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."
A concert programme that offers a ‘Concerto for coloratura soprano’ and four of Richard Strauss’s orchestral songs promises to tick every box on a lover of the soprano voice’s wish-list.
And, the performances by Romanian soprano Adela Zaharia and Swedish soprano Miah Persson in this Prom, with the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by Vasily Petrenko, were certainly satisfying, completely and complementarily.
However, the music that they performed did not hit similar heights. Persson’s Straussian credentials were polished at Garsington this summer where her role debut performance as the Countess in Tim Albery’s production of Capriccio was unanimously acclaimed. Gold, silver and pearl: the adjectives bandied about by the critics suggested that the Three Kings had come to Wormsley. But, such effulgence was retrospectively justified by the sumptuousness, gracefulness and purity with which Persson floated - with glorious freedom, suppleness and coloristic range - through the four songs selected here.
Slightly reduced in forces after the interval, the RLPO glistened with the excited heart-flutterings of a love-inflamed adolescent at the start of ‘Ständchen’ (Serenade) - indeed, Persson’s impassioned impetuosity evoked the palpitating ardours of a Cherubino. After the sweet reflectiveness of the first two stanzas of ‘Das Bächlein’ (The Brooklet), the final verse had a wonderful sense of new energy and confident purposefulness, lifted too by the exuberant spiralling in the orchestral texture. In ‘Morgen!’ (Tomorrow!), Persson crafted the vocal line with simple but pure delicacy, her melody embraced by leader Thelma Handy’s eloquent violin solo as the delicious rubatos of the heaven-aspiring harp and the deep resonance of the bass pizzicatos provided a fulfilling accompaniment. There was a ripening of emotion with the declamatory “Stumm warden wir uns in die Augen schauen” (We shall look mutely into each other’s eyes), and Petrenko exploited the harmonic tensions in the sustained chords until feeling overflowed in the final duet of solo violin and harp; Petrenko dared to diminuendo to a whisper and then to nothing, and then still further into silence. The glories of ‘Zueignung’ were over all too soon; the intensification and apotheosis of the third stanza were thrilling.
Miah Persson. Photo Credit: BBC/Chris Christodoulou.
Throughout, Persson’s lovely vocal sheen held the Proms audience in still wonderment and joy, though, if one were to quibble, perhaps the soprano might have paid a little more attention to Strauss’s word-painting. There was an occasional verbal-coloristic frisson, as in as ‘Ständchen’, when the dusk fell beneath the linden trees - “Unter den Lindenbaumen” - and Persson’s rich rolling of the ‘r’ - “Und die Rose, wenn sie am Morgen erwacht” - made the flower glow with the night’s rapture; and Strauss’s cadential falling appoggiaturas were discerningly articulated. More of such details would have raised a very fine performance still higher. But, the final phrase of ‘Zueignung’ said it all: “habe Dank!” Be thanked, indeed.
Persson was replacing Diana Damrau who had withdrawn owing to illness, and Damrau had also been the intended soloist in Iain Bell’s Aurora, a BBC co-commission with the RLPO, written for Damrau with whom Bell has collaborated frequently. It fell instead to Romanian soprano Adela Zaharia to present the world premiere. Operalia 2017 winner Zaharia, making her Proms debut here, won acclaim when she stood in for an ailing Damrau last December in Munich, when the latter withdrew from the first performance of the run of Lucia di Lammermoor at the Bayerische Staatsoper. Bell’s exploration of the coloristic mystery and majesty of the aurora borealis was well served by the ease of Zaharia’s flights into the stratosphere; the darkness and strength of her tone in the middle and lower ranges; and by the powerful muscularity, allied with subtle flexibility, of her soprano, which breezed easily over the varied orchestral textures. Such qualities did much to sustain a narrative arc and expressive focus through the three linked movements of Bell’s nocturnal probing and wonderment. Zaharia worked hard to imbue the vocalise of the first movement, ‘Dusk to Darkness: First Glimmers’, with expressive weight and intent, her voice flickering and glittering over orchestral intimations of coming night, beginning coolly and then accruing warmth, to glow with the luminescent strength of the sky’s display of dancing of electrons and photons. She slithered provocatively and fierily - and with impressive precision - through the frolics of ‘Night-time: Lights Come Out to Play’, rising exuberantly to climactic vocal peaks and soaring over the flourishes of full-textured orchestral playfulness. In ‘Dead of Night: Phantom Shadows’, her florid outbursts were delivered with deceptive ease, untroubled by the aggressiveness of the orchestra’s rhythmic repetitions, brassy challenges and percussive onslaughts. And, in the closing stages, as the sustained low pedal dissipated into the ether, Zaharia shaped the voice’s final declaration of the supremacy of light most beautifully.
Vasily Petrenko. Photo Credit: BBC/Chris Christodoulou.
The work itself, I found less convincing. Bell certainly knows how to exploit orchestral timbres and how to tint textures with flashes of colour, light and tactility. The ear was teased with myriad gestures; one could never anticipate from whence or which instrumental voice would speak, sing, stutter or demand, then disappear back into the shimmering mass. Petrenko shaped the evolving hues and episodes with a sure sense of pace and atmosphere, and, particularly in the central movement, ensured that we appreciated the teasing dialogues between voice and orchestra, in a manner of a ‘traditional’ concerto. But, it’s difficult to sustain a sense of expressive focus through twenty minutes of vocalise, however inventive the instrumental effects; and, in a work centring on colour and conflict, it’s a pity that harmony played a less significant role in Bell’s pictorial arsenal. Overall, what I missed most was the mythic poetry of the aurora borealis, though I certainly hope that we get another chance to hear Zaharia perform in the UK soon.
The vocal items were framed by two exuberant scores in which Petrenko inspired some committed and virtuosic playing from the RLPO. Elgar’s In the South opened the Prom with a blast of Mediterranean heat, sunshine and out-of-doors joie de vivre, though it was the tenderness of the strings’ playing during the episode depicting the shepherd’s pastoral idyll - a lovely, warm viola solo from Catherine Marwood - which was most stirring. Béla Bartók’s Concerto for Orchestra allowed the RLPO to demonstrate their individual and collective prowess. The Introduzione offered contrasts of blackness and brightness to complement Bell’s night-time vistas, while the snareless side-drum was an exacting master in Giuoco delle coppie. The central Elegia was somewhat restrained, and Petrenko thus did not emphasis the characteristic arch-structure of the work, but the extremes of decorum and boorishness were entertainingly exploited in the Intermezzo interrotto, while in the Finale: Presto Petrenko threw the orchestral caution to the wind in spectacular style. We needed the gentle beauty of the RLPO’s encore - Rachmaninov song, ‘Zdes’ khorosho’ (All is well here), transcribed for orchestra by the orchestra’s principal horn, Timothy Jackson - to remind us that, indeed, all was well.
Claire Seymour
Prom 62: Miah Persson (soprano), Adela Zaharia (soprano), Vasily Petrenko (conductor), Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra
Elgar - In the South (Alassio); Iain Bell - Aurora (BBC co-commission: world premiere); Richard Strauss - ‘Ständchen’, ‘Das Bächlein’, ‘Morgen!’, ‘Zueignung’; Bartók - Concerto for Orchestra
Royal Albert Hall, London; Wednesday 29th August 2018.