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.
![Bernard Haitink [Photo by Clive Barda]](http://www.operatoday.com/Haitink.png)
Last year for his 60th anniversary as conductor, Bernard Haitink celebrated with one of his first orchestra’s the Dutch Radio Philharmonic. That performance of Mahler’s Fourth turned out such a success, he returned for another round at the NTR Saturday Matinee at the Concertgebouw.
This time, he led another first-class performance in Bruckner’s Te Deum in C Major with the Groot Omroep Choir and four excellent vocalists, followed by his Symphony No. 9 in D-minor. “To the beloved God” Bruckner dedicated his last symphony, and Haitink brought that cosmic love to light today.
Bruckner called his Te Deum the pride of his life. Haitink definitely did it justice in this performance. The conductor commenced “Te Deum laudamus” with the strings highly charged. Then the Groot Omroep Choir bellowed with a powerful grandeur. Underneath all this force, the magnificent Maarschalkerweerd Organ, the centre piece in the Great Hall, reverberated heavily reaching all the way to the balcony. What a spectacular opening!
Beginning with the strings’ crisp transparency and electrifying intensity, Haitink immediately anchored his trademark tension that he sustained throughout each movement. The brass, especially the trombones players, must also be noted for glowing sound resonating soulfully in their passages throughout the performance.
Of the vocalists, Sally Matthews impressed most. From her first passages in the opening to finale, her rich vibrato and powerful volume fought off the most intense of Bruckner’s fortissimos. In the quieter passages, where the suspense thickened, Matthews charged her voice with a subtle intensity that enriched Haitink’s tension.
Mark Padmore applied a solemnity to his voice, particularly in the second movement. There, in a wonderful duet with the concertmaster, he sung with clear diction and darkened colours, although his voice did not match up to Matthews’ intensity. In the third movement, the strings throbbed energetically in the low registers, and here the choir delivered vocal purity in the mighty “In Gloria”. This Dutch choir impresses with the seeming ease, with which it moves from crystalline fortissimos to simmering pianissimo.
Gerd Grochowski had his moment in the middle of the fourth movement where his deeply resonant bass created a haunting atmosphere with the choir. In the last movement, as the vocalists sing together “In Te, Domine speravi”, Karen Cargill emerged with her voice noticeably adding a deeper dimension to the quartet. With her darker contrasts she especially complimented Matthews.
During “In excelsis” Haitink conducted at his most expressive, raising his hands high up. As a result, the climax became a physical experience. With all this power, it almost felt as if the Concertgebouw was going lift off and ascend…producing plenty of goosebumps. Bruckner called his Te Deum the pride of his life. Haitink definitely did it justice with this performance.
Before the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra made Bernard Haitink famous in the 1960s, he was violinist and later Principal Conductor of the Dutch Radio Philharmonic. This afternoon with Bruckner’s Ninth, he continued their successful collaboration. The composer’s last symphony was left incomplete after his death, lacking a fourth movement. Still, the symphony is over an hour long, but with Haitink the piece flew by.
The conductor established a similar intensity but perhaps even stronger in underlying suspense. From the slow-burning opening, Feierlich, misterioso, he kept the strings highly charged. The highlight of the evening, in the the second movement the Scherzo-Trio Haitink nearly bruised his audience with the intensity of the Scherzo. The pizzicato strings opens, but then timpani and brass explode. Another visceral sensation! A youthful oboe solo softened the tone in between heavy beats. Haitink made for a very fast paced Trio, that surprised by its nervously adolescent, romantic mood.
For the final Adagio, it felt very much like an ode to Wagner—the most suspenseful slow passages in the strings, dripping with longing, almost sensually. The brasses resonated with a golden glow, full of promise. The flautist held her own during her solo against the high strings and the brooding basses. With the calm ending and tapering down of the intensity, still highly romantic, we returned from our trip up in Te Deum. With Haitink as our venerable Captain into Bruckner’s cosmos.
David Pinedo