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."
On the page this looked rather a ‘pick-and-mix’ sort of Prom from the Deutsche Kammerphilharmonie Bremen under Greek conductor Constantinos Carydis, who was making his Proms debut. In the event, it was not so much a Chinese take-away as a Michelin-starred feast for musical gourmands.
An assemblage of instrumental items by Mozart, Richard Strauss and Beethoven might have proved difficult to sequence and balance. To close with Beethoven’s 40-minute Seventh Symphony threatened to overwhelm the slighter Mozart amuse-bouches - a three-minute Cassation, some short arias - heard previously. And, while both Capriccio and Ariadne auf Naxos see Strauss exploring the very nature of opera itself, the opening sextet from Capriccio - elegant, wistful and ardent by turn - might seem a strange bedfellow for Zerbinetta’s’ Grossmächtige Prinzessin!’ with its worldly advice on life and love.
In the event, it all made perfect sense. And, the charm and success of the evening was due in no small part to the contribution of Greek soprano Danae Kontora. Based at Oper Leipzig, Kontora has performed across Germany and with Greek National Opera and Israel Opera. Next season will see her make her debut at the Vienna State Opera. As far as I can tell this was not just her Proms debut, but - other than performances at the Edinburgh International Festival, as Woglinde in a concert-performance of Götterdämmerung a couple of weeks earlier, and as a last-minute stand-in Woodbird in Siegfried in 2018 - also, to date, a rare appearance in the UK. I hope some of country’s casting agents were in the Royal Albert Hall and have started making the calls and contacts that will bring Kontora back to London soon.
How both Mozart and Strauss would surely have delighted to hear their music performed with such effortless, silvery sweetness - the drama so fluently expressive, the vocal peaks reached so pure and integrated within a cohesive architecture. Both the concert arias by Mozart that we heard were written for one of his singing students, Aloysia Weber Lange, with whose voice Mozart became infatuated and for whom he composed at least eight arias, all difficult and all exploiting her strong upper range. When she was only sixteen years old, Mozart commented, in a letter to his father, “she sings most admirably and has a lovely, pure voice”, and a little later: “"As far as her singing is concerned, I would wager my life that she will bring me renown. Even in a short time she has already greatly profited by my instruction, and how much greater will the improvement be ...”.
The text of ‘Popoli di Tessaglia … Io non chiedo, eterni dei’ is Alcestis’ entrance scene in Gluck’s Alceste, in which she beseeches the gods, in a noble, dramatic and intensely personal lament, to spare the life of her husband, Admetus, King of Thessaly. Kontora walked regally onto the platform during the closing bars of the overture to Die Entführung aus dem Serail, and Carydis guided the mood from spirited to sombre, the strings sighing achingly as oboe and bassoon twisted in torment. Dignified and strong, in dramatic, grand recitative Kontora presented Alceste’s pleas plaintively but proudly, as oboe and bassoon obbligatos wove expressively around her entreaties. The orchestral colour softened during the gentle syncopations of the subsequent major-key Andante sostenuto e cantabile, preparing for a fluent, warm prayer in which the vocal decorations unfolded silkily, the coloratura crystalline, and which was followed by a fired-up Allegro assai - all vigorous strings and punchy horns - in which Kontora demonstrated both control and agility. If her first soaring ascent to a high G was a fraction short of the target, then she nailed it absolutely the second time round, the tone of her soprano remaining full and true however high she climbed.
When, in Vienna in 1783, Weber Lange was to appear in Pasquale Anfossi’s opera Il curioso indiscreto, Mozart - who had by then married Constanze, Aloysia’s sister - composed three arias for insertion in Anfossi’s score, two of which were written for his favoured soprano. ‘No, no, che non sei capace’ presents Clorinda’s indignant denials when accused by her husband of infidelity. The haughty dismissals of the recitative were all the more dramatic for having emerged from the stately grace of the preceding Cassation, with Carydis emphasising dynamic contrasts and sforzandi, the strings dancing on tiptoe in the pianissimos and digging in brusquely in the fortes. Kontora sailed brilliantly and tirelessly through the roulades and fireworks, making light of the virtuosity and inserting some expressive decorations of her own to shape the transitions between the various sections and moods.
One might imagine that a string sextet would seem a little ‘lost’ in the vastness of the Royal Albert Hall but, on the contrary, the six instrumentalists of the Deutsche Kammerphilharmonie Bremen perfectly captured that ‘distant but immediate’ quality of the sextet which opens Strauss’s Capriccio - which is, after all, designed to evoke the eighteenth-century world in which the opera is set and to inspire a strong emotional and visceral response. As we listened ‘from afar’, the players seemed immersed in their music-making, but their collection expression had the power to reach out across the Hall. Once again, the vocal solo emerged from the preceding instrumental music, a simple piano chord bringing to a close the strings’ sentimental winding and the subsequent piano-based sonority, with cheeky woodwind interjections, established a light-hearted, even cabaret-esque, mood.
There was a beguiling directness about this Zerbinetta’s advice to the despairing Ariadne: every word was crystal clear, the sentiments sincere, the recollections of past romantic encounters and adventures carefree - utterly untrammelled by shadows or regret. The insouciance - complemented by capricious flute and oboe echoes - was balanced by sudden surges of heartfelt fellow-feeling and musical intensity, as when Zerbinetta impresses upon Ariadne that she is not alone in her anguish - where is the woman who has not suffered it? Independence of spirit and exuberance gradually infused her honest recollections of romance, flourishing in a gloriously flowing declaration: ‘I deceive him in the end yet love him truly.” The elaborate listing of past lovers was a delight of floating flightiness, the accompanying musicians playing with chamber-like intimacy combined with dramatic expressiveness, while Zerbinetta’s reliving of her erotic transportation and surrender was by turns ecstatic and then pensive, almost ethereal, enhanced by a beautiful cello solo, finally summitting in fountains of roulades and trills, as clean as a whistle even on the highest sustained Ds.
The first half of the concert had concluded with a lovely performance of Mozart’s Haffner Symphony. On the podium, Carydis exudes energy and a confident appreciation of the dramatic sweep of the whole, bending his knees to lower his arms to the floor, seeming to dig deep into the air, and then rising again, embracing all in his outstretched arms which wave, arc, sculpt and dance. Clearly the detail has been done and dusted in rehearsal, and players and conductor can confidently communicate their collective understanding and feeling. Cardyis encourages quite a raw sound at times, with little vibrato, but the Bremeners can sing softly and sweetly too. Such contrasts were even more strongly felt in the final work of the Prom, Beethoven’s Seventh Symphony.
I’ve recently been reading Beethoven for a Later Age by Edward Dusinberre, the leader of the Takács Quartet, in which the violinist, reflecting on the alternative endings of the Op.130 quartet and the ambivalences and contradicts that dominate the composer’s late style, remarks perceptively that the essence of the apparently irreconcilable contrasts in Beethoven’s music, evident from the earliest works, is the discomforting juxtaposition, even co-existence, of the ethereal and the demonic. Dusinberre views this disconcerting conflict as evidence of Beethoven’s ‘ambition to integrate lightness and weight, youthfulness and experience, comedy and tragedy’. This performance of the Seventh Symphony seemed to embody that quest for integration, and if such a quest must end ultimately in failure, the pursuit will be unsettling and inspiring in equal measure - and in this case, incredibly uplifting, as the Prommers’ roar of applause - and the affectionate embraces with which the musicians showed their gratitude to each other, as they left the stage - confirmed.
Claire Seymour
Prom 65: Mozart - The Abduction from the Seraglio K384, Overture; Aria: ‘Popoli di Tessaglia! - lo non chiedo, eterni dei’ K316; Cassation No.1 in G major, Andante; Aria: No, no, che non sei capace’ K419; Symphony No.35 in D major, ‘Haffner’ K385; Richard Strauss - Capriccio, Sextet; Ariadne auf Naxos, ‘Grossmächtige Prinzessin!’; Beethoven - Symphony No.7 in A major
Danae Kontora (soprano), Constantinos Carydis (conductor), Deutsche Kammerphilharmonie Bremen
Royal Albert Hall, South Kensington, London; Saturday 7th September 2019.