Two weeks to go to win tickets for Roderick Williams recital at Temple Music

There are still two weeks left to enter our fabulous competition to win tickets for Roderick Williams and Julius Drake's recital on 14 November, when they will be performing Brahms's song cycle Die schone Magelone in the historic Temple Church. 

See our competition page for details of how to enter.

Malcolm Arnold Festival - concertos to the fore

This year's Malcolm Arnold Festival in Northampton will be putting the composer's concertos centre stage. The Festival runs from 19 to 20 October 2013 with events in Northampton centred on Royal and Derngate. Both Arnold's works for guitar and orchestra, the guitar concerto and the Serenade, will be performed by the Berkeley Ensemble. John Gibbons will be conducting the Ealing Symphony Orchestra in the Organ Concerto, Recorder Concerto and a suite from Sweeny Todd. Clarinettist Julian Bliss will be performing the 2nd Clarinet Concerto in a programme which includes Arnold's film music. 

The festival will be opened by Dame Monica Mason who danced the part of Clytemnestra in the world premiere of Arnold's Electra at the Royal Ballet in 1963 (with choreography by Robert Helpmann). New work in the festival includes a fanfare by Toby Young who won the Malcolm Arnold competition in 2010 and a new piece by Michael Berkeley.

Full information from the Malcolm Arnold Festival website.

Powerful stuff - Eisler songs - Matthias Goerne

Hanns Eisler is something of a contradictory composer. Described by Schoenberg as his favourite pupil, Eisler then questioned what music was for and aligned himself with the highly politicised Bertholt Brecht. War brought exile and disillusion in Hollywood, but post-war brought further disillusion in Communist East Germany. As such his career can seem something like a template for the career of the artist in the 20th century.

This new disc on Harmonia Mundi from Matthias Goerne follows up on his recording of Eisler's Hollywood Songbook. Here we get songs with piano, played by Thomas Lachner, setting texts by Bertholt Brecht, and written in Eisler's Hollywood years, plus his Ernste Gesange for baritone and strings written just before his death. Here Goerne is accompanied by Ensemble Resonanz.

The Ernste Gesange (Serious Songs) were completed in 1962 a few weeks before his death. The songs are bound up in Eisler's reaction to the Twentieth Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. Throughout his life Eisler remained convinced of a Communism with a human face, at odds with the repressive Soviet regime.

Rosalyn Tureck - a centenary tribute

When I was at university in the 1970's, busy learning about music as well as mathematics, Rosalyn Tureck was still one of the icons of the keyboard, renowned for her Bach playing. This year is not only her centenary (she was born in Chicago, Illinois, on 14 December 1913),  but the tenth anniversary of her death. Her reputation has dimmed somewhat in the years since her death, partly because she was such a pioneer and nowadays the musical world has changed a lot. Despite all the discussions over women on the podium, having a woman playing Bach on the harpsichord or piano is no longer a point of discussion, thank goodness. But it is partly thanks to Tureck's example that such an attitude is possible today.

She started her keyboard studies on the piano in Chicago, where she was in high school with the novelist Saul Bellow. She went on to study at the Juilliard School in New York, where her class mates included Jorge Bolet and Earl Wild. Tureck later taught at the Juilliard as well as at the Mannes School of Music, Columbia University and the University of Maryland. In 1970 she was made a life fellow of St. Hilda's College, Oxford and in 1973 became a visiting fellow of Wolfson College Oxford. If you mention Tureck's name to someone of a certain age from the UK, then it this period when she was living in Oxford for which she is remembered most.

Second View: Die Fledermaus at the London Coliseum

Edgaras Montvidas, Andrew Shore, Julia Sporsen
photo:Robert Workman/ENO

The premiere of English National Opera's new production of Johann Strauss's Die Fledermaus was covered by Hilary for this blog. Reviews of the opera had been mixed, so I caught up with the production on 11 October 2013. Director Christopher Alden has folded references to Sigmund Freud and other late 19th century Viennese cultural icons into his staging (designed by Allen Moyer with costumes by Constance Hoffman) which was first seen in 2012 at Canadian Opera. For this staging ENO provided a strong cast with Julia Sporsen as Rosalinde, Tom Randle as her husband Eisenstein, Richard Burkhard as Falke (here a Sigmund Freud-like figure), Rhian Lois as the maid Adele, Jennifer Holloway as Orlofsky and Edgaras Montvidas as Alfred. Eun Sun Kim conducted, making her ENO debut.

Act one took place in Rosalinde's bedroom, an oversize space with a huge bed, scale distorted. But at a certain point cracks appeared, through which dancing girls and the like came. During the overture we had watched Rosalinde dream of bats and Dr. Falke's bat costume made frequent appearances in the opera. But Christopher Alden applied a light touch and the act was amusingly diverting. Problems occurred after the interval, Rosalinde's bed was now occupied by Orlofsky (Jennifer Holloway), albeit in a huge ballroom. Holloway played the role with a heavy cod-Russian accent and her demented-brat act palled very quickly. The remainder of act two was patchy, with scenes delightfully staged alternating with heavy-handed ones. The repeated introduction of hypnotism palled.

Astonishing! Arias for Caffarelli

Caffarelli was one of the major figures in 18th century Italian opera, a castrato who was as famous as his compatriot Farinelli. In fact both came from Naples and both shared the same teacher, Nicola Porpora. Possessed of an astonishing technique, composers of all varies wrote for him in a career spanning some 30 years. On this new disc from counter-tenor Franco Fagioli and Il Pomo d'Oro directed by Riccardo Minasi, Fagioli sings a selection of arias written for Caffarelli by Hasse, Vinci, Leo, Porpora, Cafaro, Sarro and Manna. And what arias they are, alternately bravura and pathetic, each was designed to show off Caffarelli's voice and technique to its utmost.

Unlike his rival Farinelli, who was modest in person, Caffarelli was the ultimate diva and his career is littered with anecdotes about his behaviour. He made one appearance in London, in the 1737/38 season for Handel, but though he sang the title roles in Handel's Serse and Faramondo, he did not make the sort of impression that Farinelli did. Caffarelli returned to Naples and a long association with the new San Carlo Theatre there.

Caffarelli's voice had an enormous compass, over two octaves from the A below middle C to the C two octaves above. Such a wide range was not necessarily a trait in the castrato voice, Senesino had quite a narrow compass. And Caffarelli excelled in trills, roulades and chromatic scale passages, whilst composers seemed to reflect his rather fiery nature in the music that they wrote for him.

English Touring Opera - Jason

Hannah Pedley in Jason,
Photography: Richard Hubert Smith

Cavalli's Jason (Giasone) was written for Venice in 1649 and was one of this prolific composer's most popular operas. The plot has very little to do with classical myth and revolves around mistaken and thwarted love in aristocrats combined with that very Venetian speciality, the comic servant (there are three in Jason). For their performance of the opera as part of their Venetian Baroque season at the Royal College of Music's Britten Theatre (seen October 10 2013), English Touring Opera chose to perform Richard Eyre's version of the opera created for the 1984 Buxton Festival. Eyre translated the piece into elegant English, cut it and, to a certain extent re-shaped it to create a fluid, fluent and relatively short opera (under two hours of music).

Ted Huffmann directed, in designs by Samal Blak, with a cast including Clint van der Linde, Hanna Pedley, Catrine Kirkman, Andrew Slater, Peter Aisher (replacing an ailing Stuart Haycock), Michal Czerniaswki, John-Colyn Gyeantey and Piotr Lempa. Joseph McHardy conducted with the Old Street Band in the pit.


Blak's fixed set consisted of an elegant 18th century style hallway with stairs and landing providing plenty of entrances and exits that the opera needs. (For the second act, set on the shores of Lemnos, the set was damaged, distressed and strewn with leaves.) Whilst Monteverdi's Coronation of Poppea mixes serious and comic elements, Cavalli's opera brings in elements of farce as well as a novelty act, a stuttering servant. So Blak's set needed its varied means of egress (at one point in act two, Medea was thrown out through a hole in the pannelling). Blak's costumes mixed eras and my biggest complaint was that it wasn't clear who these people were. King Egeus (John-Colyn Gyeantey) for instance spent the entire opera wearing a leisure suit (aka a track suit) and his servant Demus (Peter Aisher) looked more like a tramp. Jason (Clint van der Linde) seemed to be something of a James Bond-like figure in that he did everything (getting married, making love and going to war) in a three piece suit, albeit worn with knee-boots and a sword.

The Lady in Number 6: a remarkable life in music

An intriguing and remarkable film was released this summer, showcasing a moving and remarkable story. The Lady in Number 6: Music Saved My Life. The film, directed by Malcolm Clarke, tells the story of the pianist Alice Herz-Sommer. A holocaust survivor and now aged 109, the film tells the story of her remarkable life. The title comes from the fact that her neighbours in North-West London, hearing her playing the piano, referred to her simply as the Lady in Number 6.

You may never have heard of Alice Herz-Sommer, but for a period before 1939 she was a famous concert pianist in Central Europe. She was born in Prague in 1903, as a girl she knew Gustav Mahler and Franz Kafka. A gifted pianist she married the violinist Leopold Summer. Persecuted by the Nazi's in Prague, several members of her family fled to Palestine but Alice, Leopold and their son stayed behind to care for her mother.

Joyful Company Of Singers

The Joyful Company of Singers, conductor Peter Broadbent, launches its 25th anniversary season with a concert St Sepulchre without Newgate on 17 October performing music by Roxanna Panufnik, Jonathan Harvey and Poulenc's Figure Humaine, his astonishing cantata written in occupied Paris setting words by Paul Eluard. Also in the programme is music by Chris Williams, the winner of the inaugural Joyful Company's Young Composers Competition.

The group's anniversary season continues with a positive plethora of concerts, including the Rachmaninov Vespers at St Martin in the Fields (31/10), Handel's Messiah at St James's Piccadilly (14/12), music for Passiontide by Andrzej Panufnik, Sir John Tavener, James Macmillan and Giles Swayne (2/4/14) and their 25th anniversary concert on 10 June 2014 at St John's Smith Square with music by Richard Strauss, Schoenberg, Brahms, Elgar, Bingham, Stanford and Alexander Campkin. The choir are also performing at the Presteigne Festival next year (23 and 24 August 2014). Further information from the Joyful Company of Singers website.

Aci, Galatea et Polifemo

This new recording of Handel's Aci, Galatea et Polifemo  represents the final volume in Fabio Bonizzoni's survey of Handel's Italian cantatas. The disc was recorded with soprano Roberta Invernizzi, who has appeared on many of the previous discs, mezzo-soprano Blandine Stakiewicz and bass Lisandro Abadie and Bonizzoni's group La Risonanza.

Handel's serenata Aci, Galatea e Polifemo was part of a group of works by a variety of composers written for the wedding of Tolomeo Saverio Gallio, Duke of Alvito in Naples. The text is by Nicola Giuvo the secretary of Aurora, Duchess of Laurenzana who was the bride's aunt and who seems to have been the prime mover in commissioning the work. Though the subject matter might seem, to us, rather odd for a wedding, Giuvo's texts for the various pieces seem to have all dealt with ill-fated couples from Ovid's Metamorphoses. The work must be have been deemed a success at its premiere, as it was used for two further weddings, that of the Duchess of Laurenzana's son in 1711 and of the daughter of the then Hapsburg Viceroy in 1713.

Handel, of course, returned to the subject in 1718 during his years at Cannons, but Acis and Galatea has virtually no music in common with Aci, Galatea e Polifemo. But Handel did re-use the music, albeit in other works including Il Pastor Fido, Teseo, Poro, Rinaldo, Sosarme, Debora, Atalanta and Joshua. When he revived Acis and Galatea in 1732 in a larger scale oratorio version, Handel introduced arias from Aci, Galatea e Polifemo.

English Touring Opera: Coronation of Poppea

Coronation of Poppea, photograph Richard Hubert Smith

James Conway's production of Monteverdi's Coronation of Poppea was seen first November 2012 performed by students at the Royal College of Music (see my original review). Shared with English Touring Opera, the production has returned as part of ETO's Venetian Baroque season, with a new cast and revived by Oliver Platt. Conway's version of the opera is heavily cut and concentrates on the drama of principal characters, at the expense of the more comic business with the servants. In the hands of ETO's cast, Helen Sherman, Paula Sides, Piotr Lempa, Hannah Pedley, Michal Czerniawski, Stuart Haycock, Jake Arditti, Nicholas Merryweather, Russel Harcourt, Hanna Sandison, Jonn-Colyn Gyeantey ,the opera became something intense, dramatic and highly erotic. Michael Rosewell conducted with the Old Street Band in the pit.

Conway and designer Samal Blak have set the piece in Soviet Russia. Blak's two storey, rather industrial looking set allows the lower level to function as Poppea's bedroom (where most of the action takes place) and the upper level as the royal palace. Conway's interest in the opera is the use of power, and the Soviet framework gives a realistic backdrop for the autocratic rule of Nerone with its quick disappearances of people. Conway makes it clear that 'exile' is simply another word for execution. At the end there is no coronation scene and as Nerone (Helen Sherman) and Poppea (Sides) sing of their love, we see the ghost of all those who have disappeared during the opera.

Book review - A Natural History of the Piano

This new book, by Stuart Isacoff, is billed as 'The Instrument, the Music, the Musicians - from Mozart to Modern Jazz and everything in between'. Isacoff is the founding editor of the magazine Piano Today and he teaches at Purchase College Conservatory of Music. With such a billing, he is certainly raising expectations about the book and its content. The book is organised thematically, rather than strictly historically. The opening chapter starts with some of Oscar Peterson's final performances at the age of 80 and throughout the book, Isacoff seeks to link the performances off the jazz greats of today and in the past with the historical tradition of classical piano playing.

The book has now been published in paperback, in time for that awkward Christmas present

ECO launch Cadogan Hall's Chamber Orchestra Series

The English Chamber Orchestra's concert tonight (9 October 2013) at the Cadogan Hall launches Cadogan Hall's new Chamber Orchestra series. The series includes performances from the ECO, the Academy of St Martin in the Fields, L'Orchestra du Monde, London Chamber Orchestra, Philharmonic Chamber Orchestra, Mahler Chamber Orchestra, Zurich Chamber Orchestra , the Orchestra of the Swan and La Chambre Philharmonique in a series of 18 concerts. Conductor include Joshua Bell, Christopher Warren Green, Leif Ove Andsnes, ndrew Litton, Sir Roger Norrington, David Page and Emmanuel Krevine.  Repertoire varies from Bach and Vivialdi, through Mendelssohn and Berlioz to Arvo Part, Schoenberg and David Matthews.

At tonight's concert the ECO is conducted by Alissa Firsova, who is also the soloist in Mozart's Piano Concerto No. 23. Read my interview with Alissa; readers of the blog can also get discount tickets for the concert. Further information about the Cadogan Hall's Chamber Orchestra Series from the hall's website.

London Song Festival

Nigel Foster's London Song Festival returns for five concerts starting later this month, with concerts on 23, 30 October, 4, 6, 13 November at St Paul's Church, Covent Garden. The concerts include music celebrating Britten's centenary, along with Ned Rorem's 90th birthday and the 50th anniversary of Poulenc's death, plus music by Schubert and Finzi along with an evening of comedy songs. Performers include a fine selection of young singers with Foster himself accompanying.

Ned Rorem's 90th birthday is celebrated on 23 October with soprano Gillian Keith, mezzo-soprano Jennifer Johnston, tenor Nicholas Mulroy and baritone Ben McAteer performing Rorem's Evidence of Things Not Seen, his 1997 cycle of 36 songs to texts by 4 different authors.

English Touring Opera: Agrippina

Gilllian Webster as Agrippina, © Robert Workman

Handel's Agrippina, written for Venice in 1709, is the composer's first significant opera. Written to a witty libretto by Cardinal Vincenzo Grimani, it has delighted audiences ever since and fascinated because it is so unlike many of his later, highly serious operas. With its short arias, wit and fast-paced action it has proved popular with opera companies and audiences. English Touring Opera have included the work as the third opera in their Venetian Baroque season. James Conway's production, designed by Samal Blak opened at the Britten Theatre, Royal College of Music, on 8 October 2013, with Gillian Webster as Agrippina, Paula Sides as Poppea, Andrew Slater as Claudio, Clint van der Linde as Ottone, Jake Ardittti as Nerone, Luke D Williams as Lesbo, Nicholas Merryweather as Pallante, and Russell Harcourt as Narciso. Jonathan Peter Kenny conducted with the Old Street Band in the pit.

The opera was sung in English in James Conway's new translation. This took inspiration from the wit of the English 17th century writers, with fine results. The surtitles did not project the words as such, but rather arch summaries in a similarly 17th century style which in fact rather came over like those in a silent film.

New multi-million pound music development in Belgium

In a welcome sign of investment in and confidence in the musical arts, the Queen Elisabeth Music Chapel in Belgium has announced the development of a new multi-million pound building to include a state of the art concert hall, 20 residential studios, two additional music studios in the context of a global artists village. The new building will form a back-drop to the existing Art Deco building.

The Chapel was started 75 years ago, and was one of the first such institutions to have a residential programme. They also have an impressive array of artists in residence including Maria João Pires, Gary Hoffman, Augustin Dumay and the Artemis Quartet, and even offer their students recording contracts and career integration into their studies. The chapel currently hosts 46 young artists from all over the world. The new residential studios will provide enviable new facilities, each with its own grand piano and sleeping platform.

The new buildings are designed by architects Olivier Bastin, Sébastien Cruyt, with landscape architect Jean Noël Capart in charge of the redevelopment of the park.

Buxton Festival 2014

Pauline Viardot as Orpheo in 1860

Buxton Festival has announced the operas for its 2014 festival, which runs from 11 to 27 July 2014. The opera's on offer next year will be Dvorak's The Jacobin, Gluck's Orfeo ed Euridice, Rossini's Otello and H.K. Gruber's Gloria - A pigtale. The first three are all the festival's own productions, though the Rossini will only be heard in concert. H.K.Gruber's opera is a visiting production from the Opera Group

Dvorak's The Jacobin will be conducted by the festival's artistic director Stephen Barlow, directed by Stephen Unwin and designed by Paul Willis (the same team behind the festival's fine production of Strauss's Intermezzo in 2012).  Dvorak's opera is something of a neglected masterpiece and has never gained the currency in the UK that it deserves, it is the sort of opera which crops up every so often. Its last outing was a concert performance by the BBC at the Barbican and Scottish Opera performed it in the 1990's.

Co-Oper8 - help support new youth opera company

Recently Co-Opera Co undertook a mini survey of their audiences; a perhaps surprising conclusion from this survey was that the majority of singers and audience members had discovered their love for opera in their formative years from actively taking part in a production rather than simply seeing a performance. So the company has decided to do something about this, to encourage young people.

In November, Co-Opera Co is launching a new youth opera company, Co-Opera8, in Bury St. Edmnuds. Young people between eight and 18 will be working with members of Co-Opera Co throughout the year and in a two week summer course which will culminate in two performances of an opera at the Apex, Bury St. Edmunds in August 2014. Of course, such things cost money.

To raise money for this exciting new venture, they are taking part in the Big Give Christmas Challenge, giving them the possibility of raising over £20,000 in matched funding. The first challenge is to raise £5,000 in pledges before 11 October. The are looking for people willing to pledge £100 (not payable until Januar 2014). Further information about Co-Opera8 from their website and if you can pledge money, then you can do so at the Big Give website.

Widor - Organ Symphonies nos 3 and 4, op 13

In May 2011, Joseph Nolan recorded Charles-Marie Widor's ten organ symphonies at La Madeleine, Paris for Signum. This disc is the third volume, containing symphonies nos 3 and 4, op 13 which Widor published in 1872. Widor was the organist at St Sulpice in Paris where a huge Cavaillé-Coll organ was installed in 1862. The sound world of Widor's organ music is intimately bound up with the sound of the Cavaillé-Coll organ. The organ at La Madeleine was installed by Cavaillé-Coll in 1846 and though it has been restored and extended, the instrument makes a fine vehicle for the music.

Charles-Maries Widor (1844-1937) is one of the great survivors of 19th century French music, remaining in place as organist of St. Suplice in Paris from 1870 to 1933. He was one of the prime movers in the revival of French organ music and wrote ten organ symphonies. Whilst individual movements from Widor's symphonies have remained popular, notably the famous Toccata, the symphonies themselves as complete works have been notably neglected and have only more recently started to come back into common currency. The works on this disc are not symphonies in the sense that Beethoven would have used the term. Widor attended the opening Bayreuth Festival in 1876, but the symphonies were written before Widor had fully absorbed the harmonic language of Liszt and Wagner into his style.  The symphonies are fare more influenced by the sense of the baroque suite, and the harmonic language is relatively straightforward, plain even. But what he does is weave into this a striking command of counterpoint, the lines in the music is in constant motion.

Song cycles: The English Poetry and Song Society

The 30^th anniversary concert of the English Poetry and Song Society at St. James's Church, Piccadilly on the 4^th October 2013 was a pleasant evening of storytelling in song. Soprano Sarah Leonard and baritone Stephen Varcoe provided the voices, supported by Nigel Foster on piano. Together the three brought poetry to life. The programme included song cycles by Benjamin Britten and Ivor Gurney, plus songs by Sulyen R. Caradon (otherwise known as Richard Carder - the concert organiser), Janet Oates, Clive Pollard, Betty Rowe, Raymond Warren and Robert Hugill.

A great supporter of contemporary music, Sarah studied at the Guildhall School of Music and has recently been awarded an honorary doctorate in music from Hull University where she teaches. She has collaborated with composers as diverse as Birtwistle, Boulez, Dusapin, Ferneyhough, Harle, Harvey, Lachenmann, Ligeti and Nyman, and sung with the BBC Singers, Hilliard Ensemble, the Michael Nyman Band, and the Birmingham, London, and San Francisco Symphony.

Stephen Varcoe has performed songs and opera all over the world including Haydn's L'infedeltà delusa and Debussy's Fall of the House of Usher. He teaches singing at the Royal College of Music and has produced more than 150 recordings of songs from Baroque to modern. He gained his PhD in the history and practice of song performance from the University of York.