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.
Julius Drake must have had had a lot of fun compiling this lieder programme, which was inspired by a visit to the home of Robert and Clara Schumann on Inselstraße in Leipzig. The couple lived in this classical building during the 1840s and the visitors’ book reads like a roll call of the greatest Romantic artists—composers, poets, performers—of the day.
As soprano Sophie Bevan explained to me recently ( The Schumanns at home ), Drake had selected four songs to represent each of five of the Schumanns’ illustrious international guests, and the hosts themselves. At the start of the evening, he invited us to imagine ourselves at a musical soirée in the Schumanns’ piano nobile apartment, being entertained by some of the cultural elite of the mid-nineteenth century. As Schumann himself said of musical life in Leipzig, ‘What an abundance of great works of art were produced for us last winter! How many distinguished artists charmed us with their art!’
With such a cornucopia of lieder from which to choose, one wonders how Drake settled upon his selections. Certainly, one could discern distinctive musical ‘voices’, and it was interesting to hear Clara Schumann’s gentle melodising beside Chopin’s folk-tinted melancholy, or Liszt’s blending of fervent human passion and reverent spirituality. And, as the lieder weaved from German to Polish and back again, with diversions into French and even English, a truly international conversation unfolded. But, there was variety of expressive range within the song-quartets, too. Moreover, Bevan had remarked that many of these songs were new to her, and many were also new to me and so the programme offered numerous fresh discoveries and delights.
This was a very engaging recital, both performers communicating with directness and sincerity. Despite the ‘newness’ of the material, Sophie Bevan was impressively ‘off score’ for many of the songs and took evident care to capture the spirit of each lied through the manner of performance.
She seemed a little nervous at the start of the recital, which was her debut at Middle Temple Hall, but still conveyed the tender intimacy of the opening quartet of songs by Clara Schumann. The textural repetitions, fairly low register and narrow range of ‘Liebst du um Schönheit’ (If you love for beauty) delicately draw us into the conversation; ‘Sie liebten sich beide’ (They loved each other) was more emotionally heightened but closed with a rueful, sweet-toned whisper, ‘Sie waren läbgst gestorben/Und wußten es selber kaum.’ (They died a long time ago and hardly knew it themselves.) ‘Der Mond kommt still gegangen’ (The moon rises silently) revealed the subtleties of Clara Schumann’s harmonic inventiveness and pianistic writing; Drake traversed sensitively from the relaxed chords of the opening to the more intense piano postlude. But, if the first three songs had shared a quiet serenity, then ‘Am Strand’ revealed a more turbulent expressive mode which allowed Bevan’s soprano to blossom ecstatically in conclusion: as she called to the spirits to murmur tidings of her beloved, the piano’s softening response duly obliged.
The lieder by Clara Schumann and the fours songs by Fanny Mendelssohn Hensel that followed led me to wish that performers would more regularly embrace the sizeable song repertory by such women composers. Fanny Mendelssohn wrote 249 songs, more than twice as many as her brother Felix, and ‘Frühling’, with its bubbling, trilling piano part, frequent wide vocal leaps and rapturous blooming at the close revealed an audacious, exuberant approach to song-writing. The harmonic explorations of ‘Warum sind denn die Rosen so blaß’ (Why are all the roses so pale?) were similarly responsive to the text, as the wandering phrases seemed to echo the unanswered questions of Heine’s poem. Again, Drake’s discerning selections offered expressive range, the tenderness of ‘Nachtwanderer’, contrasting with the powerful epiphanies of ‘Bergeslust’ (Mountain rapture).
One of the strengths of Bevan’s performance of these opening songs was the lack of artifice and the sincerity of her engagement with the texts, and I felt that this quality came even more to the fore in the four songs by Felix Mendelssohn. She seemed to relax, perhaps because the songs are more familiar, and ‘Die liebende schreibt’ (The beloved writes) was sensuous and impassioned. Songs by a mandolin-playing page, by rustling pond reeds and by a coven of witches ensued, and Bevan and Drake moved smoothly from the jaunty spiritedness of ‘Pagenlied’, through the richness and resignation of ‘Schilflied’, to the darkness and defiance of ‘Hexenlied’.
In the first of four songs selected from Chopin’s Polish Songs Op.74, the mazurka-like ‘Śliczny chlopiec’ (Handsome lad), Drake immediately established an insouciant air, employing a playful rubato. His fluent pianism imbued these songs with conviction and drama, most particularly in ‘Wojak’ (The warrior), summoning a crisp vision of a galloping steed whose impatience was equalled his war-mongering master’s elated urgency. At the close, after a momentary stay, man and beast sped onto the bloody battlefield and disappeared over the horizon, the piano diminishing with wonderful control.
Given that these are Chopin’s only contribution to the vocal repertoire, it’s perhaps surprising that the Op.74 songs are not performed more regularly; until, that is, one reflects on the fact that there are probably few singers who would avow to being fluent in, or familiar with, Polish. Bevan pronounced the text with care and suppleness but did not have quite enough declamatory confidence to capture the dramatic intensity of the texts (two of which are anonymous, with additionally one each by Chopin's contemporaries, Stefan Witwicki and Bohdan Zaleski). That said, ‘Dumka’ had a poignant Slavic sorrow and Bevan’s pianissimos were touching and perfectly tuned, while the narrative of the Lithuanian song (‘Piosnka litewska’) unrolled naturally, Drake’s staccatos giving life to the dialogue and Bevan displaying rich vocal quality in the lower register.
Drake is the curator of Hyperion’s ongoing project to record Liszt’s complete songs (to date four volumes have been released) - a worthy and necessary endeavour, given that even lieder enthusiasts may be unaware that Liszt composed any songs other than ‘Die Loreley’. Here, the pianist made miniature tone poems of the accompaniments, sparking and trickling with transparency in ‘Die stille Wasserrose’ (The silent water-lily), and conjuring the majesty of Cologne cathedral in ‘Im Rhein, im schönen Strome’ (In the Rhine, the beautiful river). Best of all was the brooding concentration of the introduction to ‘Der du von dem Himmel bist’ (You who come from heaven).
Bevan revealed a strong feeling for the Romantic sensibility in this sequence, and the vocal range with which to express it. Often her soprano descended quite low, as at the openings of ‘Die stille Wasserrose’ and ‘Im Rhein’, and she used vocal colour to imbue these songs with a quasi-spiritual ambience. Elsewhere, such as at the contemplative close of ‘Ihr Glocken von Marling’ (Bells of Marling), the mood was ethereal, and the high melody at the end of ‘Im Rhein’, which floated above Drake’s low pianissimo accompaniment, shimmered with reverence for ‘Our beloved Lady’. In contrast, ‘Der du von dem Himmel bist’ was impelled by anxious but irresistible urgency and intensity, attaining rapturous transcendence in the final, surging line, ‘Komm, ach komm in meine Brust!’ (Come, ah come into my breast!).
Bevan showed a similar affinity for a distinctly French sensibility in Berlioz’s ‘Chant de bonheur’ (Song of bliss), in which the melodic line freely hovered between song and recitative, and was matched by the rhythmic flexibility of Drake’s accompaniment. ‘Petit oiseau’ had classical, even ‘antique’, elegance and Bevan’s piano invitation, ‘Viens écouter ses chants touchants’ (Come and listen to his moving song) was focused and compelling. ‘Adieu Bessy’, a setting of a poem by Thomas Moore (one of one of nine composed in 1829 to translation by Berlioz’s friend, Thomas Gounet), possessed rhetorical weight despite the sweetness of the vocal line; ‘Zaïde’ was propelled by Drake’s insistent rhythmic motifs and the ecstatic, fluctuating colours of Bevan’s soprano.
Four songs by Robert Schumann brought the soirée to a close. Bevan mastered the vocal expanse of ‘Widmung’ (Dedication), the melodic line unfolding lyrically above the fervent murmurings and motions of the piano accompaniment. Again, she showed that her lower register has real focus and presence, falling with the change of mood - ‘Du bist die Ruh, du bist der Frieden’ (You are repose, you are peace) - as, paradoxically, tension was injected by the three against two rhythmic dialogue between piano and voice. ‘Die Einsiedler’ (The hermit), too, benefitted from an even vocal line, while the final song, ‘Aufträge’ (Messages) burbled excitedly propelled by an intoxicating lyrical and poetic impulse.
Claire Seymour
Sophie Bevan (soprano), Julius Drake (piano)
Clara Schumann - ‘Liebst Du um Schönheit’, ‘Sie liebten sich beide’, ‘Der Mond kommt still gegangen’, ‘Am Strande’; Fanny Mendelssohn - ‘Frühling’, ‘Warum sind den die Rosen so blaß’, ‘Nachtwanderer’, ‘Bergeslust’; Felix Mendelssohn - ‘Die Liebende schreibt’, ‘Pagenlied’, ‘Schilflied’, ‘Hexenlied’; Frédéric Chopin - ‘Śliczny chlopiec’, ‘Dumka’, ‘Piosnka litewska’, ‘Wojak’; Franz Liszt - ‘Die stille Wasserrose’, ‘Ihr Glocken von Marling’, ‘Im Rhein, im schönen Strome’, ‘Der du von dem Himmel bist’; Hector Berlioz - ‘Chant du Bonheur’, ‘Petit oiseau’, ‘Farewell, Bessy’, ‘Zaïde’; Robert Schumann - ‘Widmung’, ‘Muttertraum’, ‘Der Einsiedler’, ‘Aufträge’.
Middle Temple Hall, London; Monday 22nd January 2018.