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."
Rarely can any singer have made such an unforgettable UK debut in just twelve minutes of music. That was unquestionably the case with the Russian soprano, Elena Stikhina, who in a performance of Tchaikovsky’s Letter Scene from Eugene Onegin, sang with such compelling stage magnetism and with a voice that has everything you could possibly want.
For a soprano who has already sung Brünnhilde (in Siegfried) and is about to take on Norma, there were many assumptions to make about the kind of voice Stikhina might have; none were actually founded in fact. Everything about this performance suggested a thorough grounding in the role’s youthfulness, innocence, and romantic instincts. It was almost unbearable to hear Tatyana’s soul being displayed with such depth; it was if every novel, every chapter and paragraph of a book ever written were being narrated by Stikhina with heartrending insight. What was so unusual about this Letter Scene wasn’t just the careful attention to detail (and the impeccable Russian), it was that you felt she was writing the letter as it happened. Less the vast monologue it often is, it was a gripping and believable performance of time and place which was of the moment.
The voice itself is extraordinarily beautiful and rather wide in what it can do. It has the creaminess of Janowitz yet that rather mezzo-like, shadowy appeal of Ludwig; in a sense it’s febrile, like a molten furnace embracing dark embers from the middle of the chest, right up to a rock-solid spiralling high register that is crystalline. The vibrato is controlled with unwavering precision. Her stage presence is such that she lives the role of Tatyana - and I imagine everything else she sings. She completely charmed a capacity audience, just as she managed to persuade Bychkov and the Czech Philharmonic to follow every instinct of a performance that was as sublime as it was utterly incomparable.
The concert had opened with very familiar Czech fare - Smetana. The Overture, and Three Dances to The Bartered Bride fizzed with that unique blend of infectiousness and rustic brilliance which only a Czech orchestra can muster. That reedy woodwind sound, the rather bright brass is never a surprise from this orchestra; what did prove a revelation was the astonishing richness of the strings, particularly a cello section which really left me wondering if there is a finer one anywhere in the world.
One can imagine the work after the interval - Shostakovich’s searing Eighth Symphony - with its distinctive Soviet implications (even though it is markedly differently in tone from the Seventh) - being a touch unsettling for a Czech orchestra. The performance we heard actually suggested it might have been because I have rarely heard one in which the angst, tragedy and eruptions of sound were so visceral. This is indeed a symphony which is marked out by climaxes of terrifying power, and the Czech Philharmonic did not hold back in the slightest. Hard sticks on the timpani were mighty, and scarcely refrained from making an impact which was monumental. Yet, could one have asked for a more bittersweet, more serene cor anglais solo played over lamenting tremolo strings than the mercurial one we heard here? I very much doubt it. But when one heard those grinding climaxes against clarinet and flute duets the dichotomy of a symphony which is always in conflict with itself simply put into focus an orchestra which has an exceptional ability to display itself as a body of craftsmen rather than instrumentalists.
Semyon Bychkov tends towards a more aggressive slant in Shostakovich - a Tenth with the Orchestre de Paris in the 1990s at the Proms was a vividly wild performance - and he coaxed some very grim playing from his Czech players in the central movements of this Eighth. There were great slabs of darkness from the strings, a toccata in the Allegro non troppo that stuttered and grinded like machinery in a great industrial iron foundry; trumpets blazed through the orchestra like gun fire. Those climaxes which seemed to come from nowhere in this symphony were horrific in their power and then just collapsed; in the final movement you felt the weight of the bows against cellos and basses would break their strings.
This was a performance of such magnitude, a gripping brilliance and played with devastating power, that Bychkov was able to hold off applause for a significant amount of time. It really was that exhausting for conductor, orchestra and audience. But this had been an exceptional Prom in every way. Without a doubt the highlight of this year’s season for me.
Marc Bridle
Elena Stikhina (soprano), Semyon Bychkov (conductor), Czech Philharmonic.
Royal Albert Hall, London; Tuesday 10th September 2019.