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."
In this, the first of two recitals with pianist Helmut Deutsch, baritone Matthias Goerne continued his very personal journey through the landscape of Schubert’s lieder, a passage which is currently being preserved on an outstanding series of discs by Harmonia Mundi.
The paths on this occasion carried him largely to sombre, meditative places, the domains being defined by a series of mainly minor poets - friends and acquaintances of the composer, and with whom he performed, conversed and relaxed in the Viennese salons of the 1820s.
‘Der Jüngling und der Tod’ (‘The youth and death’), with a text by Schubert’s early champion, Josef von Spaun, opened the recital, firmly establishing the literary and emotional tone; for here, Youth cries out for the ‘calm embrace’ of Death, yearning to be led to ‘dreamed-of’ lands far from the torments of life. Deutsch’s dramatically dark piano postlude presented a stark contrast with the subsequent gentle grace of the strophic ‘Das Lied im Grünen’ (‘Songs in the open air’); but despite the apparent sense of ease, a tremulous disquiet troubled the surface as the speaker looks ahead to the days when life is ‘no longer green’.
Songs by Johann Gaudenz von Salis-Seewis followed. The introspective text of ‘Die Herbstnacht’ (‘Autumn night’) allowed Goerne to settle into the seamless, legato stream of sound - seductively sustained, yet coloured by delicate emotive shadings - for which he is revered. Indeed, the understated melancholy and brooding might have become a little too pervasive, particularly given the performers’ propensity for performing the songs with scarcely a break, and the more agitated contours and sentiments of ‘An mein Herz’ provided a welcome contrast.
Despite the attempts of Richard Stokes, in the programme notes, to bolster the merits of these lesser lights of German Romantic verse (“If Schubert composed some 150 songs to the minor verse of his friends and acquaintances, that does not imply a lack of literary awareness, but rather a gift of friendship”), it was a setting of Friedrich von Schlegel, ‘The Wanderer’, which proved to be the highlight of the first half. Deutsch’s aural impression of the ‘moon’s light’ perfectly captured in rare harmonic nuance the silvery gleam; and, the more sophisticated relationship between voice and accompaniment drew an added depth from the performers - a seriousness which was sustained through the anonymous ‘Klage’ (‘Lament’) and Schober’s ‘Am Bach im Frühling’ (‘By the stream in spring’), where the sudden wanings of colour and weight in the voice revealed the omnipresence of death.
After the interval, Goerne and Deutsch seemed even more in harmony, embraced by a shared aesthetic vision. The second half began with upwardly curving ripples from the keyboard, signalling a rare moment of lightness. In ‘An die Laute’ (‘To the lute’) the serenading lover urges his instrument to be tender and soft - not to win his loved one’s heart, but rather so that the jealous neighbours are not disturbed. After settings of Freiherr von Schlechta and Johann Baptist Mayrhofer, it was again perhaps telling that it was the more stellar figures of Rückert and von Schober who had so obviously had inspired Schubert to expressive heights. The former’s ‘Du bist die Ruh’ (‘You are repose’) was exquisitely shaped, the second climax approached and wrought with remarkably controlled passion. In the concluding lines, Goerne created a quiet stillness of remarkable and touching delicacy. In contrast, the satisfyingly familiar ‘An die Musik’ revealed the darker colours in Goerne’s baritone range, and the dialogue between voice and piano left hand enabled Deutsch to enter into the conversation as both accompanist and equal.
The final two songs, ‘Abschied von der Harfe’(‘Farewell to the harp’) and ‘Liebesend’ (‘Song’s end’) lowered a sombre curtain on the evening’s proceedings. The performers offered no hint of consolation, Goerne sustaining the embedded melancholy until the dying strains, as ‘From a cold heart/ the magic of song now steals away,/ and ever closer step/ transience and the grave.’ As throughout the recital, there were no melodramatic gestures, no exaggerated mannerisms, just a heartfelt sincerity communicated by the most controlled and often understated musical means.
What was most striking about this recital was Goerne’s ability not only to present the material with consummate mastery, but also to convey a genuine sense of inhabiting the experience of these songs; to balance introspection with direct communication, all the while sustaining a mood of intimacy worthy of the Schubertiaden itself.
Claire Seymour