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."
![John Mark Ainsley [Photo by Marc Eskenazi]](http://www.operatoday.com/Ainsley.gif)
The Wigmore Hall never stands still: not content with having increased its audience by 300% over the past year, it now seeks both to reward its loyal patrons for their support in acquiring the Lease, and to bring in new audience members, with an innovative series of ten concerts where all the seats are priced at £10.
The artists range from the stellar to the emergent, and if Saturday night’s recital is anything to go by, the standard is as high as the ‘usual’ Wigmore evening, but with the added excitement of a much younger audience demographic. Not that I object to an audience composed mainly of oldsters (that is, the 50-100s) such as myself, but it’s good to see a majority of the audience under 40 enjoying a finely balanced, deeply serious evening.
John Mark Ainsley has pretty much made a career out of being surprising: after all, this is an English tenor who never sounds ‘English’ in that dreaded Oxbridge sense; an elegant presence who never comes across as merely that; a Lieder specialist who hardly ever follows conventional ways with a song; and an opera singer who always provides a new and different perspective on a role. I have to admit that my heart sank on seeing the Heine ‘Schwanengesang’ settings as the central works, and grumbled that I would much prefer more Schumann (‘Dichterliebe’ for preference) since Ainsley is an especially sensitive interpreter of that composer, and anyway lyric tenors ought to leave the heavy stuff alone… and so on. However, I was wrong.
Howsoever you order them, the Heine settings are a demanding test for any singer, and Ainsley sang them with his customary subtlety and style, but was also able to produce impressive fortes in ‘Der Doppelgänger’ and ‘Der Atlas,’ the exposed, raw G at bar 34 in the former not so much a howl of outrage as an impassioned plea. The eerie calm created by Malcolm Martineau’s playing in the first part of the song was echoed by Ainsley’s quite chilling phrasing of ‘auf dem selben Platz,’ and his superb diction at ‘was äffst du nach mein Liebesleid’ made the song’s atmosphere all the more hectic. ‘Am Meer’ and ‘Ihr Bild’ provided more expected pleasures with beautiful tone and naturally easy legato line, although there was no self-indulgence with either, the tone’s sweetness readily discarded for a bitter one in ‘dass ich dich verloren hab.’
The Schumann group was a model of Lieder style, ‘Mit Myrthen und Rosen’ sung without any archness or sentimentality, the line ‘wie ein Lavastrom, der den Aetna entquillt’ proving that it’s possible for a lyric tenor voice to create a dramatically powerful statement, and the final ‘flüstern mit Wehmut und Liebeshauch’ caressed with aching tenderness. Liszt’s settings of Heine are of course much less familiar than those of Schumann, and Ainsley and Martineau brought out their melodic invention and rich harmonies, especially in ‘Du bist wie eine Blume,’ although the Schumann version sung as an encore reminded us of that composer’s greater sensitivity to Heine’s poetry.
The second half of the concert was all French music, Poulenc’s ‘Tel jour telle nuit’ revealing Ainsley’s deep understanding of the composer’s dictum that ‘calmness alone can give intensity to a love poem’ most finely shown in ‘Nous avons fait la nuit.’ Of Gounod’s ‘Cinq Mélodies,’ the highlight was certainly ‘Au rossignol,’ mesmerizingly played and sung with the kind of rapt contemplation and perfect diction which epitomize this singer’s art.
Melanie Eskenazi