The Origin of Adjustable Things

The Origin of Adjustable Things; Joanna Wallfisch, Dan Tepfer; SSC
Reviewed by Robert Hugill on Feb 2 2015
Star rating: 3.5
A multitude of influences in these songs for just voice and piano from a young jazz duo

I suppose that, if you want to pigeon-hole things, Joanna Wallfisch is a jazz singer and composer but her style bring all sorts of other influences to bear and this album  The Origin of Adjustable Things has much to attract and intrigue anyone interested in fine performance. Wallfisch is joined by keyboard player Dan Tepfer and most of the tracks feature Wallfisch's vocals and Tepfer's accompaniments in piano, mellotron, wurlitzer and pump organ. The majority of songs are by Wallfisch herself, both music and lyrics, but there are some covers of songs by the likes of Radiohead, Dimitri Tiomkin, Jay Livingston and Ray Evans.

Joanna Wallfisch comes from a musical family (yes, those Wallfisches) and studied Jazz Performance at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama and is now based in New York. She is joined here by jazz pianist Dan Tepfer whose heritage involves being born in Paris to American parents.

Arensky Chamber Orchestra launches new season at The Forge

William Kunhardt and
Arensky Chamber Orchestra

The Arensky Chamber Orchestra, under conductor William Kunhardt, is launching a new concert series at The Forge in Camden, with a trio of concerts, spanning works from Bach to Mahler and Strauss. If you book all three concerts, there is a 17% discount - three concerts for just £30 per person. On Tuesday 3 March 2015, they explore Mahler's Symphony no. 1 culminating in complete performance of the work in a version for 16 players by Klaus Simon. On Tuesday 5 May they pair Bach's Goldberg Variations with Strauss's Metamorphosen, then on Tuesday 2 June they are joined by soprano Susannah Hurrell for highlights from Richard Strauss's Der Rosenkavalier and Capriccio performed in chamber arrangements. 

The orchestra's Principal Conductor William Kunhardt, is Associate Conductor of the Piraeus Festival in Athens. He is the 2014 winner of the James Conlon Conducting prize at Aspen Music Festival and the recipient of a 2014 Emerging Excellence Award from the Musicians Benevolent Fund UK.

The orchestra also has a new website, where in response to sharing the site with friends you can get free tickets and tickets to secret gigs.  

Ambient minimalism: A Winged Victory for the Sullen

Adam Wiltzie (left) and Dustin O'Halloran

A Winged Victory of the Sullen; Kings Place
Reviewed by Hilary Glover on Feb 6 2015
Relaxing meditation - ambient minimalism

A Winged Victory for the Sullen took to the main stage at Kings Place as part of their Minimalism Unwrapped series. The duo Dustin O'Halloran and Adam Wiltzie were joined by a trio of strings, to produce a short but mesmerising musical interlude.

In his 1978 album 'Ambient 1: Music For Airports' Brian Eno, who seems to have coined the term, described ambient music thus "Whereas conventional background music is produced by stripping away all sense of doubt and uncertainty (and thus all genuine interest) from the music, Ambient Music retains these qualities. And whereas their intention is to `brighten' the environment by adding stimulus to it (thus supposedly alleviating the tedium of routine tasks and levelling out the natural ups and downs of the body rhythms) Ambient Music is intended to induce calm and a space to think."

Often associated with new ageism or post-party chillout rooms, ambient music has a rich history, growing out of the drones and repetition of the early minimalists such as La Monte Young, Terry Riley, and Steve Reich. However it also references 19^th century classical avant-garde such as Erik Satie's furniture music – background music to be performed while people were talking, and yet reaches forward with new technologies as they were/are being developed – embracing the synthesiser yet still incorporating human elements even if they too become part of the synthesised sound.

Brundibar at the Imagine Festival

Brundibar - Mahogany Opera Group

Hans Krasa Brundibar; Mahogany Opera, dir: Frederic Wake-Walker, cond: Alice Farnham; Imagine Festival at Purcell Room
Reviewed by Robert Hugill on Feb 13 2015
Imaginative and vivid performance of Krasa's charming and poignant children's opera

In a normal world, the children's opera Brundibar would be seen as a small but interesting part of a distinguished career. But the opera's composer Hans Krasa had the misfortune to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. Born in Prague in 1899, his mother was Jewish and in 1942 was interned in Terezin (Theresienstadt), so the opera is one of a small group of works which testify to a talent extinguished. But Terezin was a showcase for the Nazis, so Krasa was able to re-work Brundibar (written for a competition in 1938) and the opera was performed by a cast of children in Terezin some 55 times.

Brundibar - Mahogany Opera Group

How to reflect this troubled, multi-layered history in a performance of what is essentially a happy, positive piece? But the work's parable about coming together in solidarity to conquer evil was surely not without intended relevance to the contemporary politics. Happily, for the production by Frederic Wake-Walker, designed by Anna Jones, which was presented at the Purcell Room by Mahogany Opera Group as part of the South Bank Centre's Imagine Children's Festival on 13 February 2015, Krasa's opera was given in an imaginative and direct production which did nothing to complicate issues. Instead the work was prefixed by a 25 minute Interactive Introduction by Simon Wallfisch.

The majority in the audience were children and Simon Wallfisch's introduction was very much aimed at them. Dressed in a smart suit and tie, he divided the audience into two unequal groups and essentially got the larger group to verbally bully the minority. Then he talked to the children about how it had happened (never trust men in suits!) and how they felt about it. And being far less inhibited than we adults, the children were happy to discuss this, coming up with some funny but also touching and disturbing things.

New light on old songs - a final farewell from Anonymous Four

1865 - Songs of Hope and Home from the American Civil War; Anonymous Four, Bruce Moltsky; Harmonia Mundi
Reviewed by Robert Hugill on Feb 1 2015
Star rating: 4.0
Clarity, poise and precision in this exploration of American popular song from 1865

Anonymous Four is best known for its recordings of Medieval music, sung with clarity, poise and fine blend by four female voices (Ruth Cunningham, Marsha Genensky, Susan Hellauer, Jacqueline Horner-Kwiatek). But like many such groups, their performance profile is rather more diverse than can be apparent from their recordings, including contemporary pieces and American popular song in their repertoire.

This new disc from them (their last evidently), released on Harmonia Mundi, explores American popular song from 1865, the year of the Civil War, in commemoration of the 150th anniversary. They are joined by Bruce Molsky who contributes vocals, fiddle and banjo.

Many of the songs on the disc were published in or around 1865, but some were published earlier and were simply popular during that period. Different sides in the war chose different song, but listening to them now they seem to form a stylistic continuum and no North/South divide is discernable.

Reader Offer - Free copies of Opera Now

We have a terrific offer for Planet Hugill readers, thanks to those nice people at Rhinegold Publishing which publishes Opera Now, Classical Music, International Piano, Choir and Organ, and Early Music magazines. 

We have arranged for Planet Hugill readers to get free access to three issues of Opera Now magazine. Simply click on the image or follow the link http://www.rhinegold.co.uk/ondigital/ and use the code HUGILL15 

This will give you access to three fantastic free digital editions of Opera Now.

This Other Eden - An encounter with Kitty Whately

Kitty Whately
credit Natalie J Watts and the Royal College of Music

Mezzo-soprano Kitty Whately's debut disc, with pianist Joseph Middleton, comes out next month on the Champs Hill Records label and we met up to chat about the disc. Called This Other Eden: A Landscape of English Poetry and Song, the programme mixes English song with poetry, read by Whately's parents the actors Kevin Whately and Madelaine Newton, as well as involving the Navarra Quartet. The selection of work is varied, including songs by Joseph Horowitz and James MacMillan and concluding with Samuel Barber's Dover Beach which sets poetry by Matthew Arnold (who was a friend of Kitty's ancestor Archbishop Whately).

The family connection is important as Kitty wanted the disc to be something very personal. The idea of doing a mixture of poetry and song made the disc, she felt, a little bit different. Kitty feels that few people buy physical discs any more, so her first had to be something to remember. She performed a programme of song and poetry with her parents, Kevin Whately and Madelaine Newton, at the Free Thinking Festival in Gateshead last year, as well as performing programmes with her mother, so that to do a similar programme on record would involve them. The family involvement also extends to CD artwork, where the pictures are of her daughter.

The disc was planned from the start to be of English song, as this is a genre which Kitty loves. She sent pianist Joseph Middleton a huge list of all the English songs which she knew. It was his idea to divide the disc into sections, with songs and poems themed on This Other Eden, Forests and Gardens, Meadows and Fields, Wilds of Scotland, Coasts and Seas. Initially many of the songs were quite pastoral, so they deliberately chose some grittier songs and poems.

One such work, certainly not pastoral is Joseph Horowitz's Lady Macbeth: A Scena, which is a work which Kitty loves (and she sang it at Sarah Walker's 70th birthday concert at the Wigmore Hall). She has had coaching on the piece with Horowitz and was determined to include it on the recital, hence the inclusion of a section on the Wilds of Scotland. Another unusual, rather bleak, piece is James MacMillan's The Children and here Kitty was unsure whether the song would work because of its great use of silence.

Anthony Payne's Piano Quartet

Primrose Piano Quartet

Anthony Payne's Piano Quartet will receive its London premiere on Sunday (15 February 2015) at a concert at Kings Place presented by the London Chamber Music Society as part of their series at Kings Place. The quartet will be performed by the Primrose Piano Quartet (Susanne Stanzeleit violin, Dorothea Vogel viola, Andrew Fuller cello, John Thwaites piano), and they will also perform Schumann's Piano Quartet in E Flat and Brahms's Piano Quartet in A.

In an interview (available in a PDF newsletter from the London Chamber Music Society website), Payne talks about the piano quartet, "It consists of a single movement in which shapes emerge and grow and sometimes give birth to new ideas, never recapitulating in the traditional way. By the time we get to the final pages I like to think that we’ve made it to another world, which is perhaps way in the future, or even in the past.".

Making the music count - Purcell's King Arthur

Early Opera Company perform Purcell's King Arthur
at the Wigmore Hall. Photo credit Charlotte Burke

Harvey, Lawson, Boden, Pritchard, Humphreys, Hunt, Early Opera Company, Christian Curnyn; The Wigmore Hall
Reviewed by Robert Hugill on Feb 11 2015
Star rating: 5.0
Purcell without Dryden, in a performance of such quality that the music spoke for itself.

Henry Purcell's semi-opera King Arthur represents, with The Fairy Queen, his largest scale theatrical works. Not operas but a combination of speech, song, dance and spectacular staging, with the convention that the main characters did not sing, only the minor ones. This leaves modern producers with a problem, how to present the semi-operas without having an evening that runs into something overlong and requires a company of actors too. Glyndebourne bravely and successfully did so with The Fairy Queen, but this was very much a festival event. 

As part of the Wigmore Hall's Purcell Retrospective, Christian Curnyn and the Early Opera Company presented King Arthur in concert on Wednesday 11 February 2015. The music was presented on its own, apparently removed from its dramatic context so that we had to rely just on Purcell's music. But with a superb cast, sopranos Mhairi Lawson and Joelle Harvey, tenors Samuel Boden and Nick Pritchard, basses George Humphreys and Oliver Hunt, the results were entrancing.

And reading the plot summary of the original, you realise that the spoken text might have been by the poet Dryden but it didn't make a great deal of dramatic sense and certainly provided little in the way of dramatic context for the music. Instead, Dryden seems to have created a series of excuses for musical entertainment on stage (the booklet article also linked the text to propaganda for the court of Charles II). Purcell had three opportunities for extended musical sequences in the five-act play. The celebrations for the Saxons in Act one which he set almost as large-scale church anthem. The masque with Cupid and the Cold Genius, perhaps the most satisfying scene in the piece. The final sequence, a masque celebrating England, which is more diffuse but contains one of the work's loveliest numbers, Fairest Isle.

2015 Annual Jacqueline du Pré Charity Concert

The Jacqueline du Pré charity concert supports Britain’s oldest musical charity, The Royal Society of Musicians, which has been providing assistance to musicians in need since 1738. This year's concert, the 20th annual concert, is being performed in what would have been Jacqueline du Pré's 70th birthday year. The concert takes place at the Wigmore Hall on 3 March 2015 when two young quartets, the Sacconi Quartet and the Navarra Quartet are joined by cellist Guy Johnston for a programme which includes three marches specially composed for the concert by Peter Maxwell Davies, Robert Saxton and Toby Young plus Frank Bridge's Novelletten for String Quartet, Ravel's String Quartet and Schubert's String Quintet in C major, D956. 

Bridge's Novelletten date from 1904 and were the composer's first venture in chamber music, a preparation for his writing the Phantasie for the Cobbett Chamber Music Competition. Ravel's quartet was premiered the same year, and was the composer's final submission to the Prix de Rome (which he failed to win).

The commissioning of short marches from contemporary composers is a tradition that stretches back to the very founding of the Royal Society of Musicians in 1738. In 1792 Haydn was invited to the annual dinner in 1792 and composed a short march for orchestra, the manuscript for which is still in the possession of the society. All three cellos being performed on at this concert are on long-term loans to the cellists by the Royal Society of Musicians.

Further information from the Wigmore Hall website.

Longborough Festival Opera 2015

Longborough Festival Opera has announced its 2015 season. Following on from last year's Ring Cycle, they are performing Wagner's Tristan und Isolde. Again Anthony Negus conducts with Peter Wedd (who sang Lohengrin for Welsh National Opera in 2013) and Neal Cooper (Nick in Opera Holland Park's La Fanciulla del West in 2014) sharing the role of Tristan, and Rachel Nicholls (Eva in ENO's recent Mastersingers) and Lee Bisset sharing Isolde. The director is Carmen Jakobi who was associate director on Longborough's Ring Cycle.

The other operas of the season form an interesting contrast, with Verdi's Rigoletto and Donizetti's Don Pasquale. Rigoletto will be conducted by Gad Kadosh, a young Israeli conductor first spotted by Bernard Haitink and currently working at Theater Heidelberg. The production will be directed by Caroline Clegg, (the founder of Feelgood Theatre and director of the Okeanos Ensemble's Tokaido Road), with Martin Kronthaler and Andrea Tweedale in the leading roles. Don Pasquale is conducted by Thomas Blunt with a young cast including David Stout (Sancho Panza in Grange Park Opera's Don Quichotte in 2014) as Don Pasquale, Susanna Hurrell as Norina  (Erisbe in Cavalli's L'Ormindo at the Globe in 2014), Gary Griffiths (Ned Keene in Grange Park Opera's Peter Grimes in 2014) as Malatesta and Jesus Alvarez (currently playing Paco in Opera North's La Vida Breve) as Ernesto. The opera will be directed by Alan Privett, who was responsible for the Longborough Ring Cycle.

There will also be a young artists production with counter-tenor Jake Arditti (who sang in Handel's Agrippina and Monteverdi's Coronation of Poppea with ETO in 2013) taking the title role in Handel's Xerxes, conducted by Jeremy Silver (who conducts ETO's forthcoming production of Donizetti's The Wild Man of the West Indies) and directed by Jenny Miller with a young production team also, including designer Faye Bradley and lighting designer Anna Sboukou.

All the productions take place in Longborough's intimate, 500 seater, theatre set in the Cotswolds. Full information from the Longborough Festival website.

Spiritual music in a secular world - One Equal Music

Harris, Bairstow, Rachmaninov, Part, Jackson, Beamish, Lauridsen, McMillan, Moore, Parry; St Peter's Singers, Simon Lindley
Reviewed by Robert Hugill on Feb 05 2015
20th century and modern spiritual music recorded in a secular setting in Leeds

One Equal Music is the name of a project by the St Peters Singers, Leeds, conductor Simon Lindley to perform and record a programme of music in the Victoria Quarter in Leeds. The music chosen is all unashamedly spiritual, written by 20th century and modern composers, but performed in the commercial heart of the Leeds. The music encompasses music by William Harris, Edward Bairstow, Serge Rachmaninov, Hubert Parry, Francis Jackson, Morten Lauridsen, Eric Whitacre, James MacMillan and Sally Beamish. The oldest piece on the disc dates from 1906 and the most recent from 2008, and a number have a Leeds or York connection.

They open with William Harris's Bring us, O Lord God which exists in the same sound world as his other double choir motet Faire is the Heaven though it was written far later (in 1961 with earlier motet dating from 1925). They follow this with Let all mortal flesh keep silence (1906) by Edward Bairstow another piece in the richly romantic vein of English choral music which was written for Leeds Parish Church where he was organist.

Philippe Graffin and Friends - celebrating 20 years in London

French violinist Philippe Graffin is celebrating 20 years of living in London with a pair of concerts at St John's Smith Square on 20 February 2015, featuring new music specially written for him. Grafin will be joined by musician friends including cellist Raphael Wallfisch, the group Tango Factory and the composer David Matthews who will be playing the crotales.

Grafin is giving both concerts on the evening of 20 February, in the first concert Elgar's Piano Quintet and music by Debussy will be prefixed by David Matthews White Night. At the second concert Enescu's Sonata No. 3 for violin and piano will be accompanied a group of tangos written specially for Graffin by Marcelo Nisinman, based on songs by Barbara and Leo Ferre; songs which Graffin feels are part of the psyche of any Frenchman.

Saimir Pirgu at Rosenblatt Recitals - charm and lyric drama

Simon Lepper and Saimir Pirgu at the Wigmore Hall
picture credit Jonathan Rose

Bononcini, Gluck, Scarlatti, Mozart, Verdi, Gounod, Disdari, Cilea; Saimir Pirgu, Alda Disdari, Simon Lepper; Rosenblatt Recitals at the Wigmore Hall
Reviewed by Robert Hugill on Feb 10 2015
Star rating: 4.0
Lyrical drama from Albanian tenor in operatic arias from 18th and 19th centuries

Last night's Rosenblatt Recital (10/2/2015) at the Wigmore Hall showcased the Albanian tenor Saimir Pirgu accompanied by pianist Simon Lepper. Pirgu has been singing Alfredo (in La Traviata) at Covent Garden and will be the Shepherd in Szymanowski's King Roger there in May. For his return to Rosenblatt Recitals, Pirgu's programme combined operatic arias with 18th arias and music from his homeland. He started with a group of arias by Bononcini, Gluck and Scarlatti and then sang a group of arias from Mozart operas, La clemenza di Tito, Don Giovanni and Idomeneo. For the second half we had arias from Verdi's Rigoletto and Macbeth, Gounod's Romeo et Juliette and Cilea's L'Arlesiana plus a song by the Albanian composer Limoz Disdari and another Albanian song. A surprise was the participation of violinist Alda Disdari (daughter of the composer) who played in her father's song and also gave us a movement from a Beethoven violin sonata.

There was something rather reassuringly old-fashioned in feel about Pirgu's recital. I can remember attending recitals at Covent Garden on Sunday evenings in the 1980's and Monserrat Caballe would always begin her recitals with a group of arie antiche, sung beautifully but certainly not in any sense a period style. This was how Pirgu approached his group of arias by Bononcini, Gluck and Scarlatti. Per la gloria d'arodrarvi comes from Griselda by Giovanni Bononcini (1670-1747) based on the story of patient Griselda from Bocaccio's Decamaron. The opera was premiered at the King's Theatre in London in 1722. Pirgu's performance combined a nice feel for the ornamental vocal line, with a rather traditional style so that he mixed a lovely mezza-voce with some very powerful climaxes.

More than just a concert hall - Wigmore Hall goes global

Christian Gerhaher at the Wigmore Hall - photo credit Simon Jay Price

If I mention the Wigmore Hall what image springs to mind? Sedate middle aged people listening to a Beethoven string quartet? How about a horde of school children learning about classical music or participating in a performance, or jazz or world music? Yesterday (10/2/2015) the hall had an event to launch their 2015/16 season and it became apparent that the organisation has developed in surprising ways. Chamber music, and recitals are still central to what they do and they will be presenting 920 events (460 concerts plus 460 learning events) next season which involved such goodies as the beginning of a two year survey of all of Schubert's songs (!), the continuation of a survey of Purcell's output and a series on Bartok's chamber music. But having refurbished the hall and front of house over 10 years ago, there are now plans to refurbish the backstage areas and make the backstage and rehearsal facilities fit for the 21st century. The hall's website has just been re-launched and it is now possible to buy downloads of their extensive CD catalogue (all taken from live recordings at the hall), and they will be moving into live streaming of concerts so that wherever you are in the world you can see a concert at the Wigmore Hall. Ticket prices are being revised and all concerts will have tickets under £15 available, and under 35's will be able to buy subsidised £5 tickets.

John Gilhooly - credit Keith Saunders

Of course, all this would not work without a strong artistic programme. Listening to artistic director John Gilhooley talking at the launch it was clear that he feels very strongly about the role of the arts as being central, and that the Wigmore Hall's core programme is thus the essence of what it does. 2015/16 will see the start of a 2 year project to perform all of Schubert's 600 songs (in fact some are being repeated, so there will be 900 songs) with a strong line-up of soloists including Ian Bostridge, Simon Keenlyside and Angelika Kirchschlager.

Henry Purcell: A Retrospective continues in 2015/16 with a complete performance of Dido and Aeneas with Trevor Pinnock and concerts from Vox Luminis, The Sixteen and Harry Christophers, and an evening featuring the combination of countertenors Iestyn Davies and Andreas Scholl.

Residencies next season include a five concert series celebrating mezzo-soprano Magdalena Kozena including a concert where she is accompanied by her husband, Simon Rattle, and another with music from the 1920s and 1930s to be given at Wilton’s Music Hall (Gilhooley commented that there was no way the audience could dance at the Wigmore Hall, so they had to promote the concert elsewhere; the first time they have ever done so). French cellist Jean-Guihen Queyras is Artist in Residence and there is a residency from baritone Christian Gerhaher. Other delights include a Shostakovich and Beethoven cycle from the Borodin Quartet, the continuation of Llŷr Williams’s Beethoven Piano Sonata Cycle, Martha Argerich joins Stephen Kovacevich in celebration of his 75th birthday and the conclusion of The Mozart Odyssey, with Alina Ibragimova and Cédric Tiberghien rounding off their survey of Mozart’s works for violin and piano, and Francesco Piemontesi beginning his cycle of the complete piano sonatas.

Opera North Ring Cycle on tour

Opera North is taking its acclaimed concert staging of the Ring Cycle on tour in 2016 and will be performing two cycles in Leeds Town Hall (23 April 2016, 24 May 2016), as well as performing the cycle in the Royal Concert Hall Nottingham (6 June 2016), The Lowry, Salford Quays (13 June 2016), the Southbank Centre, London (26 June 2016) and the Sage Gateshead (5 July 2016). Full details of dates, casts and much more are available from the dedicate Ring Cycle website. 

This is an amazing event, with a wonderful opportunity for people to see this fine production and a rare tour of a whole Ring Cycle. Tours of the Ring by UK opera companies are extremely rare. ENO toured with the Goodall Ring in the 1970's (I saw it in Manchester as a student), and WNO did some touring with their Ring and brought it to Covent Garden in the 1980's. Then Graham Vick's Ring in two days for Birmingham Opera (with a reduced scoring by Jonathan Dove) toured in the 1990's. But that is about it, so catch it if you can.

Richard Farnes conducts and the concert staging is by Peter Mumford. Many of the operas are double cast, with roles also being shared across the cycle so that casting varies with the combination of city and opera.  Wotan is shared by Michael Druiett, Bela Perencz and Robert Hayward, Alberich is Johl Pohlheim, Loge Wolfgang Ablinger-Sperhacke, Mime is Richard Roberts. Brunnhilde is being shared between Kelly Cae Hogan and Alwyn Mellor, with Mellor also sharing Sieglinde with Lee Bissett. Siegfried is Mats Turi, Siegmund is Michael Weinius and Mark Le Brocq. And the cast includes Susan Bickley, Mats Almgren, Andrew Foster-Williams, Heather Shipp, Fiona Kimm, Yvonne Howard, and James Creswell.

You can see the preview trailer after the break:

Emotional blast - Elizabeth Zharoff debuts in La Traviata at ENO

La traviata at ENO in 2013
Corinne Winters and Ben Johnson (c) Tristram Kenton

Verdi La Traviata; Zharoff, Johnson, Michaels Moore, dir: Konwitschny, cond:Boer; English National Opera at the London Coliseum
Reviewed by Robert Hugill on Feb 10 2015
Star rating: 4.0
Strong revival of Konwitschny's intense, concentrated and dystopic production

English National Opera's revival of Peter Konwitschny's production of Verdi's La Traviata had many elements in common with the production's original outing in 2013 (The production was a co-production with Opera Graz, where it had debuted in 2011). Ben Johnson and Anthony Michaels Moore repeated their performances as Alfredo and Giorgio Germont and the smaller cast members were the same. The production was revived by Mika Blauensteiner who was the assistant director on the original production. The biggest changes were that the conductor was now Roland Böer, and the title role was sung by the American soprano Elizabeth Zharoff.

Konwitschny's view of the opera is stripped down, anti-romantic and not a little dystopic. The opera is cut so that it plays for just under two hours, without an interval. The biggest loss is the party entertainment in Act 2, scene 2, but throughout Konwitschny has tightened the focus of the work so that Violetta and Alfredo are even more the focus of attention. The advantage of losing the intervals is the concentration of focus, and the way the ends of scenes bled into the next notably the prone party guests from act two, scene two, crawling away from Violetta at the opening of act three.

And the whole piece plays out against sets of red curtains, effectively this opera is set in the theatre. As the action progresses, curtains are opened so that more of upstage is revealed, till the very end when on a bare stage Elizabeth Zharoff's Violetta walked through the final curtain (an elegant metaphor, or a corny gag depending on your point of view). There are no props beyond a chair and pile of books, no stage setting, no frippery, no big frocks. The focus is on Violetta, and Zharoff was on-stage virtually the whole time.

Etude - Clare Hammond

Lyapunov, Chin, Szymanowski, Kapustin; Clare Hammond: BIS
Reviewed by Robert Hugill on Jan 30 2015
Star rating: 5.0
Extended brilliance in the dazzling exploration of the Etude in the 20th century

The Etude (study) is particularly used by pianist composers to explore extended technique. The form has its origins in studies written to focus on a particular technique for students, but composers like Chopin and Liszt have provided a model for later generations showing how flexible and challenging the form can be.

On this new disc from pianist Clare Hammond on the BIS label, she takes the Etude into the 20th and 21st centuries, with studies by the Russian composer Sergei Lyapunov (1859 - 1924), Polish composer Karol Szymanowski (1882 - 1937), Russian composer Nicolai Kapustin (born 1937) and Korean composer Unsuk Chin (born 1961). It goes without saying that these pieces challenge the pianist's technique and in her article in the CD booklet Hammond talks of how the etude combines the visceral excitement of technical display with expressive, colouristic and compositional ingenuity.

She starts with three studies from Lyapunov's 12 Etudes d'execution transcendent. They are modelled on Liszt's transcendental studies but Lyapunov mixes in highly Russian colours influenced by his collecting of Russian folksongs. Etude IV: Terek (written in 1900) is named after a river which flows from Georgia into Russia. It is an impulsive piece, with cascades of notes and both delicate and bravura moments. Etude V: Nuit d'ete (written in 1900) is more lyrical and elaborate, but Lyapunov provides big romantic development. With Etude VI: Tempete (written 1897) we are back in bravura territory with robust yet romantic cascades of notes.

Opera and more on South Bank during 2015/16

The 2015/16 season at the South Bank includes the first performances of the complete Ring Cycle in the Royal Festival Hall as Opera North brings its concert staging. Other operas include Berg's Wozzeck from Zurich Opera with Fabio Luisi conducting and Christian Gerhaher in the title role. The Czech Philharmonic Orchestra perform Janacek's Jenufa with Jirí Bélohlávek conducting and Adriana Kohútková as Jenufa and Karita Mattila (herself a distinguished Jenufa) as Kostelnicka. the Budapest Festival Orchestra, conductor Ivan Fischer, brings Mozart's Magic Flute

The Simon Bolivar Orchestra with Gustavo Dudamel make what seems to be their annual visit in January 2016. But as well having distinguished visitors, the South Bank Centre itself is going visiting. During 2015/16 the refurbishment of the Queen Elizabeth Hall is taking place which means that from Autumn 2015 they will be presenting some concerts at St John's Smith Square.

The South Bank Centre has four resident orchestra, the London Philharmonic Orchestra, the Philharmonia Orchestra, the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment and the London Sinfonietta and each is of course presenting its own season at the South Bank,

You can explore the whole 2015/16 season on the South Bank Centre's website.

The Psalms of David - the Cardinall's Musick at Cadogan Hall

The Cardinall's Musick

Psalms of David - Gabrieli, Palestrina, Victoria, Lassus, Allegri, Gibbons, Byrd, Tomkins, Weelkes; The Cardinall's Musick, Andrew Carwood; Cadogan Hall
Reviewed by Robert Hugill on Feb 5 2015
Star rating: 4.0
Vibrant performances of 16th century psalm settings from both the Roman Catholic and Anglican traditions

How necessary are conductors and do they make a difference? Inevitably are thoughts went through my mind when scanning the programme for Andrew Carwood and the Cardinall's Musick's concert on 5 February 2015 at the Cadogan Hall as part of the Choral at Cadogan series. The personnel for the 10 person group included at least two Tallis Scholars plus names familiar from other ensembles; so if the personnel were similar but the conductor changed, would it make a difference.

Celebrating its 25th anniversary this year, the Cardinall's Musick was performing a programme the Psalms of David in which settings of texts based on the psalms were compared and contrasted. For the first half, the music was by 16th century composers from the European Roman Catholic tradition, whilst the second half looked at music by English composers from a similar period.

The focus of much Roman Catholic musical ceremonial at the period was on the vespers service, so the first half was built around large scale vespers psalm settings by Victoria, interspersed with smaller scale motets by Palestrina, Gabrieli and Lassus, finishing with Allegri's Miserere. For the second half the works were by English composers from a very different tradition, with anthems by Gibbons, Tomkins, Weelkes plus small scale pieces by Byrd designed for the home, a motet from the Gradualia and one of his large scale Latin works from Cantiones Sacrae.