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.
In the 17th century, sacred vocal music was not just for public worship in church but also for private devotion within a secular setting, and this concert at the Wigmore Hall by Theatre of the Ayre under its director Elizabeth Kenny transported us from Chapel Royal to domestic chamber.
Noting in his Preface to Harmonia Sacra (1688/93) that the ‘youthful and gay’ had already been entertained with a ‘variety of rare compositions’, the entrepreneurial Henry Playford addressed his new publication to: ‘others, who are no less musical though they are more devout.’ For these ‘pious persons’, who are excellent judges of both music and wit, divine hymns are the ‘most proper entertainment’, one which ‘warms and actuates all the powers of the soul and fills the mind with the brightest and most ravishing contemplations’.
The devotional songs presented here certainly foregrounded the misery of the penitential and the blisses of spiritual consolation which might be attained through devotion — a fitting focus, perhaps, for the current liturgical season. In addition to Psalm texts, there were settings penned by persons whom Playford describes as ‘eminent both for learning and piety’ and who include William Fuller, Bishop of Lincoln, and poet George Herbert.
While the lion’s share of the programme was de devoted to Purcell, whose dominant presence would surely have made the collection more attractive to potential purchasers, there were contributions by Purcell’s English contemporaries, John Blow and Pelham Humfrey, whose collaborative ‘Hark how the wakeful cheerful cock’ opened the programme, seguing from the brief canon ‘Laudate Dominum’ to which the five soloists had processed onto the platform.
The dialogue, begun by Humfrey and completed by Blow, between two penitents was spirited and theatrical: as awareness of their sins mounted so did their misery, and soprano Sophie Daneman and tenor Nicholas Mulroy joined in lamentation — ‘Since then the cause of both our grief’s the same,/ Mix we our tears for grief let’s die,/ But first our dirge let’s sing, or cry:’ — the enriched accompaniment, as theorbo was joined by viola da gamba and harpsichord, ironically deepening the sweetness of their miserere.
Pepys may have described Humfrey as a man ‘full of form and confidence and vanity’, but the anthem ‘Lord! I have sinned’ suggests that his self-assurance may have been justified, for he was clearly skilful in using flamboyant musical gesture to express sombre contrition. The Italianate idiom — drooping chromaticism, angular melodic shapes and poignant dissonances — was delivered with madrigalian vivacity by Daneman, accompanied by organ and viola da gamba, but while the soprano’s phrases were expressive, the line and tuning were not consistently controlled. In particular, I found Daneman’s tendency to slide through the chromatic sighs to be excessive; the sentiments she seemed sought are already present in the music and need no exaggerated articulation.
There was even more Italianate virtuosity to enjoy in soprano Katherine Watson’s witty and technically assured performance of Giacomo Carissimi’s dramatic motet ‘Lucifer Caelestis olim’, which enacts Lucifer’s fall from grace. Watson was equally convincing as the imperious narrator, the boastful Lucifer and when she was when delivering God’s condemnation, perhaps not surprising as the two dramatic figures are, ironically, not distinguished in terms of musical style. Lucifer’s deluded bragging — ‘O me felice, o me beatum coelestis gloriae decoratum!’ (O how happy am I, blessed and adorned with the glory of heaven!) — was delivered in nimble coloratura with a bright edge at the top and real strength in the lower register.
John Blow brought Mulroy and bass Matthew Brook together in two rich duets. ‘Help, Father Abraham!: The dialogue of Dives and Abraham’ showcased the agility and diverse hues of Mulroy’s bright tenor as he pleaded for Brook’s Abraham to show pity, while Brook demonstrated rhetorical presence — ‘What son of Hell and darkness dare molest/ This blessed saint, scarce warm yet on my breast?’, he thundered — and control of vocal nuance. In ‘Enough my muse, of early things’, it was Mulroy’s registral range which was noteworthy, as he rose from low depths to a fervent upper register, calling upon his muse to take up its lute and play ‘Happy mournful stories, The lamentable glories of the crucify’d King’. There was striking urgency as the two voices blended in thirds, and melismas were delivered with sharp musical and textual clarity.
But, this was really Purcell’s evening. Many of the Purcell’s devotional songs survive only in manuscript, and so Playford’s publication is a valuable one; the songs are some of the less familiar works among the composer’s output but also some of the finest. On his title pages to the two volumes of Harmonia Sacra, Playford noted that the continuo part should be played by ‘theorbo-lute, bass-viol, harpsichord, or organ’ and that was the ensemble gathered here, supplemented by two violins, as ‘domestic’ representatives of the renowned Twenty-Four Violins of the Chapel Royal. Brook was joined by the violins, viola da gamba and organ in Purcell’s ‘My song shall be of the loving kindness of the Lord’, and the instrumentalists provided a rich-textured symphony between the arioso and recitative passages of Brook’s intense but lyrical solo; there was some delightful interplay and dialogue between voice and instrumentalists, and Watson, Mulroy and countertenor Robin Blaze gradual heightened the exaltation of the choral Hallelujah. Brook’s performance of ‘In the black dismal dungeon of despair’ was a highlight of the evening: to the sparse accompaniment of theorbo, the bass wrought meaning from every detail of the text — for example, opening the vowels of the title line to convey the depths of suffering, or the rolling of the ‘r’ in ‘certain horrid judgement’ — and music. Here, too, the unsurpassed naturalness of Purcell’s text setting was evident, in the short-long sprung rhythms (‘Lost to all hope of Liberty,/ Hence ne-ver to remove’) which punched home meaning, and in the melismatic flourishes which reified emotion — ‘Being guilty of so long, so great neglect’. This was a masterly rendition, sustained to the final perfectly executed trill.
Contrasting trios of voices were presented in and ’I was glad when they said unto me’ (ATB) and ‘In guilty night: Saul and the witch of Endor’ (STB). In the latter, the voices moved with freedom from ensemble blend to solo prominence and build the drama with urgency. The chromatic piquancy conveying his ‘sore distress’, Mulroy’s Saul hurried fearfully through his imploration, ‘For pity’s sake tell me, what shall I do?’ but Brook’s Samuel was implacable in his magisterial authority: ‘At thou forlorn of God and com’st to me?’ Daneman was a lively witch, but at times I thought that, determined to impress upon us the passion of Purcell’s declamatory idiom, she sacrificed beauty of tone and precision for dramatic effect. In ‘I was glad’, the interjection of the two violins rivalled the voices for rhetorical impact.
The two female voices spoke with a pleasingly unified timbre at the close of Purcell’s ‘Jehovah quam multi sunt hostes’; Watson demonstrated a burnished lower range at the start of ‘With sick and famished eyes’, and again negotiated the dissonances and disjunctions of the more Italianate passages skilfully, though the virtuosity did occasionally detract from the clarity of the diction.
In the concluding items, and with the metaphorical setting of the sun, we moved closer to spiritual consolation and rest, with two ‘Evening Hymns’. The first, to an anonymous text, was warmly delivered by Mulroy and Brook, and again the interaction between instrumental and vocal bass parts brought expressive richness to the close, ‘By sleeping, how it is to die’. Robin Blaze performed Purcell’s long-lined melodic setting of Bishop Fuller’s more well-known text with gentle understatement, accompanied by Kenny’s thoughtful theorbo. Thomas Tallis’ hymn, ‘All praise to thee my God this night’, the textures engagingly varied for each verse, brought the evening to a soothing close.
The continuo ensemble also performed three trio sonatas by Purcell, with expertise and musicality. The unanimity of articulation and expression of violinists Rodolfo Richter and Jane Gordon was remarkable, and Alison McGillivray’s viola da gamba provided a lyrical even-toned bass, while Robert Howard was an alert and crisp contributor at the keyboard and organ. The increasingly complex and deeply compelling accumulations and variations of the Chacony of the Trio Sonata No.6 in G Minor (Z807) almost stole the show.
Claire Seymour
Performers and programme:
Theatre of the Ayre: Rodolfo Richter violin, Jane Gordon violin, Alison McGillivray viola da gamba, Robert Howarth organ, Sophie Daneman soprano, Katherine Watson soprano, Robin Blaze countertenor, Nicholas Mulroy tenor, Matthew Brook baritone, Elizabeth Kenny director, theorbo.
Anon — Canon a 3 Laudate Dominum; John Blow — ‘Hark how the wakeful cheerful cock’; Henry Purcell — ‘My song shall be alway of the loving kindness of the Lord’ Z31, Trio Sonata in Three Parts No. 10 in A major Z799; John Blow — ‘Enough, my muse, of earthly things’; Henry Purcell — ‘In the black, dismal dungeon of despair’ Z190, Trio Sonata in Three Parts No. 11 in F minor Z800, ‘In Guilty Night’ (Saul and the Witch of Endor) Z134, ‘I was glad when they said unto me’ Z19, Jehova, quam multi sunt hostes’ Z135; Giacomo Carissimi: ‘Lucifer, caelestis olim’; Henry Purcell — ‘Trio Sonata in Four Parts No. 6 in G minor’ Z807; Pelham Humfrey — ‘Lord, I have sinned’; John Blow — ‘Help, Father Abraham’; Henry Purcell — ‘With sick and famish’d eyes’ Z200, ‘Now that the sun hath veiled his light’ (An Evening Hymn on a Ground) Z193, Trio Sonata in Four Parts No. 10 in D major Z811, ‘The Night is come’ (An Evening Hymn) Z77; Thomas Tallis — ‘All praise to thee my God this night’.
Wigmore Hall, London, Tuesday 23rd February 2016.