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.
The Barbican’s six-month series celebrating the English oratorio, has now reached Mendelssohn’s Elijah — or perhaps we should follow the Victorians and refer to it as ‘the Elijah’, given that it was performed in English, in William Bartholomew’s translation.
My preference for the German version is neither here nor there, really, given the commission for the Birmingham Festival, and certainly not when it is performed in a series devoted to English-language oratorios. However, it is interesting to note the difference in sound; indeed, it is almost impossible not to notice it. Bach seems more distant, at least for much of the time, though it is not necessarily the case that Handel seems closer. For better or worse, we seem closer to the world of Victorian piety. (Consider, in a celebrated example, how different ‘O for the wings of a dove’ and ‘O könnt' ich fliegen wie Tauben dahin’ sound.)
One aspect, however, of the present performance could not have been more different from the world of the Victorian choral society, namely the size of the forces involved. This was a chamber Elijah, both in terms of choir and orchestra. The Britten Sinfonia’s instrumental forces included strings scaled at 8:6:4:4:2, wind instruments and timpani, whilst Britten Sinfonia Voices numbered thirty-four in all, quite a contrast with the previous time I had heard the work, from a fully symphonic London Philharmonic Orchestra and London Philharmonic Choir under the baton of Kurt Masur (in German). The soloists were fewer in number too, limited to just the five, including a treble. The Barbican is a smaller venue than the Royal Festival Hall, though it is certainly not a chamber venue, and there were times when I missed the heft that could be imparted by larger forces — not because they are in some dubious sense ‘authentic’, but more on account of the near-Wagnerian dramatic scale they can assist to convey. One’s ears adjust, though, at least to an extent, and clarity provided some degree of compensation.
The Britten Sinfonia is generally acknowledged to be one of this country’s most enterprising ensembles, its programmes regularly proving more interesting, more imaginative, than many longer established groups. Based in Cambridge — during my time there, I attended a good number of its lunchtime and evening performances — it has recently been appointed an Associate Ensemble at the Barbican. Though that appointment will begin in autumn 2012, coinciding with the Sinfonia’s twentieth anniversary, this concert offered Barbican audiences a taste of what will be on offer: obviously not so much in programming terms — Elijah is Elijah — as in musicianship. My only real doubt concerning a fine orchestral performance was a certain stinginess concerning string vibrato during the Overture. Otherwise, all sections of the chamber orchestra emerged with great credit, from the opening sepulchral, stentorian woodwind, to the blaze of the final ‘Amen’. There was some very fine solo work too, for instance from obbligato cello (Caroline Dearnley) in Elijah’s recitative, ‘It is enough,’ and oboe (Alun Darbyshire) in his arioso, ‘For the mountains shall depart’.
Likewise Britten Sinfonia Voices, recently formed under the leadership of Eamonn Douglas, acquitted themselves extremely well. There were indeed times when I had to remind myself that they were relatively few in number. Diction and clarity were excellent; there was never the slightest hint of (pseudo-)Victorian staidness. Only once did I find the choral singing a little tame, in the chorus ‘Baal, we cry to thee,’ but the lack of wildness — and this is Mendelssohn, after all — seemed more a matter of direction by Andreas Delfs than of the singing as such. At any rate, the call of the priests of Baal to their god to ‘hear and answer … Mark how the scorner derideth us!’ soon registered less ‘tastefully’ and with far greater dramatic force.
Delfs I was less sure about. For the most part, his was a capable performance. Only occasionally, most notably during the Overture, did he drive the music too hard. On the other hand, and despite a truly thrilling chorus to conclude the first part, this was not a reading to grip one dramatically as Masur’s had done. The comparison may be odious, but, especially when we are dealing with a work and indeed genre that remain unfashionable, an extra ounce of musico-dramatic conviction can work wonders. It is probably fair to say that Mendelssohn’s inspiration is uneven here, not least in some of the numbers towards the end of the second part, but fiery advocacy can help persuade one otherwise. Some of these numbers dragged, alas, lending an impression of chamber-scale neo-Victoriana, petering-out Stanford rather than invigorating Handel.
There was much, nevertheless, to relish in the solo singing. Simon Keenlyside made an excellent Elijah, not a bluff prophet, but a thoughtful, sometimes even conflicted soul, sensitive to an unusual degree, whether in terms of characterisation or verbal acuity. The pathos to his delivery of ‘It is enough…’ reminded one, despite the language, of Bach: recitative it might be, but Keenlyside — and, I think, Mendelssohn too — brought the music, not for the first time, closer to arioso. Mendelssohn at his most Handelian, in the aria ‘Is not his world like a fire?’ was conveyed with equal success, echoes of the Messiah readily discerned. Lucy Crowe offered a particular highlight with the aria that opens the second part, ‘Hear ye, Israel’. Clear of tone and direct of expression, this was model oratorio singing, as were the contributions from Catherine Wyn-Rogers. Wyn-Rogers had considerable ground to cover, but moved effortlessly between Angel and Queen. The latter — Jezebel, of course — exuded menace and feminine wiles, whilst the Angel’s ‘O rest in the Lord’ revelled, for better or worse, in Mendelssohn at his loveliest. After an unfortunate start, treble William Carne made up lost ground and offered a number of well-turned phrases. The only real disappointment was tenor, Andrew Kennedy. Oddly, his single line as Ahab offered properly dramatic impact, but much of the rest of his performance suffered from an awkward combination of overt emoting and a tendency to croon. Obadiah was bad enough, but the final, tenor aria, ‘Then shall the righteous shine forth,’ sounded as if it were excerpted from a West End musical, vibrato so wide as to disconcert. Fortunately, there was some excellent choral and orchestral playing still to come.
Mark Berry