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."
This programme of seventeenth-century duets, odes and instrumental works was meticulously and finely delivered by countertenors Iestyn Davies and James Hall, with The King’s Consort, but despite the beauty of the singing and the sensitivity of the playing, somehow it didn’t quite prove as affecting as I had anticipated.
The programme largely reproduced that presented by James Bowman and Michael Chance on the disc of countertenor duets by Henry Purcell and John Blow that they recorded with The King’s Consort in 1987. Perhaps we experience recorded and live performances differently, or expect and anticipate different things from them, but on this occasion the works performed - which were supplemented by detailed explanatory notes by Robert King - did not seem to me to offer sufficient variety of mood and affekt, and those opportunities that did exist for contrast and diversity were not always exploited to the full. At times I found myself wishing for more dramatic engagement with the musical rhetoric, such as would not only communicate sense and emotion, but would also - as seventeenth-century audiences would have so desired - arouse passions.
One could not complain about the technical standards and tonal beauty, however. Davies and Hall have contrasting voices - Davies’ has variety of colour, dramatic nuance and projects strongly; Hall’s voice is lighter, and agile and fresh at the top - but they formed an ear-pleasing blend. And, as immediately demonstrated by the vocal roulades of the opening ‘Sound the trumpet’ (from the last of Purcell’s birthday odes for Queen Mary, Come ye Sons of Art) they matched each other, and their fellow instrumentalists, for unassuming and assured virtuosity.
The singers’ appeal for trumpets is not answered until later in the ode, and in this recital the singers were partnered by two recorders, played with grace and facility by Rebecca Miles and Ian Wilson, and a continuo group of harpsichord or chamber organ (King), bass viol (Reiko Ichise) and theorbo (Lynda Sayce). As one would expect from such experienced and accomplished musicians, the accompaniments were unfailingly stylish and discerning (though at times, from my seat at the rear of the Hall, I found the organ a little too loud).
Miles and Wilson worked hard to charm and inspire “Wanton heat and loose desire” in ‘In vain the am’rous flute’ (from Purcell’s ode for St Cecilia’s Day) and strongly defined bass and theorbo parts enhanced the vocal tenderness in the theatre ayre ‘No, resistance is but vain’. In the latter, the voices wound around each other lithely and sweetly, but I missed the quasi-operatic drama of the song in which the lover scolds the reluctant beloved whose resistance proves futile when assailed by the ‘tyrant’, Love. Another theatre song, ‘Sing, sing ye druids’, proved one of the highpoints of the evening, the prefatory instrumental ritornello invigored by agile bass viol playing, complemented by airy theorbo textures.
James Hall (Photo courtesy of Athole Still Artists).
We had a chance to hear the singers in solo items too. Hall displayed a clean, fresh tone in a song from Dioclesian, ‘Since from my dear Astrea’s sight’, rising confidently and easily to the melodic peaks, though he might have made more of the word-painting and rhetoric, finding deeper emotive resonance in the falling minor sixths of “mourn”, the troubled quick ascents of “alas” and the winding motif of “weeping”. Davies’ reading of ‘O Solitude’ was a masterclass in dramatic singing. The contrasting elements - of register, between simple declamation and searching melisma - perfectly embodied the song’s paradoxical blend of pain and desire, and Davies’ appreciation of the expressive architecture of the song - articulated through the declamatory phrasing and piquant harmonic twists and false relations - was utterly compelling.
The first half of the concert ended with the intimacy and sombreness of Purcell’s ode ‘O dive custos Auriacae’, which sets a Latin elegy by Henry Parker, and this grave mood resumed after the interval, with John Blow’s setting of Psalm 107, ‘Paratum cor meum’. Hall aptly exploited what one might term an ‘English cathedral tradition’ style in Pelham Humfrey’s devotional song, ‘Lord I have sinned’, negotiating the strange harmonic shifts persuasively and expressively, and drawing touching pathos from the closing image of the “one drop of balsom” which will suffice to ease the sinner’s suffering. John Donne’s words made a strong impact in Davies’ rendition of Purcell’s ‘A hymn to God the Father’, the pleas and questions of the opening stanza driven by the speaker’s conflicting emotions of doubt and devotion, and this anxiety and turmoil growing in the last stanza where Davies, pushing forward and phrasing with considerable character, captured all of the speaker’s fears and, ultimately, faith.
Though Davies communicated strongly in the central, solo episode of Blow’s ‘Ode on the death of Mr Henry Purcell’, the varied elements of this expansive setting of Dryden’s elegy did not quite come together with structural cohesiveness and logic. Perhaps so much earnest solemnity had taken its toll on this listener’s powers of focus. Fortunately, the encore alleviated the sober mood, ‘Hark how the songsters of the grove’ rebounding charmingly from the panelled walls of Wigmore Hall.
Claire Seymour
Iestyn Davies (countertenor), James Hall (countertenor), The King's Consort
Henry Purcell - ‘Sound the trumpet’, ‘In vain the am’rous flute’, ‘O solitude, my sweetest choice’, ‘No, resistance is but vain’, Chaconne from Dioclesian; John Blow - ‘Ah heav’n! what is’t I hear’; Purcell - ‘Sing, sing ye Druids’, ‘Since from my dear Astrea’s sight’, ‘O dive custos Auriacae domus’ (Ode on the death of Queen Mary), Blow - ‘Paratum cor meum’, Pelham Humfrey - ‘Lord, I have sinned’, ‘A Hymn to God the Father’, William Williams - Sonata in imitation of birds, Blow - An Ode on the Death of Mr Henry Purcell
Wigmore Hall, London; Friday 4th January 2019.