First Time Live - Youth: more music to more towns

First Time Live - Youth, Orchestras Live's orchestral touring initiative, will be bringing more orchestral music to hard to reach areas, both in terms of geography and in terms of access to orchestral concerts. Working with local partners, Orchestra Live will present the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra and the City of London Sinfonia a series of concerts and workshops during Spring 2014 at schools in March (Cambridgeshire), Peterborough, Thurrock, Doncaster, Grimsby and Mansfield.

One of the distinctive features of First Time Live – Youth is that is puts young people at the centre of the project and gives them responsibility for creating a major orchestral concert for their peers. This includes selecting concert repertoire, scriptwriting, sound and lighting design, video projection, stage management, writing press releases, blogging, photography, concert presentation and even conducting. The result generates high levels of engagement and enthusiasm amongst participants, both in the audience and on stage, including the professional musicians.

London A Cappella Festival

The London A Cappella Festival is back at King's Place from 22 to 25 January 2014, with a varied range of a cappella music. Curated by Ikon Arts and the Swingle Singers (who have just celebrated their 50th anniversary), the event is in its fifth year. This year's events open with a treat, the Estonian Philharmonic Chamber Choir (Eesti Filharmoonia Kammerkoor) presents An Eastern Vigil with music from Estonia and from Russia (22/1, at LSO St Lukes) They will be joined by saxophonist Gilad Atzmo in a programme which includes music by Arvo Part (Magnificat and Nunc Dimittis), Alfred Schnittke (Three Sacred Hymns), Cyrillus Kreek, Vasyl Barvinskyi, Nikolai Kedrov and excerpts from Rachmaninov's All Night Vigil Op.39

The remaining events are all at King's Place, and other groups include the American 'rock band without instruments' The House Jacks, the British close-harmony group The Song Men, the Swedish super-group The Real Group, The Time Ensemble and the festival is brought to a close with a concert by The Swingle Singers.

Throughout the day on Saturday 25 January at King's Place there are workshops covering such diverse topics as Brazilian Body Percussion, improvising with members of The House Jacks, vocal skills with Bob Chilcott, jazz with The Real Group and a workshop with choral director Dominic Peckham.

Further information from the London A Cappella Festival website.

Jephtha - The Sixteen at the Barbican

James Gilchrist

Handel - Jephtha: The Sixteen, Harry Christophers, James Gilchrist: Barbican Centre, London
Reviewed by Robert Hugill on Jan 14 2014
Star rating: 5.0
Intensely compelling performance of Handel's remarkable final oratorio.

Harry Christophers and The Sixteen brought Handel's final oratorio, Jephtha, to the Barbican (14 January 2014) preparatory to recording the work. The cast of experienced Handelians included James Gilchrist in the title role, with Susan Bickley as his wife Storge, Sophie Bevan as his daughter Iphis, Robin Blaze as her fiancee Hamor and Matthew Brook as Jephtha's brother Zebul. The result was a finely dramatic performance which bodes well for the recording, to be released later this year on the Coro label.

Handel's oratorio, with a libretto by Revd Thomas Morrell, was written not for the stage but for concert performance, and the intention was to point a moral via uplifting music. Morrell's libretto might not be the best literary creation, but it gave Handel the opportunity to create some powerful music. Morrell used a heavy admixture of Euripides with the biblical plot and an important key to his libretto is Jephtha's family's reaction to the events. For this to work, they must be established as characters and so the first three scenes give us a sequence of arias, one for each of the five main characters, ending with a duet for the lovers Hamor and Iphis. It is not the most dramatic of sequences, and can be tricky to make work on stage.

El Sistema comes to Northern Ireland

Rafael Payare - photo credit Luis Cobelo

The Ulster Orchestra has announced that the young Venezuelan conductor, Rafael Payare, will be its next chief conductor from 2014-15 initially on a 3-year contract. Payare is a former member of the Simon Bolivar Symphony Orchestra and began his formal conducting studies in 2004 with Jose Antonio Abreu, the founder of the Venezuelan El Sistema. Abreu remains Payare's principal conducting mentor. Payare went on to work with Gustavo Dudamel, notably on a co-production of Carmen with the Teatro alla Scala, and for the Simón Bolívar Symphony Orchestra’s 2010 European tour.

It has been announced that Payare will be leading the Ulster Orchestra's outreach programme as well, with 'an ambitious new programme of community engagement, including plans to introduce the celebrated "El Sistema" programme of social musical education to Northern Ireland’s children in 2014-15.'

Rough for Opera

Rough for Opera, Second Movement's scratch night for opera returns to the Cockpit Theatre on 21 January 2014. Three young composers, Edward Henderson, Alex Groves and David Merriman, will be trying out new opera and music theatre. After each performance there is a Q and A with Professor Paul Barker of the Royal Central School of Speech and Drama, so there is a lovely chance to talk about the opera and opera making process. The three pieces are rather varied and promise some quite strong stuff, challenging both in content and in what the idea of opera is.

Edward Henderson's Manspangled with a libretto by Lavinia Murray is a dissection of masculinity using spoken opera for male voice, cello, tenor saxophone and chorus. Henderson's first collaboration with Murray, I Dust Skinheads With Icing Sugar, is being performed in January at King's Place. Henderson is studying for an MMus in composition at Trinity Laban Conservatoire of Music and Dance. His writing includes aleatoric music, found sound and improvisation alongside the more traditional notation, and he runs two inclusive community choirs. The piece is presented by Bastard Assignments, a cross-arts collective based in London.

Eclectic celebration

On Saturday 18 January the Crouch End Festival Chorus (CEFC) is presenting a programme which celebrates its 30th anniversary with a typically eclectic selection of contemporary music. Conducted by David Temple, they are performing music by TV & film composer Murray Gold (best known for his work on Dr Who) Robert Fripp (who was guitarist with King Crimson in the 1970's) and David Bedford, a composer whose work embraced both popular and more complex contemporary classical.

CEFC have performed on a number of TV soundtracks for Gold, and for their first commission of 2014 the choir will be performing Gold's when my brother fell into the river... described as a highly personal exploration of loss. Composer Andrew Keeling has arranged Robert Fripp's Soundscapes (originally written for the group King Crimson), recreating Fripp's ethereal looping effects using live singers and orchestra. The programme is completed with David Bedford's Twelve Hours of Sunset, a piece which uses involves some stunning vocal techniques which combine to create a dream-like meditation on time and space.

The concert takes place at the Barbican Centre on Saturday 18 January, David Temple conducts the Crouch End Festival Chorus and the London Orchestra da Camera, further information from the choir's website.

Che puro ciel - the rise of classical opera

Che puro ciel - the rise of classical opera: Bejun Mehta, Akademie fur Alte Musik Berlin, Rene Jacobs: Harmonia Mundi
Reviewed by Robert Hugill on Jan 13 2014
Star rating: 5.0
Fascinating and brilliantly performed: the rise of reform opera

We tend to think of Gluck's reform operas being a unique development between baroque opera and classical opera but of course it was never so simple. This new recital disc on Harmonia Mundi from counter-tenor Bejun Mehta with the Akademie fur Alte Musik Berlin conducted by Rene Jacobs, explores the world of opera at the time of Gluck. Taking in operas by Gluck, Traetta, Hasse and Mozart, the recital looks at the world of opera as composers explored the new theatrical developments and bravura virtuoso gave way to the search for a new kind of theatrical truth.

The recital opens with Che puro ciel from Gluck's Orfeo, the archetype of the classical reform opera, written for a new type of virtuoso Gaetano Guadagni. Guadagni was a castrato who had been trained to sing Handelian oratorio by the ageing Handel and who had had lessons from the actor David Garrick. When Guadagni first performed Orfeo Gluck wanted him to achieve a new kind of dramatic naturalism. (Guadagni also sang the role of Oreste in Traetta's Ifgenia in Tauride in 1763)

Still time to get discount on tomorrow's Jephtha

There is still time to take advantage of our Reader Offer to get 50% off tickets for the performance of Handel's Jephtha at the Barbican, with The Sixteen conducted by Harry Christophers and James Gilchrist in the title role. 

See our special offer page for details.

Rameau 250

A new ensemble, the International Rameau Ensemble, are appealing for funds via Kickstarter to help them launch their Rameau 250 Spring Project: a UK concert tour of Rameau's rarely performed sacred choral works, which as far as they know will be the works' premiere performances in the UK. The ensemble was founded by artistic director Lawrence Olsworth-Peter to celebrate Rameau's 250th anniversary this year. The company launched last year with a concert scenes from Rameau's operas. 

In addition to their spring tour they plan a tour of a double bill of Rameau's Pygmaleon and Anacreon in the autumn.

Olsworth-Peter trained as a tenor at the Royal Academy of Music and made his debut at Pesaro Opera Festival as Don Luigino in Il Viaggio a Reims under the direction of Alberto Zedda in 2010. He was a finalist in the 2012 Les Azuriales Young Artist Competition in Nice

You can support them via their Kickstarter page. A video of them in action follows after the break:

Scelsi, Vivier, Scott Walker and Radiohead

Filthy Lucre 3: Cults - The Bussey Building/CLA Arts Cafe Peckham
Reviewed by Robert Hugill on Jan 11 2014
Star rating: 3.0
Scelsi, Vivier, Scott Walker and Radiohead in a new type of club night

It has become popular for established ensembles to promote 'club night' style concerts in the hope of attracting a younger audience by performing music outside of the standard classical concert concept. Last night (11 January 2014) in Peckham we attended an event in this style, but one which had been created by young musicians themselves. Joe Bates and Anthony Friend started their Filthy Lucre events in Cambridge in 2010, last night's Filthy Lucre 3: Cults was the fourth such, and the first in London. They describe Filth Lucre as creating 'immersive musical experiences with carefully crafted programmes built around artistic concepts and cohesive musical ideas'. The event took place in the Bussey Building (The CLA Art Cafe) in Peckham, a re-purposed Victorian warehouse space just behind Peckham high street.
 

Filthy Lucre 3: Cults took over two floors of the building (there was a separate event, a Hawaiian Bop, upstairs on the third floor). On entry you passed bouncers and had your hand stamped just like any other club. Doors opened at 8pm and people were encouraged to arrive to have a drink before hand, and the bar did indeed have an impressive selection of wines and bottled beers (not your usual club venue this!). One whole wall was covered in atmospheric projections: Georgia Hicks is credited with design and animation, Paul Vernon with trailer and filming and Justinas Brikys with photography. A few chairs were laid out for the audience, but most were expected to stand, or sit on the floor. The orchestra had individual stand lights, so that the overall lighting level was low.

The Filthy Lucre Orchestra consisted of 23 musicians, including eight strings, conducted by Will Cole. The programme started late, but on the sound of the bass drum being banged they instrumentalists walked in, dressed in black and all wearing white face make-up with random coloured streaks (earlier I had heard two of the orchestral musicians talking back-stage with one lamenting that he'd forgotten his make-up). This matched the make-up of the dancers who mingled with the audience (more of them later).

Oxford Lieder's Schubert Project

This year's Oxford Lieder Festival is planned to be something special. Between 10 October and 1 November 2014 they will be performing every single song which Schubert wrote, that is over 650 songs. Names already confirmed for recitals include Sir Thomas Allen, Sarah Connolly, Sophie Daneman, William Dazelely, James Gilchrist, Robert Holl, Wolfgang Holzmair, Sophie Karthäuser, Angelika Kirchschlager, Stephan Loges, Christopher Maltman, Mark Padmore, Christoph Prégardien, Birgid Steinberger, Roderick Williams and pianists Eugene Asti, Julius Drake, Graham Johnson and Roger Vignoles amongst others.

The Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment, the Doric String Quartet and the Schubert Ensemble will be among the partners for chamber and orchestral music. Pianist Imogen Cooper will perform Schubert’s great final sonata in B flat, D960.

To help support the festival you can sponsor a song for as little as £25.

Concordia Foundation and Satoko Fukuda go ‘Beyond the Horizon’

Sakato Fukuda - Credit Andy Newcombe

Beyond the Horizon: Concordia Foundation & Satoko Fukuda: St Martin in the Fields
Reviewed by Hilary Glover on Jan 7 2014
Star rating: 3.0
'Beyond the Horizon' a meeting of new and old English, Japanese and South American music

The Concordia Foundation started their 2014 season with 'Beyond the Horizon' a meeting of new and old English, Japanese and South American music at St Martin in the Fields. Imagined by violinist Satoko Fukuda this concert was a showcase for her playing and her passion, dancing.

The concert began with the beautiful ‘Zen Love Song’ by Roxanne Panufnik (1968 - ) sung by Voces8, with Clive Bell playing the shakuhachi. Taken from a poem by the 15^th century Zen master Ikkyū Sōjun, this song tells the story of the loss of a little boy’s nursemaid. A fusion of renaissance part song and Japanese lullaby, the main feature is a cushion of sound from which voices and Japanese flute appear and fall back. This is followed by a section which separates out the two sounds – firstly the voices sung in English, with a more traditionally English ambience, followed by a flute solo providing the Japanese feel, before they join back together for the ending.

Llandaff Cathedral Choir - one last chance

Having been made redundant, members of Llandaff Cathedral Choir have decided to appeal against the Chapter’s decision. The ISM, who have been very active during the campaign, are supporting them through this process. 

Thanks to the campaigning in support of the choir, the Cathedral has had direct offers of funding from Wales, the UK and across the globe (pledges can be made by email to llandaff@ism.org), and funding for choirs such as Llandaff Cathedral Choir is available from charitable trusts. 

There is still a small chance that the cathedral authorities minds can be changed and the ISM is suggesting people email the Cathedral Authorities

Spring at the Guildhall School of Music

The spring term at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama includes a recital by Tasmin Little, masterclasses from a range of distinguished practitioners, the launch of Rolf Hind's new CD, a conference on audience engagement, performances of Shakespeare's Henry V and Hamlet and a staging of Jonathan Dove's opera Pinocchio

Musicians from the Guildhall School will be joining the BBC for their two Total Immersion days, devoted to Thea Musgrave (15 February) and Villa-Lobos (8 March). The Guildhall New Music Ensemble is conducted by James Weeks in a programme of music by Aldo Clementi, Salvatore Sciarrino, Edmund Finnis (a recent DMus graduate) and Thomas Fournil (a current BMus composer) (3 April).

Singing for Dürer - the Courtauld Community Choir

In connection with the Courtauld Gallery's Young Dürer Exhibition, I joined the Courtauld Community Choir to perform at last night's late opening (9 January 2014). The music for the evening was all themed around music of Dürer's time, such as a group playing recorder consort music from the period. The choir, under the direction of Joseph Timmons, sang music by Heinrich Isaac and JS Bach along with some pieces to celebrate Epiphany and to get the audience singing as well.

We met to rehearse a couple of hours before, always a strange experience being led through the maze that is the Courtauld Institute (the door opposite that of the gallery, leading into the other half of Somerset House). Rehearsing in a seminar room is not ideal, but at least it meant that we had nice surprise when we moved to the more gracious acoustic of the Courtauld Gallery.

Aurora's Road Trip

Road Trip: The Aurora Orchestra/Nicholas Collon at King's Place
Reviewed by Hilary Glover on Jan 4 2014
Star rating: 3.5
A Road Trip across America to investigate what makes America music unique

From a modern take on traditional folk songs to Ives, Copland and Carter, the Aurora Orchestra went on a ‘Road Trip’ across America, at the Kings Place in London, to investigate what makes American music unique. With programme notes in the style of Jack Kerouac and images of an open top American car they were all set.

Aurora Orchestra conducted by Nicholas Collon are a group of talented musicians able it seems to turn their hand to any style of music and supply virtuosic soloists from within their ranks.

Spring at the Handel House museum

Spring at the Handel House Museum includes Handel's birthday and the Stanley Sadie Memorial Lecture along with a variety of recitals many of which pair Handel's music up with that of his contemporaries and rivals. There is still chance to see the exhibition devoted to Handel's music for a series of musical clocks, as well as the new exhibition on Susannah Cibber.

Duo Dorado (Hazel Brooks, violin, and David Pollock, harpsichord) are revisiting the 1701 opera contest which saw Eccles, Weldon, Finger and Daniel Purcell all setting Congreve's The Judgement of Paris, and the duo perform music by all four composers (9 January).

The complete songs of Poulenc - volume 4

Poulenc Complete Songs vol 4: Malcolm Martineau: Signum Classics
Reviewed by Robert Hugill on Jan 9 2014
Star rating: 3.0
Not all masterpieces, but worth investigation.

This new disc of songs by Francis Poulenc is the fourth disc in a five disc set from Malcolm Martineau on Signum Classics, covering all of the composer's songs. The discs use a variety of singers and here Martineau is joined by John Mark Ainsley, William Dazeley, Sarah Fox, Magdalena Molendowska (winner of the Guildhall School's Gold Medal in 2013), Ann Murray and Thomas Oliemans. The repertoire ranges widely from Poulenc's early Le Bestiaire to the late La dame de Montecarlo, and includes his Polish songs.

In fact, one of the puzzling things about the disc is the selection of songs. There is no rationale given for the selection. But if you simply sit back and relax, there is much to enjoy in the selection. Poulenc wrote over 150 songs and it would be foolish to expect them all to be masterpieces but many are well worth investigating.

Arts Council confirms strategic funding for In Harmony

In a document outlining their funding strategy for 2015-2018, the Arts Council has confirmed that they will continue funding In Harmony. Though part of the budget is still subject to negotiations with the government, the council did make specific funding commitments: 'Strategic funding for In Harmony, a national programme that aims to inspire and transform the lives of children in deprived communities using the power and disciplines of community-based orchestral music-making, will continue'.

Of course such groups require support in all sorts of ways in addition to basic funding. Sistema England is currently appealing for unwanted musical instruments, which will be used for children in the programmes. If you have an instrument gathering dust on the shelf, then Sistema England wants to hear about it. Each instrument donated is another child able to learn. See their website for further information and contact details.

Matthias Goerne and Leif Ove Andsnes

Matthias Goerne and Leif Ove Andsnes recital: The Wigmore Hall
Reviewed by Robert Hugill on Jan 7 2014
Star rating: 5.0
 

The recital by baritone Matthias Goerne and pianist Leif Ove Andsnes at the Wigmore Hall last night (7 January 2014) was notable for the mesmerising intensity of the performances and the thoroughgoing way which the performers examined their chosen subject, death. The recital interleaved six of Shostakovich's songs from his Michelangelo Suite with ten of Gustav Mahler's lieder taken from the Ruckert Lieder, Des Knaben Wunderhorn and Kindertotenlieder. The entire seriousness of the enterprise was underlined at the end of the recital when, as an encore, the pair performed a long intense Beethoven song.

The results could have been maudlin and self-indulgent, but in the hands of Goerne and Andsnes the songs illuminated each other and Goerne's technically assured but highly interventionist performances made for ravishing listening. Both performers made you hang onto every word and note, no matter how slow the tempi sometimes got. Having heard a number of recent performances of Des Knaben Wunderhorn which brought the folk-influences to the fore, it was a welcome change to hear Goerne returning to a more darkly romantic, highly interventionist style of performance. He sang with a consistently fine sense of line and legato, but made every detail count, with highly wrought lines.