The Music Room at Champs Hill to celebrate its 25th anniversary in 2024

The Music Room at Champs Hill (Photo: Philip Hollis)

When he retired from a 40 year career in farming, David Bowerman and his wife Mary decided to create a state-of-the-art concert hall at home in West Sussex. The result was the Music Room at Champs Hill which celebrates its 25th anniversary in 2024. That is 25 years bringing the highest-quality music-making to the area, giving a platform to emerging artists, and promoting lesser-known repertoire by giving concerts in the Music Room, using it as a recording studio and issuing records under their own Champs Hill label. 

As part of the 25th-anniversary celebrations, The Music Room will host an array of performances by world-class musicians. The schedule includes specially curated concerts from Roderick Williams, the Belcea Quartet and Quator Ebene, in the same concert performing Mendelssohn’s Octet.

Over the last 25 years, The Music Room has hosted a rich tapestry of performances and recordings, by such acclaimed artists as Simon Keenlyside, Nikolai Demidenko, James Gilchrist, Steven Isserlis, Dame Felicity Lott & Graham Johnson, Chloe Hanslip, Jack Liebeck, Julian Lloyd-Webber, Viktoria Mullova, Richard Rodney-Bennett, Amanda Roocroft, Nicky Spence, and Roderick Williams. Speaking about The Music Room, Williams comments: "It's a beautiful place to be. You look out of the windows in between pieces, and you see the Downs stretching out in front of you. They have the most gorgeous garden, and an amazing rockery. As you look around, you find sculptures sprinkled here and there. It's a remarkable place to be and to record."

Further information from the Champs Hill website.

Autumn season: Southbank Sinfonia and St John's Smith Square

Southbank Sinfonia and St John's Smith Square

Southbank Sinfonia and St John's Smith Square have announced a varied Autumn Season. Southbank Sinfonia will be exploring French music with Poulenc, Ravel, and Farrenc, going through Alice's looking glass with Joby Talbot, Missy Mazzoli, Caroline Shaw, and Haydn, exploring Mozart's re-imagined with Jonathan Dove and Jonathan Harvey, as well as exploring the night sky with conductor Olivia Clarke and presenting Raymond Briggs' The Snowman with Howard Blake's enchanting score and The Bear and the Piano with music by Daniel Whibley. And still with families, the Southbank Sinfonia continues its Musical Zoo sessions

Elsewhere during the season, Bampton Classical Opera present Salieri's At the Venice Fair, Baroque Encounter present Handel's Tolomeo, and London Opera Company present Wagner's The Valkyrie. The Kensington Symphony Orchestra perform Elena Kats-Chernin, John McCabe and RVW, Aram Khachaturian's 120th anniversary is celebrated, London Mozart Players and pianist Isata Kanneh-Mason perform Beethoven and Mendelssohn.

Lunchtime concerts feature a range of chamber music and soloists including Halcyon Quartet, the Kleio Quartet, winners at the Carl Nielsen International Chamber Music Competition 2023, Azul Piano Trio, trumpet trio Natrio and organists Roger Sayer, Polina Sosnina, and Charles Andrews.

And, of course, the Christmas Festival returns in December with a host of guests including Tallis Scholars celebrating their 50th anniversary.

Full details from the SJSS website.

Overwhelmingly intense electronic sound worlds from marginalised voices: Nonclassical's Disruptive Frequencies at Kings Place

Aniruddha Das aka Dhangsha

Disruptive Frequencies: Gary Stewart, Amit Dinesh Patel, Nikki Sheth, Poulomi Desai, Nicole Raymond, Aniruddha Das - Nonclassical at Kings Place
16 July 2023, reviewed by Florence Anna Maunders

A fruit of Amit Dinesh Patel's research into cultural diversity in experimental sound, Disruptive Frequences featured six performers in almost complete darkness, giving a theatrical and almost religious aspect to the whole evening

Disruptive Frequencies is one of the results of Amit Dinesh Patel's research into cultural diversity in experimental sound – a project with the aim of addressing the the distinct lack of visibility of Black and Brown artists within the field. The record label, music promoter, events producer and charity Nonclassical worked together with the SOUND/IMAGE Research Centre (based at the University of Greenwich) to create this album, parts of which were presented live at this record launch / concert in Islington's Kings Place. In almost complete darkness, the stage was set with multiple altars of sound equipment, giving a theatrical and almost religious aspect to the whole evening.

Opening proceedings with his work Dark Energy Live Stream Track 2, Gary Stewart spun a compelling and complex web of manipulated white and filtered noise, delivered at crushing volume and building into a driven, lopsided pulsation, which successfully maintained an aloof poise of non-expressive abstraction over an extended span, with gargling, rumbling subterranean oscillations held in check and only infrequently allowed to emerge from a tightly controlled cage. The darkened, expectant silence which followed was galvanised by the overwhelming noise-scape of Patel's extended sonic essay Chakria. Defying all attempts at a conventional formal approach, this was a piece which embraced a sense of timelessness. Lacking the convention of any regular pulsation to divide the passage of time from moment to moment, the unearthly timbres seemed to exist in an unlimited aural void, defined without recourse to human expectations, exploring an alien landscape of crackling static electromagnetic fields, cycling machinery and broken transmissions.

In complete contrast, the two pieces presented by Nikki Sheth, developed from field recordings, both conveyed a very real sense of place. The splashing water, manipulated honking geese and flapping wings of Sandwell Valley worked in harmony to effectively construct an impressionist landscape with sounds, a mediation on location without any need for the Western affectations of form, structure and long-term development, as did the often beautiful collage of subtly edited bird calls which comprised Pemberton Gardens.

The DIY punk aesthetic of the self-taught multidisciplinary artist and curator Poulomi Desai was very much evident in the overwhelming sonic experience of her evocatively titled Electromagnetic signals from our raging Black Earth, all our flora and fauna are burning, which lived up to its titular expectations with blasts of distorted, furiously raging electronic signal-noise, layered with insistent warning sirens, the clangour of broken circuitry, and a sense of theatrical overload. Very much a highlight of the evening, and of the album as a whole, this is music for the end of the world – a distress call from the heart of destruction rendered in coruscating electronic timbres at ear-pulverising volumes.

Exploring a wide range of sampled distorted voices & glitchy synths, Nicole Raymond's set was a study in the use of panned delays. In a live setting, as opposed to the immersive world of headphones, this created a very different impression, somehow both more focused and simultaneously more incoherent. Her techniques strip sounds of their original meanings and contexts, like a collage of panels from different comics, presented in the infinitely receding reflections of a hall of mirrors - somehow creating a new meaning, but a meaning which is always just out of reach to the listener. Raymond's sound world is hypnotic, disorientating and perplexing, with a sense of dark humour.

Concluding the evening, the vastly experienced eminence behind the whole project, Aniruddha Das (aka Dhangsha) performed a live electronic remix of his own tracks Mahapralay and Germinate. Drawing on a wide range of cultural influences, from dub to bhangra via African clave patterns, this was the most traditionally metrical and groove-based work on display across the evening, as evidenced by the number of bobbing heads in the well-attended and mixed audience. Additionally, as the only artist this evening to work extensively with synthesis, his was the music with the most pitch-based content. Continually varied through constant repetitions by gradual alterations, disintegrations, distortions and fragmentations this was music that seemed constantly dancing on the edge between rigid order and collapse into total chaos. Straddling a line between tradition(s) and innovation, Das presented a set which was on the verge of danceable, yet never crossing the line into predictability of phrase, pattern or timbre.

Reviewed by Florence Anna Maunders

Disruptive Frequencies is available as a double vinyl or download from Nonclassical.

Disruptive Frequences at Kings Place, 16 July 2023
Bantu (Gary Stewart) - Dark Energy Live Stream Track 2
Dushume (Amit Dinesh Patel) - Chakria
Nikki Sheth - Sandwell Valley
Poulomi Desai - Electromagnetic signals from our raging Black Earth, all our flora and fauna are burning
NikNak (Nicole Raymond) - Combative Embers / Swirls
Nikki Sheth - Pemberton Gardens
Dhangsha (Aniruddha Das) – Mahapralay / Germinate

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Elsewhere on this blog

• Carmen in in the Quarry: Arnaud Bernard transforms Bizet's opera into film set in 1930s-era Spain on Oper im Steinbruch's spectacular stage - opera review
• There are things to discover still: Benjamin Appl on exploring themes of temptation and seduction in his latest album, Forbidden Fruit -interview
• An engaging and eclectic selection: Soar from Alastair Penman and Jonathan Pease - record review
• Any performance of Verdi's Don Carlo is an event: Verdi's large-scale drama returns to Covent Garden with Lise Davidsen and Brian Jagde - opera review
• An engaging diversity & fierce intelligence: the piano music of Bernard Hughes played by Matthew Mills - record review
• Imagination and seduction: Huw Wiggin in Rhapsody, music Debussy, Joseph Phibbs, Iain Farrington, Coates, Jennifer Watson, and Liszt - record review
• Heard in her own right: an important new disc explores Fanny Hensel's songs, focusing on the unknown and unrecorded - record review
• The Elixir of Love: Wild Arts brings Guido Martin-Brandis' enjoyably characterful production of Donizetti's opera to the Thaxted Festival - opera review
• Mendelssohn, Schumann and a Noah Max premiere: Emma Abbate & the Tippett Quartet at the Thaxted Festival - concert review
• Delving into her Greek background: Lisa Archontidi-Tsaldaraki's debut recital places 20th-century Greek composers alongside Bartok, Szymanowski and Ravel - interview
• I have rarely heard Bach's Mass in B minor performed with such consistency of style, integrity and sheer musicality: Vox Luminis at Wigmore Hall - concert review
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Autumn at Snape and at the Red House

Britten Pears Arts' has just announced its Autumn season. The Britten Weekend, 14-15 October 2023 will feature tenor Allan Clayton, horn player Martin Owen and the Britten Sinfonia in a programme that includes Britten's Serenade for Tenor, Horn and Strings, plus music by Holst, Bridge and Elgar, and there is also a study morning on Britten's Serenade. Also in the weekend, Julius Drake leads a masterclass on English song with the Britten Pears Young Artists, which is the culmination of a week of masterclasses that the Young Artists will be taking part in, and there is an end of course recital on 15 October.

Ben Vonberg-Clark will be conducting two Scratch Choir days, inviting everyone to participate in explorations of music by Emma Lou Diemer and RVW, plus Britten's A Ceremony of Carols. Baritone Peter Brathwaite and pianist Allyson Devenish will be spending a BPA Residency exploring music that complements visual art, inspired by Peter's Rediscovering Black Portraiture project, and there will be an open session on 20 September.

At the Red House, mezzo soprano Anna Huntley and pianist Lucy Colquhoun will perform an intimate song recital in the Library, celebrating the songs of Britten, Schubert and his influence on the composer and Britten’s contemporaries, whilst  mezzo soprano Lottie Betts-Dean and accordionist Ryan Corbett, a BBC New Generation Artist, present a programme of music spanning centuries from Monteverdi to Kurt Weill and Purcell to Joni Mitchell.

Other events include English Touring Opera bringing their new productions of Monteverdi's The Coronation of Poppea and Rossini's La cenerentola, and family concerts feature Elena Urioste, Tom Poster and London Rhymes.

Full details from the Britten Pears Arts website.

Byrd and Biscuits: Tallulah Horton on being a member of Genesis Sixteen

Genesis Sixteen at St James's Piccadilly, 15 July 2023 (Photo: Douglas Jones/Twitter)

In May 2022, I received a very happy phone-call from The Sixteen’s wonderful Genesis Sixteen Manager offering me a place on their Genesis Sixteen Scheme, much to my surprise. This fully-funded, year long opportunity to work with Harry Christophers, Eamonn Dougan, and a handful of other long-standing Sixteen legends is a very special opportunity, and one which took approximately 0.4 seconds to prompt the exclamation “yes please!” with both shock and delight. Having been a chorister for most of my school years, imagining thirteen-year-old me having the chance to rehearse and perform with my choral heroes was, in short, absolute madness.

Tallulah Horton

The Genesis Sixteen Young Artists Programme is comprised of two weeklong courses at the start and end of the year, and two short weekend courses in November and February. The majority I spoke to on arrival in Oxford for our first course were visibly buzzing, but understandably a little nervous. Amongst the obvious challenges of starting a yearlong course not knowing anyone, I wasn’t sure what to expect of Harry and Eamonn’s rehearsal style, and how they would deal with 23 raucous young singers. Indeed, most musicians have had their fair share of abrasive experiences when working with highly demanding musical directors, conductors, and colleagues - but I soon realised I had nothing to worry about. When asked about my experience with Genesis Sixteen, the first thing that always springs to mind is how lovely, genuine, and approachable both conductors are. It soon becomes apparent that everyone at The Sixteen is genuinely interested in you and your singing and, despite all that knowledge and expertise, they want to learn from the group and chat to everyone as colleagues. Their highly talented regular singers are grounded and down to earth, and make you feel like you are absolutely meant to be there. Insecurities are left at the door, so singers can develop and flourish from the start of the very first rehearsal. Don’t get me wrong, the bar is set very high, but the atmosphere is such that the conductors’ performance goals feel achievable both as an individual singer and as an ensemble.

My singing has undoubtedly developed over the last year through the continued guidance and training offered by the scheme. As well as detailed ensemble rehearsals, each singer also has individual lessons with the legendary Julie Cooper and Charlotte Mobbs, giving everyone the opportunity to work on aspects of their solo singing. Everyone on the course is, rather unusually, recognised as an individual voice with the ability to form a cohesive choir, instead of being forced to “blend into the background”. This idea comes into its own, though, when working with consort leaders Sally Dunkley, Simon Berridge, Kim Porter, and Mark Dobell. Their expertise in guiding small groups of through complex polyphony has helped each singer enhance their individual line, whilst ensuring a cohesive performance overall by working intensely on our phrasing, intonation, blend, and balance as a consort.
 
Having learned so much from this array of tailored training, the idea of performing Spem in Alium one-to-a-part (something I once thought to be too terrifying for words!) is now hugely exciting. Singing Tallis’ infamous piece alongside David Bednall’s recent forty-part motet Lux orta est iusto presents the opportunity to use the skills gained through Genesis Sixteen to perform this complex, multi-choir close harmony with style…if no one forgets to count, though. (Here’s hoping a GCSE in maths will finally prove useful!)

Last but not least, one of the most crucial aspects I’ve learned from this wonderful group is how important chocolate hobnobs are to a happy choir (other brands are available) - any rehearsal without biscuits should be cancelled immediately, never to be mentioned again. That’s what has really kept us all coming back for more, I think: Byrd and Biscuits. 

Tallulah Horton

Genesis Sixteen performed in The Sixteen's Sounds Sublime Choral Festival on 15 July at St. James’s Piccadilly. On 16 July, Genesis Sixteen celebrated their 250-strong alumni with a performance of two forty-part motets: Tallis’ Spem in Alium and Bednall’s Lux orta est iutso with members of the current cohort and alumni of the programme at Kings Place.  

Tallulah Horton became a chorister aged nine, moving to Downside School at thirteen as a major music scholar to study with Rachel Bevan. Having completed her undergraduate degree in music at Durham University, she will soon be graduating with a masters in Musicology from St Hugh’s College, Oxford.

 

Carmen in in the Quarry: Arnaud Bernard transforms Bizet's opera into film set in 1930s-era Spain on Oper im Steinbruch's spectacular stage

Bizet: Carmen - Oper im Steinbruch 2023 (Photo: Esterhazy / Katharina Schiffl) 

Bizet: Carmen; Francesca di Sauro, Migran Agadzhanyan, Vanessa Vasquez, Vittoria Prato, director Arnaud Bernard, conductor Valerio Galli: Oper im Steinbruch, Austria
Reviewed 14 July 2023

Carmen on a stage seven times larger than that of the Vienna State Opera in a production that reinvents it as the film production of a story set in 1930s Civil War era Spain

Oper im Steinbruch (Opera in the Quarry) presents an annual spectacular outdoor opera production in the historic St. Margarethen quarry near Eisenstadt in Austria. In 2019, the opera was Mozart's Die Zauberflöte [see my review] and after a two-year gap, Oper im Steinbruch returned with Bizet's Carmen, directed by Arnaud Bernard with sets designed by Alessandro Camera and costumes by Carla Ricotti. I caught the third performance of the production on 14 July 2023, conducted by Valerio Galli, when Francesca di Sauro was Carmen and Migran Agadzhanyan was Don Jose (both roles are triple cast) , with Vanessa Vasquez as Micaela, Vittorio Prato as Escamillo, Aleksandra Szmyd as Frasquita and Sofia Vinnik as Mercedes. The opera was presented in Ernest Guiraud edition with sung recitatives and the work was performed in French.

Carmen premiered, with spoken dialogue, in the relatively intimate confines of the Opera Comique in Paris, but before his death Bizet had signed a contract with the Hofoper in Vienna (now Vienna State Opera). So, he always knew that the work would need changing and expanding to fit the larger Vienna stage and to suit a cast of non-French speakers. The same process happened to Gounod's Faust and Thomas' Mignon; an opera premiered with dialogue in a smaller French theatre is expanded including sung recitatives for larger, grander theatres.

Bizet: Carmen - Francesca di Sauro - Oper im Steinbruch 2023 (Photo: Esterhazy / Jerzy Bin)

 We can never know what Bizet might have done, but Guiraud's recitatives are creditable and the slowing of the dramatic pace is on a par with the larger scale and loss of dramatic intimacy. Moving the opera onto the huge stage at St. Margarethen (seven times the area of the Vienna State Opera!) means that the work needed expanding again.

I am a child of my era, I first saw Carmen at the Edinburgh Festival in the 1980s with Teresa Berganza and Placido Domingo. That used spoken dialogue, and since then every production I have seen has used spoken dialogue (or no dialogue at all). Whilst familiar with the Guiraud version from disc (notably the Beecham/Victoria de Los Angeles and the Pretre/Callas versions), I had never actually heard it on stage.

There are things to discover still: Benjamin Appl on exploring themes of temptation and seduction in his latest album, Forbidden Fruit

James Baillieu and Benjamin Appl at Ingolstadt Festsaal in 2020 (Photo: Foto Schaffer)

Benjamin Appl's latest recital disc on Alpha Classics is a bit of a change. Benjamin and pianist James Bailieu previous disc with Alpha was Schubert's Winterreise, but the new disc is an eclectic mix of styles, composers and languages under the title Forbidden Fruit. Linked by Benjamin reading fragments of the Biblical story of Adam and Eve, the metaphor of forbidden fruit gives Benjamin and James a wide range of possible interpretations.

When I comment to Benjamin about the variety of song on the disc, he points out that there is still a lot of German song in the recital - Hugo Wolf, Kurt Weill, Richard Strauss, Arnold Schoenberg, Robert Schumann, Fanny Mendelssohn, Lothar Brühne, Franz Schubert, Hanns Eisler, Gustav Mahler alongside songs by Gabriel Faure, Ivor Gurney, Francis Poulenc, Reynaldo Hahn, Roger Quilter, Leonello Casucci, Edvard Grieg, and Jake Heggie. As regards the story of the Temptation, Benjamin grew up in Catholic Bavaria so he is very familiar with the Biblical tale. Yet though it sits deeply in the psyche, there are a lot of contradictions in it. He loves the metaphor that the story of Adam and Eve contains, yet some elements do not make sense. Why was God dealing with conditional love; if Adam and Eve did not know about evil why should they mistrust the serpent?  

Benjamin Appl  (Photo: Manuel Outumuro)

Thinking about the story, he started getting ideas for songs, and it was an interesting concept, the themes of temptation and seduction, yet bringing the ideas into our own times, looking at what was inside us. He looked at songs which examined themes of stepping over boundaries, for instance, Eisler's Die Ballade vom Paragraphen 218 is about abortion, Schumann's Wer nie sein Brot mit Tränen aß is ultimately about incest (the text is spoken by the Harper in Goethe's Wilhelm Meister). But to create a coherent programme, Benjamin needed to put the songs in order and this is brought him back to the original story. This is why they included the spoken quotations from the Bible, the songs are an interpretation of the text, like a sermon on the gospel.

Back for the 16th festival, Tête à Tête: The Opera Festival also celebrates the company's 25th anniversary with a lively new season

Tête à Tête: The Opera Festival is back at the Cockpit Theatre for the 2023 festival from 29 August to 12 September as well as celebrating 25 years since the company first launched! A remarkable achievement for all, including artistic director and founder  Bill Bankes-Jones. 

As ever the repertoire is many and varied from classics reimagined, such as Judith, a reimagining of Bartok's Bluebeard's Castle, to Helen Epega revisiting her 2015 work, the first-ever Pidgin English opera, Song Queen: A Pidgin Opera Reimagined, to a one-woman micro-opera based on a women's support group.

LGBT representation is strong from Fierce Love, a story of love and AIDS activism in 1990s London, to Bermondsey, 1983, a documentary opera detailing the Bermondsey by-election and homophobic smear campaign against Labour candidate Peter Tatchell. Homo Promos returns with 1944: Home Fires, a follow-up to last year’s 1936: Fishing with a narrative following Ivor Novello’s imprisonment, and performance artist and self-confessed gender-outsider Alice d'Lumiere is also back to reveal if she's now able to hold a note in The Trans Lady Sings! Songs of Descent is a gothic queer re-telling of the Persephone myth.

And myth is also highly prominent. Belgian composer Hans Vercauteren’s Arthur draws on Laurence Binyon's Arthur, a Tragedy and the old-Flemish version of the tale, Freguut, as well as Ricardo Dourado's Medusa, Alice Beckwith's The Golden Thread, an Angela Carter-inspired piece involving a woman's encounter with the Green Man and his more sinister counterpart, the Erlking. Whilst Susannah Self's Fragments of a Lost Land merges tales of Atlantis with Doggerland.

One particular highlight is Cupboard Love, a staging of Madeline Dring's only opera. I saw the work when it was giving in a semi-staging in the crypt at St John's Smith Square in the 1980s and look forward to a chance to see it again for Dring's centenary.

Full details from the festival website.

Up Close and Musical

Up Close & Musical - Lucy Schaufer

Violist Shiry Rashkovsky’s festival Up Close and Musical returns to Fidelio Café for three Wednesday evenings in October, with each night pairing an early evening recital with a more relaxed late evening event, along with interviews with the artists.

The festival is opened by mezzo-soprano Lucy Schaufer, pianist Ben Dawson and Trio Klein for a programme inspired by the power and majesty of storms including music by Deborah Pritchard, Jocelyn Pook, Georgia Stitt and Amanda McBroom, as well as the world premiere of Stephen Barber’s A Ride in a Helium Balloon, commissioned Schaufer’s Wild Plum Arts which supports livings artists in the creation of new work.

The other early evening concerts are Chi-chi Nwanoku, double bass and Chineke! soloists in music by Florence Price alongside Schubert's Trout Quintet, and Esther Abrami, violin and Alexandra Whittingham, guitar in Piazzolla's L'histoire du Tango plus music by Falla, Paganini and Sarasate.

Late evening events encompass a behind-the-scenes look at the making of the film Chevalier with violinist Ronald Long, followed by a performance of Joseph Boulogne, Chevalier de Saint-Georges’ Symphonie Concertante for Two Violins and a screening of the film, vocalist Alice Zawadzki, Misha Mullov-Abbado, bass and Fred Thomas, piano/drums in an eclectic programme spanning folk, indie and world music, and a celebration of October House Records with Héloïse Werner, vocals/cello, Shri Sriram, bass guitar/Indian flute and Max Baillie, violin/viola in music by Love Ssega, Jasmin Kent Rodgman and Max Baillie.

Full details from the Fidelio Cafe website.

An engaging and eclectic selection: Soar from Alastair Penman and Jonathan Pease

Soar: Pedro Ituralde, Richard Rodney Bennett, Robert Planel, Andy Scott, Alastair Penman, Paul Mitchell-Davidson, Amy Quate, Debussy, Demersseman; Alastair Penman, Jonathan Pease; Meadowbank Music

For his first disc on his new label, saxophonist Alastair Penman joins pianist Jonathan Pease for an engaging selection of 20th century and more recent favourites from the duo's recitals

Saxophonist Alastair Penman's third album is his first on his new label, Meadowbank Music. The album, Soar, with pianist Jonathan Pease features a selection of the duo's favourite repertoire. Whilst the disc's name might come from Penman's Soar which is on the disc, the epithet also refers to all the music on the disc where a selections of works by 20th century composers Pedro Ituralde, Richard Rodney Bennett, and Robert Planel, along with new pieces by contemporary composers, Andy Scott, Alastair Penman, Paul Mitchell-Davidson, and Amy Quate, a recent arrangement of Debussy and a 19th-century fantasy on Carnival of Venice, all feature music where the saxophone soars over the piano.

Tandava: Simon Thacker and Piah Dance Company at Edinburgh Fringe

Tandava: Simon Thacker and Piah Dance Company

Scottish classical guitarist Simon Thacker has been on our radar ever since I reviewed his disc, Rakasha in 2013. Thacker's interests lie in the edge between Western classical music and Indian classical music, and for a new project he will be joining forces with India's Piah Dance Company. 

Tandava, which is at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe from 18-26 August 2023 at theSpace @ Niddry St, Edinburgh, combines dazzling dance with guitar wizardry. The Sanskrit word Tandava represents a cosmic dance which is the source of the cycle of creation, preservation and dissolution, unifying seemingly irreconcilable opposites.

Full details from the Edinburgh Fringe website.

BREMF is back: Autumn festival returns with over 20 events

After three years of disruption, experimentation, and adapting to circumstances, Brighton Early Music Festival (BREMF) returns this Autumn in full pre-pandemic style with more than 20 events during September and October 2023. The main festival runs from 13 to 28 October 2023 and highlights include The Gesualdo Six and Fretwork in their music drama Secret Byrd and The Whispering Dome, a large scale multi-media event featuring a varied range of traditional and early music from Europe, Morocco and West Africa tracing routes followed by migrating swallows.

Other events include Musica Secreta in Mother, Sister, Daughter, music and intriguing stories of women across the ages, including newly discovered music, and a new commission by Joanna Marsh, Fieri Consort in The Excellence of Women, newly discovered madrigals of Maddalena Casulana alongside works by another of Italy’s greatest composers, Barbara Strozzi, La Fonte Music in works by 14th century composer Antonio Zacara da Teramo. Visiting groups include Ensemble Hesperi, Helen Charlston, mezzo-soprano & Toby Carr, theorbo, and the festival ends with BREMF Players, Baroque Collective Singers and soloists in Bach and Buxtehude.

Before the main festival, a series of pre-events run from 16 September offering opportunities to take part in choral and instrumental workshops, OAE TOTS family concerts, and a ceilidh celebrating the music of John Playford’s The English Dancing Master. BREMF will be popping up around the city too, with free performances of music by William Byrd and a baroque-ground-bass-meets-jazz fusion event.

Full details from the BREMF website.

Any performance of Verdi's Don Carlo is an event: Verdi's large-scale drama returns to Covent Garden with Lise Davidsen and Brian Jagde

Verdi: Don Carlo - Brian Jagde, Lise Davidsen - Royal Opera (Photo Bill Cooper/ROH)

Verdi: Don Carlo; Brian Jagse, Lise Davidsen, John Relyea, Luca Micheletti, Yulia Matochkina, director: Nicholas Hytner/Daniel Dooner, conductor: Bertrand de Billy; Royal Opera
Reviewed 9 July 2023

Strong revival of Verdi's complex drama with a nuance performance by Lise Davidsen as Elizabeth complemented by finely balanced cast.

My memories of Nicholas Hytner's 2008 production of Verdi's Don Carlo (currently being revived at the Royal Opera House) rather focus on the unsatisfactory Auto da Fe scene in Act Three, but revisiting the production on Sunday 9 July 2023, I realised that Bob Crowley's designs are in fact largely stylish and efficient, each scene flows easily on from the previous without awkward pauses. And this is the production's fifth outing, (revival director Daniel Dooner) and it still looks handsome. 

On Sunday, Bertrand de Billy conducted with Brian Jagde as Don Carlo, Lise Davidsen as Elizabeth, John Relyea as Philip, Luca Micheletti as Posa, Yulia Matochkina as Eboli and Taras Shtonda as the Grand Inquisitor.

The production solves the work's complex editorial issues by opting for the final, 1886 version though there is an argument that his original 1883 revision in four acts is more coherent and reflects his final intentions. Also, the performance uses the Italian translation and I suspect that this is principally because the Royal Opera House's track record in performing the opera in French is not completely glorious.

An engaging diversity & fierce intelligence: the piano music of Bernard Hughes played by Matthew Mills

Bernard Hughes: Piano Music; Matthew Mills; Divine Art
Reviewed 8 July 2023

Featuring pieces from right across his composing career, Bernard Hughes' piano music is engagingly diverse with music ranging from the insanely difficult to that written for amateurs. Always intelligent and characterful, this is a disc of wonderful short pieces.

There is an enormous range and diversity on this disc of Bernard Hughes' piano music. Under the title Bagatelles, on the Divine Art label, pianist Matthew Mills has recorded a programme of 38 short movements. Mills is a friend of Hughes' and the composer wrote his Partita Contrafacta for Mills to premiere on the disc. Whilst some of the pieces are, to quote the  composer, 'insanely difficult', others were written specifically for amateurs to play, and the pieces range in date from that most recent Partita Contrafacta to works from the 1990s.

There is also an engaging diversity of style which gives the recital a sense of variety. It is clear that Hughes engages with music in different ways and that he has no single conception of what a piano piece might be. 

Imagination and seduction: Huw Wiggin in Rhapsody, music Debussy, Joseph Phibbs, Iain Farrington, Coates, Jennifer Watson, and Liszt

Rhapsody: Debussy, Joseph Phibbs, Iain Farrington, Coates, Jennifer Watson, Liszt; Huw Wiggin, Norik Ogawa; Orchid Classics

Pairing two major 20th-century works for the instrument with a trio of recent commissions, Huw Wiggin has created a wonderfully imaginative and seductive programme

Saxophonist Huw Wiggin's latest disc, Rhapsody on Orchid Classics, with pianist Noriko Ogawa features six works for saxophone and piano that all loosely come into the category of rhapsody. 

Wiggin has cast his net widely, the disc includes two major 20th-century works for saxophone, Debussy's only work for solo saxophone alongside Eric Coates' Saxo-Rhapsody, plus three contemporary pieces by Joseph Phibbs, Iain Farrington and Jennifer Watson, and an arrangement of Liszt's Hungarian Rhapsody No. 2.

Young musicians to the fore: Bampton's singing competition and Liverpool's emerging musician fellowships

Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra Emerging Musicians Fellowship
Danny Cleave, Meggie Murphy, Ewan Miller, Méline Le Calvez

Bampton Classical Opera has announced that entries are now open for its 2023 Young Singers' Competition, whilst Liverpool Philharmonic has announced the appointment of four musicians selected for the second annual Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra Emerging Musicians Fellowship. 

Applications are now open for Bampton Classical Opera’s sixth biennial Young Singers' Competition, launched in 2013 to celebrate the company’s 20th birthday.  Open to young professional singers aged 21-32 and their accompanists,  previous winners are mezzo-soprano Anna Starushkevych (2013), soprano Galina Averina (2015), mezzo-soprano Emma Stannard (2017), soprano Lucy Anderson (2019), and soprano Cassandra Wright (2021).  In 2017 an Accompanists' Prize was introduced, and the first winner was Keval Shah. 

After a closed first round, the public final take places in the Leonard Wolfson Auditorium, Wolfson College, Linton Road, Oxford OX2 6UD, on 25 November 2023. Judges for the competition include two internationally renowned British singers: tenor Bonaventura Bottone and mezzo-soprano Jean Rigby.

Applications entry deadline is Thursday 31st August 2023, full details from Bampton Classical Opera's website.

The Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra's Emerging Musicians Fellowship offers early-career musicians a paid, immersive professional orchestral experience, both on and off the stage over the course of a year.  The Fellowship has no upper age limit and in 2023/24 over 270 musicians applied for the scheme. The four musicians selected are:

• Danny Cleave (double bass) - a native of Devon who has just finished his Masters degree at the Royal College of Music
• Meggie Murphy (trombone) - who studied at the Royal College of Music and was in the National Youth Orchestra 
• Ewan Millar (oboe) - from Yorkshire, currently enrolled in a Masters degree at the Royal Academy of Music and who won the woodwind final of BBC Young Musician
• Méline Le Calvez (clarinet) - born in Burgundy, France will finish her studies at the Royal Academy of Music this Summer

Sameeta Gahir, Principal Piccolo, Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra and Lead Musician for the Emerging Musicians Fellowship, said, "In light of the successful launch of the Emerging Musicians Fellowship last year, this year we were overwhelmed by the sheer number of exceptional applications we received from talented musicians nationwide. The level of skill and dedication displayed by all the applicants was truly remarkable, and we extend our heartfelt gratitude to each and every one of them for their commitment and effort in presenting themselves. It is with great excitement that we announce the newest Fellowship Musicians. Their exceptional musical abilities and unique talents have stood out among the many outstanding candidates, and we are delighted to have them on board for this upcoming season."

Full details from the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic's website.

A trio of rarities: If Opera's resident ensemble is back with Giordano's Fedora, Will Todd's Alice and Tchaikovsky's Iolanta

If Opera at Belcombe Court in 2022

If Opera is back with another season at two venues in Bradford on Avon using the repertory ensemble model that they developed last year. This year the company is presenting three operas and hosting a visit from Charles Court Opera.

Umberto Giordano's Fedora is the first opera up, directed by John Wilkie and conducted by Oliver Gooch, If Opera's artistic director. Premiered in 1898, the opera has remained on the fringes of the repertory, often providing a star vehicle for sopranos (and tenors) - I saw it at Covent Garden with Mirella Freni. It will be interesting to see how John Wilkie approaches a work with a cast of young singers, including Skye Ingram as Fedora and Charne Rocheford as Loris.

Next up is Will Todd's wonderful family opera, Alice's Adventures in Wonderland which was originally commissioned by Opera Holland Park. At If Opera the work is being directed by directed by Lysanne van Overbeek and conducted by Mark Austin. 

Both these operas are being performed at Belcombe Court, where opera takes place in a handsome temporary structure and you can picnic in the picturesque grounds. Also visiting Belcombe Court are Charles Court Opera who bring their production of Gilbert & Sullivan's The Mikado.

As if one unusual opera wasn't enough, If Opera ends their Summer season with Tchaikovsky's final opera, Iolanta. This was premiered in 1892, just six years before Fedora, which makes you think, and when premiere Iolanta was given in a double bill with The Nutcracker ballet! If Opera's production of Iolanta is directed by Lysanne Van Overbeek and conducted Sorcha Corcoran. This production is being given in doors at the Wiltshire Music Centre in Bradford upon Avon.

For all operas, the resident ensemble is the Bristol Ensemble. And the company features 13 singers who are all appearing in multiple roles.

Full details from the If Opera website.

Spanish season: the Horton pays tribute to the Spanish dancer confined in Epsom Asylum in 1919

Felix Garcia sketched by Picasso with Vera Nemtchinova
during rehearsals of the Ballets Russes in 1919

The Horton in Epsom is an arts centre based in the former chapel of Horton Hospital (Horton Asylum), a huge cluster of psychiatric hospitals, the largest complex of its kind in Europe when it opened in 1901. The hospital closed in 1997 and the site was redeveloped as flats. The chapel survived, just, and opened in 2021 as a cultural and heritage venue.

One of the lesser known people who was confined to Horton Asylum was the Spanish dancer Felix Garcia. Employed by Diaghilev to work on Spanish dance with the company for Massine's ballet, The Three Cornered Hat based on Falla's music, Felix Garcia was confined to Horton Asylum in 1919 and died there in the 1940s. The story of how he came to be there is full of uncertainties, whether he was genuinely disturbed or whether Diaghilev simply wanted to get rid of him (see the Horton Cemetery website).

Now the Horton is having a Spanish season, 18-19 July 2023, paying tribute to Felix Garcia. There is Boccherini in Love, a celebration of the music of Luigi Boccherini with instrumental music and arias, a Flamenco and Spanish dance masterclass, a recital by pianist Jose Vicente Riquelme playing music by Chopin, Liszt, Balakirev, Albeniz, Gimenez and Lecuona, and Spanish Soul with Spanish and Spain-inspired music by Albeniz, Schumann, Rossini, Berlioz, Falla, Turina, Sarasate, and more.

Full details from the Horton website.

Heard in her own right: an important new disc explores Fanny Hensel's songs, focusing on the unknown and unrecorded

Fanny Hensel Lieder: Tim Parker-Langston, Jennifer Parker, Stephanie Wake-Edwards, Genevieve Ellis, Jâms Coleman, Ewan Gilford; First Hand Records
Reviewed 4 July 2023

A disc which focuses entirely on Fanny Hensel's songs, enabling us to hear many unpublished and unrecorded ones in enjoyably subtle performances from six young artists

Whilst the name of Fanny Hensel (Felix Mendelssohn's elder sister) is not unknown as a composer, her music is still relatively rare on concert platform and on disc, and when we do hear her works it tends to be in the context of her brother's output. She very rarely gets a chance to be heard in her own right, and it is only relatively recently that thanks to the internet (notably HenselPushers.org and Henselsongsonline.org) that the full extent of her songs have been easily available to singers. Over 100 of her songs have remained unpublished and unrecorded, and the majority of her 450 compositions remain unheard and unseen.

Tenor Tim Parker-Langston began a PhD studying Hensel's lieder at Goldsmith's University of London in 2021, and it is Parker-Langston who created Henselsongsonline.org and now all 239 of her songs are available. An extension of this, is the new disc from First Hand Records on which Tim Parker-Langston is joined by mezzo-sopranos Jennifer Parker and Stephanie Wake-Edwards and pianists Genevieve Ellis, Jâms Coleman and Ewan Gilford for a recital of 34 of Hensel's song including 17 first recordings. The disc was recorded in the Gartenhaus of the Mendelssohn-Haus Museum in Leipzig, a room that Fanny Hensel would have known.

Somewhere for the weekend: rare Medieval walls, the development of the Eisteddfod and its own festival, Cowbridge in the Vale of Glamorgan

South Gate, Cowbridge (Photo: Mick Lobb, CC BY-SA 2.0)

Cowbridge is a market town in the Vale of Glamorgan, some 12 miles West of Cardiff, and it has the distinction of being very few medieval walled towns in Wales, and substantial portions of the walls, together with the south gate, are still standing. The 18th century antiquary, Iolo Morganwg, who developed the rituals of the present day Eisteddfod, had a bookshop in the town.

Since 2010 the Cowbridge Music Festival has provided the town with a mix of classical music, jazz and folk as well as community events, and since 2021 the festival has been directed by husband and wife duo, violist Rosalind Ventris and conductor Joseph Fort. There is plenty of chance to hear the artistic directors in action as Rosalind Ventris is joined by pianist Llyr Williams for Brahms' Viola Sonatas, whilst Trio Anima (Flute – Matthew Featherstone, Viola – Rosalind Ventris, Harp – Anneke Hodnett) will be playing music from their recent debut disc, Between Earth and Sea, and Joseph Fort conducting the Choir of St Paul’s Knightsbridge in Bach's motets.

Visitors to the festival include baritone Roderick Williams with pianist Iain Burnside, the young Welsh pianist Tomos Boyles, and Trio Gaspard, as well as performers from other traditions with the Ukrainian bandura duo, Dvi Doli, (the bandura is a folk instrument combining elements of the zither and the lute), flamenco guitarist Daniel Martinez, the ensemble Khamira which comprises three musicians from Wales and three from India in fusion of Hindustani classical music, jazz, Welsh folk, and rock, and a Welsh jazz big band, The Power of Gower. 

In addition, the festival is presenting performances in care homes, as well as a wide range of outreach workshops for local school children, plus a family performance from Children's Musical Adventures.

The Cowbridge Music Festival runs from 15 to 24 September 2023, full details from the festival website.