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.
The Sixteen continues its exploration of Henry Purcell’s Welcome Songs for Charles II. As with Robert King’s pioneering Purcell series begun over thirty years ago for Hyperion, Harry Christophers is recording two Welcome Songs per disc.
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.
In February this year, Albanian soprano Ermonela Jaho made a highly lauded debut recital at Wigmore Hall - a concert which both celebrated Opera Rara’s 50th anniversary and honoured the career of the Italian soprano Rosina Storchio (1872-1945), the star of verismo who created the title roles in Leoncavallo’s La bohème and Zazà, Mascagni’s Lodoletta and Puccini’s Madama Butterfly.
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.
Collapsology. Or, perhaps we should use the French word ‘Collapsologie’ because this is a transdisciplinary idea pretty much advocated by a series of French theorists - and apparently, mostly French theorists. It in essence focuses on the imminent collapse of modern society and all its layers - a series of escalating crises on a global scale: environmental, economic, geopolitical, governmental; the list is extensive.
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.’
Amongst an avalanche of new Mahler recordings appearing at the moment (Das Lied von der Erde seems to be the most favoured, with three) this 1991 Mahler Second from the 2nd Kassel MahlerFest is one of the more interesting releases.
‘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.’
If there is one myth, it seems believed by some people today, that probably needs shattering it is that post-war recordings or performances of Wagner operas were always of exceptional quality. This 1949 Hamburg Tristan und Isolde is one of those recordings - though quite who is to blame for its many problems takes quite some unearthing.
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."
Austrian singer Elisabeth Kulman has had an interesting career trajectory. She began her singing life as a soprano but later shifted to mezzo-soprano/contralto territory. Esteemed on the operatic stage, she relinquished the theatre for the concert platform in 2015, following an accident while rehearsing Tristan.
Though this accident was ‘freakish’ (she suffered a blow to the throat), the consequences led Kulman to reassess the opera singer’s professional, personal and financial lot: she launched a campaign against the practice of not paying singers for rehearsals - meaning that illness or indisposition could result in a singer being financially unrewarded for their hard work and even, taking in accommodation and other costs, potentially facing substantial losses - and established Art But Fair, a lobby group for fair play. Kulman declared, ‘The opera business is an enormous enterprise. The individual’s room to move is relatively small. As an artist what concerns me is individual creativity, personal expression, individuality. Personally, I have discovered for myself that I am best able to develop my creative potential when I am able to work according to my own rules and not have to subordinate myself to other structures. It is not, therefore, a general criticism of the current opera business but rather recognition of the incompatibility of my personality’s makeup.’ ( translation from the German by Martin Snell).
Prior to this concert given by the Britten Sinfonia under Sir Mark Elder, at the Barbican Hall, I had not previously heard Kulman perform, in opera or concert. Her performance of Mahler’s Rückert-Lieder - a work which she presented with Elder and the Bergen Philharmonic Orchestra in September 2016 - was immaculate: her tone was even across the registers, the phrases were gracefully sculptured, the tone suggested the pliant plushness of the softest velvet. Refinement, delicacy, intimacy were the words which most readily sprang to mind.
But, despite the vocal polish and allure, this was a very ‘polite’ performance. I missed the range of emotions - which might be communicated through a varying timbre, for example - in the sequence of Rückert poems (not really a ‘cycle’), and Kulman did not communicate a sense of her personal connection to the texts, though the diction was pristine. There was peace but not passion: ‘Um Mitternacht’ (At midnight) surely traverses wider emotional terrain.
That said, Sir Mark Elder did exquisitely balance the intimate conversations within the small chamber orchestra, as at the start of ‘Blicker mir nicht in die Lieder!’ (Do not look into my songs!) when muted cello, clarinet oscillations, and flickering oboe and flute acciaccaturas formed a rarefied interplay, and the prominent, lyrical horn beautifully complemented the vocal line. ‘Ich atmet’ einen linden Duft’ (I breathed a gentle fragrance) floated on an airy bed of spare viola and violin meandering which allowed the woodwind motifs to sweetly make their mark, and the harp and celeste offered an ethereal closing flourish, evoking the heady piquancy of the ‘fragrance of line’.
Muted strings and the low-lying vocal line evoked a calm acceptance which might have shimmered with greater potential intensity at the start of ‘Ich bin der Welt abhanden gekommen’ (I am lost to the world). Kulman seemed to add vocal weight and fullness, though, to ‘Liebst du um Schönheit’ (If you love for beauty), as if reaching out from a world of quiet intimacy. But, ‘Um Mitternacht’ (At midnight) needed to scale more glistening vocal heights, to provide a counter-weight for the stirring bassoon contributions, the deliciously dark chromatic tuba and horn descents, and the heart-stirring rumbles of tuba, double bassoon and timpani towards the close. Kulman seemed oddly impassive amid such orchestral frissons: there was undeniable vocal beauty and taste, but where was the ardour, or even the animation?
This concert marked the start of a four-year project during which Elder and the Britten Sinfonia will explore the symphonies of Johannes Brahms (though, strictly, the opening of this series took place the previous evening in Norwich); alongside a Brahms symphony, a song-cycle by Mahler and a work by a British composer will throw Brahms’ ‘sound-world’ - which, in a podcast on the Britten Sinfonia website, Elder describes as warm but not thick, lithe but not bombastically heroic - into relief.
The second half of the concert thus comprised Brahms’ First Symphony, which Elder has not previously conducted. This was a delicate reading which foregrounded the woodwinds’ soothing, pure lyricism and subtle expressive gestures and in which the strings (at 10, 10, 8, 8, 4, perhaps not exactly ‘Classical’ in dimension) played with judicious use of vibrato and thoughtful phrasing. Indeed, there was a prevailing sense of ‘care’ and consideration, as Elder moved from a slightly unsettled first movement, through the contemplative middle movements, to well-judged ‘arrival’ and ‘resolution’ in the concluding, Allegro no troppo, ma con brio. There was an exciting and uplifting sense of joy in the final movement without the sound ever becoming self-indulgently or weightily pompous; and, one could sense the players’ intellectual and emotional engagement with the arguments that they were being asked to consider, explore and articulate.
Elder described (in the aforementioned podcast) the first half of the programme as a ‘Mahler sandwich’, and the concert began with Benjamin Britten’s arrangement of the second movement of Mahler’s Third Symphony, titled What the Wild Flowers Tell Me. Britten essentially reduced the extension orchestration of the original to a delicate chamber-like dialogue. In this performance, lyricism was complemented by rhythmic alertness, but the overall effect was one of restraint and Elder did not really establish a strong musical mien - though perhaps this is because this single emblem of Mahler’s monumental, magnificent work feels a little ‘adrift’ from its symphonic moorings.
As someone who believes that anything composed by Gerald Finzi is worth hearing, I was pleased to have the opportunity to enjoy the composer’s orchestral elegy, The Fall of the Leaf, written - like so many of Finzi’s works - over a period of many years, and first published in piano-duet form. Finzi’s close friend, composer Howard Ferguson, developed Finzi’s orchestral drafts, completing the ‘gaps’ left within the basic architectural form. Characteristically, Finzi communicates a restrained nostalgia and a melancholic poignancy that is at once lovely in its tenderness and heart-rending in its pathos. The initial flute solo was wonderfully pure - the expressiveness was equalled by the oboe’s subsequent dolefulness - but from these clean beginnings Elder drew ever greater warmth and soul. Despite my sympathetic leanings, I was not entirely convinced that the work has a structural ‘direction’, but the Britten Sinfonia injected colour - rich brass, shining cymbals - and rhythmic athleticism, through displacement and emphatic stresses. A heavy sadness lingered after the final dull thuds of quiet low strings, harp and bass drum had faded.
The reprise of this programme, in Saffron Waldon, will be broadcast on Radio 3 on 14th November .
Claire Seymour
Elisabeth Kulman (mezzo-soprano), Sir Mark Elder (conductor), Britten Sinfonia.
Mahler - (arr. Britten) What the Wild Flowers tell me; Finzi - The Fall of the Leaf Op.20; Mahler - Rückert-Lieder, Brahms - Symphony No.1 in C minor Op.68
Barbican Hall, London; Thursday 9th November 2017.