A highly effective synthesis: James Joyce's The Dead in a dramatised reading from Niamh Cusack with music from The Fourth Choir that underscored the emotional drama

The Dead - Niamh Cusack, The Fourth Choir, Jamie Powe - Wilton's Music Hall (Photo: Kathleen Holman)

The Dead: James Joyce, Sarah MacDonald, Rhona Clarke, Robert Parsons, Bellini, Aine Mallon, Joanna Marsh, Samuel Barber, Healey Willan, Bo Holten; Niamh Cusack, The Fourth Choir, Jamie Powe, Seamus Rea; Wilton's Music Hall
Reviewed 14 January 2025

The slightly unlikely combination of Joyce's masterly long short-story and music from Robert Parsons to Healey Willan and Samuel Barber to Joanna Marsh and Bo Holten proved a surprisingly effective synthesis, creating an engaging theatrical experience, not quite dramatic reading and not quite musical treatment.

James Joyce's The Dead, the final short story in his 1914 collection Dubliners might seem a somewhat unlikely inspiration for musical treatment, but it has inspired more than one dramatic adaptation including a Broadway musical. Music does, in fact, play an important part in the story. The first half depicts a Dublin party which seems an amusing examination of Irish identity, but a folksong The Lass of Aughrim raises such powerful memories and emotions in the hero, Gabriel Conroy's wife, Gretta, that the second half of the story where Gabriel and Gretta Conroy retire to a hotel, goes in an entirely surprising direction. The story ends with Gabriel watching the snow and considering the role of the dead in people's lives - "His soul swooned slowly, as he heard the snow falling faintly through the universe, and faintly falling, like the descent of their last end, upon all the living and the dead".

On Tuesday 14 January 2025, The Fourth Choir, musical director Jamie Powe, presented a dramatised reading of James Joyce's The Dead at Wilton's Music Hall, with actor Niamh Cusack. The work was adapted and directed by Séamus Rea, and developed in collaboration with Jamie Powe, with lighting by Guy Hoare.

The Dead - Niamh Cusack, The Fourth Choir, Jamie Powe - Wilton's Music Hall (Photo: Kathleen Holman)

The result was surprisingly engaging and thought-provoking, a dramatised reading of The Dead interspersed with music that sometimes referenced the story and sometimes simply heightened the atmosphere. 

Calling aspiring composers: ORA Singers 2025 Graduate and Young Composers schemes open

Suzi Digby at ORA Singers' Graduate Composer scheme

ORA Singers is looking for young composers as their 2025 Graduate Composers scheme and their 2025 Young Composers scheme are both open for applications.

The 2025 Graduate Composers scheme is designed to kick-start the careers of young professionals, offering the chance for five Graduate Composers to become professionally commissioned by ORA Singers. Each Graduate Composer will receive a commission fee of £1,000.00 to write a new short piece which ORA Singers will perform and record in concert in front of industry guests at the Royal Welsh College of Music and Drama in October 2025. 

Graduate Composers will also receive a professional video recording of their piece to help build their portfolios.   During the composing period, Graduates will have opportunities to meet with Director, Suzi Digby , and the ORA Singers team over consultation sessions, where they can receive guidance on their queries.

Full details from the ORA Singers website.

The 2025 Young Composers will be welcoming 50 students from non fee-paying schools to receive free, first-class coaching in composition with professional composers. Students are enrolled as either Young Composers or Apprentices. Young Composers receive one-to-one composition coaching with professional composers, chances to attend a workshop and are invited to write a new piece which ORA Singers perform and record in concert. 

"Nothing else I’ve done this year - including school! - has taught me, inspired me and moulded me as much as this programme. Thank you so much to everyone at ORA, it’s been incredible.” - Emily Pedersen, 2019 Winner

Apprentices receive mentoring through a course of online Zoom workshops with composer, Rory Wainwright Johnston as well as opportunities to meet with professional composers and undergraduates to learn about the music industry, and gain tips on applying to University/Conservatoire.

Full details from the ORA Singers website.

Creating a personal world: Ethel Smyth's earliest orchestral work alongside contemporary pieces by inti figgis-vizueta and Ying Wang

Lauter! Ethel Smyth, inti figgis-vizueta;Ying Wang; ensemble reflektor, Holly Hyun Choe; Solaire Records
Reviewed 14 January 2025

Ethel Smyth's earliest orchestral work alongside contemporary pieces by inti figgis-vizueta and Ying Wang in an intriguing programme that brings a sense of contrast, of creating worlds.

 Lauter! from ensemble reflektor on Solaire records combines two contemporary female composers with an early work by a female composer in the historical canon. Conducted by Holly Hyun Choe, the ensemble performs inti figgis-vizueta's devour, Ying Wang's Freiheit is der Atem der  Kunst and Ethel Smyth's Serenade in D major. The two contemporary works were commissioned by PODIUM Esslingen and premiered at PODIUM Festival 2023.

Based in North Germany but with strong links to PODIUM Esslingen near Stuttgart, ensemble reflektor is a lively chamber orchestra and Lauter! is their fourth disc, each one encompassing a mix of the old and the new, the classic and the cutting edge.

The Serenade in D major was Ethel Smyth's first major orchestra work, written in late 1889 and premiered at a Crystal Palace concert in 1890 with the composer conducting. Apart from an overture dating from the same period, Smyth wrote little further orchestral music that was not connected to her operas until the late Concerto for violin and horn in 1926. After 1890 her attention would turn towards her Mass in D and her first opera, Fantasio.

An alternative Valentine, a Welsh songbook and celebrating 10 years of Creative Minds in Song: Song in the City's 2025 season begins

Song in the City's Creative Minds in Song

Song in the City is an artist-led charity directed by Gavin Roberts and Rebecca Cohen that aims to take classical music out of its comfort zone, using the talents of professional classical musicians to respond to the world around us, whilst challenging our artists and audiences in creative ways.

Their 2025 season gets off to a lively start with a trio of concerts at St Giles Cripplegate. First off is Reclaiming Love: An Alternative Valentines on 14 February when Sam Cobb (soprano), Charlie Morris (alto), Jonathan Henley (tenor), Thomas Litchiev (baritone), Gavin Roberts and Anna Reiley (piano), as part of LGBT+ History Month celebrate love of all kinds with music including Brahms' Love Song Waltzes, and songs chosen specially by the performers that share what 'love' means to them!

For Wales Week London 2025, Elinor Rolf Johnson (soprano) and Gavin Roberts are presenting A Welsh Songbook on 7 March, with music and poetry by Morfydd Owen, Meirion Williams, Nicholas Olsen, Alun Hoddinot, Dilys Elwyn-Edwards, RS Hughes, and E T Davies. 

Then on 11 April, they celebrate 10 years of Creative Minds in Song. Lynda Shariff (mezzo-soprano), Gavin Roberts and artists from Creative Minds in Song will present the premiere of My Child by poet Isobel Lane and composer Michal Kawecki, alongside previous compositions and poetry readings from former Creative Minds in Song participants.

Creative Minds in Song was begun by Song in the City in 2015, and has produced 30 co-created songs with in collaboration with writers who have lived experience of mental illness using the talents of Guildhall School composers, singers and instrumentalists. Isobel Lane and Michal Kawecki first met on Song in the City’s Creative Minds in Song project.

Further information from the Song in the City website and tickets from TicketTailor.

The complete Walton songs: there aren't that many but Siân Dicker, Kyrstal Tunnicliffe, Saki Kato certainly make us understand why they are all worthy of attention

William Walton: Complete Song Collection;  Siân Dicker, Krystal Tunnicliffe, Saki Kato; DELPHIAN
Reviewed 12 January 2025

Shedding a light on Walton's small but valuable song output from remarkable early songs to the late masterpieces, all performed with love, attention and often lyrical exuberance

William Walton wrote music in a wide variety of genres and whilst his orchestral and film music might stand top dead centre in his output, the voice is a constant throughout his career with choral music, opera and of course the reciters in Facade, whose medium of reciter and ensemble seemed to offer the composer such a fertile ground that the original Facade spawned further material.

But what does not crop up that often is song. Walton does not seem to have had a habit of songs, and most of his song-writing seems to have relied on others to choose the texts, he wasn't a composer to read poetry to select his songs. His two major song cycles, A Song for the Lord Mayor's Table and Anon in Love both date from late in his career, and both have intriguing links back to Walton's only full-scale opera, Troilus and Cressida. Whilst for all the fertility of his ideas for Facade, he wrote just three songs based on it. 

So it is all the more valuable to have Walton's Complete Song Collection on this disc from Delphian, performed by soprano Siân Dicker, pianist Krystal Tunnicliffe and guitarist Saki Kato. Alongside the three Facade settings, A Song for the Lord Mayor's Table and Anon in Love we have Four Early Songs, Tritons, Under the greenwood tree and Beatriz's Song (from Christopher Columbus).

The idea of Greece: Robin Tritschler and Jonathan Ware in a wide-ranging recital from Schubert, Loewe & Wolf to Shostakovich, Dvorak, Berkeley & Ravel

Photo: Antonio Beato, 19th century
Brooklyn Museum

Greek Songs: Schubert, Loewe, Wolf, Conradin Kreutzer, Ludwig Berger, Shostakovich, Dvorak, Lennox Berkeley, Ravel: Robin Tritschler, Jonathan Ware; Wigmore Hall
Reviewed 8 January 2025

Composers different ideas of Greece from Schubert's experimental, architectural songs, to Shostakovich's workers songs and Ravel's French-influenced folk songs, along with some rather rare Dvorak and Berkeley.

In their programme, Greek Songs, at Wigmore Hall on Wednesday 8 January 2025, tenor Robin Tritschler and pianist Jonathan Ware explored the idea of Greece in composers' minds. None of the songs set any Greek, though some used translations of the original, and as far as I can tell, none of the composers visited Greece. This was an exploration of the idea of Greece in the Western mind. We began with Schubert, seven of his settings of Mayrhofer's mythological-based texts, followed by similarly Greek-inspired work from Carl Loewe and Hugo Wolf. As a sort of palate cleanser in the middle of the recital, there were songs by two of Schubert's older contemporaries, Conradin Kreutzer and Ludwig Berger, and then we moved to the 20th century for Greek-inspired songs by Shostakovich, Dvorak, Lennox Berkeley and Ravel.

In 1818 Schubert spent the Summer as a music teacher to the family of Count Johann Karl Esterházy at their château in Zselíz. When he returned to Vienna, he moved into a one-room apartment with his friend Johann Mayrhofer, a poet who was ten years older than Schubert and the two would live together until 1821. Mayrhofer was almost certainly homosexual and the relationship with Schubert is one that continues to tantalise as critics theorise without much concrete evidence, one way or the other.

Mayrhofer had a fascinating with Greek mythology and used it, sometimes to autobiographical effect, in his poems (such as Memnon). We heard a group of seven of Schubert's settings, dating from 1817 and 1820. The songs are all serious and full of sober intensity, there is almost something architectural about Schubert's writing. In many ways, these Mayrhofer settings feel as if Schubert is experimenting with arioso and dramatic recitative rather than lyrical song.

Continuo Foundation opens applications for funding for round 9!

Handel: Messiah - Manchester Baroque at Manchester Cathedral in December 2024 (Photo: Tom Bowles)

Continuo Foundation is inviting applications for funding early music concerts, tours and other projects taking place between May and October 2025, anywhere in the UK. As in previous rounds, the funding available in this ninth grant round amounts to £100,000.

Since its inception, the Foundation has awarded £850,000 to 100 UK period-instrument ensembles, including 29 emerging groups, formed since 2020. The 200 projects supported so far have benefited over 1,000 freelance musicians and more than 260,000 audience members in 200 locations across the country and online.

Professional UK-based period instrument ensembles are eligible to apply, with a separate category for emerging ensembles. Project proposals will be evaluated by the Foundation’s Advisory Panel and Trustees based on artistic quality, audience reach and long-term impact. At least 20% of the funds will be directed to support recently formed groups, underlining the Foundation’s commitment to nurturing emerging talent and new creative partnerships.  

The photo (above) shows Manchester Baroque, one of the emerging ensembles the Foundation helped to get off the ground with their grants, and the ensemble has had enormous success in developing new audiences for early music in Manchester.

In addition to grants, the Foundation supports all UK-based professional early music artists, including vocal ensembles, through the Continuo Connect digital platform for early music. The Foundation invests in growing the community of musicians, festivals and audiences using this online hub to raise the profile of the sector and to open access to the world of early music.

Full details from the Continuo Foundation's website.

precept.concept.percept XII - open call for composers and performers for residency run by Slovenian .abeceda [new music ensemble]

There is an open call for composers and performers for a residency programme for 2025. The precept.concept.percept residency focuses on a collaborative creative process where performers and composers work closely together to prepare for a performance at the fifth .abeceda Contemporary Music Festival (Bled, Slovenia, EU). Composers present, optimize, theorize, and develop new works, while performers form an ensemble to refine their practice and premiere these compositions.

This represents a year-long collaboration with monthly online workshops from February to May 2025, a week's workshop in Bled, Slovenia in June 2025 with a performance at the fifth .abeceda Contemporary Music Festival in Bled. Then monthly online workshops from September to November 2025 with presentations by participant composers and performers focused on in-depth analysis and reflection.

The video shows Claudia Sofía Alvarez Cuba's Gritos silentes performed by .abeceda [new music ensemble]. The residency is run .abeceda [new music ensemble], which composer Alastair White has worked with over the past few years as composer-in-residence

Applications need to take place before 25 January 2025, further information at the website.

Uprising! Director Sinéad O’Neill on Glyndebourne's new community opera written by Jonathan Dove and April De Angelis

Can one person make a difference? Horrified by the climate crisis, teenager Lola decides that she must fight for the future. Composer Jonathan Dove and writer April De Angelis' new opera looks at the state of the world through the eyes of the young. 

The work is premiered at Glyndebourne opening on 28 February, featuring a cast of professionals including Ffion Edwards (who recently sang the title role in Rimsky Korsakov's The Snow Maiden with English Touring Opera, see my interview with Ffion), Madeleine Shawe, Julieth Lozano Rolong, and Ross Ramgobin, and the Glyndebourne Sinfonia alongside Glyndebourne Youth Opera, a community chorus and young instrumentalists from Brighton & East Sussex Youth Orchestra and Brighton & Hove Percussion Ensemble, conducted by Andrew Gourlay.

Here, the work's director, Sinéad O’Neill introduces the project. Sinéad founded Cambridge City Opera to create original music theatre for new audiences. She co-created Pay the Piper with composers Ailie Robertson, Cecilia Livingston, Ninfea Crutwell-Reade and Anna Appleby and writer Hazel Gould for Glyndebourne Youth Opera (2022), and with long-time collaborator, composer Matt Rogers, she  has created Amor Mundi (conceived and written by Zsuzsanna Ardó), The Raven, On the Axis of this World and And London Burned.

Uprising is set to premiere at Glyndebourne in 2025. Could you share some insights into the inspiration behind this production and how the storyline developed?

In 2020, a man called Jim Potter received a terminal diagnosis. He lay awake at night thinking about the world and his place in it, and he was inspired to commission a new opera. He wanted it to be about young people, and about the climate crisis. The seeds Jim planted in those dark days grew into Uprising. Jim and his wife Hilary worked closely with composer Jonathan Dove and writer April De Angelis to combine a rigorous understanding of climate change and a direct, emotional engagement with one girl's drive to change the world.

Our December newsletter has arrived: songs by Robert Kahn and Thomas Pitfield, new youth opera and Pieces that Disappear

 

The Cast of ENO’s The Pirates of Penzance 2024 © Craig Fuller

In case you missed it online, our December newsletter has arrived, a handy digest of the month's reviews. December was a month when we moved from Gilbert & Sullivan to Christmas celebrations both well-known and lesser known. Interviews this month include baritone Benjamin Appl on his three new discs from Christmas in Regensburg to György Kurtág, composer Nathan Williamson on his new opera for London Youth Opera, and composer Stephen Goss on his latest triple album which is a celebration of collaboration.

Read the newsletter at Mailchimp.

Idomeneo in Amsterdam: Lawrence Cummings joins forces with Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui for a new production of Mozart's first mature opera

Mozart's Idomeneo is regarded as his first mature opera, written for Munich in 1781. The subject may not have been Mozart's choice but it represents the composers continuing engagement with Italian opera seria, a style that had dominated his operatic output in his teenage years. Mozart continued his engagement with this style, though his three mature operas with Lorenzo da Ponte represent a new direction, yet in 1791 he would return to opera seria for his late masterpiece, La clemenza di Tito.

Idomeneo was written to a libretto by Giambattista Varesco, the court chaplain, based on a libretto written for  André Campra's Idoménée (1712). It has been suggested that Varesco was familiar with the work of Calzabigi, Gluck's librettist, and much of the opera represents a mediation between the French and the Italian serious styles. The opera is something of a musicological minefield, before the first performance Mozart was making large cuts and changes, then in 1786 he was contemplating wholesale revisions to make it more Gluckian, with Idomeneo as a bass and Idamante as a tenor (rather than a castrato). In the event, all he did was give a concert performance in Vienna in 1786, writing some new music, making more cuts and changing Idamante to tenor, a half-way house towards a version that he never created.

Idomeneo's dependence on the Italian 18th-century opera seria style can mean dramatic challenges for directors, yet you need to set beside this that Mozart wrote a full-scale dance divertissement for the opera too! Idomeneo remains one of those operas that fascinates and tantalises on the stage, whilst few productions manage to distil its essence.

If you fancy a trip to Amsterdam then on 7 February 2025, the Nationale Opera & Ballet opens a new production of Mozart's Idomeneo. Lawrence Cummings conducts, making his debut with the company and the production is directed by choreographer Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui who will also be working with members of his dance troupe, Eastman, and sets are designed by the Japanese artist Chiharu Shiota. Daniel Behle is Idomeneo with a cast including Cecilia Molinari, Anna El-Khashem, and Jacquelyn Wagner.

Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui, former artistic director of Royal Ballet of Flanders, has directed a number of operas including Rameau's Les Indes Galantes (2016, Bavarian State Opera), Philip Glass' Satyagraha (2017, Theater Basel), Debussy's Pelléas et Mélisande (2018, Opera Vlanderen) and Gluck's French version of Alceste (2019, Bavarian State Opera, see YouTube)

This is a co-production with Grand Théâtre de Genève and Grand Théâtre de Luxembourg, so if it appeals then there are other wonderful operatic trips to be made.

Interesting note: In 1964, Luciano Pavarotti made his UK debut as Idamante in Idomeneo at Glyndebourne in a production directed by Carl Ebert, conducted by John Pritchard with a cast including Gundula Janowitz as Ilia and Richard Lewis as Idomeneo. Now doesn't that make the mouth water! [full details at the Glyndebourne website]

Full details from the company's website.

Drawing us in: baritone James Atkinson makes his Wigmore Hall debut with pianist Iain Burnside in a programme moving from Robert to Clara Schumann to Brahms' late tombeau for Clara

Robert and Clara Schumann

Schumann: Eichendorff Liederkreis, Clara Schumann: Gedichte aus Rückerts Liebesfrühling, Brahms: Four Serious Songs; James Atkinson, Iain Burnside; Wigmore Hall
Reviewed 6 January 2025

Young baritone James Atkinson used his rich, dark hued voice in a manner that really drew us in, not over-demonstrative yet rich in subtlety, in a programme that moved from Robert to Clara Schumann to Brahms' late tombeau for Clara

Baritone James Atkinson has been a BBC New Generation Artist since 2023 and we have caught him in a variety of roles from London Song Festival appearances celebrating the friendship of Hector Berlioz & Théophile Gautier [see my review] and the bi-centenary of the invention of the Mackintosh at the [see my review] to performing Belcore in Donizetti's L'elisir d'amore with Wild Arts [see my review], as well as premiering Out of the Shadows, the programme of my songs and cantatas that we premiered in 2023.

On Monday 6 January 2025, James Atkinson made his Wigmore Hall debut at a BBC Lunchtime Concert with pianist Iain Burnside in a programme that moved from Schumann's Eichendorff Liederkreis, Op. 39 to Clara Schumann's Gedichte aus Rückerts Liebesfrühling, Op. 12 and Johannes Brahms' Four Serious Songs, Op. 121

We began with Schumann's Eichendorff Liederkreis setting twelve poems by Joseph von Eichendorff to create one of the great explorations of the Romantic experience of landscape.

A significant link between Gounod's Faust & Offenbach's Les contes d'Hoffmann, Saint-Saens's Le timbre d'argent gets a rare UK outing revived by New Sussex Opera

Offenbach: La princesse de Trébizonde - Anthony Flaum, Meriel Cunningham - New Sussex Opera in 2021 (Photo Colin Chapman)

Under Léon Carvalho, the Théâtre Lyrique in Paris had something of a miracle period in the 1860s. In 1859 it produced the original version of Gounod's Faust (with spoken dialogue), going on to then produce Gounod's Roméo et Juliette and Mireille, Bizet's Les pêcheurs de perles and La jolie fille de Perth and Berlioz's Les Troyens à Carthage as well as the Paris premiere of Wagner's Rienzi. So it was perhaps not surprising that Saint-Saens was intended to be on the list too.

He began Le timbre d'argent in 1864 and finished it a year later, but first the theatre's financial difficulties and then the Franco-Prussian war rather delayed things and the opera was not premiered until 1877, by an entirely different theatre. 

Described as an opéra fantastique, the libretto is by by Jules Barbier and Michel Carré, who penned the librettos for Gounod's Faust and Offenbach's Les contes d'Hoffmann, and Saint-Saëns's opera serves as a significant link between these two. 

In May 2025, UK audiences will get a chance to appreciate the work as New Sussex Opera will be presenting a production directed by Paul Higgins and conducted by Toby Purser (the same team as was in charge of their 2024 production, Lampe's The Dragon of Wantley, see my review). Anthony Flaum will feature as Conrad with the remaining casting to be announced. The New Sussex Opera Chorus will be joined by St Paul's Sinfonia, and the work requires a much larger orchestra than their recent productions.

New Sussex Opera will be presenting it in a newly commissioned English translation.

The first performance is in Lewes on 5 May, with subsequent performances in London, Eastbourne, Worthing, and Winchester.

Full details from New Sussex Opera's website.

Don Giovanni, Dido and two Handel operas: Ensemble OrQuesta's new season

Mozart: Le nozze di Figaro - Rosemary Carlton-Willis, Marcio da Silva, Joshua Furtado-Mendes - Ensemble OrQesta at Arcola Theatre's Grimeborn Festival, 2024

Ensemble OrQuesta, artistic director Marcio da Silva, whom we last heard at the Grimeborn Festival in 2024 in Mozart's Le nozze di Figaro, with Marcio da Silva both directing and playing Figaro [see my review], has announced its 2025 season.

In March, Marcio da Silva will be directing 'a provocative and thought-provoking' version of Mozart's Don Giovanni at the Cockpit Theatre with Oshri Segev in the title role plus Flavio Lauria, Helen May, Rosemary Carlton-Willis, Anna-Luise Wagner, and Joshua Furtado-Mendes. And they will be back at Grimeborn in 2025 with a production yet to be announced.

The Ensemble OrQuesta Opera Academy, dedicated to the training of the new generation of opera singers, is presenting three production, Mozart's Don Giovanni at Christ Church, Hastings in March, a double bill of Handel's Acis and Galatea ;and Purcell's Dido and Aeneas at the Cockpit Theatre in May, and Handel's Teseo at the Cockpit Theatre in June.

Full details from the Ensemble OrQuesta website.

We Are! In support of Ukraine

Violinist Roman Mints is the artistic director of WE ARE! Concert in Support of Ukraine, a night of music and solidarity to support Ukraine on Sunday 26 January 2025 at St John's Church, Waterloo. The event will feature oboist Nicholas Daniel OBE, violinist Dmytro Udovychenko, conductor Natalia Ponomarchuk, pianist Sasha Grynyuk, flautist Karen Wong, and Roman Mints along with Another Chamber Orchestra.

The programme features Malcom Arnold's Variations on a Ukrainian Theme and his Concerto for two violins and string orchestra, alongside music by Ukrainian composers including Yevhen Stankovych, Valentin Silvestrov, Victoria Poleva, Myroslav Skoryk (1938-2020), Vitaliy Hubarenko (1934-2000) and Yuri Shevchenko who died of pneumonia a month after Russia launched the invasion; he was trapped in a cellar in Kiev.

Moscow-born Roman Mints is a violin professor at both Trinity Laban Conservatoire of Music and Dance and the Royal Birmingham Conservatoire. Following the start of the full-scale invasion of Ukraine, he has been involved in several fundraising campaigns to raise money for charities helping Ukraine. He has founded Another Music Festival Ltd to promote these and other concerts, to bring together young and experienced musicians, and to create musical programmes with unexpected twists.

Ticket proceeds will go towards supporting Medical Life Line Ukraine which buys ambulances and power generators. 

Join us as we stand with Ukraine!

Full details from Eventbrite.

New Year in Berlin: Tony Cooper's cultural break takes in a new Torsten Rasch piece, Beethoven's Choral Symphony, Mendelssohn's Paulus & artists of Circus Roncalli

Silvesterkonzert - Artists of Circus Roncalli, Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin conducted by Paul Daniel - Tempodrom, Berlin (Photo: Peter Adamik)

Torsten Rasch: Pataphor; Beethoven: Symphony no.9 in D minor; Mirjam Mesak, Emily D’Angelo, Christopher Sokolowski, Christof Fischesser, Rundfunkchor Berlin, Rundfunk-Sinfonieorchester Berlin, Vladimir Jurowski; Konzerthaus am Gendarmenmarkt, Berlin.
New Year’s Eve concert (Silvesterkonzert): Artists of Circus Roncalli, Stephan Mörth, Thomas Holzmann, Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin, Paul Daniel; Tempodrom, Berlin.
New Year’s Day concert (Neujahrskonzert): Mendelssohn: Paulus; Johanna Winkel, Anke Vondung, Patrick Grahl, Samuel Hasselhorn; RIAS Kammerchor Berlin, Akademie für Alte Musik Berlin. Florian Helgath; Philharmonie Berlin.
Reviewed by Tony Cooper (30 & 31 December 2024, 1 January 2025)

Our roving European correspondent, Tony Cooper, travels to Berlin, a European capital he greatly favours, to see the Old Year out and ring in the New taking in a trio of concerts heard over consecutive days

My New Year’s cultural break in Berlin started in the historic Konzerthaus am Gendarmenmarkt offering a delightful concert from Rundfunk-Sinfonieorchester Berlin comprising Beethoven’s Choral Symphony heard against an illuminating new work by Torsten Rasch entitled Pataphor. And to punctuate New Year’s Eve, artists of Circus Roncalli joined forces with Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin to produce a dazzling, fun and entertaining concert at the Tempodrom while New Year’s Day witnessed a powerful and rewarding performance of Mendelssohn’s oratorio, Paulus, at the Philharmonie, Berlin.

To ease me out of the Old Year and launch me into the New, a trio of concerts in Berlin proved just the ticket with the first call falling to a New Year’s Eve pre-concert held at the magnificent and historic Konzerthaus am Gendarmenmarkt, Berlin, featuring Torsten Rasch’s Pataphor and Beethoven’s Symphony no.9 in D minor ‘Choral’ featuring soprano Mirjam Mesak, mezzo-soprano, Emily D’Angelo, tenor Christopher Sokolowski and bass Christof Fischesser with the Rundfunkchor Berlin and the Rundfunk-Sinfonieorchester Berlin conducted by Vladimir Jurowski.

The New Year’s Eve concert (Silvesterkonzert) at the Tempodrom, Berlin, witnessed artists of Circus Roncalli joining forces with the Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin conducted by Paul Daniel.

And on New Year’s Day, Mendelssohn’s Paulus, a work I’ve longed to hear for years and years, unexpectedly fell into my lap. A refreshing and beautiful oratorio, the performance featured soprano Johanna Winkel, mezzo-soprano Anke Vondung, tenor Patrick Grahl and baritone Samuel Hasselhorn with RIAS Kammerchor Berlin and the Akademie für Alte Musik Berlin conducted by Florian Helgath.

Beethoven: Symphony No.9 - Mirjam Mesak, Emily D’Angelo, Christopher Sokolowski, Christof Fischesser, Rundfunkchor Berlin, Rundfunk-Sinfonieorchester Berlin, Vladimir Jurowski - Konzerthaus am Gendarmenmarkt, Berlin.

As we wish everyone a Happy New Year, it is a time to look back at 2024 and celebrate

Ben Goldscheider & Gavin Higgins at the London premiere of Gavin Higgins' Horn Concerto
with London Chamber Orchestra (Photo: Jerome Weatherald)

2024 saw us writing 545 articles, from William Christie and Les Arts Florissants celebrating New Year's Eve 2023 in style to my review of two discs of retellings of the Christmas story from Gabriel Jackson and Edward Nesbitt.

There were just on 80 concert reviews and 53 opera reviews with everything from Lampe's The Dragon of Wantley to Bizet's Carmen at the BBC Proms. There was new opera by Stephen McNeff and revivals of Poul Ruders' The Handmaid's Tale, Judith Weir's Blond Eckbert, and Jonathan Dove's community opera, The Monster in the Maze, as well as Baroque rarities by Vivaldi, Pergolesi, Gazzaniga and Jommelli. And we heard horn player Ben Goldscheider in two terrific new horn concertos, by Gavin Higgins and Huw Watkins, and Gavin Higgins was back with a revival of his terrific Concerto Grosso for Brass Band and Orchestra.

Out of the UK, our new correspondent, Robert, started his Letter from Florida, including visits to Palm Beach Opera and Sarasota Opera. We made a return visit to Le piano symphonique in Lucerne, the Dresden Music Festival and the Göttingen Festival, whilst Tony caught the Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin. We received a warm welcome at the Glasperlenspiel Festival in Tartu, Estonia where a programme of my music was performed.

• 2024 in record reviews: white-hot prophets, sensitive souls, a German in Venice, Holst's organ and the 20th century brass band - article
• 2024 - A year in concert reviews: astonishing youth, late-romantic rarities, riveting symphonic theatre - article
• 2024 - A year in opera reviews: strong individual performances, reinventing classics and historically informed Wagner - article

We heard a fine account of Massenet's Werther in Zurich and a revelatory historically informed performance of Wagner's Die Walküre at the Dresden Music Festival and Tony Cooper revisited Dmitri Tcherniakov's Ring Cycle at the Staatsoper, Berlin.

Still with Wagner's Ring Cycle, Florence caught the next instalment of Regent Opera's powerful new chamber version of the cycle, Siegfried and transgender tenor Holden Madagame wrote about singing Mime in the production, whilst Tony heard the London Opera Company's full-scale concert performance of Siegfried.

Around the UK we made three visits to Opera North, and two to WNO, plus helping Leeds Lieder celebrate its 20th anniversary, as well as catching some of the Summer festivals at Glyndebourne, Garsington, and the Grange Festival, whilst in London there was Opera Holland Park, Grimeborn and of course the BBC Proms.

It was a year of rarities galore, but particular highlights must include a first chance to explore the songs of Robert Kahn, and a rare outing for Ethel Smyth's The Prison, whilst Nigel Foster's London Song Festival gave us the chance to explore the song output of Gustav Holst.

These remain worrying and challenging times for the arts in the UK, whilst the outlook can sometimes look bleak it is heartening to find so many artists and companies finding ways to demonstrate the value of the arts in so many ways.

As ever, you can explore further in our recently updated archives of live reviews, record reviews, and interviews.

2024 in record reviews: white-hot prophets, sensitive souls, a German in Venice, Holst's organ and the 20th century brass band

Early and late feature heavily in this year's selection, but in the middle a pair of individual performances stand out. The white-hot dramatic impetus of John Osborn's account of the title role in Meyerbeer's Le prophète in a performance from Mark Elder and the LSO that really capture's the work's drama, and a rediscovery of the original orchestral sound of Elgar's The Dream of Gerontius from Gabrieli and Paul McCreesh, with a sensitive account of the title role from Nicky Spence.

Early discoveries include Victoria's Tenebrae Responsories sung one to a part at the original pitch by I Fagiolini and Robert Hollingworth, and  David de Winter and The Brook Street Band putting Schütz's Venetian career in context. In Copisteria del Conte explores late 18th century chamber music from Genoa, giving us a very particular sense of time and place.

And the Choir of Queen's College, Oxford and Owen Rees' disc of Bononcini's English choral music raises him from simply being an interesting footnote to Handel. Turning to Handel, a fully rounded performance of his late masterpiece, Theodora, from Jonathan Cohen and Arcangelo with Louise Alder in the title role.

In recital, Laurence Kilsby and Ella O'Neill's Awakenings was an intriguing and eclectic programme full of disturbing elements complemented by performances of remarkable maturity.

Transcription was the order of the day with three striking recordings. Holst's The Planets was superbly reimagined for the Father Willis organ at Salisbury Cathedral by John Challenger, whilst discs of brass band music by Bliss and Arnold mixed the composers' works for brass with transcriptions of other pieces to create two brilliant and highly satisfying portraits.

Contemporary music included the mad, magical and mesmerising world of Tom Coult's Pieces that Disappear, his debut disc from NMC Records, and another remarkable debut, a disc of chamber music by 25-year-old Sam Rudd-Jones 

2024: A year in concert reviews, astonishing youth, late-romantic rarities, riveting symphonic theatre

Janine Jansen, Martha Argerich, Mischa Maisky - Le Piano Symphonique, Lucerne (Photo: Philipp Schmidli, Luzerner Sinfonieorchester)

Baroque music featured highly this year, Lawrence Cummings and the AAM used just eight singers for their moving version of Bach's St Matthew Passion and equally life-enhancing was Bach's Brandenburg Concertos from the OAE. We heard Handel's original version of Esther from Solomon's Knot, who also popped up in Monteverdi's Vespers of 1610, one of a pair of contrasting performances of this work, the other by from the ever admirable Sixteen. There was more Handel at the Wimbledon Festival with Benjamin Hulett and Helen Charlston in Jephtha.  I Fagiolini took us to 17th century Venice for glorious multi-choir music by Benevoli.

Thanks to baritone Florian Störtz and pianist Aleksandra Myslek I finally got to hear a goodly selection of songs by Robert Kahn, whose music was forbidden by the Nazis and who was forced to flee to England in his 70s, whilst tenor Laurence Kilsby and pianist Ella O'Neill took us on a journey of remarkable emotional depth.

At Le Piano Symphonique in Lucerne, Martha Argerich and two friends created a little bit of magic in an evening that moved through from large-scale Liszt and Grieg to poetic intimacy.

There were rarities. At the Proms, Benjamin Grosvenor, Edward Gardner and the LPO turned Busoni's Piano Concerto into riveting symphonic theatre whilst Andras Schiff and the OAE brought their Mendelssohn festival to a close with his rarely performed symphony-cantata Lobesgesang. And a real rarity, impressively tackled by the North London Chorus was Ethel Smyth's late work, The Prison. And on a different scale, pianist Simon Callaghan tackled Cyril Scott's unjustly neglected Piano Sonata.

In contemporary music, the National Youth Orchestra and National Youth Brass Band combined forces for Gavin Higgins's epic Concerto Grosso for Brass Band and Orchestra, whilst horn player Ben Goldscheider joined forces with Britten Sinfonia for the premiere of Huw Watkins' Horn Concerto.

Bach: Brandenburg Concerto No. 1 - Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment, Queen Elizabeth Hall

2024: A year in opera reviews, strong individual performances, reinventing classics and historically informed Wagner

Britten: Death in Venice - Antony César (Tadzio), Frederico Saggese (Jaschiu) - Welsh National Opera (Photo Johann Persson)

It was one of those evenings about which you can say 'I was there', Wagner's Die Walküre at Dresden Music Festival as their historically informed Ring Cycle unfolds. And there was something astonishing about Olivia Fuchs' new production of Britten's Death in Venice for Welsh National Opera, too with its combination of theatrical and circus arts.

Strong individual performances were a theme throughout the year. A strong ensemble of singing actors made Welsh National Opera's revival of Puccini's Il Trittico a special treat. Kate Lindsey's emotional roller-coaster performance as both Offreds anchored a strong revival of Poul Ruders' The Handmaid's Tale at English National Opera. Nina Stemme was back on form with a coruscating performance in the title role of Strauss' Elektra at the Royal Opera House.

Stravinsky's Rake's Progress at the Grange Festival made us really care for about the characters, at Opera Holland Park their revival of their 2008 production of Puccini's Tosca took us back to the revolutionary 1960s. The youthful vitality of the cast was compelling in Irish National Opera's production of Vivaldi's L'Olympiade. Opera North's 'in the round' production Britten's Albert Herring was wonderfully involving. And in Zurich, Benjamin Bernheim led a wonderfully memorable account of Massenet's Werther.

Reinventing classics was another theme of the year with Jack Furness' thought-provoking take on Hänsel und Gretel at the Royal Academy of Music, and English Touring Opera gave us a brilliant reinvention of Judith Weir's Blond Eckbert, whilst Glyndebourne's stripped down yet intelligent production of Bizet's Carmen at the BBC Proms was highly satisfying. David McVicar's iconic production of Handel's Giulio Cesare returned to Glyndebourne as vivid and vibrant as ever thanks to a terrific young cast.

Sui generis, professionals & amateurs came together at Sheffield's Crucible Theatre for Jonathan Dove's The Monster in the Maze.

In a year when there was G&S at Opera North, English National Opera and Opera Holland Park, it was Opera North's revival of Ruddigore that stayed in the mind. Still with comedy, Rossini's The Barber of Seville was rather flavour of the Summer with new productions at Opera Holland Park, Waterperry Opera, and West Green House Opera where Victoria Newlyn's new production was a complete delight.

Humperdinck: Hänsel und Gretel - Zahid Siddiqui (Witch) - Royal Academy Opera (Photo: Craig Fuller)