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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
The voices of six women composers are celebrated by baritone Jeremy Huw Williams and soprano Yunah Lee on this characteristically ambitious and valuable release by Lontano Records Ltd (Lorelt).
As Paul Spicer, conductor of the Royal Birmingham Conservatoire Chamber Choir, observes, the worship of the Blessed Virgin Mary is as ‘old as Christianity itself’, and programmes devoted to settings of texts which venerate the Virgin Mary are commonplace.
Ethel Smyth’s last large-scale work, written in 1930 by the then 72-year-old composer who was increasingly afflicted and depressed by her worsening deafness, was The Prison – a ‘symphony’ for soprano and bass-baritone soloists, chorus and orchestra.
‘Hamilton Harty is Irish to the core, but he is not a musical nationalist.’
‘After silence, that which comes closest to expressing the inexpressible is music.’ Aldous Huxley’s words have inspired VOCES8’s new disc, After Silence, a ‘double album in four chapters’ which marks the ensemble’s 15th anniversary.
A song-cycle is a narrative, a journey, not necessarily literal or linear, but one which carries performer and listener through time and across an emotional terrain. Through complement and contrast, poetry and music crystallise diverse sentiments and somehow cohere variability into an aesthetic unity.
One of the nicest things about being lucky enough to enjoy opera, music and theatre, week in week out, in London’s fringe theatres, music conservatoires, and international concert halls and opera houses, is the opportunity to encounter striking performances by young talented musicians and then watch with pleasure as they fulfil those sparks of promise.
“It’s forbidden, and where’s the art in that?”
Dublin-born John F. Larchet (1884-1967) might well be described as the father of post-Independence Irish music, given the immense influenced that he had upon Irish musical life during the first half of the 20th century - as a composer, musician, administrator and teacher.
The English Civil War is raging. The daughter of a Puritan aristocrat has fallen in love with the son of a Royalist supporter of the House of Stuart. Will love triumph over political expediency and religious dogma?
Beethoven Symphony no 9 (the Choral Symphony) in D minor, Op. 125, and the Choral Fantasy in C minor, Op. 80 with soloist Kristian Bezuidenhout, Pablo Heras-Casado conducting the Freiburger Barockorchester, new from Harmonia Mundi.
A Louise Brooks look-a-like, in bobbed black wig and floor-sweeping leather trench-coat, cheeks purple-rouged and eyes shadowed in black, Barbara Hannigan issues taut gestures which elicit fire-cracker punch from the Mahler Chamber Orchestra.
‘Signor Piatti in a fantasia on themes from Beatrice di Tenda had also his triumph. Difficulties, declared to be insuperable, were vanquished by him with consummate skill and precision. He certainly is amazing, his tone magnificent, and his style excellent. His resources appear to be inexhaustible; and altogether for variety, it is the greatest specimen of violoncello playing that has been heard in this country.’
Baritone Roderick Williams seems to have been a pretty constant ‘companion’, on my laptop screen and through my stereo speakers, during the past few ‘lock-down’ months.
Melodramas can be a difficult genre for composers. Before Richard Strauss’s Enoch Arden the concept of the melodrama was its compact size – Weber’s Wolf’s Glen scene in Der Freischütz, Georg Benda’s Ariadne auf Naxos and Medea or even Leonore’s grave scene in Beethoven’s Fidelio.
A Louise Brooks look-a-like, in bobbed black wig and floor-sweeping leather trench-coat, cheeks purple-rouged and eyes shadowed in black, Barbara Hannigan issues taut gestures which elicit fire-cracker punch from the Mahler Chamber Orchestra.
She turns, fixes the audience with a steely stare then whips off her coat to reveal fishnets and PVC basque, and, as the audience chuckles, she clicks four brisk beats and a whiplash strike brings in the orchestra behind her, to accompany her launch into the peaking, plunging, faltering soprano solo of György Ligeti’s Mysteries of the Macabre, a concert setting of his operatic scene (from Le grand macabre) for an unhinged, soprano chief-of-police and orchestra. Just singing this work is challenge enough for most, let alone conducting it at the same time.
The opening moments of Taking Risks, a double-disc documentary/performance offering an insider’s look at Barbara Hannigan’s first opera production as a conductor - The Rake’s Progress, in December 2018 with the Gothenburg Symphony Orchestra - certainly justify the DVD’s title. Directed by Maria Stodtmeier, Taking Risks is the second documentary DVD that Accentus Music has released with Barbara Hannigan, following the award-winning release of I’m a creative animal in 2015. This film follows Hannigan through auditions, casting, workshops and rehearsals, to first night.
“As a singer I probably have ten more good years left, and I’m doing more and more conducting, and I’m making this strange, funny path as a singer-conductor and eventually I’ll just be a conductor,” Hannigan begins. “So, now, yeah, my first opera, and I do think, ‘What was a thinking?’ On the other hand, I think that I got it. I can’t wait, I’m super-excited and I’m very scared.”
The Rake’s Progress was the first opera that Hannigan sang, at the age of 19: “It’s in my blood - but that doesn’t mean that anyone who sang an opera years ago can conduct it.” Never one to take a short cut when she could tackle a marathon, there was no chance that Hannigan would select a cast of experienced professionals all of whom had sung their roles before - which would have meant “I don’t need to worry about them, only my own responsibilities as a conductor” - when she could choose to work with young singers at the start of their careers, only one of whom had performed their role before. She was looking for “like-minded” musicians, but these were people whom Hannigan did not know; as she says, she was “taking a huge risk”.
So, Equilibrium Young Artists was born. And one thing that is clear is that the process of giving her younger colleagues exciting opportunities and mentoring them as they overcame their own challenges and fears, was as important to Hannigan as the actual performance. 350 applications, from 39 countries, were whittled down to 125 who were invited to audition live. The auditions became mini-mentoring sessions, and she hoped that “everyone walked away with a personal connection”.
Certainly, she was generous with her time, advice and kindness. We see her discussing her feelings about being a female conductor: she wondered why she kept be asking questions about this, but realised that she had to answer the questions since they were not really about “women and conducting”, but “women and leadership”, a social issue. She puts candidates at ease by joking that she must have chosen the right opera because after 300 or 400 applications she’s not yet sick of The Rake’s Progress!
Barbara Hannigan during auditions at the École Normale de Musique de Paris.
Auditions begin in the École Normale de Musique de Paris and, via Stockholm and Zurich, conclude in Greenwich, London in the historic grandeur of the Royal Naval College, now home to Trinity Laban Conservatoire. We see both a sequence of hopeful young singers come and go, and Hannigan herself, working on her score on an airplane, in hotel rooms, her plans disrupted by train cancellations which leaving her sitting on the floor of a crowded train carriage trying to study The Rake’s Progress, and arriving tired and stressed at her destination. At the end of a casting day, she is tearful with tiredness.
Hannigan explains that it’s not technical ‘perfection’ that she’s looking for, it’s “something else”: how they look, move, talk to the pianist, work in the group. Several singers have caught her eye and interest from the start of the process including Greek soprano Aphrodite Patoulidou: she has a certain “seriousness” and Hannigan is willing her on during her audition, “don’t disappoint me”. She doesn’t.
We see the successful singers receiving a call from Hannigan, offering them a role: dodgy telephone and wifi connections, incredulous responses and absolute joy … in one case a singer’s inability to provide a correct ’phone number prompts a rueful reflection on whether this means he shouldn’t get the job. Fortunately for the said singer, Hannigan follows her instincts and finds a way to contact him. It’s a good lesson to learn about professionalism.
As she works on this project, Hannigan’s own singing career continues to make personal, musical and practical demands. She finds herself at Dutch National Opera singing in a production of George Benjamin’s Lessons in Love and Violence. She explains that she couldn’t imagine herself singing beyond the age of 40, and talks honestly and openly about the fast-paced intensity of an international singer’s life, and about her own performance anxiety and how she has learned to manage it.
Rehearsals involve workshops with diverse professionals: Jackie Reardon, a performance coach; conductor/composer/pianist Reinbert de Leeuw, a special mentor for Hannigan; Natalie Dessay and Daniel Harding. It’s interesting that something that Hannigan mentioned right at the start of the auditioning process, when asked about her own career, is reprised by Dessay and Harding: the loneliness that professional musicians at the top of their profession experience.
The final rehearsals in Gothenburg with the orchestra - breaking with convention, Hannigan requests that the singers are present and involved from the start - are obviously tremendously exciting for all involved, and the premiere sparkles with musical commitment, intensity and that first-night ‘dust’ that magical moments sprinkle.
In May 2019, Hannigan toured Europe with a new bunch of Equilibrium Young Artists but this inaugural venture must have been something very special. The risks were worth taking.
Claire Seymour