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.
The Sixteen continues its exploration of Henry Purcell’s Welcome Songs for Charles II. As with Robert King’s pioneering Purcell series begun over thirty years ago for Hyperion, Harry Christophers is recording two Welcome Songs per disc.
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.
In February this year, Albanian soprano Ermonela Jaho made a highly lauded debut recital at Wigmore Hall - a concert which both celebrated Opera Rara’s 50th anniversary and honoured the career of the Italian soprano Rosina Storchio (1872-1945), the star of verismo who created the title roles in Leoncavallo’s La bohème and Zazà, Mascagni’s Lodoletta and Puccini’s Madama Butterfly.
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.
Collapsology. Or, perhaps we should use the French word ‘Collapsologie’ because this is a transdisciplinary idea pretty much advocated by a series of French theorists - and apparently, mostly French theorists. It in essence focuses on the imminent collapse of modern society and all its layers - a series of escalating crises on a global scale: environmental, economic, geopolitical, governmental; the list is extensive.
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.’
Amongst an avalanche of new Mahler recordings appearing at the moment (Das Lied von der Erde seems to be the most favoured, with three) this 1991 Mahler Second from the 2nd Kassel MahlerFest is one of the more interesting releases.
‘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.’
If there is one myth, it seems believed by some people today, that probably needs shattering it is that post-war recordings or performances of Wagner operas were always of exceptional quality. This 1949 Hamburg Tristan und Isolde is one of those recordings - though quite who is to blame for its many problems takes quite some unearthing.
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."
Released to commemorate the seventy-fifth anniversary of the London Philharmonic Orchestra, the three multi-disc sets of recordings makes available recordings that document the triumphs of the ensemble since its founding in 1932 by Sir Thomas Beecham.
The third and final volume brings the documentation to the present, and celebrates some fine contemporary conductors of the London Philharmonic, with a disc devoted to each of its four recent conductors. Taken from a number of live performances, the recordings represent well the quality of the performances in the vividness of the concert hall. Reaching back a quarter century to 1983, the choice of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony under the direction of the late Klaus Tennstedt not only pays tribute to that conductor’s exemplary leadership and also demonstrates the caliber of soloists involved, with the late Lucia Popp, soprano, Ann Murray, mezzo soprano, Anthony Rolfe Johnson, tenor, and René Pape, bass. The performance of the “Choral” Symphony stems from a concert on 8 October 1983 at Royal Festival Hall. While it is difficult to recommend a limited number of recordings of this iconic work of nineteenth-century symphonic literature, this particular release conveys a dynamic tension that is not always possible in various fine studio recordings. This performance captures Lucia Popp at an excellent time in her career and, at the same time, includes the young René Pape, a bass who has since achieved an international reputation. The addition of Ann Murray and Anthony Rolfe Johnson make this a festival-level cast for this intensive reading of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony.
Dating from the later 1980s through the 1990s, the tenure of Franz Welser-Most includes music from several concerts and is denoted by several representative works for voices and orchestra. The disc includes five selections: Mozart’s Mass in C minor, K. 427, recorded at Walthamstow Assembly Hall in February 1987; Mozart’s Requiem, recorded at St. Augustine’s Church, London, in 1989; the final scene from Richard Strauss’s opera Capriccio, with soprano Dame Felicity Lott and bass Michael Georg from a concert on 25 February 1992; Schubert’s Stabat Mater, D. 175, from a concert at Royal Festival Hall, on 26 October 1992; and Bruckner’s Te Deum, recorded in October 1995 at All Saints’ Church, London. While most of the works are well-known, Schubert’s Stabat Mater is, perhaps, less familiar than the others and nonetheless of interest because of Welser-Most’s exemplary attention to the choral textures of this work. As one of the finest contemporary interpreters of Bruckner, the recording of the Te Deum brings together a remarkable cast, which includes soprano Jane Eaglen; contralto Brigit Remmert; the late tenor Deon van der Walt, and bass Alfred Muff. It is an exciting performance that stands well with other releases of the work. The relatively large amount of choral music on this disc does not need an explanation, but the inclusion of the scene from Strauss’s Capriccio remains a kind of commentary. With the nature of musical composition at the core of the libretto for Strauss’s opera, the final scene in this famed “conversation” about music contains the unresolved argument as to whether the text of the music should be foremost. It remains for the listener to decide, but the works chosen make a strong case for the place of choral music in the tradition of the London Philharmonic.
Moving to the early twentieth century, Kurt Masur, familiar to American audiences for his fine work with the New York Philharmonic is represented here with two critical works by Dmitri Shostakovich, the composer’s First and Fifth Symphonies. The recordings of those two symphonies are taken from performances given in the relatively short time between 31 January and 3 February 2004. Masur’s lively interpretation of Shostakovich’s First Symphony bears hearing for its fine sonics that make bring a nice clarity to the solo lines and thinner textures that are characteristic of the work. With the Fifth, Masur strikes a fine balance between the range of moods and textures that are part of the score. The slow movement, the penultimate band on the recording, is seamless, with a welcome spaciousness to its elegiac quality. The ensemble required for a successful execution is present in this masterful performance, which demonstrates the quality of playing that has been part of the London Philharmonic since its founding. The culmination of the movement, with the percussive line with xylophone and piano leads to a moving conclusion under Masur’s direction.
The final disc of the set is an opportunity to hear the young conductor Vladimir Jurowski, whose recorded legacy is not yet as extensive as those of his predecessors. Jurowski brings his own intensive musicality to the London Philharmonic in a performance of Shostakovich’s Symphony no. 14, a work that brings together settings of poetry by Lorca, Apollinaire, Küchelbecker, and Rilke, in a symphonic song cycle that stands well alongside other such twentieth-century works as Mahler’s Das Lied von der Erde and Britten’s Les Illuminations. With soloists Tatiana Monogarova and Sergei Leiferkus, this recording from February 2006 is an excellent introduction to Jurowski’s work.
As part of the anniversary celebration of the London Philharmonic, this last installment stands well with the other two. The sound is consistently fine, and audience noise, minimal. Not only do these recordings serve well in documenting the recent years of the London Philharmonic, but they represent well the conductors involved, each a major figure at the end of the twentieth century and the beginning of the twenty-first.
James Zychowicz