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 Cardinall’s Musick invited us for a second time to join them in ‘the company of heaven’ at Wigmore Hall, in a recital that was framed by musical devotions to St Mary Magdalene and the Virgin Mary.
The eight singers who formed The Cardinall’s Musick on this occasion - some of whom are familiar figures from other ensembles such as The Tallis Scholars and The Sixteen - know this repertory and how to perform it like the proverbial back of the hand. But this no way lessens their attentiveness, expressivity and accomplishment. Rather - refreshingly so, in these days when we seem to be casting all continuity and cogency aside - I felt swept up in what one might call the comfort of tradition. The composers represented provided what was required, by Church and monarch, day after day, month after month, year after year; and they did so with confidence and certainty, of faith and fellow-feeling. And this performance by The Cardinall’s Musick celebrated and sustained the values and practices of such shared knowledge, experience and expectation. Past and present and, one would hope, future, truly cohered.
That’s not to say that the misgivings I tentatively expressed about the first concert in the series, didn’t persist here. It is strange to listen to liturgical music that is the medium and expression of collective worship being performed in a concert hall; it seems different in the case of the Passions of Bach, and the oratorios of Handel, which have such driving narratives and are dramatic and theatrical in character. However, the quality and persuasiveness of the singing pushed any qualms aside. Director Andrew Carwood achieved an excellent balance between a blended ensemble sound and highlights of colour, as individual voices came to the fore, and the security of the performances was underpinned by bass Robert Macdonald, so often providing a relaxed and reassuring foundation. If I had any slight reservation then it would be that occasionally the soprano voices were not entirely attuned to the harmonic bed beneath them, though their sound was bright and sensitively nuanced.
The programmes that Carwood devises, and his delivery of them, confirms the sureness of his conceptions and intent, although in the compositions for smaller combinations of voices I did wonder whether the singers ‘needed’ a conductor. Tenor Steven Harrold was characteristically eloquent in his solo contributions and alertly engaged with his fellow performers, and the absence of a conductor might have encouraged more consistent ensemble communication of this kind.
Thomas Crecquillon’s motet ‘Congratulamini mihi’ retells the story of Mary Magdalene’s meeting with Christ in the garden of Gethsemane, following the Resurrection. It is a stirring and vibrant work, and the five voices conjured energy and expansiveness in the first section before coming to rest on a soft cadential ‘Alleluia’ at the mid-point. Mary’s anxious questioning in the second part of the motet, as she struggles to make sense of the empty tomb, was darker in tone, and Crecquillon’s linear movement led to some striking harmonies as the searching contrapuntal lines interweaved.
Francisco Guerrero’s Mass Congratulamini mihi (à 6) takes up themes from Crequillon’s motet. When Carwood and The Cardinall’s singers recorded the Mass in 2010, on the Hyperion label, they placed the motet after the Mass which parodies it, but here we had the more conventional ordering. This was a truly polished performance, reverential in tone and sung with soaring fluency. Carwood’s tempi were convincing and flexible. The interplay of voices in the Kyrie was gentle, but towards the close there was a slight pushing forwards, intimating a fresh sense of purpose as we looked towards the ensuing Gloria, in which the three upper voices were beautifully beseeching when asking for the Lord’s mercy, and vigour was derived at the close from the conversations between the inner voices. In the Credo, the lines ‘Et resurrexit tertia die secundum scripturas, Et ascendit in caelum’ (And he rose on the third day according to the scriptures, and ascended into heaven) were wonderfully spacious, as Carwood held back the tempo, allowing the expressive harmonies to make their mark, before once more pressing on, ‘Et in spiritum sanctum Dominum et vivificantem’ (And in the Holy Spirit, the Lord and giver of life). Harrold’s prominent tenor line in the Sanctus was beautifully mellifluous and tender, but again Carwood was alert to the varying sentiments and spirit of the text, building to a buoyant ‘Hosanna in excelsis’, the rhythms of which were particular muscular when the section was repeated after the more withdrawn Benedictus. The triple-time pulse at the start of the Agnus Dei and the sweetly blended sound were consoling, while with the shift to four beats in a bar there was a heightened earnestness. The movements of the Mass were separated by Gregorian chant propers for the Feast of St Mary Magdalene; those sung by tenor Nicholas Todd made a particularly strong impression, the tone warm, the phrasing expressively devotional.
Various female saints - Mary, Cecilia, Barbara - were celebrated in the motets which formed the second half of the recital. I loved the way the singers settled so soothingly and gratifyingly into the final cadence of Peter Philips’ ‘Caecilia virgo’, calming the preceding vigour. Philippe Verdelot’s ‘Salve, Barbara’ was one of the highlights of the evening, the four voices (SATT) flowing through the melismatic lines with beguiling tenderness. Carwood’s careful planning was evident in the progression of pieces, the four lower voices in Adrian Willaert’s ‘In tus patientia’ which followed presenting a pleasing contrast.
We heard more from Guerrero, his six-part ‘Surge propera’, and two settings of ‘Cantantibus organis’ - Luca Marenzio’s four-part setting which was notable for the beautiful soprano and alto duet that pleads for the Lord to make hearts pure, and the more expansive and robust eight-part setting of Daniel Torquet. And composers on this side of the Channel were not neglected. The singers communicated the yearning intensity of William Byrd’s ‘Salve regina’ and glowed through the increasingly rich harmonies with which Byrd conveys the suffering of those groaning and weeping in the vale of tears (‘Gementes et flentes in hac lacrimarum valle’). After such passion and power, Michael Praetoris’ ‘Regina caeli jubila’ for SSA was refreshingly clean and the singing was free and joyful.
In the first concert of this series, Palestrina had been the magisterial figure. Here, he was kept silent until the end, but when The Cardinall’s Musick presented their final item, the composer’s Magnificat Primi Toni (à 8), in which Carwood crafted a compelling forward drive, in was hard not to feel that here was the true master at work - assured and reassuring.
The encore, Joseph lieber, Joseph mein by Hieronymous Praetorius - chosen to mark Candlemas, which falls this Saturday and brings Christian celebrations of the birth of Christ to a close - was beautifully sung but rather dissolved the strength of the spiritual certainty and conviction that Palestrina’s Magnificat establishes. What was most powerfully echoing in my memory as I left Wigmore Hall was the expressive eloquence of Nicholas Todd’s chants. Divine in every sense of the word.
This concert was recorded and broadcast on BBC Radio 3 on Thursday 31 st January; it will be available via BBC iPlayer Radio and the BBC Sounds app for 30 days.
Claire Seymour
The Company of Heaven II : The Cardinall’s Musick
Thomas Crecquillon - Congratulamini mihi; Francisco Guerrero - Missa Congratulamini mihi; Gregorian Chant - Propers for the Feast of St Mary Magdalene; Peter Philips - Cecilia Virgo; Philippe Verdelot - Salve Barbara; Adrian Willaert - In tua patientia; Francisco Guerrero - Surge propera; Luca Marenzio - Cantantibus organis; Daniel Torquet - Cantantibus organis; William Byrd - Salve regina; Michael Praetorius - Regina caeli jubila; Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina - Magnificat primi
Wigmore Hall, London; Wednesday 30th January 2019.