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 Anvil in Basingstoke was the first location for a strenuous seven-concert UK tour by the Prague Symphony Orchestra - a venue-hopping trip, criss-crossing the country from Hampshire to Wales, with four northern cities and a pit-stop in London spliced between Edinburgh and Nottingham.
A gruelling travel itinerary with five performances of the longest symphony in the standard repertoire doesn’t necessarily make a comfortable ride in terms of logistics, especially when two choirs (women’s and children’s voices) need to be locally sourced for several performances. Little wonder on opening night there was a sense of an orchestra holding back, keeping its collective powder dry. Pacing is everything on an orchestral tour, and a similar sense of keeping something in reserve might also be applied to the Finnish conductor Pietari Inkinen whose efficient and understated direction of this gargantuan work (played without an interval and coming in at about one hour and forty minutes) drew some fine, if uneven, playing from his Czech forces.
With its extraordinary blend of the sublime and the commonplace, Mahler’s Third Symphony - written in an unassuming little hut in the middle of an Alpine field - inhabits a sweeping grandeur that inflates the genre well beyond convention. Its mix of garish marches, rustic folk tunes and hymn-like apotheosis bring together a celebration of the natural world along with high-minded ideals from Nietzsche, all compressed into an ambitious design that confounded William Walton who declared, ‘It’s all very well, but you can’t call that a symphony’. It’s a work fraught with challenges, not least the need to integrate its earthy and exalted manner into a satisfying and coherent whole. In many respects Inkinen met this challenge head on, creating a handsome, well-judged account that grew in stature and emotional power, By the end I was won over, largely by his impressive control over its vast structure. This was no flawless account by any means, but there was sufficient certainty of direction and accuracy of playing to engineer no small achievement.
The striding opening theme was cleanly despatched by eight horns and heralded a thirty-minute plus span of accumulating momentum and drama. The Anvil’s bright acoustic allowed plenty of detail to register, and for the most part the orchestra produced a well-balanced tone, if a tad lightweight from its eight double basses. Occasionally, there could have been more rhythmic bite, as in the somewhat limp upward scales from the lower strings - marked to be played wild and triple forte. Elsewhere, the solo violin might have been more tender and the solo trombone less effortful. But the playing overall gave full expression to the gravitas and jollity of Mahler’s vision, with plenty of swagger in climaxes where a shrieking piccolo and two timpanists were not afraid to come to the fore.
There was a gentle nod to indulgence in the Minuet, its summer flowers charmingly lit by oboe and pizzicato strings at the start and thence a flowing account in which playful woodwind brought much effervescence to this musical Garden of Eden. If the creatures of the forest (as Mahler once subtitled his third movement) needed a little more definition, there was no escaping the clarity of the post-horn. Despite being hidden away in a corridor, Marek Zvolánek’s trumpet scorched the air with no chance of sounding distant and realising the composer’s evocation of primal innocence.
Ester Pavlů was a poised and rich-toned mezzo-soprano for her ‘Midnight Song’, and as her intonation and sense of involvement developed so the movement gained in intensity. Hopes to hear the mournful rising third from first oboe (marked hinaufziehen - drawn upwards) remained unfulfilled - a shame as it’s a characterful quirk from Mahler. Apart from its suggestive cry of a night bird, its ear-catching glissando is surely endorsed by the composer’s wish that ‘the whole of nature finds a voice’.
Pavlů was joined by the women of the Brighton Festival Chorus and the Tiffin Boys’ Choir who acquitted themselves with conspicuous joy and forthright tone in the ‘angels’ movement - Peter’s journey to heaven. They were easily heard above the clangour of tubular bell and too when softer dynamics demanded, the whole aided and abetted by a no-nonsense tempo. It was the heaven-storming Adagio, ‘ What love tells me’, that found Inkinen in his element. This was a wonderfully translucent reading; noble and of searching inwardness, with solo flute and resplendent brass adding to the rapt serenity and eventual triumph, this last thrillingly captured by unrestrained timpani. If earlier playing had occasionally felt routine this was a superbly redemptive close and left me in no doubt of this conductor’s promising future.
David Truslove
The Anvil, Basingstoke; Thursday 7th November 2019.