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.
![James MacMillan [Photo by Hans van der Woerd courtesy of intermusica]](http://www.operatoday.com/JamesMacMillan.gif)
It was fitting that in this Year of Creative Scotland, the Edinburgh International Festival should honour James MacMillan’s contribution to Scottish musical life with the premiere of a new work.
The Hebrides Ensemble, which co-commissioned the work with Soli Deo Gloria, performed Since it was the day of Preparation… in the historic setting of Greyfriars Kirk on the 22nd of August.
MacMillan is a major Scottish composer who specializes in music with spiritual sensitivity. Since it was the day of Preparation… sets the final section of St John’s Gospel from the removal of Jesus’ body from the cross to the end of John’s account, covering the period from Easter Eve until Pentecost. The work is for a small group of singers and a small group of musicians, together with male soloist, baritone is in the original scoring but here the role was ably sung by the low operatic bass, Brindley Sheratt.
Episodes of recitative for different vocal groupings, are interleaved with ‘interludes’ an extended cadenza for each instrument in turn and with other ‘interludes’ for the quintet as an ensemble (theorbo, cello, clarinet, horn and harp). These could in fact be used in excerpt and would stand on their own, either as short works showcasing each instrument, or collectively.
There are long passages for tenor (Andrew Busher) — who opens the entire work — and high baritone (Tom Bullard), not a bass, as described slightly confusingly in the programme, but very good, with a warm sweet tone. Both are very good, and the excellent acoustic meant every word was clearly audible, even at the back of the performance space. Against this are placed periodically Latin liturgical texts, mainly from the Renaissance. The musical, liturgical and dramatic climax of the whole work comes early in the second act, when a piercing peal of sound from the clarinet symbolises the discovery of the empty tomb.
The clarinet is an instrument for which MacMillan has written well, and here his writing for it is at its finest. This vocal section, ‘The Empty Tomb’ is followed by an Interlude for that same instrument, perhaps pre-eminent amongst these and very ably played by Yann Ghiro, whose contribution to this performance was one of its highlights. The clarinet also features prominently in the ensemble interlude between the first two acts, which separates the burial scene from the discovery of the empty tomb ; after quiet, dignified understated playing in the lower register by the other instruments, it enters to take the lead in a skirl-like dance which fades into a keening wail of mourning, being joined by the cello playing high in its register — a piece reminiscent of MacMillan's Tuireadh.
The difficulty of performing the role of Christ has been addressed before. MacMillan creates a feeling of distance and other worldliness by setting the soloists further back from the rest of the singers, and in this performance the use of the low bass voice added gravitas to the role. Brindley Sherratt’s singing created an absolutely spine-tingling effect, further enhanced by the continuous use of bells whilst Christ’s words were sung, recalling the effect of bells being used in the eucharistic prayers during a mass.
Another of James MacMillman’s religious works formed one of the programme items in Sunday’s recital from the festival series at St Michael’s Church. Kiss on Wood, for violin and cello, is also drawn from liturgy for Holy Week, this time an anthem for devotions on Good Friday. A small but powerful piece, it was ably and enjoyably performed there by Monika Geibel (violin) and Olja Buco (piano) — who also gave an excellent account of Elgar’s Violin Sonata in E minor, Op 82 (both works influenced by wood as a material, as well as for a wooden instrument).
The Edinburgh Festival will be presenting more of of MacMillan’s work next week in the shape of his Opera Clemency, one of a series of chamber operas commissioned by Scottish Opera and performed in turn on a nightly basis. Again a religious work, this time from the Old Testament rather than the New. I’ll be reporting further for Opera Today.
Since it was the day of Preparation… will be performed again in London during the autumn season this year. Last night’s performers are also recording this work, to be released next Spring. The Hebrides Ensemble can be heard again on tonight’s Late Junction on BBC Radio 3, and at the Lammermuir Festival in east Lothian next month. Synergy Vocals will be returning to the Edinburgh Festival next year to perform Berio’s Sinfonietta with the BBC Symphony Orchestra. Brindley Sheratt will be appearing in a new production of Medea at the ENO.
Juliet Williams