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."
Two great operas come from the year 1911 - Richard Strauss’ Der Rosenkavalier and Bela Bartók’s Duke Bluebeard’s Castle. Both are masterpieces, but they are very different kinds of operas and experienced quite asymmetric performance histories.
Duke Bluebeard didn’t really get much international exposure until the 1950s - it premiered in France in 1950, New York in 1952 and London in 1957. Bartók certainly calls for a large orchestra, but even he would have been impressed by the sheer scale of the one fielded by the National Youth Orchestra for their performance at the Barbican - some 160 musicians.
The scale of the orchestral forces required, even in a standard performance, underpins much of the work’s psychological layers and its musical narrative. This isn’t an opera where the stage is overly important, hence why it’s usually performed in concert rather than in the opera house. It can undeniably seem a static work, and this was even the case in concert here, but it remains a magnificent opera nevertheless. You cannot escape the minor second in this opera - it’s everywhere. Like a knife being twisted in slowly, inch-by-inch, Bartók evokes sadness and despair, shock and danger through fluctuating musical scenes that while sounding dissonant (and in this performance they were grounded in phenomenally charged beacons of brilliance) they remain largely tonal. You get Judith’s “blood motif”, but you’re also aware of the sheer tonality of passages that breathe throughout Door Three and then the massive, blazing major triads that herald the opening of the Fifth Door, one of the greatest pieces Bartók ever composed.
It was perhaps not surprising that Sir Mark Elder brought an element of early Schoenberg and Wagner (Siegfried came to mind) in this performance. It was notably expansive, with some broad tempos - but this worked allowing the scale of the opera to unfold very grandly. There was something very Gothic about this castle, a touch lurid perhaps, almost as if one could touch the blood running through it - helped by some glorious string playing and some febrile and nervous, but assured, wind playing, that if it at first suggested more Hammer Horror was always authentically Bartókian. The Seventh Door was menacing and brooding, perhaps a little darker than we might normally hear - but with twelve double basses there was no shortage of depth of tone here. The First Door had thrown up a potential problem which was how successfully the two singers, Rinat Shaham, the mezzo-soprano, singing Judith, and Robert Hayward, as Bluebeard, would tackle the large orchestra. Ms Shaham in particular sounded a touch overwhelmed at the beginning of the opera (in fact, I initially thought the voice too high for the part) but she proved more than able to fight against the massed forces of the National Youth Orchestra, and her bottom range was often sumptuous. I still came away from this performance largely preferring a darker, more tenebrous, voice such as Christa Ludwig or Birgit Nilsson in the role of Judith but after the initial problems and inertia of Ms Shaham’s “crimson sunrise” in Door One she adequately played the part. She was a little too stuck to her score but was expressive enough with her hands and body to give Judith some humanity. Mr Hayward was rich and powerful and found it easy to ride above the orchestra. Daisy Evans’ direction of the opera, with its coils of alternating light switching colours, was sparse, but effective.
A brief mention of the first half of the concert, if only because it showed how ineffective a conductor can be, or perhaps something else entirely. Liadov’s The Enchanted Lake was quite superbly done, in fact it was exquisite, showing exactly what a huge orchestra can do in shaping dynamics. Dukas’ The Sorcerer’s Apprentice was probably the least magical performance I’ve heard in the concert hall. But perhaps it’s just wrong to think of Dukas’ piece like this: it is, after all, dark, sinister and rather terrifying. In an age of Harry Potter, Walt Disney is much more difficult to bring off, it seems.
Marc Bridle
Bela Bartók: Duke Bluebeard’s Castle
Sir Mark Elder (conductor), Robert Hayward (bass-baritone), Rinat Shaham (mezzo-soprano), Daisy Evans (director), National Youth Orchestra.
Barbican Hall, London: Sunday 7th January 2018.