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."
Sir Harrison Birtwistle’s early opera, Punch and Judy, premiered at Aldeburgh in 1968. Benjamin Britten reportedly walked out. Now Birtwistle is himself the pre-eminent British composer, whose work has long since become part of the Aldeburgh tradition. This year’s Festival opened with two Birtwistle premieres, The Corridor and Semper Dowland, simper dolens.
Like Britten himself, Birtwistle is fascinated by early English music. So his new music grows on ancient roots, much like the new buildings at Snape rising from the remains of granaries that occupied the site in Victorian times. The new Britten Studio is a minimalist structure, with open beams in the roof and rough hewn brick walls. Architecture as abstract art. It was a perfect setting for the austerity of Birtwistle’s two new works.
Semper Dowland, simper dolens takes its cue from John Dowland's Seven Teares figured in seven passionate Pavanes. To Birtwistle, the Dowland sequence is "unique in the history of music". The basic unit is a song Lacrimae, which is set in seven versions, with the same chord sequence, each only a slight variation on the former, so the whole flows endlessly like the tears in the text. "It's like making music into a three dimensional object", says Birtwistle, "like seeing something in different facets".
In a musical puzzle piece like this, simplicity is of the essence. Dowland played the lute and sang it himself to small audiences. Mark Padmore sings, accompanied by austere yet limpid harp, a lute writ large with deeper sonorities. At critical moments, low voiced murmurs from bass clarinet, viola and alto flute, then sudden lyrical flights on piccolo.
The Corridor is Birtwistle's latest exploration of the Orpheus myth. Again, it springs from a simple idea, a freeze frame focus on a single, fleeting moment in the saga, when Orpheus, leading Eurydice out of the Underworld, suddenly looks back. In an instant, he loses her and she's swept back into eternity. So Birtwistle makes the split second extend into a half hour meditation on past, present and future. He layers mood on mood, infinitely extending the moment, which once past cannot be retrieved. So don't expect a storyline or development. This is a different concept of time in music.
The text is by David Harsent, whose poetry is poignant because it's direct and seemingly simple. He wrote the libretto for Birtwistle's The Minotaur where the Minotaur's fierce exterior hides his innocent, childlike soul. An even better comparison with The Corridor is The Woman and the Hare, a 15 minute jewel Harsent and Birtwistle wrote some several years ago. Birtwistle has come a long way from Punch and Judy. His more introspective work is delicate and intricately constructed - like his fascination with clockwork and mazes.
Indeed, Harsent's text in The Corridor is particularly elegaic and beautiful, Birtwistle hardly has to "set" it as such, for the phrases and words flow melodically. Elizabeth Atherton's was nicely warm blooded and lusty, making her fate all the more distressing. You could "hear" the vibrant young woman who dies on her wedding day. I wasn't so sure about the film projections and dancing, though I can see why the spartan staging might need elaboration to keep an audience happy. London audiences will get a chance to see a concert performance at the Queen Elizabeth Hall on 6th and 7th July.
But again, the best writing is for the male voice. As the poem goes:
"...there's only one word dark enough, one word as bleak, as cruel....to tear the heart, a word to blacken rain....to bring to ruin all joy or gift or courage...."
Orpheus cannot bring himself to say the word. Padmore sings the name instead, Eurydice, over and over, each time differently, as if reluctant to lose hold of the moment.
Anne Ozorio