Inventive and imaginative: Olivia Fuchs' successfully reinvents Rimsky Korsakov's The Snowmaiden for English Touring Opera

Rimsky Korsakov: The Snowmaiden - English Touring Opera (Photo: © Richard Hubert Smith)

Rimsky Korsakov: The Snowmaiden; Ffion Edwards, Kitty Whately Katherine McIndoe, Edmund Danon, Hannah Sandison, Joseph Doody, Jack Dolan, Amy J Payne, Edward Hawkins/Phil Wilcox, director: Olivia Fuchs, conductor Hannah Quinn; English Touring Opera at Saffron Hall
Reviewed 19 October 2024

A welcome outing for Rimsky Korsakov's favourite opera with engaging performances from a strong ensemble cast in an inventive production

Rimsky Korsakov's opera The Snowmaiden always remained one of his favourites but has not been on UK stages that much. We caught up with English Touring Opera's welcome new production in Saffron Hall on Saturday 19 October 2024. The production was directed by Olivia Fuchs and conducted by Hannah Quinn with designs by Eleanor Bull and was sung in Alistair Middleton's English translation.

Ffion Edwards was the Snowmaiden (though referred to as Snow Princess in Middleton's text), with Kitty Whately as Lel, Katherine McIndoe as Kupava, Edmund Danon as Mizgir, Hannah Sandison as Spring Beauty, Joseph Doody as the Tsar, Jack Dolan as Bobyl, Amy J Payne as Boblikha, David Horton as spirit of the wood, Neil Balfour as Maslenitsa and Alexandre Meier as the Tsar's Page. Edward Hawkins was unable to sing and walked the roles of Grandfather Frost and Bermyata whilst Phil Wilcox the ensemble sang, whilst also doing his ensemble duties and playing the accordion for one of Kitty Whately's solos.

Like many of Rimsky Korsakov's operas, The Snowmaiden is quite discursive with focus shifting between characters. It is also long, the fullest version on record lasting around three and a half hours of music. Here, trimmed to around 2 hours 40 minutes of music, the result did full justice to Rimsky Korsakov's discursive mix of solos, choruses and dances, whilst ensuring a pace that kept the attention of an audience unfamiliar with the work.

Rimsky Korsakov: The Snowmaiden  - Hannah Sandison, Ffion Edwards - English Touring Opera (Photo: © Richard Hubert Smith)

Alistair Middleton's rhyming English version was a complete delight and under Hannah Quinn's expert direction the orchestra made the orchestral reduction seem richly expansive. This was a production that successfully reinvented a work premiered by the lavish forces of the Imperial Theatres in St Petersburg without losing ita essence.

Portraits of a troubled family: Bernstein's Trouble in Tahiti & A Quiet Place at the Royal Opera House

Bernstein: A Quiet Place - Henry Neill, Elgan Llyr Thomas - Royal Ballet & Opera (Photo: Marc Brenner/ROH)

Bernstein: Trouble in Tahiti, Bernstein: A Quiet Place; Henry Neill, Wallis Giunta, Grant Doyle, Rowan Pierce, Elgan Llyr Thomas/Benjamin Hulett, director: Oliver Mears, conductor: Nicholas Chalmers; Linbury Theatre, Royal Opera House
Reviewed 18 October 2024

A double bill of Bernstein rarity, fantastic performances of two operas that present a disturbing picture of family life in the 20th century with all its messiness, along with autobiographical references.

Leonard Bernstein wrote his one-act opera Trouble in Tahiti in 1952, the story of a troubled marriage inspired by his own parent's marriage and one of Bernstein's few music theatre works to set his own words. Thirty years later, he returned to the subject and this time with a libretto by Stephen Wadsworth produced A Quiet Place, examining what has happened to the family in Trouble in Tahiti in the intervening 30 years. A Quiet Place was premiered in a double bill with Trouble in Tahiti in 1983 but the new opera was not well received. Bernstein and Wadsworth produced a revised version where most of Trouble in Tahiti was incorporated into A Quiet Place as flashback. In this form the opera had some currency.

At the Linbury Theatre, the Royal Ballet and Opera has been revisiting Trouble in Tahiti and A Quiet Place in a new production by Oliver Mears, conducted by Nicholas Chalmers. The operas were performed in new versions by Garth Edwin Sunderland. Separated into two distinct operas again, Trouble in Tahiti was given in Sunderland's reduced orchestration whilst A Quiet Place was presented in Sunderland's adaptation of the libretto with the flashbacks removed, and again in a reduced orchestration. In Trouble in Tahiti, Henry Neill was Sam and Wallis Giunta was Dinah, then in A Quiet Place, Grant Doyle was Sam, Rowan Pierce and Henry Neill were his children, Dede and Junior. Elgan Llyr Thomas was intended to be Francois but Thomas was unable to sing and walked the role with Benjamin Hulett singing from the side of the stage.

Bernstein: A Quiet Place - Grant Doyle - Royal Ballet & Opera (Photo: Marc Brenner/ROH)

We saw Trouble in Tahiti in 2017 as part of Opera North's The Little Greats season when it was in a double bill with Gilbert & Sullivan's Trial by Jury [see my review]. Oliver Mears and designer Annemarie Woods took a more downbeat view of the opera than Matthew Eberhardt at Opera North, perhaps influenced by the fact that the second half of the double bill at the Linbury was distinctly downbeat indeed.

Leading with a love that inspires: Canadian ensemble, Tafelmusik has a new collaboration with violinist Rachel Podger & a new disc of Haydn symphonies under her direction

Tafelmusik & Rachel Podger (Photo: Dahlia Katz)

Tafelmusik, the Canadian period instrument ensemble, recently appointed violinist Rachel Podger as principal guest director and this month the orchestra released a disc of Haydn symphonies with Rachel Podger as director, on the ensemble's own label. Tafelmusik is led by the artistic triumvirate, all three players in the ensemble, Brandon Chui (viola), Christina Zacharias (violin) and Dominic Teresi (bassoon) and I recently chatted to Brandon to find out more about the new disc and Tafelmusik's collaboration with Rachel Podger.

The new disc features two of Haydn's symphonies, No. 43 in E-flat Major “Mercury” and No. 49 in F minor “La Passione", both recorded live from concerts at Toronto's Jeanne Lamon Hall in 2023 led from the violin by Rachel Podger. The ensemble was not, originally, planning on issuing a recording. But they have a digital stream, issuing three programmes per season. The plan was for Rachel Podger to come and direct a programme of Hadyn and Mozart which would be performed in Toronto and recorded for video. The initial concept of the two Haydn symphonies and a Mozart violin concerto was one that Rachel Podger and co-artistic director Dominic Teresi initially came up with. They filmed the concert, as planned, but the results were, in Brandon's words, 'so damn good' that it was decided to issue the recording on the ensemble's own label.



Brandon explains that many of the ensemble's recordings are made live, including their set of the complete Beethoven symphonies conducted by Bruno Weil and their recording of Handel's Messiah. Whether or not a recording is made live is to a certain extent dependent on financing, but also there is the desire to capture the effect of playing for a live audience. Brandon explained that, though it can sound cliched, when Tafelmusik is on stage, they find an extra gear for the audience, collectively taking a level of risk which can sound special.

London Opera Company returns with a full-scale performance of Wagner's Siegfried

Wagner: Die Walküre - The London Opera Company, November 2023

London Opera Company presented a full-scale performance of Wagner's Die Walküre at Smith Square Hall (St John's Smith Square) in November 2023 conducted by Peter Selwyn. [see my review 'A remarkable sense of energy & engagement']

Now the company is returning to Smith Square for Wagner's Siegfried, again with full orchestra conducted by Peter Selwyn on Saturday 2 November 2024. 

Having sung Brünnhilde and Wotan in last year's Die Walküre, Cara McHardy and Simon Thorpe return as Brünnhilde and Der Wanderer, with Brad Cooper as Siegfried, Colin Judson as Mime, Stephan Loges as Alberich and Harriet Williams, who sang Fricka last year, is Erda.

The London Opera Company was formed in 2020 by singers to give opportunities to performers who had lost work in the pandemic. Starting from relatively small beginnings, with chamber versions of Wagner's operas, the company founded its own orchestra in 2022 and presented a full version of Wagner's Tristan und Isolde.

The orchestra is a mix of professionals, music students and good amateurs. Selwyn is an experienced Wagnerian; he has been assisting on the most recent Ring Cycle at Bayreuth and conducted Grimeborn's Ring [see my interview with Peter, 'From Bayreuth to Grimeborn'] as well as being the chief conductor of the non-professional Lambeth Orchestra.

Full details from the Sinfonia Smith Square website.

UK premiere of Ludwig Göransson’s suite from Oscar-winning film Oppenheimer at the Royal College of Music

Christopher Nolan's enormously successful 2023 film, Oppenheimer (seven Oscars, seven Golden Globes, five BAFTAs) about the life of J. Robert Oppenheimer, the American theoretical physicist who helped develop the first nuclear weapons during World War II, featured a score by Ludwig Göransson. Unusually, Göransson began writing before filming started and Göransson has described the process as open and very collaborative, so that Nolan began filming with two or three hours of music that he could reference and the film never used temp track. The soundtrack was recorded by the Hollywood Studio Orchestra.

Göransson was born in Sweden and studied at the Stockholm Royal College of Music before studying on the University of Southern California Scoring for Motion Picture and Television program. Soon after graduating, he began work assisting Theodore Shapiro, a composer known for films such as The Devil wears Prada.

On 7 November 2024 there is a chance to relive the magic in a different form as Göransson's Oppenheimer Suite receives its UK premiere at the Royal College of Music when Ben Palmer conducts the RCM Philharmonic in a concert which also features John Adams Doctor Atomic Symphony and Takemitsu’s luminous Spirit Garden, one of his last works.

John Adams' opera Doctor Atomic premiered at San Francisco in 2005 and deals with some of the same themes as Oppenheimer, though Adams and his librettist Peter Sellars with Oppenheimer as the leading character. Adams' Doctor Atomic Symphony was premiered in 2007 by the BBC Symphony Orchestra at the BBC Proms with the composer conducting, though Adams later revised the work, reducing it in length by nearly half.

Full details of the concert from the RCM website.

A themed programme with an imaginative difference: Music from Pole to Pole with City of London Sinfonia and atmospheric physicist Dr Simon Clark

Music from Pole to Pole - City of London Sinfonia and Dr Simon Clark at Smith Square Hall - (Photo: Suzi Corker)

Music from Pole to Pole: Caroline Shaw, Webern, Dvorak, Lutosławski, Osvaldo Golijov, Marais, Vivaldi, Thomas Adès, Anna Thorvaldsdottir, Bach; Dr Simon Clark, City of London Sinfonia; Smith Square Hall
Reviewed 15 October 2024

Cloud formations and music in a fascinating mix of informed talk and challenging music to create a bravura mix that made us leave wanting more

City of London Sinfonia's (CLS) Patterns of Nature series involves the ensemble sharing the platform with those outside classical music in an intriguing mix of talk and concert (much in the way that the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment does with its Bach, the Universe and Everything series). For the second of CLS' Patterns of Nature, at Smith Square Hall (St John's Smith Square) on Tuesday 15 October 2024, the title was Music from Pole to Pole with the tag line Cloud formations from Antarctica to the Arctic where CLS, director Alexandra Wood, was joined by atmospheric physicist Dr Simon Clark, a science communicator and author who specialises in studies of the Earth's atmosphere.

Quite how the music and science were going to match up was unclear, but the programme for the evening was definitely not pulling any musical punches with Caroline Shaw's 'in manus tuas', movements from Webern's 5 movements for string orchestra, Op. 5, Dvorak's Nocturne in B flat, Op. 40, the epilogue from Lutosławski's Musique funèbre, the first movement of Osvaldo Golijov's Last Round, the tempest from Marin Marais' Alcione, two movements from Vivaldi's Concerto in G minor Op. 8 No. 2 'Summer', the movement O Albion from Thomas Adès' Arcadiana, Op. 12, three movements from Anna Thorvaldsdottir's Spectra and the aria from Bach's Goldberg Variations. And we began, in almost total darkness, with a terrific performance of Joely Koos of Caroline Shaw's solo cello piece 'in manus tuas'.

Music from Pole to Pole - City of London Sinfonia and Dr Simon Clark at Smith Square Hall - (Photo: Suzi Corker)

A Christmas Carol this isn't: The Telling's What the Dickens!

For their latest show, playwright/singer Clare Norburn and her company The Telling have turned to the private life of Charles Dickens. With an estranged wife and teenage mistress, he doesn’t quite live up to the image of the family man he would like to present to the world. Norburn's What the Dickens! imagines Charles Dickens’ reading of A Christmas Carol isn’t going to plan. He finds himself re-cast as Scrooge, with his past, present and future being played out, as presented by two women he mistreated - his wife Catherine and his mistress, the actress Ellen Ternan, who was only 19 when Dickens first approached her at the age of 45.

Directed by Nicholas Renton the show stars Clive Hayward as Dickens, Karen Ascoe as Catherine Dickens and actor-cellist Rosalind Ford as Ellen ‘Nelly’ Ternan, plus actor/musicians Alexander Knox, and Rosa Lennox, with soprano Clare Norburn and composer/pianist Steven Edis. The drama is accompanied by live music; all seven performers act, play instruments and sing, sometimes all at the same time. They perform colourful Victorian popular songs and street music, old carols and lively folk dances, arranged by music theatre composer Steven Edis.

Clare Norburn explains the unusual premise of the show: “'In What the Dickens?',  I’ve reimagined Charles Dickens' classic ‘A Christmas Carol’, taking inspiration from the secrets of Dickens’ life: his secret mistress, his terrible treatment of his wife and his early life as a boy working in a factory which made shoe blacking, of which he was deeply ashamed. I have also drawn on how unwell and febrile he was in his final years: he put so much energy into his theatrical readings that he would often collapse afterwards in the wings. So, I have used all those elements to overlay the familiar story we all know of ‘A Christmas Carol’, with Dickens himself being forced to re-evaluate his life and the impact of his actions.”  

The show is touring the UK from Friday 22nd November to Sunday 8th December, stopping at Wolverhampton, Lewes, Cardiff, Folkestone, Manchester, Silsden and OSO Arts Centre, Barnes for a week run from 26 to 30 November. Full details from The Telling's website.

Nominations announced for the 2024 Ivors Classical Awards

Jonathan Dove: Itch - Adam Temple Smith as Itch and Victoria Simmonds as Watkins - Opera Holland Park 2023 (Photo: Craig Fuller)

Celebrating the best new classical music and sound art, this year's Ivors Classical Awards take place at BFI Southbank on 12 November 2024 when 11 Ivor Novello Awards will be presented to eight category winners and three Gift of the Academy award winners. BBC Radio 3 will broadcast the ceremony on Saturday 16 November in a special edition of the New Music Show.

The Ivors Academy has announced the 36 composers who have been nominated for this year's awards. The shortlist features 10 first-time nominees - Amy Bryce, Benjamin Tassie [for A Ladder is Not the Only Kind of Time, see my review of the recording], Cassandra Miller, Jane Stanley, Lawrence Dunn, Lisa Illean, Rufus Isabel Elliot, Rūta Vitkauskaitė, Ryan Latimer and Soosan Lolavar. 

Amongst previous winners, the shortlist also features works by Sir George Benjamin (recipient of the Ivor Novello Award for Outstanding Works Collection in 2022), Matthew Herbert (recipient of the Ivor Novello Award for Innovation in 2023) and Jonathan Dove (recipient of The Ivors Classical Music Award in 2008) who is nominated this year for his opera Itch [see my review]. Whilst Julian Anderson, Cassandra Miller and Laurence Osborn have all been nominated twice.

Subject matter and themes in the works go well beyond the traditional. Two works focus on sexuality and queer communities, Julian Anderson’s ECHOES, which was commissioned for Classical Pride, and Philip Venables’ music theatre piece The Faggots and their Friends Between Revolutions. Hannah Conway’s FLY/WORK/GROW highlights the devastating impact of temporary accommodation and homelessness has on child health and development, whilst Bushra El-Turk’s opera Woman at Point Zero is based on the 1975 novel of the same name by the Egyptian feminist and activist Nawal El Saadawi [see my interview with Bushra El-Turk, talking about the opera].

Gavin Higgins: Horn Concerto, London premiere - Ben Goldscheider, Gavin Higgins, Christopher Warren Green, London Chamber Orchestra (Photo: Jerome Weatherald)

Nature and climate change is another perennial theme. Works highlighting our relationship with our planet, nature and the changes we are facing as humans include Christian Mason’s environmental cantata The Singing Tree, Gavin Higgins’ Horn Concerto, which celebrates his relationship with forests and love of woodlands [see my review of the London premiere] and Tiding II (silentium) by Lisa Illean which focusses on the ocean. Other works inspired by the ocean and water are Benjamin Tassie’s A Ladder is Not the Only Kind of Time, Dan Jones’ Each Tiny Drop and Duncan MacLeod’s Orasaigh.

Full details from the Ivors Academy website.

Sound magic: En Couleur from the percussion group, Trio Colores

En Couleur: Saint-Saens, Ravel, Tailleferre, Debussy, Milhaud;  Trio Colores (Fabian Ziegler, Luca Staffelbach and Matthias Kessper); Solo Musica
Reviewed 7 October 2024

Sensitivity of touch and an ear for timbre and colour bring a sense of timbral magical to these reinventions of French music for a group playing marimbas, vibraphones and glockenspiels

The art of a good transcription is to reinvent the original in a way which remains true but exploits all the characteristics of the new genre. Sometimes this can be radical and sometimes quite discreet; playing much of Bach's keyboard music on the piano requires only minor adjustment whereas Busoni's piano transcription of the Chaconne from Violin Partita No. 2 has a significant amount of Busoni added to the Bach. How could it not, as the original was for a single instrumental line with harmony just touched in. 

On this new disc, En Couleur on Solo Musica from Trio Colores (Fabian Ziegler, Luca Staffelbach and Matthias Kessper, mallett percussion) we have Saint-Saens' Danse Macbre, Maurice Ravel's Le Tombeau de Couperin, Germainne Tailleferre's Toccata, Debussy's Petite Suite and Daius Milhaud's Scaramouche transcribed for a trio playing two marimbas, three vibraphones and two glockenspeils. This is the debut CD of a trio founded at Zürcher Hochschule der Künste (Zurich University of the Arts) by three Swiss and Austrian musicians.

Ethel Smyth returns to Germany: The Wreckers in Karlsruhe, The Wreckers - Der Leuchtturm des Todes in Meiningen, Strandrecht in Schwerin

Ethel Smyth: The Wreckers - Badisches Staatstheater Karlsruhe (Photo: Felix Grünschloß)

Ethel Smyth's The Wreckers has a fascinatingly international history, the work was written to a French libretto by a France-based American, premiered in German translation in Leipzig. For more background see my 2016 article celebrating The Wreckers at 110, and my 2023 article, A Lady and her Reputation.

More recently, the opera has been catching attention, most notably in productions at Glyndebourne in 2022 [see my review, the premiere of the original French version] and Houston Grand Opera. But this season, The Wreckers seems to be returning to Germany and there are three different productions during the seasons, and even more fascinatingly, each one uses a slightly different version of the opera!

On 29 September, Keith Warner directed a production at the Badisches Staatstheater in Karlsruhe, conducted by Georg Fritsch. This was the German premiere of the 1909 English version created by Smyth for the work's UK premiere. German press reaction to the opera seems to have been positive [see the theatre's press page] with Andreas Falentin in Die deutsche Bühne saying 'Diese Musik ist tatsächlich aufregend – und ungehört' [This music is really exciting - and unheard of.]

There are performances of The Wreckers in Karlsruhe through November and December, and Keith Warner's production looks worth catching, see the theatre's website for details.

This premiere would be fascinating enough, and Karlsruhe has a history with rediscovering works, their production of Meyerbeer's Le Prophète in 2015, directed by Tobias Kratzer, was notable [see the review in Forum Opera]. But what is even more fascinating is that this season, there are two further productions of Smyth's opera in Germany, in Meiningen and Schwerin. Both in German, but both using different versions of the opera.

In Meiningen, a new production opens at Staatstheater Meiningen on 25 October 2024. Jochen Biganzoli's production, conducted by Killian Farrell, will be the German premiere of the original version of the work, that performed at Glyndebourne in 2022, in a new German translation by John Bernhoff. The opera is being presented as The Wreckers - Der Leuchtturm des Todes [the lighthouse of death]. There are performances through to February 2025, see the theatre's website.

On 7 February 2025, the Mecklenburgisches Staatstheater in Schwerin will be performing Smyth's Strandrecht in German in a production directed by Daniela Kerck and conducted by Mark Rohde. This seems to be a performance of the 1909 version of the opera. There are performances of Strandrecht in Schwerin through to May 2025, see the theatre's website for details.

Earth Unwrapped: Sirens for a wounded planet - Kings Place's latest year-long series announced

Kings Place's 17th instalment in its year-long Unwrapped series will be exploring our relationship with nature and the eco-system, plant life and ornithology, the climate crisis, activism, protest and more, through music and spoken word. 

Earth Unwrapped, subtitled Sirens for a wounded planet, begins in January 2025 and continues throughout that year. The series will feature artists in residence, Mercury Prize nominated singer-songwriter Sam Lee, composer and producer Gazelle Twin (aka UK composer, producer, singer and visual artist Elizabeth Bernholz) and sound artist Jason Singh. 

The Sacconi Quartet and Festival Voices open Earth Unwrapped with a rare performance of Terry Riley’s Sun Rings, celebrating Riley’s 90th birthday in 2025 and the first London performance of the work in over 20 years. Utilising audio recordings of NASA’s Voyager I and II, the 10-movement suite questions humanity’s place in the universe. The Ligeti Quartet also celebrate Riley with a performance of his seminal work Cadenza on the Night Plain and the premiere of a new arrangement of Poppy Nogood and the Phantom Band.

Theatre of Voices present the UK premiere of a new work by Julia Wolfe (a Kings Place commission) alongside Nigel Osborne’s The Tree of Life, inspired by his work in Lebanon with Syrian children in refugee camps. Erland Cooper presents the world premiere of his new work The Peregrine for small ensemble, inspired by J.A. Baker’s book of the same name. Cellist Nicholas Altstaedt joins the Carice Singers for an evening of old and new music that questions our relationship with an increasingly threatened environment including premieres from Raquel García-Tomas and Josephine Stephenson, as well as music from Galina Grigorjeva and JS Bach.

Violinist Daniel Pioro joins forces with Manchester Camerata for Vivaldi’s The Four Seasons, interspersed with newly commissioned poetry by Sir Michael Morpurgo preceded by Caroline Shaw’s The Evergreen. Pioro also curates a weekend of deep listening entitled Time Unravelling, Sound Unfolding, inspired by Pauline Oliveros’ concept of deep listening. Audiences will be invited to actively listen and explore emotional states via the music of Bach, Oliveros, Tenney and a new commission in collaboration with Valgeir Sigurðsson. Oliveros’s music is also featured by The House of Bedlam and soprano Juliet Fraser, pairing her To Valerie Solanas and Marilyn Monroe in Recognition of Their Desperation, written in the aftershock of political upheavals of 1968, with Larry Goves Crow Rotations, performed in-the-round and enhanced through the d&b audiotechnik Soundscape system.

The venue's resident ensemble, Aurora Orchestra, present a year-long exploration of Gustav Mahler and his fascination with nature. Resident Quartet, the Piatti Quartet take a contemporary look at our relationship with nature and the English landscape with a programme centred around the poet Alice Oswald, the quartet perform works by Joseph Phibbs, Imogen Holst, Thomas Ades and Britten. Voces8 and the Carducci Quartet present The Lost Birds, an tribute to bird species driven to extinction by humankind. The Solem Quartet contemplate and mourn Earth’s current condition, with works from Hildegard von Bingen, John Metcalf, Nick Martin, Meredith Monk and Max Richter.

All thus plus folk, jazz and much much more. Full details from Kings Place's website.

nonclassical at 20: legendary music promoter celebrates with a concert alongside the London Symphony Orchestra including five world premieres

"in music many people are never exposed to long-form compositions, or more challenging works; and I think they should be"
nonclassical founder, Gabriel Prokofiev

nonclassical in action (Photo: Nick Rutter)

Music promoter, record label and events producer - nonclassical embraces a variety of roles and for twenty years has also embraced other genres and unconventional spaces, cultivating a young and dedicated following. Now celebrating its 20th birthday, nonclassical began in 2004 as a merging of contemporary classical music with electronic music and culture with its first concert of the Elysian Quartet in the Shoreditch club Cargo.

Founded by composer Gabriel Prokofiev, nonclassical reimagined the classical concert experience, with adventurous cross-genre programming using spaces beyond the concert hall that were radical for the early noughties, and directly paved the way for today’s norm of classical music in unconventional spaces and formats. 

Founder, Gabriel Prokofiev, comments: "At the very beginning nonclassical was completely DIY. I had this strong conviction that contemporary classical music had a huge potential audience who just weren’t aware of the existence of new classical music (which they would find to be very relevant and inspiring). The whole project was driven by passion and a belief that contemporary classical was unnecessarily hidden-away, and that it could bring so much to more people's lives. I’ve often commented that most people read long novels, short stories, newspaper articles, comics (a full range of duration & difficulty), but in music many people are never exposed to long-form compositions, or more challenging works; and I think they should be & would benefit from it. Radio & promoters often tend to under-estimate the public, and so us composers need to do out best to get our music out to new audiences."

nonclassical is celebrating 20 years with an event at the Hackney Empire on 26 October 2024, with a programme of music all composed in the last decade, including five world premieres and one UK premiere, showcasing 13 contemporary works from emerging and established composers. 

For the concert, nonclassical joins forces with the London Symphony Orchestra and the evening includes the premiere of sound artist and musician Beatrice Dillon's first work for orchestra, along with the first ever concerto for drum machine and orchestra, plus Tonia Ko demonstrating her bubble wrap virtuosity, Emily Abdy on vocals, Gabriel Prokofiev and Sasha Scott on live electronics, all with the LSO. There will also be a live DJ set from Matthew Herbert.

Further details of the celebratory concert from the Hackney Empire's website.

"Radio & promoters often tend to under-estimate the public, and so us composers need to do out best to get our music out to new audiences" 
 nonclassical founder, Gabriel Prokofiev

From expressionist nightmare to radiant energy: Schoenberg's Pierrot Lunaire & Schubert's String Quintet at Hatfield

Queen Elizabeth I awaiting the performance of Schoenberg's Pierrot Lunaire in the Marble Hall at Hatfield House

Schoenberg: Pierrot Lunaire, Schubert: String Quintet in C; Claire Booth, Ensemble 360, Magnus Johnston, Max Baillie, Brett Dean, Guy Johnston; Hatfield House Music Festival
Reviewed 13 October 2024

A vividly Expressionist account of Schoenberg's influential masterpiece contrasting with Schubert's late chamber work in a performance full of vibrant energy

Two contrasting masterpieces, written under a century apart, each having a completely different effect on its first performance. The premiere of Schoenberg's Pierrot Lunaire in Berlin in 1912 would resonate around the Western classical world. Stravinsky and Edgar Varese and their reports of the premiere would influence French composers such as Ravel, the instrumental ensemble Schoenberg used would become a defining ensemble of 20th century music, and Schoenberg's use of half-speech, half-song would free composers' imaginations. Some 84 years earlier, in Vienna, Schubert's String Quintet in C major had just the opposite effect. Written in the last months of Schubert's life, he failed to interest a publisher in the work and the manuscript languished after Schubert's death. The work was only published in 1853.

The closing concert of this year's Hatfield House Music Festival, in the Marble Hall at Hatfield House on Sunday 13 October 2024 paired the two works. Soprano Claire Booth and Ensemble 360 (Juliet Bausor, flute, Robert Plane, clarinet, Benjamin Nabarro, violin, Gemma Rosefield, cello, Tim Horton, piano) performed Schoenberg's Pierrot Lunaire, then the festival's artistic director, cellist Guy Johnston joined Magnus Johnston, violin, Max Baillie, violin, the composer Brett Dean wearing his viola playing hat, and cellist Gemma Rosefield from Ensemble 360 to perform Schubert's String Quintet.

Claire Booth has lived a long time with Schoenberg's Pierrot Lunaire, she first performed it with Pierre Boulez shortly after leaving college and studied it with Jane Manning. Claire Booth and Ensemble 360 first performed Pierrot Lunaire together last year and they have since recorded the work and done further performances this year. In June this year, Claire Booth and I talked about Schoenberg, see my interview 'Expressionism and rigour', and it is worth revisiting her thoughts on Pierrot Lunaire. 

'Claire is a firm believer in the necessity of being accurate when it comes to the pitches Schoenberg notated, and she points out that if you simply sing the vocal line, then the pitches sung prove to be important to what is going on musically underneath. Whatever else Claire does with the Sprechstimme, she wants it to be accurate and she comments that with the majority of other roles in the classical and 20th century repertoire, it is regarded as important that you are accurate but with Pierrot Lunaire, there has developed the idea that this does not matter. She goes on to emphasise that within the bounds of respect for the notes that are written, there is still lots of scope; once you find the notes, then there is lots that you can do with it. Schoenberg deserves that you be rigorous.'

The performers were placed in an arc, with Booth at its centre. The result, in terms of the sound, meant that she was very much primus inter pares rather than being completely spotlit, her vocal line part of the chamber ensemble. Word, pitch and vocal expression are clearly important to her, but the performance encompassed far more than that and ever syllable was accompanied by vivid gesture. Each of the movements became a small masterpiece in expressionist story-telling with Booth's body language almost as important as the sound of her voice. We were provided with English translations but frankly, if you looked down to read them you missed so much.

The pairing of Marc-Antoine Charpentier’s Actéon with Jean-Philippe Rameau’s Pygmalion proved a perfect double-bill for baroque aficionados offering a delightful, entertaining and pleasant evening

Page from the edition of Ovid's Metamorphoses published by Lucantonio Giunti in Venice, 1497

Marc-Antoine Charpentier: Actéon, Jean-Philippe Rameau:Pygmalion; Anna Dennis, Rachel Redmond, Katie Bray, Thomas Walker , Academy of Ancient Music, Laurence Cummings; Barbican
Reviewed by Tony Cooper, 9 October 2024

Rarities on the British stage such dramas of human emotion and divine power contained in Marc-Antoine Charpentier’s Actéon and Jean-Philippe Rameau’s Pygmalion were penned by two of the most imaginative and well-respected composers of the French baroque era. 

The Academy of Ancient Music’s two mythological masterpieces of baroque opera, Marc-Antoine Charpentier’s Actéon, and Jean-Philippe Rameau’s Pygmalion, sung in French at London’s Milton Court Concert Hall was blessed by an extremely fine and stellar quartet of soloists comprising Anna Dennis and Rachel Redmond (sopranos), Katie Bray (mezzo-soprano), Thomas Walker (tenor) and Laurence Cummings (director/harpsichord). 

Based upon the third book of Metamorphoses, written by the celebrated Roman poet Ovid between 1683 and 1685, the original title of Charpentier’s one-act opera is Actéon - Pastorale en musique; it received a private performance at the Hôtel de Guise, the house of the composer’s appreciative and wealthy patron, the Duchesse de Guise affectionately known as Mlle de Guise. The author of the libretto, however, is not known but is often thought as being Thomas Corneille. An associate of Jean-Baptiste Lully his adaptations of stories from the Metamorphoses bear a likeness to the libretto of Actéon. 

Intimate & communicative: Solomon's Knot brings its distinctive approach to Monteverdi's Vespers of 1610 at Wigmore Hall

Title page of the "Bassus Generalis" for one of the partbooks in which the Vespers were published in 1610

Monteverdi: Vespers of 1610; Solomon's Knot; Wigmore Hall
Reviewed 12 October 2024

A chance to hear Monteverdi's vespers in an acoustic bringing out the more intimate qualities, with the highly communicative singers enjoying the more madrigalian elements of the music

After hearing The Sixteen in Monteverdi's Vespers of 1610 in the acoustic splendour of Temple Church [see my review] earlier in the week, on Saturday it was the turn of a rather different approach.

Solomon's Knot, artistic director Jonathan Sells, returned to Wigmore Hall on Saturday 12 October 2024 with their own distinctive take on Monteverdi's Vespers of 1610, performed by ten singers and 14 instrumentalists, all on a very full Wigmore Hall stage.

The singers sang from memory, and stood in a circle with the instrumentalists behind. The result was quite a feat, both the sense of the singers performing directly do us without intervening music or music stands, but also giving such a complex piece without conductor and there were some passages that seemed to hover on the edge of the possible. It also brought out that, for all the grandness of the writing in some places, much of the work has an intimate quality. 

In the Magnificat, singers only stood up when performing so that many movements were performed by just three or four, so that solo blended into duet or trio into ensemble. There was also a chamber feel to everyone's approach, the sound was very much vocal ensemble, a group of individuals responding to each other (and we could clearly see them doing just that), with individual voices clear rather than a perfect blend. There was also a feeling of spontaneity to it, with each shaping lines accordingly.

This approach is probably closer to what Monteverdi might have imagined. What I missed, however, was a bit of space in the acoustic. In the clarity of the Wigmore Hall, everything came over admirably yet the slightly dry warmth did not compensate for the air that a more generous, church acoustic might bring. That said, it was glorious being able to hear the detail in such clarity.

Waiting till they feel they have something to say: I chat to Trio Bohémo about their debut disc

Trio Bohémo

Formed in 2019 by three Czech musicians, Matouš Pěruška (violin), Kristina Vocetková (cello) and Jan Vojtek (piano), Trio Bohémo released their debut disc on Supraphon in August 2024, featuring Schubert’s great E flat Piano Trio D929 and Smetana’s Trio in G minor Op 15. The disc has already garnered praise, and the trio has a tour of the UK during October and November 2024 [see their website for details]. 

I recently spoke to the three of them, via Zoom, to chat about the new disc, their attitude to programming and performing, and their fondness for England. The result turned into a lively discussion as they proved to be very engaging company.

I was intrigued by the programme for their debut disc, the pairing of Schubert and Smetana is not an obvious one, the two works were written nearly 30 years apart and they rather inhabit different worlds. Recording Smetana's trio was an obvious choice, the three feel a deep connection with the work and the recording linked to the 200th anniversary of Smetana's birth this year. 

The pairing of Schubert's trio took more time to decide, with discussions with the record company but the three pointed out that both are great works for piano trio. Remarkably both composers were similar ages when they wrote the pieces (though Smetana would live to be 60 whilst Schubert died aged 31, the year after he completed the trio). 

There is also a possible thematic link, that of grief and death. Smetana's trio was written in the wake of the death of his daughter, whilst Schubert's trio was amongst the last works he completed before he died. Arguably though, Schubert did not know that he was dying, but both works have an element of hope in the darkness. Smetana's trio ends in the major and you feel, in the piece, that sense of emotional healing that Smetana felt as he wrote the work. The three performers also comment that the more serious aspects of the programme balance their own naturally cheerful personalities!

Alma: Ella Milch-Sheriff's opera based on the life of Alma Mahler premieres Vienna Volksoper

Alma Mahler remains a fascinating figure. Musically active as a composer, albeit for a relatively short time, her life has been rather overshadowed by her relationships. She married the composer Gustav Mahler, the architect Walter Gropius, and the author Franz Werfel, whilst her affairs included the painter Gustav Klimt, the composer Alexander von Zemlinsky and the painter Oskar Kokoschka. The death of daughter Manon Gropius partly inspired Alban Berg's Violin Concerto. 

Since her death in 1964, her life has inspired a wide variety of art and music. Britten dedicated his Nocturne, Op. 60 to her. American satirist Tom Lehrer described her obituary as “the juiciest, spiciest, raciest obituary it has ever been my pleasure to read” and he wrote his song, Alma about her [see YouTube]. Stephen McNeff and Aoife Mannix' opera Beyond the Garden was inspired by Alma Mahler's relationship with her daughter. The opera was commissioned by Slovenian Chamber Music Theatre and premiered by them in Slovenia in 2019, and received its UK in 2022 [see Stephen's article about the opera]

Now, Alma Mahler's life has inspired another composer. Israeli composer Ella Milch-Sheriff's five-act opera, Alma, with a libretto by Ido Ricklin, receives its premiere at the Vienna Volksoper on 26 October 2024. Directed by Ruth Brauer-Kvam and conducted by Omer Meir Wellber, the work asks the question, what happens when a woman is forced to give up her potential as a composer? A portrait opera, the piece focuses on Alma as a mother, with Alma being played by soprano Annette Dasch.

Full details from the Volksoper website.

On tour from New York, the Philip Glass Ensemble at the Cambridge Music Festival

Philip Glass: Akhnaten - English National Opera, 2016 (Photo: © Richard Hubert Smith)

Philip Glass: Glassworks plus excerpts from Satyagraha, Akhnaten and The Photographer; Lisa Bielawa, Peter Hess. Mick Ross, Sam Sadigursky, Andrew Sterman, Philip Glass Ensemble, music director Michael Riesman, sound engineers Dan Bora, Ryan Kelly, production manager Michael Amacio; Cambridge Music Festival at Cambridge Corn Exchange
Reviewed by Tony Cooper, 1 October 2024

Philip Glass’ music is instantly recognisable with its pulsating rhythms, hypnotic repetition and slowly shifting patterns of notes. His music sits somewhere between classical music and rock, intricately constructed yet filled with familiar chords and clean-cut electronic sounds

Showing talent from a very early age, Philip Glass, born 31 January 1937 in Baltimore, Maryland, widely regarded as one of the most influential musicians of the 21st century, developed his great love of music from his father who owned a record shop. He later discovered that many relations on his father’s side of the family had been musicians, too, including a cousin (pianist) as well as several vaudeville performers. His parents, Latvian and Russian-Jewish emigrants, helped Holocaust survivors at the end of the Second World War by welcoming them into their home to learn English, find a job and rebuild their lives in the United States.  

Employing short ideas which gradually change resulting in an exceptionally hypnotic-layered effect so associated with minimalism, Glass much prefers to describe his work as ‘music with repetitive structures’. Therefore, over the course of a long and distinguished career, he has evolved such repetitive structures to produce a style that is instantly recognisable as a piece of ‘Philip Glass music’. 

Originally a flautist, Glass eventually focused his musical education on the keyboard. By the age of 15, he was studying mathematics and philosophy at the University of Chicago followed by composition at New York’s Juilliard School where among his fellow students was Steve Reich, widely recognised as the ‘founding father’ of the ‘Minimalist movement’. Fellow Americans such as La Monte Young, Terry Riley, Moondog and, indeed, John Adams, were in the front line in developing compositional techniques exploiting a minimalistic approach to music. 

The Light of Paradise: Paul Mealor's new choral opera inspired by medieval mystic Margery Kempe

The mediaeval mystic, Margery Kempe (ca.1373-1448) is a fascinating figure. She freed herself from the restraint of marriage and embarked on pilgrimages to sacred sites in Europe and the Middle East, dressed usually in white. Kempe considered her travels as a series of divine trials and whilst nowadays she can be seen a suffering the symptoms of various mental illnesses, she distilled them into The Booke, a spiritual autobiography that she began in 1430, despite being illiterate.

The manuscript was copied, probably shortly before 1450, by someone who signed himself Salthows; this scribe has been shown to be the Norwich monk Richard Salthouse. However after the 16th century Kempe's book was essentially lost; the only surviving manuscript was found again in 1934 the private library of the Butler-Bowdon family, and this is now in the British Library.

The Light of Paradise is a new work by Paul Mealor which was commissioned by the Zurich Chamber Singers. An hour long work for choir and saxophone quartet, Mealor describes it as a choral opera. Its fourteen movements, devotions Mealor calls them, are loosely based on the fourteen stations of the Way of the Cross, using words by Kempe to create a narrative arc, presenting the story of her pilgrimage as well as unfolding her religious universe. 

The result is neither opera nor oratorio, and mixes choral writing with solos and music for the saxophone quartet. Mealor creates a distinctive sound world all of his own. Whilst Mealor's musical style is a long way from that of Arvo Pärt, listening to The Light of Paradise you cannot help but think about the way Pärt reinvented the Lutheran passion in his own image. 

British composers have rather shied away from the more ecstatic, mystical side to Catholicism. You have to remember that Elgar's Dream of Gerontius was regarded as rather too Catholic for the Three Choirs Festival (even as late as the 1930s, the Dean of Peterborough banned the work from the cathedral). So it is intriguing, and heartening, to find Mealor treating religious mysticism so directly and in  work that makes it approachable.

Paul Mealor's The Light of Paradise was premiered by the Zurich Chamber Singers and Sonic Art Saxophone Quartet, conductor Christian Erny in January 2024 [see details], and is released on the Berlin Classics label - https://BC.lnk.to/lightofparadiseID

Everyone clearly enjoyed themselves and brought the house down: Harry Christophers & The Sixteen in Monteverdi's Vespers of 1610 at Temple Church

Basilica of Santa Barbara at the Palazzo Ducale in Mantua
where Monteverdi was working when he wrote his Vespers of 1610

Monteverdi: Vespers of 1610; The Sixteen, Harry Christophers; Temple Music Foundation at Temple Church
Reviewed 8 October 2024

Technically assured and finely expressive performance that filled the Temple Church with extraordinary richness from bravura moments to intimate magic 

There is something rather tantalising about Monteverdi's Vespers of 1610, so many questions. We tend to view it in the light of Monteverdi's subsequent appointment to St Mark's in Venice, but if we think about Monteverdi at the time of writing it (working in Mantua, keen to leave and with an eye on a job in Rome) it is less clear where it was written for. The work is full of questions like that, and prime amongst those of course is whether it is a 'work' at all. But what we cannot question is the extraordinary richness of the music, and all those questions mean that each music director is free to take their own view of the work, make their own decisions.

At Temple Church on 8 October 2024, Temple Music Foundation presented Harry Christophers and The Sixteen in Monteverdi's Vespers of 1610. Christophers took a large-scale, choral view of the work so we had a choir of 20 plus and instrumental ensemble of 18 with soloists Katy Hill and Charlotte Mobbs (soprano), Jeremy Budd and Mark Dobell (tenor), Ben Davies and Eamonn Dougan (bass) stepping out from the choir, though this should not disguise the extraordinary quality of the individual soloists. 

Using full choir to perform the large-scale psalm settings in the work means that you need technically adept choral singers, and The Sixteen had that in spades. This was one of those performances where you never needed to worry about the significant technical difficulties, all was superbly realised, even to the Magnificat which was performed at the high pitch (another one of those questions).