The Library of a Prussian Princess: Ensemble Augelletti at the Newbury Spring Festival

Ensemble Augelletti

The Library of a Prussian Princess; Ensemble Augelletti at the Newbury Spring Festival; Corn Exchange, Newbury
Reviewed by Florence Anna Maunders, 8 May 2023

Historically informed and charismatic virtuosity dazzle in the opening concert of Newbury Spring Festival's Young Artists' Recitals

One of the treasures of Berkshire's musical life, for years the Young Artists' Recital series has been part of the exciting programming of Newbury Spring Festival, giving a platform to exceptional chamber musicians and soloists at the start of their careers. A glance back at programmes from past years reads like a veritable who's-who of familiar names from across the UK and further afield, a clear reflection of the level of success enjoyed by festival director Mark Eynon's stated ambition to bring world-class music to Newbury.

Within the non-stop wall-to-wall concert programming of the two-week-long festival, this series of six recitals form a regular pattern, opening this year with the exciting UK-based period Ensemble Augelletti (Olwen Foulkes, recorders, Ellen Bundy, violin, Carina Drury, cello, Toby Carr, lute, Benedict Williams, harpsichord). With a string of prizes and awards already under their belts, and a very well-reviewed debut CD released last year [see Robert's review], it was unsurprising to see a large turnout at Newbury's magnificent Georgian Corn Exchange theatre for this lunchtime recital on 8 May 2023. 

Under the title, The Library of a Prussian Princess, the group presented a series of pieces collected from the personal library of Prussian princess Anna Amalia, perhaps best known as the musical sister of King Fredrich the Great and a life-long champion and patron of the Bach family, especially J.S. Bach, and his son C.P.E Bach, both of whom appeared on this programme, alongside works copied out in manuscript for the library for Amalia, and a selection of her own compositions as well.

Women of Note: Arch Sinfonia and Chloé Van Soeterstède in music by Lucy Armstrong, Ylva Skog and Emilie Mayer

Arch Sinfonia and Chloé Van Soeterstède

Arch Sinfonia and conductor Chloé Van Soeterstède's Women of Note concert, the programme of which was announced on International Women's Day earlier this year, features music by three notable women composers performed at Cecil Sharp House on 29 June 2023.

The concert features the world premiere of Lucy Armstrong's Saxophone Concerto with soloist Gillian Blair plus Symphony No. 1 by the 19th century German composer Emilie Mayer (1812-1883) who studied with Carl Loewe, and Swedish composer Ylva Skog's They Call Her Love.

In an intriguing development of audience involvement, members of the audience vote to help shape the programme of the next concert. 

Further details from the Arch Sinfonia website, and tickets from the Cecil Sharp House website.

Guildhall Young Artists: Guildhall School's network of centres that provides performing and production arts training for children and young people.

Students at GYA Norwich (Photo: Phil Barnes Photography)

The Guildhall School for Music and Drama has expanded its provision for training children and young people with the introduction of Guildhall Young Artists (GYA), a network of six centres that provides performing and production arts training for children and young people. Guildhall Young Artists is formed of six centres, Centre for Young Musicians based in Waterloo, London, Junior Guildhall based at Guildhall School’s Barbican site in London, Guildhall Young Artists King’s Cross, the newest GYA centre, Guildhall Young Artists Norwich, Guildhall Young Artists Taunton and Guildhall Young Artists Online for those who wish to join at GYA anywhere.

Each GYA centre is run and overseen by Guildhall School, in partnership with arts venues and local providers of education, including schools, local authorities and Music Hubs. Over 1500 students currently participate in GYA centre activities, including weekly Saturday courses and orchestras. Bursary support is offered to nearly 20% of participants across all GYA centres and almost 40% of participants are from the global majority. Students come from over 700 schools nationally, and from 23 counties, to attend each week. Taster sessions are offered at Guildhall Young Artists Norwich, Taunton and King’s Cross to give participants a better feel for the classes that they would like to take part in.

Regardless of their ultimate career direction, the professional artistic environment of Guildhall Young Artists provides students with valuable life skills and the means to develop their individual talents to the full. Many students go on to study their chosen discipline full-time at undergraduate level, with 132 students aged 16-18 from the network going on to study music or drama at higher education in the last three years. 

Full details from the Guildhall School website.

Summer at Snape

Britten Pears Arts' Summer at Snape returns this year with six weeks of events at venues across Snape Maltings and The Red House in Aldeburgh from 24 July to 2 September 2023, including music, dancing, walks & talks, art, food & drink, workshops, free outdoor music. Classical music visitors include Aurora Orchestra, BBC Concert Orchestra, Southbank Sinfonia, the Ukrainian Freedom Orchestra, cellist Sheku Kanneh-Mason, pianists Benjamin Grosvenor, Christian Blackshaw, Sir Andras Schiff, soprano Danielle de Niese, violinist Hyeyoon Park, guitarist Sean Shibe, flautist Adam Walker, violist Timothy Ridout, Ensemble 360, the Jess Gillam Ensemble, The King’s Singers, Fretwork, Sphinx Virtuosi, Slide Action, and Connaught Brass.

The Aurora Orchestra will be bringing their latest challenging project, performing Stravinsky's The Rite of Spring from memory, whilst pianist Christian Blackshaw will be performing all of Mozart's piano sonatas and fantasias across four concerts. The Gavin Bryars Ensemble will be celebrating the composer's 80th birthday.

The BBC Concert Orchestra, conductor Barry Wordsworth, will give the world premiere of the orchestral version of Peter Dickinson’s Unicorns Suite alongside Lord Berners’ A Wedding Bouquet, Doreen Carwithen’s Men of Sherwood Forest and Elgar’s Enigma Variations. Keri-Lynn Wilson conducts the Ukrainian Freedom Orchestra in a programme that combines Beethoven's Eroica Symphony with music by two Ukrainian composers, Yevhen Stankovych and Myroslav Skoryk. The National Youth String Orchestra will be performing music by Britten, Beethoven, Shostakovich arranged Rudolph Barshai and Anna Clyne.

Full details from the Britten Pears Arts website.

Classical Pride at the Barbican

In what seems to be something of a first for a major classical music organisation, Oliver Zeffmann will be conducting the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra in a concert at the Barbican celebrating Pride. Classical Pride, on 7 July 2023, will feature music by LGBT composers and celebrate diversity with performers including pianists Pavel Kolesnikov and Samson Tsoy, soprano Ella Taylor, tenor Nicky Spence, and bass-baritone Davóne Tines, plus an LGBTQ+ Community Choir.

The the concert features by LGBT composers including Bernstein's overture to Candide, Poulenc's Concerto for two pianos, Tchaikovsky's Romeo and Juliet, Caroline Shaw's Is a Rose and the world premiere of Julian Anderson's Echoes.

The concert is being presented in partnership with ViiV Healthcare and GAY TIMES and proceeds will go to the charities, Terence Higgins Trust, Amplifund and Rainbow Railroad.

Full details from the Barbican website.

Meditating, listening & letting the music unfold: Syrian composer & musician Maya Youssef on the inspirations behind her music

Maya Youssef

The Syrian composer and musician Maya Youssef released her second album, Finding Home, last year. Now based in the UK, the loss of her Syrian homeland is a subject that imbues both the new album and her first album, Syrian Dreams. Maya and I had plans to meet up last year, but these never managed to come to fruition so it was with great delight that we finally managed to meet for coffee in London in April 2023 to talk about the inspirations behind her albums, the idea of finding home, the importance of teaching, explaining the Arabic system of modes using Lego and much more.

The qanun is her instrument, this is a 78-stringed instrument from the zither family, and she plays the strings with her fingers. Her index fingers have rings and plectrums on them, which makes for a more resonant sound, but she plays with all her fingers in a manner akin to a harp. 

She describes her music as Arabic chamber music, but she grew up in Damascus surrounded by lots of different music. Her father was a writer who wanted to be a musician but unfortunately, he was tone deaf, so he collected records, and growing up there was Western classical, jazz, fusion and other weird combinations for her to listen to. She studied at the conservatoire for children, and both there and at high school both Western classical and Arabic classical music were studied. When she graduated from high school she played Vivaldi's Winter from The Four Seasons.

Cautionary Tales: the current cohort of Young Artists from the National Opera Studio in an evening of contemporary opera

Cautionary Tales - National Opera Studio with Opera North at Wilton's Music Hall (Photo Malcolm I Johnson)

Cautionary Tales: Judith Weir, Tom Coult, Tansy Davies, Steven Mackey, Elena Kats-Chernin, Soren Nils Eichberg, Jonathan Dove, Errollyn Wallen; National Opera Studio with Opera North; Wilton's Music Hall
Reviewed 3 May 2023 by Florence Anna Maunders

Dramatic contemporary operatic excerpts from a cohort of exceptional young voices in Whitechapel's historic Wilton's Music Hall

Whitechapel's battered monument to a theatrical past, the crumbing and wonderful Wilton's Music Hall, was the setting for Cautionary Tales, this fascinating partnership between the fresh enthusiasm of the National Opera Studio's Young Artists, and the brilliantly responsive and highly experienced Orchestra of Opera North, conductor Gary Walker. Over the course of eight 'bleeding chunks' of contemporary (mostly British) opera, by Judith Weir, Tom Coult, Tansy Davies, Steven Mackey, Elena Kats-Chernin, Soren Nils Eichberg, Jonathan Dove, Errollyn Wallen, the eleven vocalists demonstrated their abilities across an enormous range of emotions, musical styles and narrative approaches. The performers were sopranos Sarah Seunghwa Chae, Beren Kader Fidan, Hasmik Harutyunyan and Samantha Quillish, mezzo-sopranos Laura Fleur and Emma Roberts, tenors Phillip Costovski, Rhydian Jenkins and Felix Gygli, basses Jack Holton and Smelo Mahlangu, directed by Olivia Fuchs.

Cautionary Tales - National Opera Studio with Opera North at Wilton's Music Hall (Photo Malcolm I Johnson)

Introducing Gayathri Khemadasa:

Gayathri Khemadasa

Gayathri Khemadasa, a renowned Sri Lankan composer, has made history by winning an international award for her music in the 2020 film The Newspaper. In June 2022, she won the category for Best Music at the Ceylon International Film Festival in Santa Barbara, California and this marks the first time that Sri Lanka has won an international award for film music.  

Khemadasa's talent for creating innovative music has also caught the attention of the University of Portsmouth Choir in the UK. Her choral work, written to the text of a poem by Rabindranath Tagore, Freedom, was performed by the choir in what is a first for the university, which had never performed the works of an Asian composer before.  Freedom was performed by University of Portsmouth Choir, conducted by George Burrows, at St Mary's Church in Portsmouth, on Saturday 25 March, 2023

Born in Colombo, she studied music at the Prague Conservatory and Masaryk University, Czech Republic. She began performing in public in 2005, in order to raise money for the victims of the 2004 Asian tsunami.

Khemadasa's unique blend of Western classical music and traditional Sri Lankan music has garnered her critical acclaim and numerous awards. Her passion for music and the arts has also led her to found several organizations and initiatives aimed at promoting and supporting the development of music and the arts in Sri Lanka.  In 2011, she was awarded a Fulbright Professional Scholarship and became a visiting scholar at Wesleyan University where she began writing an opera on Phoolan Devi. In 2015, at the Derana Film Awards, Khemadasa became the first Sri Lankan woman to win a national award for Best Original Score with the film Thanha Rathi Ranga.

Gayathri Khemadasa's contributions to music and the arts continue to be celebrated both nationally and internationally, and her innovative approach to composition is sure to inspire and captivate audiences for years to come.

Full details from her website.

The Flying Dutchman reinvented: OperaUpClose tours radical new version of Wagner's opera

OperaUpClose, artistic director Flora McIntosh, is touring a radical new look at Wagner's The Flying Dutchman. From 28 June to 23 July, the company will be performing The Flying Dutchman at Turner Sims, Southampton, SS Great Britain, Bristol, Worthing Pavilion, Worthing, Grand Junction, London, Trinity Market, Hull and Invisible Wind Factory, Liverpool.

Directed by Lucy Bradley with music director Timothy Burke, the production features a new libretto by Glyn Maxwell and an orchestration for eight-piece chamber orchestra by composer Laura Bowler (in association with associate music director Robin Wallington) performed by the Manchester Camerata.

The production steers clear of traditional 'end-on' performance to immerse the audience in a haunting political tale exploring the displacement of people and the psychology and realities of living on an island with hardening borders. The cast includes Philippa Boyle, Timothy Dawkins, Carolyn Holt and Pauls Putnins, as well as pre-recorded voices from a national network of community choirs.

The Flying Dutchman is touring with We two were lovers – The Sea and I. A musical and poetic journey that addresses themes around the movement of people, island mentality and humanity’s complex love affair with the sea. Work is centred around Toria Banks’s new, contemporary version of Arianna a Naxos, Haydn’s dramatic cantata.

Full details from the OperaUpClose website.

Temple Song: Kate Royal, Christine Rice & Julius Drake in Brahms, Schumann and Weill

Middle Temple Hall in its wisteria
(Photo courtesy of Julius Drake)

Brahms: Zigeunerlieder, duets by Brahms and Schumann, songs by Kurt Weill; Kate Royal, Christine Rice, Julius Drake; Temple Song at Middle Temple Hall

From Brahms in exuberant gypsy mode, to intimate duets from Brahms and Schumann, to Kurt Weill demonstrating his brilliant versatility

The Temple Music Foundation's Temple Song returned to Middle Temple Hall on Tuesday 2 May 2023 with its first song recital of 2023. Pianist Julius Drake was joined by soprano Kate Royal and mezzo-soprano Christine Rice for a programme of songs and duets by Brahms, Schumann and Kurt Weill.

We began with Brahms' Zigeuner Lieder. These were originally written in 1888 as a cycle for quartet and piano, setting German translations of Hungarian folk songs. Such was the work's popularity that Brahms recast eight songs for solo voice, the version we heard at Middle Temple Hall. The music is only vaguely Hungarian, belonging to the category of 19th-century composers appropriating the styles of the Hungarian gypsy musicians who could be found in Vienna. Brahms ate regularly at the Gasthaus Zum Roten Igel where gypsy musicians could usually be heard. In its original format, Zigeuner Lieder's lively exuberance proved popular, hence Brahms' recasting for solo voice. 

The St Teilo Organ comes to Lincoln Cathedral as part of its Byrd 400 celebrations

The St Teilo Organ

As part of Lincoln Cathedral's Byrd 400 celebrations this year, commemorating the 400th anniversary of Byrd's death, the St Teilo Organ is coming to the cathedral as part of the celebrations. The organ was built in 2001 by organ builders Goetze and Gwynn using traditional materials and techniques and is based on an original Tudor soundboard found at Wetheringsett in Suffolk in 1977. The oak case is covered in decoration, including murals depicting the Annunciation and Adoration of the Shepherds on the doors. The organ is entirely mechanical, with power provided by a set of manually operated bellows. 

The St Teilo organ will be on display in the Cathedral during normal opening hours and will also be used during services, concerts and lectures as part of the Byrd 400 Festival.

 William Byrd was Master of the Choristers at the Lincoln Cathedral from 1563 to 1572, during which he composed much music for the relatively newly translated services of the Church of England. For Byrd 400, which takes place at the cathedral from 30 June to 4 July 2023, Byrd's music will feature at cathedral services sung by the cathedral choir, the Choir of Merton College Oxford and the Tallis Scholars. There will be a series of concerts and recitals including viol music from the Arculo Viol Consort and keyboard music from Friederike Chylek, culminating in a late evening performance of some of Byrd’s most beautiful music by the cathedral choir and the Tallis Scholars. There will also be an academic symposium.

Full details from the Lincoln Cathedral website.

Hail, O Queen

The Dunedin Consort's associate director, Nicholas Mulroy, directs the group in a programme of Marian music on a tour to Aberdeen, Perth, Edinburgh and Glasgow from 11 to 14 May 2023. These concerts will also see young musicians from Dunedin Consort’s Bridging the Gap programme — Laura Coppinger (soprano) and Joshua McCullough (bass) — make their first professional appearance with the a cappella consort.

The programme mixes Renaissance music by Palestrina, Jean Mouton, Tomás Luis de Victoria, Vicente Lusitano, Carlo Gesualdo with Hildegard of Bingen, more recent works by Bruckner and Rebecca Clarke and contemporary pieces by Arvo Pärt, Giles Swayne, Cecilia McDowall, Kerry Andrew, Joanna Ward, and Cheryl Frances-Hoad.

Nicholas Mulroy explains, "Some pieces seem explicitly linked to the Renaissance music we’ll sing, and others take their influences from further afield, and ask what a choir can do and how one might display devotion in music. I hope that for performers and listeners alike, it’s telling to breathe air into new and old music side by side, hearing new voices for perhaps the first time, and old things anew".

Full details from the Dunedin Consort website.

Silence, texture and atmosphere: music by John Luther Adams, Kaija Saariaho, Judith Weir, and Gary Carpenter at Royal Academy of Music's Fragile Festival

Stones and Light: John Luther Adams, Kaija Saariaho, Judith Weir, Gary Carpenter; Bridget Yee, Tiago Soares Silva, Oona Lowther, Aisha Palmer; Angela Burgess Recital Hall at Royal Academy of Music
Reviewed 2 May 2023

Four contemporary chamber works inspired by the natural world, explorations of silence, texture and atmosphere in terrific performances

The Royal Academy of Music's Fragile Festival, created in association with The Listening Planet, is a week of events inspired by the natural world. Events opened with a lunchtime concert on 2 May 2023, Stones and Light in Angela Burgess Recital Hall when Bridget Yee (piano), Tiago Soares Silva (violin), Oona Lowther (cello) and Aisha Palmer (harp) played John Luther Adams' Tukiliit (The Stone People who Live in the Wind), Kaija Saariaho's Light and Matter, Judith Weir's Night and Gary Carpenter's Azaleas.

London Sinfonietta in Enfield

The London Sinfonietta is heading to Enfield for a residency at St Ignatius College, Enfield in May, marking the beginning of a longer-term relationship with the Enfield area which will build towards work with the wider community. 

From 22 to 25 May, London Sinfonietta musicians and staff, as well as the 2023 cohort of the London Sinfonietta Academy, will work alongside students of St Ignatius College in Enfield to offer the opportunity to compose, film and learn the inner workings of a professional ensemble. 

The ensemble is performing at the Southbank Centre on 25 May, presenting Fireworks, a programme of virtuosic pieces by Augusta Read Thomas, Dai Fujikura, Tania León, and György Ligeti. They will be rehearsing for the concert at St Ignatius College and students from the college will be invited to attend both rehearsals and the concert. 

The ensemble has an existing connection to the Borough since 2019, collaborating with Enfield Music Service to deliver Composition Challenge workshops in primary schools and involve their young instrumentalists in the Sound Out project and concert.

The London Sinfonietta Academy, the ensemble's annual programme that recruits young musicians across the UK to train as a Sinfonietta-sized ensemble, will also be involved in composition workshops during the residency.

Full details from the London Sinfonietta's website.

Shipston Song 2023

Pianist Ian Tindale's Shipston Song is returning for a second celebration of song in the Cotswolds from 22-24 September. Set in an intimate venue on the edge of the Cotswolds, the festival weekend features recitals and masterclasses from mezzo-soprano Helen Charlston, tenor Laurence Kilsby, and baritone Roderick Williams with pianist Ian Tindale. 

Four Shipston Song Rising Stars, soprano Henna Mun, baritone Sam Hird, tenor Dafydd Jones and pianist Francesca Lauri, representing the emerging generation of song interpreters, will be in residence for masterclasses and performances, working alongside the main artists throughout the weekend.

Composers represented during the weekend include Tippett and Rachmaninoff, both of whom have anniversaries this year. The festival has made a commitment in 2023 to programming an equal number of songs by male and female composers, as well as featuring contemporary song in all recitals, commitments which will culminate in the world premiere performance of a new cycle by Anna Semple.

The weekend begins with Laurence Kilsby and Henna Mun in Tippett's Boyhood's End, and songs by Rachmaninoff, Lili and Nadia Boulanger, Purcell arranged by Britten and Tippett, folksongs arranged by Britten and Josephine Stephenson. Helen Charlston and Sam Hird's recital combines Mahler's Lieder eines fahrenden Gesellen with songs by Fanny Mendelssohn Hensel, Clara Schumann, Alma Schindler-Mahler, Amy Beach, and Wilhelm Stenhammar, plus songs by Joshua Borin and Richard Barnard from the Isolation Songbook.

Roderick Williams and Dafydd Jones conclude the festival with The Elements featuring Tippett's Songs for Ariel, plus songs by Anna Semple, Gerald Finzi, Ina Boyle, Joan Trimble, Dilys Elwyn-Edwards, Ralph Vaughan Williams, Francis George Scott and Rebecca Clarke.

Full details from the festival website.

As The Sun Brightens, The Shadows Deepen: Neil Hannon's new work for the Ulster Orchestra is inspired by his late father's role in a 1963 film on the development of Derry~Londonderry

Image from Terence McDonald and John Hume's film A City Solitary

On Friday 5 May 2023, the Ulster Orchestra will be giving the premiere of a new piece by Neil Hannon (of The Divine Comedy), As The Sun Brightens, The Shadows Deepen, in a programme conducted by Matthew Owens and David Brophy at Ulster Hall, Belfast, called Dwellers in Time and Space, which features music by Khachaturian and Vaughan Williams alongside another work by Hannon.

The roots of Hannon's new piece lie in a short film by Terence McDonald and John Hume called A City Solitary, based on Hume’s research for his thesis on Derry~Londonderry and made in 1963. The film charts the development of the city and, perhaps unexpectedly, is narrated by Neil Hannon’s father, the late Bishop Brian Hannon, who was then a curate in the city. 

As the 25th Anniversary of the Good Friday Agreement is commemorated, this glimpse of Derry~Londonderry on the cusp of all that was to come is a fascinating moment in time, additionally made personal for Hannon by hearing the voice of his father as a young man. As The Sun Brightens grows from these roots into a meditation on history and place that ultimately has a message of hope for a shared future. The full film is viewable at https://digitalfilmarchive.net/media/a-city-solitary-2121

Neil Hannon comments: "Until quite recently I’d only been dimly aware of the film, A City Solitary, and my father’s role in it. Then, not long after his funeral, a particularly resourceful niece tracked it down on the internet. I was entranced. I love those little historical/societal documentaries of the 40s and 50s; here was one about the city of my birth, narrated by my Dad! And this just happened to coincide with the Ulster Orchestra asking me for a new piece about the north. It was all strangely perfect."

Full details from the Ulster Orchestra's website.

Casta Diva: trumpeter Matilda Lloyd showing just what her instrument can do with elegant yet dazzling accounts of Italian bel canto arias

Casta Diva: Donizetti, Viardot, Arban, Rossini, Bellini; Matilda Lloyd, Britten Sinfonia Soloists; Wigmore Hall
   Reviewed 27 April 2023
Casta Diva: Operatic arias arranged for trumpet - Mercadante, Bellini, Arban, Ricci, Rossini, Viardo, Donizetti; Matilda Lloyd, Britten Sinfonia, Rumon Gamba; Chandos Records
   Record Review

An elegant sense of line and some nice bravura moments make trumpeter Matilda Lloyd's recasting of Italian bel canto arias a surprising delight

French cornet player, pedagogue and composer Jean-Baptiste Arban (1825-1889) was the first virtuoso of the cornet à pistons. When the valved cornet developed using piston valves in Paris in the 1830s it gave players access to a full chromatic range and Arban, inspired by the example of violin virtuoso Paganini, demonstrated that the cornet could be a virtuoso instrument. His complete method was published in 1864. Trumpets were slower to adopt the modern valve technology, hence some mid-19th century orchestral works have parts for both trumpets and cornets. But now, Arban's method is regarded as the trumpeter's bible.

At the back of the book are 12 sets of variations on well-known melodies. One of these, Alban's Variations on Bellini's 'Norma' (Casta Diva), suggested to trumpeter Matilda Lloyd the idea of a disc of Italian bel canto operatic arias transcribed for trumpet. 

It is not that the trumpet and cornet were not in the opera house, but the technology available to the instruments in early 19th-century Italian opera houses was limited, the instruments' use was restricted. But outside the opera house, they were let loose in bands playing arrangements of popular operatic airs.

Matilda Lloyd has joined forces with arranger William Foster, the Britten Sinfonia and conductor Rumon Gamba to record a disc, Casta Diva: Operatic airs transcribed for trumpet on the Chandos label. This features transcriptions of arias from Mercadante's Zaira, Bellini's Beatrice di Tenda and I Capuleti e Montecchi, Rossini's Semiramide, and Donizetti's L'elisir d'amore and Don Pasquale, plus Arban's Variations on a Cavatina from Bellini's 'Beatrice di Tenda' and Variations on Bellini's 'Norma' (Casta Diva), a tarantella by Luigi Ricci, two songs by Pauline Viardot and Rossini's Prelude, Theme and Variations.

To launch the album, Matilda Lloyd and the Britten Sinfonia Soloists (Hannah Perowne and Miranda Dale, violins, Daisy Speirs, viola, Caroline Dearnley, cello, Joseph Cowle, double bass, Tomos Xerri, harp) performed a selection from the album at Wigmore Hall on Thursday, 27 April 2023.

Stop Motion Music: Edinburgh-based composer Neil T. Smith chats about his new disc, exploring the smaller-scale works he has written from the last eight years

Neil T. Smith

Edinburgh-based composer Neil T. Smith has an album out, Stop Motion Music on BandCamp. His debut album, it explores works that he has written in the last eight or so years. In that time, Neil has written either large-scale orchestral works or smaller chamber ones, so economic necessity has meant that this, his first solo disc, explores the smaller-scale works with performers Carla Rees (flute), Delia Stevens (vibraphone), Simon Roth (drums), Justyna Jablonska and Duncan Strachan (cellos).

The main work on the disc is the title track, Stop Motion Music for the intriguing combination of three flutes and vibraphone. This had its origins in a long-ago conversation with a friend who ran his own ensemble, and they talked about the idea of putting small speakers in a vibraphone. The friend totally forgot about the conversation, but with Neil, it stuck. He is also a flute player and had written a flute trio in 2012 as well as playing flute in other ensembles. This suggested to him the idea of combining the flute with the purely mechanical silvery sound of the vibraphone. It is not a narrative work, but a series of scenes.

For the recording of the new disc, he was just doing the fundraising when COVID began, so the plans involved considering what music could be recorded with a minimum number of people. This means that for Stop Motion Music, flute player Carla Rees has multi-tracked the three flute lines alongside vibraphone player Delia Stevens. Carla Rees plays a Kingma System flute, which has a full quarter-tone capability (on a regular flute quarter tones can be uneven). This capability came in very useful when multi-tracking Stop Motion Music. The work is a single piece, some 26 minutes long, but for the convenience of listening Neil has split it into four tracks.

Henryk Górecki's Symphony of Sorrowful Songs at ENO in an astonishing visual treat from Isabella Bywater

Górecki:Symphony of Sorrowful Songs, third movement - Nicole Chevalier - English National Opera (Photo: Clive Barda)

Henryk Górecki: Symphony of Sorrowful Songs; Nicole Chevalier, director: Isabella Bywater, conductor: Lidiya Yankovskaya; English National Opera at the London Coliseum

Górecki's moving symphony given a treatment that is less a dramatisation and more a poetic visual meditation on the music

For its last new main stage event of the season, English National Opera (ENO) made the intriguing choice to present a staging of Henryk Górecki's Symphony No. 3 'Symphony of Sorrowful Songs'. Symphony of Sorrowful Songs opened at the London Coliseum on 27 April 2023 in a production directed and designed by Isabella Bywater. Lidiya Yankovskaya conducted the orchestra of English National Opera with soprano Nicole Chevalier who was joined on stage by six actors - Christian Flynn, Alessandro Gruttadauria, Malik Ibheis, Owen McHugh, Ryan Munroe, Ben Owara. 

Video design was by Roberto Vitalini, lighting by Jon Driscoll with Dan O'Neil as movement director. The work was sung in the original Polish. The staging was ENO's first adhering to the Theatre Green Book, with costumes sourced from charity shops.

Górecki:Symphony of Sorrowful Songs, first movement - Nicole Chevalier - English National Opera (Photo: Clive Barda)

It wasn't an opera as such, but a music theatre piece that verged on being an installation, but Bywater and Vitalini came up with some astonishing images to accompany the music.

Hooray for summer and all that it has to offer! Tony Cooper reports on this year’s BBC Proms, the world’s largest classical-music festival

And summer has a lot to offer for classical-musical aficionados wherever they are with the BBC Proms running this year from Friday 14th July to the famous Last Night on Saturday 9th September. Therefore, there’s a feast of music over a wonderfully packed eight-week season offering more than 84 concerts featuring over 3000 musicians thus making the BBC Proms the largest festival of its kind in the world.

Remember, too, that the Proms reaches far beyond the Royal Albert Hall and this year for the first time the Great Yarmouth Hippodrome (often referred to locally as ‘Norfolk’s mini-Albert Hall’) is one of the chosen venues to be used outside of London. And for the first time, too, most of the concerts will be available on BBC Sounds for 12 months while BBC television and BBC iPlayer will broadcast 24 programmes including the First and Last Nights. These will also be available to watch on iPlayer for a period of 12 months.

The BBC orchestras and choirs, the ‘backbone’ of the Proms, will perform at 32 Proms including 14 premières while the BBC Singers will perform five Proms including the First and Last Nights plus a Late-Night Prom showcasing their broad range of repertoire while Sir Simon Rattle and Jon Hopkins have their own Late-Night Proms showcasing their huge range of repertoire, too.