitty Whately, Alessandro Fisher, Nicholas Lester, Carolina Lippo, Christian Senn, director: Martin Lloyd-Evans, Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra, conductor: Kirill Karabits

An intelligent period production that engages as well as questions, with a wonderfully balanced cast and superb support from the pit. All in all, a very stylish evening

Directors tend to try and shed new light on an established classic by altering the location, either transposing it into a different, usually more recent, era or providing something semi-abstract, avoiding historicism and focusing on character. The problem with setting operas in their intended historical period is that the period detail can act as a smoke screen hiding the emotional content, we come away admiring the costumes and singing the sets.

For Mozart's Cosi fan tutte at The Grange Festival (seen 18 June 2023), director Martin Lloyd-Evans and designer Dick Bird decided to use the original setting to interrogate what the opera's time and location would mean to people of the time. We thus got a production which was not only in 18th-century costume but was full of detail and incident pointing to the location too, Naples. 

Mozart: Cosi fan tutte - Christian Senn - The Grange Festival (Photo Craig Fuller)

Kirill Karabits, making his festival debut, conducted the Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra, with harpsichord continuo from Peter Davies. Samantha Clarke and Kitty Whately were the sisters, Fiordiligi and Dorabella, with Alessandro Fisher and Nicholas Lester as their lovers, Ferrando and Guglielmo. Carolina Lippo was Despina and Christian Senn was Don Alfonso.

During a stylish account of the overture that boded well for the remainder of the opera, we saw a street in Naples. Full of character and incident, this was evidently a brothel patronised by Don Alfonso (Christian Senn), Ferrando (Alessandro Fisher) and Guglielmo (Nicholas Lester). From the outset, it was clear that Martin Lloyd-Evans' solution to the work's problematic title was to add a corollary, 'Men are like that too!'. The opera's first scene took place outside the brothel and you felt that the two young men were already spending their winning on whores.

Rückert lieder: Ian Bostridge and Julius Drake in songs by Robert & Clara Schumann, Schubert, Henze and Mahler

Friedrich Rückert

Robert & Clara Schumann, Schubert, Henze and Mahler; Ian Bostridge, Julius Drake; Temple Music at Middle Temple Hall
Reviewed 17 June 2023

All about the song; Ian Bostridge in remarkably direct and intense performances that spin magic in a wide-ranging programme

Faced with mezzo-soprano Jamie Barton's sudden withdrawal from her concert for Temple Music on Saturday 17 June 2023, pianist Julius Drake and Temple Music swiftly replaced the programme with the intriguing prospect of tenor Ian Bostridge in an entire evening of settings of the poetry of Friedrich Rückert stretching from Schubert's six Rückert settings, songs by Robert and Clara Schumann including songs from their Gedichte aus 'Liebesfrühling' to Henze's Das Paradies and four of Mahler's Rückert Lieder.

Friedrich Rückert (1788-1866) studied at the universities of Würzburg and Heidelberg, spent a year in Rome and eventually became a professor of Oriental languages in Erlangen and then Berlin, before retiring to his estate near Coburg. The beginning of his literary career coincided with Germany's struggles with Napoleon and his first, pseudonymously published Deutsche Gedichte (German Poems) expressed patriotic sentiments. His Östliche Rosen (Eastern Roses) came in 1822, and from 1834 to 1838 his Gesammelte Gedichte (Collected Poems) were published in six volumes. His best known work was Liebesfrühling (Spring Songs), some 400 love poems originally addressed to his beloved, a collection that Robert and Clara Schumann very much took as their own. 

We simply forget that there was anything young artist about the evening: Hansel & Gretel at Opera Holland Park

Humperdinck: Hansel & Gretel - Shakira Tsindos, Emily Christina Loftus - Opera Holland Park 

Humperdinck: Hansel & Gretel; Shakira Tsindos, Emily Christina Loftus, Ella de Jongh, Edward Kim, Madeline Boreham, director John Wilkie/Bence Kalo, City of London Sinfonia, conductor Charlotte Corderoy; Opera Holland Park

The annual Young Artists performance proves a superb ensemble account of the opera that drew us into the story and never let us leave.

One of the reasons why Humperdinck's Hansel & Gretel remains such a popular staple in the opera house is that it combines a potent story with great tunes. Written before Freud, yet full of intriguing psychological depth, the opera provides directors with plenty of grist for their mills, and yet in a production that takes the story at face value the resonances remain.

John Wilkie's new production of Humperdinck's Hansel & Gretel for Opera Holland Park is definitely family friendly. The production debuted on 10 June 2023, and we caught it on Friday 16 June, which was the Young Artists Performance, with Charlotte Corderoy conducting the City of London Sinfonia, and Bence Kalo directing a cast of Shakira Tsindos (Hansel), Emily Christina Loftus (Gretel), Ella de Jongh (the Gingerbread Witch), Edward Kim (Peter), Madeline Boreham (Gertrud), Claudia Haussmann (The Sandman), and Eleanor Broomfield (The Dew Fairy). There were eight singers from the Opera Holland Park chorus plus children from Cardinal Vaughan Memorial School. Designs were by Neil Irish, lighting by Robert Price, movement by Michael Spenceley.

The Young Artists Scheme at Opera Holland Park plays an important role on the company's ethos, not only does the scheme give the year's young artists full performances of their own (this year the Young Artist cast was giving three performances of Hansel & Gretel), but former young artists form the backbone of the company and so that this season includes a dozen former young artists.

Humperdinck: Hansel & Gretel - Eleanor Broomfield (Dew Fairy) - Opera Holland Park Young Artists performance

Colour, text & character: Dresden Music Festival launches its historically informed Ring cycle with gripping Das Rheingold

Wagner: Das Rheingold - Derek Welton, Kent Nagano, Mauro Peter, Daniel Schmutzhard, Concerto Köln & Dresdner Festspielorchester - Dresden Music Festival

Wagner: Das Rheingold: Derek Welton, Mauro Peter, Daniel Schmutzhard, Katrin Wundsam, Gerhild Romberger, Concerto Köln, Dresdner Festspielorchester, Kent Nagano; Dresden Music Festival at the Kulturpalast, Dresden
Reviewed 14 June 2023

I found myself gripped and entranced from beginning to end, an historically informed Das Rheingold proves to be something magical

You remember your first performance of Das Rheingold? Of course you do, one's first exposure to Wagner's Vorabend des Bühnenfestpiels 'Der Ring des Nibelungens has a special excitement and energy about it. There was something of that quality in listeners and performers alike at the performance of Wagner's Das Rheingold at the Dresden Music Festival (Dresdner Musikfestspiele) in Dresden's Kulturpalast on 14 June 2023. This was an historically informed performance (HIP) with Kent Nagano conducting the combined forces of period instrument ensembles, Concerto Köln and the Dresden Festival Orchestra (Dresdner Festspielorchester). Part of a planned Ring cycle, with the instalments coming annually, the performance built on period performances of Das Rheingold by Concerto Köln and Kent Nagano as part of the Wagner Lesarten project. The whole has an academic superstructure, looking at what HIP means in the context of Wagner. And just as any performance of Das Rheingold is only the start of Ring journey, we should see this performance as being part of a work in progress, and exploration, rather than a definitive statement.

Concerto Köln & Dresdner Festspielorchester before the performance of Wagner's Das Rheingold at the Dresden Music Festival

Whilst Concerto Köln has given previous performances of Das Rheingold, the Dresden Festival Orchestra has, over the last few years, been exploring the symphonic music of Richard Wagner's contemporaries [I caught their live stream of Schumann's symphonies in 2021, see my review]. Together, their combined forces numbered close on 100 players, not to mention the dozen young performers required for the anvils. Quadruple woodwind, seven harps (six on-stage and one off-stage), two timpanists, five horns and five Wagner tubas. We have rarely seen this many period instrument specialists assembled on one stage.

A little bit of magic: Asya Fateyeva and Lautten Compagney Berlin at the Dresden Music Festival

Asya Fateyeva (Photo Marco Borggreve)

Baroque goes Pop: Henry Purcell, Lennon & McCartney; Asya Fateyeva, Lautten Compagney Berlin, Wolfgang Katschner; Dresden Music Festival at Martin-Luther-Kirche

A remarkable evening full of wonderful sounds and colours as Baroque and contemporary blend with imagination and musicality

Travelling to Dresden for the Dresden Music Festival's production of Wagner's Das Rheingold, I took advantage of my presence in the city to catch another festival concert. Now, I have to admit that my selection was based on eagerness to hear the period instrument ensemble Lautten Compagney Berlin in a programme of Purcell. It was only later I realised that the soloist wasn't a soprano, but a saxophone player.

So, on Tuesday 13 June 2023, I was at the historic Martin-Luther-Kirche in Dresden's Neustadt for Asya Fateyeva (saxophones) and Lautten Compagney Berlin, directed from the lute by Wolfgang Katschner in a programme interleaving music by Purcell with songs by the Beatles. Asya Fateyeva is a Ukrainian born, German resident saxophonist who studied in Moscow, Cologne, Paris and Hamburg.

The Purcell selections concentrated on the theatre music, King Arthur, The Fairy Queen, The Indian Queen, Dido and Aeneas, Distressed Innocence, Bonduca, and Abdelazar plus the funeral music for Queen Mary. The Beatles selections included well known items such as Yesterday, Blackbird and Norwegian Wood, along with the not so well known such as Being for the Benefit of Mr Kites, Because and Another Girl.

Mozart's late masterpiece: La Clemenza di Tito from Chelsea Opera Group with Helena Dix and Kezia Bienek

Mozart: La Clemenza di Tito - Helena Dix as Vitellia - National Opera, Canberra, Australia 2021 (photo: Peter Hislop)

Mozart: La Clemenza di Tito; Helena Dix, Kezia Bienek, Polly Leech, Ben  Thapa, Ellie Laugharne, Simon Wilding, Chelsea Opera Group, conductor Paul Wingfield; Cadogan Hall

A strong cast and a fine conductor lift a concert performance of Mozart's last masterpiece into something special

There was a lot going on in the opera world on 10 June 2023, what with new productions opening at Glyndebourne (Poulenc's Carmelites), Grange Park (Puccini's Tosca) and Opera Holland Park (Humperdinck's Hansel and Gretel). Chelsea Opera Group gamely presented its Summer offering at Cadogan Hall, with a top-notch cast that would be the envy of many and opera festival. Paul Wingfield conducted, with Helena Dix as Vitellia (a role she sang to much acclaim with the National Opera in Australia in 2021), Kezia Bienek as Sesto, Polly Leech as Annio, Ellie Laugharne as Servilia, and Simon Wilding as Publio. Christopher Turner had been due to sing Tito but had to withdraw and he was replaced at the last minute by Ben Thapa.

La Clemenza di Tito is effectively Mozart's last opera, and whilst the libretto was not his choice it is clear from his treatment of it that, ten years after writing Idomeneo, the composer was still interested in the challenge of bringing opera seria up to date. He had given a concert performance of Idomeneo in Vienna in 1786 and had had plans to reshape that into a rather more Gluckian form. So, in many ways, it is a pity that Mozart did not have longer to write La Clemenza di Tito, the secco recitatives are by someone else and you feel that Mozart might have done more reshaping if he had had time. 

Using a smaller than usual orchestra, Paul Wingfield drew stylish playing with an overture that brought out the music's vitality and urgency. This was modern instrument Mozart, but it was slim-line and lithe, with none of the fat richness of big symphonic performance of his music. 

Verdi's Rigoletto: Opera Holland Park's opening production for 2023 with Elgan Llŷr Thomas as the Duke

Verdi: Rigoletto - Alison Langer, Stephen Gadd - Opera Holland Park (Photo: Craig Fuller)

Verdi: Rigoletto; Alison Langer, Stephen Gadd, Elgan Llŷr Thomas, director Cecilia Stinton, City of London Sinfonia, conductor Lee Reynolds; Opera Holland Park
Reviewed 9 June 2023

Rigoletto set in a 1930s Oxbridge College in a production that is imaginative yet not entirely convincing, but illuminated by some fine performances

Does the exact setting for Verdi's Rigoletto matter? Jonathan Miller at ENO, famously set the opera in the context of New York's Little Italy in the 1950s, whilst Zefferelli's handsome, but cumbersome, old production for the Royal Opera was faithful to the libretto's original setting. Of course, Verdi and his librettist, Piave, altered the location as the original source, Victor Hugo's play, was based on King Francis I of France; it is perhaps relevant that a later Royal Opera production set the production at the court of another French monarch, Emperor Napoleon III. In fact, some of the most successful productions that I have seen have given the piece in a non-realistic setting. 

Whatever the setting, there are two elements needed to bring out the story - a clear power structure with enough class divisions to bring a real element of danger and a society where a curse really means something. This is why Miller's production worked so well.

Verdi: Rigoletto - chorus - Opera Holland Park (Photo: Craig Fuller)

Cecilia Stinton's new production of Verdi's Rigoletto for Opera Holland Park sets the piece in an Oxbridge College during the inter-war period. We caught the performance on 9 June 2023, when Elgan Llŷr Thomas was the Duke with Stephen Gadd as Rigoletto, and Alison Langer as Gilda. Lee Reynolds conducted the City of London Sinfonia. Designs were by Neil Irish, lighting by Jake Wiltshire, and movement by Cailtlin Fretwell Walsh.

Simplicity is one of the hardest things to do: composer Debbie Wiseman on the challenges of writing music, and introducing her new disc, Signature

Composer Debbie Wiseman, known for her many film and TV scores as well as writing for such occasions as the Platinum Jubilee Pageant and the Coronation, has a new album out. Signature, on Silva Screen Records (issued on 30 June), features a series of new arrangements of her pieces, played by the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra (CBSO) with Debbie conducting. There is a diverse mix of music, from film and TV scores, to music from a recent album to accompany Alan Titchmarsh's poems, to music for Royal occasions.

The album came about because earlier this year she had a significant birthday. Approaching this, she was talking to the CBSO and the idea came up for a birthday concert. Then there was a question of what the music would be; she felt it would be lovely to put together a programme of concert suites from film and TV scores plus her occasional pieces and music written as part of her being the composer-in-residence at Classic FM. It turned into a lovely birthday gift, she had the use of the CBSO Centre and a date to record the programme that was just after her birthday. She feels lucky the CBSO wanted to collaborate on the album.

She chose the pieces to be recorded, and this was partly driven by the orchestral line-up. They used an orchestra of just over 40 players; they had to perform pieces that worked with these forces, ruling out some scores. She wanted the disc to be representative of her recent work, but also to be music that the players would enjoy playing. She jokes that it was a bit like Desert Island Discs (she was on the programme in 2014), except she was choosing her own music. The result is representative of a particular moment, significant works that she loved writing.

West Green House Opera’s 2023 season

West Green House - The Opera Garden from West Green House on Vimeo.

West Green House Opera in Hampshire is now well-known for its enchanting Theatre on the Lake, set in the beautiful surroundings of West Green House Gardens which are spectacularly lit throughout the evening. This year's season is as ambitious as ever. The two fully staged productions are Stephen Sondheim's Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street and opera's most famous double bill Mascagni's Cavalleria Rusticana and Leoncavallo's Pagliacci.

Sweeney Todd is brought to West Green by the creative team of director/designer Richard Studer and conductor Jonathan Lyness, who have been with the company since its inception over twenty years ago.  Baritone Matthew Sharp sings the murderous title role with mezzo-soprano Clare Presland playing the resourceful proprietress of a failing pie shop Mrs Lovett.  The supporting cast includes Felicity Buckland as the beggar woman, Simon Wilding as Judge Turpin, Eleanor Sanderson-Nash as Johanna and Harry Apps, fresh from Les Miserables in the West End, as Tobias Ragg. Performances are on 22 & 23 July. 

The high drama of Cav & Pag comes to West Green on 29 & 30 July. The double bill will be directed by John Ramster (Eugene Onegin 2021) and conducted by John Andrews.  The stellar casts include Alexey Dolgov as Turiddu and Ronald Samm as Canio. Samantha Crawford makes her West Green debut as Santuzza and Jenny Stafford (Tatyana, Eugene Onegin 2021) returns as Nedda. Bridget Kimak is the designer. 

The Friday night productions look set to be equally exciting. On 21 July, director Thomas Guthrie weaves his magic in his newly devised show Mozart’s Constanze. Soprano Luci Briginshaw sings the music written by the composer for his beloved wife, including the exquisite 'Et incarnatus est' from his Mass in C Minor, alongside players from Orpheus Sinfonia. Dance choreographed by Maria da Luz promises an evening of great beauty.

Robert Murray (Photo: Gerard Collet)

The second Friday of the festival (28 July) brings an entirely different production, Offenbach’s Robinson Crusoe in Concert. Conductor David Parry has written a new English translation full of wit and fun. Tenor Robert Murray sings the title role. Where better to perform this sadly neglected work than on West Green’s very own desert island! 

West Green House Opera is dedicated to supporting young artists and implemented its first Young Artists Covers Programme in 2022. The programme continues this year, culminating in a scenes showcase in London on 22 July and a lunchtime concert in the Theatre Lawn Pavilion at West Green on 23 July.

Finally on 25 July, also in the Theatre Lawn Pavilion, Armonico Consort and Oz Clarke present an evening of wine and music. It is a little-known fact that the famed writer, wine critic and broadcaster Oz Clarke was a singer for many years, starting at Canterbury, continuing with the Schola Cantorum, followed by both the Monteverdi Choir and the Academy of St Martin’s. In a completely unique programme presented in cabaret style, Oz & Armonico Consort investigate the spurious links between wine from across the world and Baroque music. Featuring the work of composers including Bach, Purcell and Vivaldi, plus some of the most upbeat Baroque dance music from South America, it promises to be a highly entertaining evening.

West Green House Opera runs from 21 July to 30 July 2023. Full details from their website.

West Green House Opera's Theatre on the Lake in 2022

Ida revealed: John Wilson & the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment take a fresh look at Gilbert & Sullivan's unjustly neglected opera

Gilbert & Sullivan: Princess Ida - Benjamin Hulett, Sophie Bevan, Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment (Photo: Zen Grisdale)

Gilbert & Sullivan: Princess Ida; Sophie Bevan, Benjamin Hulett, Catherine Wyn-Rogers, Simon Butteriss, Robert Hayward, Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment, John Wilson; Queen Elizabeth Hall
Reviewed 7 June 2023

A near ideal cast having the time of their life and, with the historically informed performance, revealing the romantic (and comic) delights of this rarely performed gem

 Gilbert & Sullivan's Princess Ida is surprisingly little known considering that, in their output, it comes between Iolanthe and The Mikado. It was in the D'Oyly Carte company's canon and received occasional revivals, but since the company's demise the opera's appearances in the UK have been rare and English National Opera's ill-fated production in 1992, directed by Ken Russell, probably did not help the opera's reputation.

The opera satirises feminism, women's education and Darwinian evolution, though as Richard Bratby's article in the programme book for the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment's performance points out, Gilbert is really poking fun at idealism taken to extremes. The opera has some unusual features, in many ways it is an experimental departure, never to be repeated. For a start it is in three acts, not two, and the dialogue is in blank verse. This is because plot and a lot of dialogue were lifted from Gilbert's 1870 play The Princess which satirised Tennyson's narrative poem of the same name. 

Gilbert & Sullivan: Princess Ida - Morgan Pearse, Robert Davies, Jonathan Brown, John Wilson & Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment (Photo: Zen Grisdale)

The soprano part of Ida requires a more dramatic voice than the usual G&S heroine; Ida is certainly no soubrette and has a couple of distinctly operatic numbers. And the music itself has a more serious cast than usual. The Topsy-Turvy-dom of the plot is far less farcical than in some G&S operas and Sullivan's music for Act Two, in particular, has a lyric vein rather more serious than usual. It makes you think of some of the late Offenbach operettas where the cast of the piece is veering closer to the romantic opera comique. After Princess Ida came The Mikado and Ruddygore, then Yeomen of the Guard, the most serious opera in the G&S canon. 

On Wednesday 7 June 2023, I caught Gilbert & Sullivan's Princess Ida, or Castle Adamant at the Queen Elizabeth Hall (the first of two performances). John Wilson conducted the Choir & Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment with Sophie Bevan as Ida and Benjamin Hulett as Hilarion. Robert Hayward was King Hildebrand (Hilarion's father), whilst Ruairi Bowen and Charles Rice were Cyril and Florian (Hilarion's friends). Simon Butteriss was King Gama (Ida's father), with Morgan Pearse, Robert Davies and Jonathan Brown were Arac, Guron and Scynthius (Ida's brothers). Catherine Wyn-Rogers was Lady Blanche, Bethany Horak-Hallett was Lady Psyche, Marlena Devoe was Melissa and Claire Ward was Sacharissa.

Terrific and intensely atmospheric: the String Quartet No. 1 and Piano Quintet by Olli Mustonen from the Engegård Quartet and the composer on LAWO Classics

Olli Mustonen: String Quartet No. 1, Piano Quintet; Engegård Quartet, Olli Mustonen; LAWO CLASSICS

Two chamber works by the Finnish polymath; terrific contemporary chamber music in superb, intensely atmospheric recordings

When I spoke to members of the Norwegian Engegård Quartet back in 2020 [see my interview], they were about to embark on a mini-festival devoted to the music of Finnish composer Olli Mustonen, and had a project to record his chamber music. The quartet had commissioned Mustonen's String Quartet no. 1, premiered it in 2017 and enjoyed playing it, now we have the fruits of all that with a disc from Lawo Classics featuring Olli Mustonen's String Quartet No. 1 and his Piano Quintet, with the composer on piano.

Olli Mustonen started composing when he was five and was studying with Einojuhani Rautavaara very soon afterwards! But Mustonen has always had a multi-threaded career, winning awards for his recordings of piano music by Shostakovich and Alkan as well as holding a number of distinguished conducting appointments, and he is currently artistic director and principal conductor of the Turku Philharmonic Orchestra.

Young Artists on the move: announcements from YCAT, Northern Aldborough Festival's Vocal Competition, VOICEBOX and BBC Radio and Music's Open Music scheme

YCAT young artists 2023

The Young Classical Artists Trust (YCAT) has announced the latest group of artists to join its roster, whilst the Northern Aldborough Festival has revealed the semi-finalists in its forthcoming vocal competition. A brand-new initiative, VOICEBOX, has announced the names of the singers who will make up its inaugural cohort, and BBC Radio and Music launched the second edition of the Open Music training scheme, 

YCAT has selected all six finalists at its recent round of auditions at Wigmore Hall (on 2 June 2023) to join its roster. The young artists are Ignas Maknickas (piano), Charlotte Spruit (violin), Will Duerden (double bass), Trio Chagall (piano trio), Hana Chang (violin), Atenea Quartet (string quartet). In addition to performance opportunities, the young artists will receive professional publicity materials and digital support to enhance their online presence, ensuring maximum exposure for their exceptional talents to cement their path to becoming full-time performing musicians.

Also announced was the next YCAT-Music Masters Robey Artist - Cellist, Sterling Elliott - further cementing YCAT’s collaboration with Music Masters and their commitment to celebrate and champion underrepresented voices in the industry. Full details from the YCAT website.

The Yorkshire-based Northern Aldborough Festival's Vocal Competition runs from 20 to 21 June 2023 and the semi-finalists for the competition, where winners receive a cash prize plus opportunities to perform at festivals including Leeds Lieder, Newbury Spring Festival, Ryedale Festival, Music@Malling, as well as the Northern Aldborough Festival itself, are Mezzo-soprano Aileen Baker and pianist Daniel Silcock, mezzo-soprano Rachel Barnard and Beth Haughan, soprano Alexandra Beason and Yupeng He, baritone Jack Holton and Max Bilbe, soprano Betty Makharinsky and Vladyslav Kuznetsov, soprano Georgie Malcolm and Edward Campbell-Rowntree, mezzo-soprano Camilla Seale and Evi Wang, mezzo-soprano Lea Shaw and Kristina Yorgova. Full details from the festival website.

VOICEBOX is a new initiative, the first programme of its kind in the UK, offering a bespoke curriculum for advanced singers specialising in contemporary vocal performance. Designed and led by soprano Juliet Fraser, this fully funded programme is separated into four intensive residency periods, hosted by partner organisations around the UK, Britten Pears Arts, Suffolk, City, University of London , Sound Festival, Aberdeen and Dartington Music Summer School & Festival, Devon.

This year’s cohort are Patricia Auchterlonie, Hester Dart, Tara Lily Klein, Oskar McCarthy, Sarah Parkin, and Pascal Zurek. On the review panel this year were Juliet Fraser, Sara Mohr-Pietsch and Nwando Ebizie. Full details from Juliet Fraser's website.

VOICEBOX's first cohort: Hester Dart, Pascal Zurek, Tara Lily Klein,  Oskar McCarthy, Sarah Parkin and Patricia Auchterlonie

BBC Radio and Music launched the second edition of the Open Music training scheme, with a call out for applications from creatives and musicians across the UK. The first edition of Open Music ended in October 2022 and the former trainees have gone on to take up opportunities at the BBC and beyond, in the fields of radio production, presenting, communications and sound engineering. The participants were mentored by BBC radio presenters Mary Anne Hobbs, Linton Stephens, and Katie Derham – amongst others –  and by staff across BBC Radio and Music, from Radio 3 to BBC Introducing,  Radio 1Xtra to the BBC Concert Orchestra. Full details from the BBC website.