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."
The songs of Tchaikovsky and Rachmaninov lie at the heart of the Romantic Russian art song repertoire, but in this duo recital at Wigmore Hall it was the songs of Nikolay Medtner - three of which were framed by sequences by the great Russian masters - which proved most compelling and intriguing.
This was the second concert in the Hall’s Russian Song Series which began in September. Curated by pianist Iain Burnside, the series is bringing repertoire by leading Russian composers from the mid-19th to the mid-20th centuries to the UK concert platform, allowing us an opportunity to hear infrequently performed songs by composers such as Myakovsky, Gretchaninov, Cui, Glazunov and Glière.
In a recent interview , Burnside identified some of the ‘themes’ which unite this rich repertoire and what he described as ‘the vocabulary of star gazing, breast beating and soul searching’ was certainly in evidence here. There is an operatic intensity and scale about many of these songs, as Burnside’s two musical partners - the Ukrainian tenor Dmytro Popov and Lithuanian mezzo-soprano Justina Gringytė - confirmed in performances of drama, vivid characterisation and colour.
Both singers have powerful voices and can unleash a full-throated intensity which ease. Popov’s lyric tenor is beautiful of tone, generally steady of intonation - there was just an occasional wavering from the centre of the note at phrase-end climaxes - and rises to the top without strain. Relaxed and singing with obvious enjoyment, he took great care with the Russian texts, bringing words and notes together with engaging focus and clarity, though perhaps not always capturing the tender simplicity and sincerity of some of the more folk-like songs.
Gringytė sings with a fervour and power which, in the intimate environs of Wigmore Hall, were at times somewhat overwhelming, but the vibrant energy which I noted when I saw the mezzo-soprano perform the role of Preziosilla in David Pountney’s WNO production of La forza del destino in March this year was equally impressive here. Gringytė’s tone, particularly her chest voice, is marvellously rich and she used her unwaveringly secure technique to luxuriantly amplify the sound, communicating the emotional tortures and raptures expressed in some of these songs with a soul-engulfing intensity - although sometimes there was a shrillness as her mezzo rose and she reached ever deeper in the music’s wells of agony and suffering. The astonishing strength of her voice was, however, advantageous in controlling the softer phrases, the moments of vulnerability and gentleness, and like Popov, Gringytė was unfailingly attention to the texts.
Beside such drama and extroversion - and, at times, exaggeration - Iain Burnside himself adopted an assuming, supportive role. He was a quietly reassuring presence (the Steinway lid was only slightly raised), but, the piano accompaniments were ever sensitive to the singers’ needs and nuances, and Burnside’s thoughtful expressivity in the piano preludes and postludes defined wonderfully discrete environments from which he sung dramas could emerge.
Dmytro Popov. Photo credit: Anton Ovcharov.
Tchaikovsky wrote romances throughout his career, his hundred or so songs spanning from his early years as a student at the St Petersburg Conservatoire to the Op.73 set of 1893, the year of his death. In selecting his texts, he generally avoided the work of the great Russian poets, such as Pushkin or Lermontov, preferring to set poetry by writers such as Daniil Rathaus, Aleksey Konstantinovich Tolstoy, Ivan Zakharovich Surikov, whose lyrics we heard here, and he also had a penchant for the poems of the Grand Duke Konstantin Romanov. César Cui suggested that Tchaikovsky viewed poetry as a ‘necessary evil’ in the process of song composition, but his settings of Lev Alexandrovich Mey’s translations of Heine, which framed the sequenced presented here, seemed rather to demonstrate an instinctive, uncomplicated response to text which inspired directness of melodic expression. Popov sculpted a strong line in ‘Khotel by v jedinoje’ (I wish I could pour into a single word (the translations, from the Cyrillic and into English, were not credited)) and in ‘Otchevo?’ (Why?) built the short, questioning phrases to a powerful concluding climax, ‘Why, oh tell me right now, did you leave me and forget me?’. Popov sang three of the Op.73 settings of Rathaus, beginning ‘Mi sideli s toboy’ (We sat together) seated stage-left besides Gringytė. But, after Burnside’s unsettling bass line and wandering minor harmonies had delineated the storm which embodies, in its driving rain, the protagonist’s grief and tears, he moved to the centre - ‘once again, as before, I’m alone’ - his loneliness exacerbated by the cruelly growling piano bass. ‘Zakatilos solntse’ (The sun has set) was full of persuasive passion, the final phrase almost exploding with the lover’s boundless joy, while ‘Snova, kak prezhde, odin’ (Again, as before, alone), a song which is gently propelled the piano’s repeating rhythmic motif, came to a quieter, more poignant point of rest: ‘Say a prayer for me. I am praying for you.’ Popov combined an even middle-voice and controlled head-voice effectively in ‘Mochi bezumnye’ (Frenzied nights), capturing the oppositions of the protagonist’s recollections of love.
Gringytė’s dynamic and coloristic range were immediately apparent in ‘Uzh gasli v komnatakh’ (The lights were going out in the rooms), the drama of memories of ardent love being tempered by the piano’s poised repetitions creating an almost Chekhovian resignation. ‘Kaby znala ya’ (If only I had known) grew from the piano’s high, delicate tapestry-weave - with Gringytė seated, eyes cast downwards - to a quasi-hysterical expression of disillusioned love culminating in a terrible cry of pain, ‘If only I’d know, I’d realised’ that could not be assuaged by the return of the piano’s subtle sparkling. The latter now seemed hollow and haunting. This song is the first of seven which form Tchaikovsky’s Op.47 set, and Gringytė also presented the final song, ‘Ja li b pole da ne travushka byia’, known as ‘The Bride’s Lament’. The latter was inspired by the duet between Christ and Mary Magdalene in Jules Massenet’s oratorio Marie-Magdeleine which Tchaikovsky described in a letter of 1880 to his benefactor Nadezhda von Meck as a ‘masterpiece’: ‘The duet between Jesus and Mary Magdalene touched my very self and even led me to shed tears.’ Disbelief, woe, suffering, despair: the emotional trajectory, which Gringytė did not just delineate but also seemed to ‘live’, was again projected with immersive power and intensity. The rhapsodic expressivity of the Op.63 ‘Serenade’, in contrast, occasionally had a folk-like tint and the mezzo-soprano showed that she could withdraw to a sweet thread of sound to convey dreamy introspection: ‘Sleep then, darling girl, and surrender to the harmonies of my serenade.’
Iain Burnside. Photo credit: Gerard Collett.
In the sequence of songs by Rachmaninov which followed the interval, I was impressed by the way that Burnside was able to maintain a dramatic impetus within each song, and from song to song, despite the heavy emotional weight of the texts and the richly expressive explorations of the piano parts. A lovely bloom coloured Popov’s rendition of ‘Ne poj, krasavica, pri mne’ (Sing not to me, beautiful maiden’, and his strong high notes were further injected with a flash of vigour by the piano’s final flourish. ‘Ne ver mne, drug!’ (Don’t believe me, friend!) had impulsiveness, youthful drive and passionate heroism worthy of Pushkin’s Lensky. The sinuousness of the piano’s prelude to ‘Khristos voskres’ (Christ is risen) was complemented by Popov’s purposeful declamatory focus as he described a world ‘soaked in blood’ and a hymn sung before an altar which ‘sounds so insulting and unjust’. I thought that Burnside might have unleashed even more emotional thunder at the end of ‘Ya opya’ odinok’ (Again I am alone), where the piano’s final fantasia expresses a despairing alienation so powerfully communicated by Popov but the pianist did conjure a surging current at the start of ‘Vesennye vody’ (Spring waters) where again the tenor’s steadiness and strength were admirable.
The agility of Gringytė’s lower voice was apparent at the start of ‘O, ne grusti’ (O, do not grieve) though more restraint subsequently would have allowed the countering rhythm presented in the piano’s bass to make its expressive mark more readily. In ‘Jest’ mnogo zvukov’ (There are many sounds), however, Burnside really did rise to meet the vocal drama before expertly shaping the subdued close. The mezzo-soprano adopted a less rapturous mode in ‘Pred ikonoj’ (Before the icon), shaping the line with delicacy and delineating the ‘night’s silence’ and the flickering of the icon-light with floating beauty and reverence. And, ‘K detjam’ (To the children) was wonderfully personal and direct, the line simple and true.
It was the three songs by Medtner, though, which were most compelling, as the music - with its complex piano writing and sense of continuous development and searching - seemed to invite a greater freedom of rhythm and emotional colour from Gringytė. The heart’s flights and sighs were conveyed by a judicious rubato at the start of ‘Ne mogu ja slyshat’ ’etoj ptichki’ (When I hear birdsong); the full piano chords which open ‘Nash vek’ (Our age) inspired powerful declamatory rhetoric from Gringytė. Bu, it was in ‘Bessonitsa’ (Sleeplessness) that the sophistication of Medtner’s writing was most apparent. The interaction of voice and piano is detailed and complex and Burnside listened meticulously as the piano’s repetitions supported the vocal line as it withdrew with weariness, languorously shaped by Gringytė who exploited a great range of colour. The emotional palette was further enhanced by the piano’s beautiful closing vocalise.
Gringytė and Popov proved perfect advocates for these Russian romances, conveying an innate empathy with the ‘voice’ of these songs which seem to grow out of the experiences and history of the Russian nation itself.
Claire Seymour
Justina Gringytė (mezzo-soprano), Dmytro Popov (tenor), Iain Burnside (piano)
Tchaikovsky : ‘I wish I could pour into a single word’, ‘The lights were going out in the rooms’ Op.63 No.5, ‘We Sat Together’ Op.73 No.1, ‘The Sun has Set’ Op.73 No.4, ‘If only I had known’ Op.47 No.1, ‘Frenzied nights’ Op.60 No.6, ‘Serenade’ Op.63 No.6, ‘The Bride’s Lament’ Op.47 No.7, ‘Again, as Before, Alone’ Op.73 No.6, ‘Why?’ Op.6 No.5; Medtner: Whenever I hear birdsong’ Op.28 No.2, ‘Our Age’ Op.45 No.4, ‘Sleeplessness’ Op.37 No.1; Rachmaninov: ‘Sing not to me, beautiful maiden’ Op.4 No.4, ‘Oh, do not grieve’ Op.14 No.8, ‘Fragment from A Musset’ Op.21 No.6, ‘The dream’ Op.8 No.5, ‘Before the icon’ Op.21 No.10, ‘Don’t believe me, friend!’ Op.14 No.7, Christ is risen Op.26 No.6, ‘To the children’ Op.26 No.7, ‘The ring’ Op.26 No.14, ‘Again I am alone’ Op.26 No.9, ‘There are many sounds’ Op.26 No.1, ‘Spring waters’ Op.14 No.11.
Wigmore Hall, London; Thursday 29th November 2018.