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."
It came as quite a surprise throughout much of the first half of this recital of French song, that it was the piano-playing of Susan Manoff that made the greater impression upon me than the singing of Véronique Gens.
With the best will in the world, it could hardly be claimed that the songs of Gounod and Massenet are possessed of remarkably piano parts. And yet, from the prelude to the opening Où voulez-vous aller, it was often the piano that proved more communicative, that grabbed and retained my interest. Indeed, Manoff’s evident love for the music and for music-making in general proved so infections that I found more in the songs, especially Gounod’s, than I might ever have imagined possible. Whether it were her teasing, effortlessly ‘natural’ rubato in the Lamartine setting, Le Soir, the immediate establishment of a cradle rhythm, and her play therewith, in the Hugo Sérénade, or the unerring sense of line and shaping the song as a whole in Mignon, (sort of) after Goethe, it would have been more or less impossible not to warm to these performance. I certainly did not try. Likewise in the rhythms of Massenet’s Nuit d’Espagne. ‘Generative’ might be thought too Teutonic a way of considering the music in a song like that; it was nevertheless the word that came to mind to this incorrigible Teutonophile.
Gens sometimes sounded reticent by comparison, rather as if she were holding something back for the second half. Perhaps she was. Not that there was nothing to admire. Above all, there was her ready way with the texts and her cleanness of line. A touch more vibrato might on occasion, though, have been welcome - at least to me. The tasteful sadness of Massenet’sElégie prove eminently satisfying, though. In Edmond de Polignac’s Lamento, simple and well-formed, far more than a mere curiosity, both artists left one wanting more. The piano’s harmonic inflections nevertheless proved the key, or so it seemed.
If I found Gens at times a little ‘white’ of voice in Duparc’s songs - Vie antérieure in particular - that is more a matter of taste than anything else. It remained, however, the piano parts in which I found, again to my surprise, the greater interest, at least until the Théophile Gautier setting, Lamento. Contemplation of the white tomb, as opposed to entombment itself, was very much the thing - until the high drama (relatively speaking) of the third and final stanza. ‘Ah! jamais plus près de la tombe je n’irai…’
Try as I might, I cannot summon up the enthusiasm shared by so many for the songs of Reynaldo Hahn, whether in the second half proper, or as encores. Nevertheless, I found myself well able to appreciate the darker undercurrents of a song such as Mai in performance. Likewise that ineffably Gallic regret - a cliché, I know, but what of it? - in Infidélité, another Gautier setting. Moreover, the way Manoff set up musical expectations through rhythm in the Hugo Rêverie reminded me very much of the opening Gounod set.
Offenbach’s cynical humour is probably just more appealing to me. I do not think I had ever heard his songs before. The two pieces from his Six Fables de La Fontaine, pretty much operettic scenas in their own right, made me keen to hear more. Gens now seemed far more at ease, more readily communicative. ‘She played humorously with the closing phrase of ‘Le Corbeau et le renard’ - ‘qu’on ne l’y prendrait plus’ - with no need to underline. The preceding ‘La Cigale et la fourmi’ closed with a true invitation to the dance. This was by now a true partnership, whether between soprano and pianist or grasshopper and ant.
Mark Berry
Gounod: Où voulez-vous aller?; Le Soir;O ma belle rebelle; Sérénade; Mignon; Viens, les gazons sont verts; Edmond de Polignac: Lamento ; Massenet: Chant provençal; Elégie;Nuit d’Espagne; Duparc: Chanson triste; La Vie antérieure; Extase; Lamento; Reynaldo Hahn: Le Rossignol des lilas; Mai; Les Cygnes;Infidélité; Rêverie; Offenbach: Six Fables de La Fontaine: ‘La Cigale et la fourmi’, ‘Le Corbeau et le renard’.
Wigmore Hall, London, Monday 2 July 2018.