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.
Luca Pisaroni and Wolfram Rieger were due to give the latest installment in the Wigmore Hall's complete Schubert songs series, but both had to cancel at short notice. Fortunately, the Wigmore Hall rises to such contingencies, and gave us Benjamin Appl and Jonathan Ware. Since there's a huge buzz about Appl, this was an opportunity to hear more of what he can do.
Being a BBC New Generation Artist, guarantees high level coverage. Careers are launched, though in some cases one wonders if marketability isn't part of it. Benjamin Appl, though, is probably the real thing. Several of my friends, some of whom go to dozens of Lieder recitals each year, certainly think he has the potential. He has a very good "instrument", to use a rather unpleasant term, as if voice exists disembodied. Many successful careers have been based on sounding good, but in Lieder, the paramount virtue is Innigkeit, the expression of "inward" nuance, often subtle and complex. The Romantic revolution - upper case "R" not lower case - transformed European culture, and Lieder was part of the vanguard. If Appl takes more risks and captures its spirit, he has the potential to be not just good, but great.
But what pressures that creates! Appearing for the first time in a high-profile evening recital at the Wigmore Hall, with its formidable reputation, especially in place of Pisaroni, must be quite overwhelming. Sensitivity is essential in a good artist, but it has its downsides, too. Once Appl settled in, he seemed much more at home. The gentle An die Apfelbäume, wo ich Julien erblickte D 197 (1815), allowed Appl's singing to gently unfold, like the "heilig Säuseln" in Holty's poem, where the poet uses outward images to allude to feelings he can't articulate. It's possible that the lovers have been separated by death: these perfumed memories are spookier than they seem. The mood continued with An den mond D193 (1815), a far more sophisticated setting of Holty. Nice pairing, which indicates that Appl knows what he's doing when he compiles a programme.
Appl was accompanied by Jonathan Ware, who has worked with Appl (and Pisaroni) before. He's very assertive, even forceful, which can be a good thing. He challenged Appl, pushing him to give his best. The pace was, at times, quite frantic, but well judged. In Der Musensohn D764 (1822), the son of the muses flies along swiftly, like the turbulent winds of early Spring, awakening the world. Yet the Musensohn is driven by forces greater than himself. "Wann ruh' ich am Busen, auch endlich weider aus? ". Last week, in his recital of Eichendorff settings at the Wigmore Hall, Appl was accompanied by Graham Johnson, the doyen of Schubert accompanists, but the partnership between Ware and Appl might be more stimulating in the long term.
Viola D 786 (1823) made a good contrast to Erlkönig D328 (1815). Goethe and Mayrhofer were very different poets. Viola, a long strophic ballad, can be rather twee, with its images of flowers talking to one another. But consider its deeper meaning. Those that come out before their time deserve respect. The song works best when performed with equal daring. Appl and Ware followed this with another good pairing, Totengräberlied D 44 (1813) and Totengräbers Heimweh D842 (1825), the latter a masterpiece. It's a song so strong that it can support a far more powerful interpretation than it received here. That's a direction in which Appl should be heading.
Appl and Ware then performed a selection of classics: Der Wanderer an den Mond D870 (1826, Seidl), Abendstern D806 (Mayrhofer), Der Wanderer D489 (1816 Schmidt von Lübeck) and Nachstück D672 (1819 Mayrhofer) . Schubert's finest songs worked their magic.
Anne Ozorio