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English Touring Opera are delighted to announce a season of lyric monodramas to tour nationally from October to December. The season features music for solo singer and piano by Argento, Britten, Tippett and Shostakovich with a bold and inventive approach to making opera during social distancing.
This tenth of ten Live from London concerts was in fact a recorded live performance from California. It was no less enjoyable for that, and it was also uplifting to learn that this wasn’t in fact the ‘last’ LfL event that we will be able to enjoy, courtesy of VOCES8 and their fellow vocal ensembles (more below …).
Ever since Wigmore Hall announced their superb series of autumn concerts, all streamed live and available free of charge, I’d been looking forward to this song recital by Ian Bostridge and Imogen Cooper.
Although Stile Antico’s programme article for their Live from London recital introduced their selection from the many treasures of the English Renaissance in the context of the theological debates and upheavals of the Tudor and Elizabethan years, their performance was more evocative of private chamber music than of public liturgy.
Evidently, face masks don’t stifle appreciative “Bravo!”s. And, reducing audience numbers doesn’t lower the volume of such acclamations. For, the audience at Wigmore Hall gave soprano Elizabeth Llewellyn and pianist Simon Lepper a greatly deserved warm reception and hearty response following this lunchtime recital of late-Romantic song.
For this week’s Live from London vocal recital we moved from the home of VOCES8, St Anne and St Agnes in the City of London, to Kings Place, where The Sixteen - who have been associate artists at the venue for some time - presented a programme of music and words bound together by the theme of ‘reflection’.
'Such is your divine Disposation that both you excellently understand, and royally entertaine the Exercise of Musicke.’
‘And there was war in heaven: Michael and his angels fought against the dragon; and the dragon fought and his angels, And prevailed not; neither was their place found any more in heaven … that old serpent … Satan, which deceiveth the whole world: he was cast out into the earth, and his angels were cast out with him.’
There was never any doubt that the fifth of the twelve Met Stars Live in Concert broadcasts was going to be a palpably intense and vivid event, as well as a musically stunning and theatrically enervating experience.
‘Love’ was the theme for this Live from London performance by Apollo5. Given the complexity and diversity of that human emotion, and Apollo5’s reputation for versatility and diverse repertoire, ranging from Renaissance choral music to jazz, from contemporary classical works to popular song, it was no surprise that their programme spanned 500 years and several musical styles.
The Academy of St Martin in the Fields have titled their autumn series of eight concerts - which are taking place at 5pm and 7.30pm on two Saturdays each month at their home venue in Trafalgar Square, and being filmed for streaming the following Thursday - ‘re:connect’.
The London Symphony Orchestra opened their Autumn 2020 season with a homage to Oliver Knussen, who died at the age of 66 in July 2018. The programme traced a national musical lineage through the twentieth century, from Britten to Knussen, on to Mark-Anthony Turnage, and entwining the LSO and Rattle too.
With the Live from London digital vocal festival entering the second half of the series, the festival’s host, VOCES8, returned to their home at St Annes and St Agnes in the City of London to present a sequence of ‘Choral Dances’ - vocal music inspired by dance, embracing diverse genres from the Renaissance madrigal to swing jazz.
Just a few unison string wriggles from the opening of Mozart’s overture to Le nozze di Figaro are enough to make any opera-lover perch on the edge of their seat, in excited anticipation of the drama in music to come, so there could be no other curtain-raiser for this Gala Concert at the Royal Opera House, the latest instalment from ‘their House’ to ‘our houses’.
"Before the ending of the day, creator of all things, we pray that, with your accustomed mercy, you may watch over us."
The doors at The Metropolitan Opera will not open to live audiences until 2021 at the earliest, and the likelihood of normal operatic life resuming in cities around the world looks but a distant dream at present. But, while we may not be invited from our homes into the opera house for some time yet, with its free daily screenings of past productions and its pay-per-view Met Stars Live in Concert series, the Met continues to bring opera into our homes.
Music-making at this year’s Grange Festival Opera may have fallen silent in June and July, but the country house and extensive grounds of The Grange provided an ideal setting for a weekend of twelve specially conceived ‘promenade’ performances encompassing music and dance.
There’s a “slide of harmony” and “all the bones leave your body at that moment and you collapse to the floor, it’s so extraordinary.”
“Music for a while, shall all your cares beguile.”
The hum of bees rising from myriad scented blooms; gentle strains of birdsong; the cheerful chatter of picnickers beside a still lake; decorous thwacks of leather on willow; song and music floating through the warm evening air.
Performances
28 Mar 2005
Krassimira Stoyanova at the Rousse Festival
Her occasional home-coming always turns into a music event in her native Bulgaria. This time Krassimira Stoyanova appeared at the Rousse March Music days in a recital including twenty melodies and songs by opera composers: Gounod, Donizetti, Puccini in the first part and Tchaikovsky and Rahmaninov in the second plus two “encores” by Bulgarian composers Dobri Hristov and Liubomir Pipkov. She performed this same recital at Carnegie Hall on January 18, 2005, accompanied by Yelena Kurdina.
Krassimira Stoyanova
Krassimira Stoyanova In Recital At The 45th March Music Days
Rousse, Bulgaria, 24 March 2005
Her occasional home-coming always turns into a music event in her native Bulgaria. This time Krassimira Stoyanova appeared at the Rousse March Music days in a recital including twenty melodies and songs by opera composers: Gounod, Donizetti, Puccini in the first part and Tchaikovsky and Rahmaninov in the second plus two "encores" by Bulgarian composers Dobri Hristov and Liubomir Pipkov. She performed this same recital at Carnegie Hall on January 18, 2005, accompanied by Yelena Kurdina.
French and Italian opera repertoire is the strong point of this fine Bulgarian soprano who, since 1999, has been a regular at the Vienna National opera on which stage Stoyanova can be seen between April 2 and May, 16 in "La Bohème," "Simone Boccanegra," "Falstaff" and "Les Contes d'Hoffman."
Krassimira Stoyanova is a "sparkly" performer who "catches" the audience from the beginning, making it experience all the drama of the works. From the most dramatic fullness of sorrow and despair like Donizetti's "La mère et l'enfant" through Gounod's "A une jeune fille," Tchaikovsky's "Ni slovo, o moi drug," "Snovo kak prezhde, odin" and Rachmaninov's "Poliubila ya pechal svoiu," "Ne poi krassavitsa..." to the radiant "Ma belle rebelle" et "Venise" (Gounod), Puccini's baroque-like "Salve Regina," "Terra e mare," "Storiella d'amore," "Sole e amore" and Rachmaninov's "Vessennie void," Stoyanova suggests all the range of emotions with her moving vibrato, lighter in the French melodies and darker in the rest of the songs, large amplitude and subtlety of singing. Some Russian performers could take lessons from her approach to Tchaikovsky and Rachmaninov: dynamic phrasing, clear diction, observed measure of emotion, sincerity and naturalness, as well as pleasure of singing. Both Donizeti's songs "La Sultana" and "Ah! Rammenta o bella Irene" (genuine arias), Rachmaninov's "Ne poi krassavitsa..." and all five Tchaikovsky's songs were of her best. On the other hand, the variety of the program and, perhaps, because of some problems with the acoustics, some vowels in the French melodies seemed lacking in control of pronunciation.
Both Bulgarian "encores" "Devoiche" by Dobri Hristov and "Lullaby" by Liubomir Pipkov were polar opposites from the point of view of dynamics of phrasing and emotions. The first one was performed with much humor and vitality that thrilled the audience; and the second with great control of the voice and heavenly floated pianissimi.
Maria Prinz was an expressive and careful accompanist who demonstrated a good knowledge of all the three different styles of music, although sometimes her tone sounded a bit loud and hard perhaps due to the peculiarity of the acoustics. Nevertheless, this evening was a great experience for both performers and audience at Rousse, Bulgaria.