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."
In 1682 the Archbishopric of Salzburg celebrated its 1100th anniversary with an appropriately festal service in the Cathedral, depicted in an engraving by Melchior Küsel. Küsel’s engraving is a striking image, bringing into harmony the grand scale of the building (not yet one hundred years old), the ornamental richness of the interior, and the strong subdivisions of its space.
In many ways the image also seems iconic of Heinrich Biber’s Missa Christi resurgentis, recorded here by the English Concert under the direction of Andrew Manze. The Mass itself is for large forces—two vocal choirs, a wind choir of trumpets, cornetti, and trombones, and a choir of strings—all deployed in a rich antiphonal array. The Küsel engraving also documents the divided placement of musicians in the cathedral’s galleries, and certainly the Mass would seem well served by this model.
Biber spent the vast majority of his career in the service of Prince Bishops, first at Kremsier where the bishop, Karl, Count Liechtenstein-Kastelkorn of Olomouc, maintained a strong interest in music—the library there remains a rich trove of Biber’s works—and later at Salzburg, where Biber served the Archbishop Maximilian Gandolph, Count Khüenberg and his successors for over three decades.
The Missa Christi resurgentis likely dates from early in Biber’s time at Salzburg, with a possible performance in the Cathedral at Easter of 1674. The festal circumstance of the liturgical occasion naturally would prompt a splendid display, but equally so would the princely context of the bishopric itself. (The bent towards splendor is perhaps most dramatically seen in a slightly later work, the fifty-three-part Missa Salisburgensis, now thought to be most likely by Biber, and probably performed in 1682.) The Easter Mass presents big swaths of color in alternation with more figural, smaller textures, where instruments and voices are in dialogue among themselves, as well as with the larger textures. Reflecting Biber’s status as a great violin virtuoso, the instrumental parts are prominent here with extended interludes and also in counterpoint with the voice, as in the compellingly intertwined writing of the Benedictus. Moreover, the prominence of trumpets here underscores not only the celebrative nature of Easter, but additionally the courtly ethos of the bishopric. The effect is dazzling! As is the performance. The choir, an ensemble of soloists, leans towards color and vibrancy rather than homogeneity, and given the emphasis on splendor and variety, that priority seems well chosen. The instrumental playing is highly polished, attaining both a high degree of elegance and verve. There is the occasional stylistic oddity, however. For instance, the solo trumpets have an odd tendency to push weak beats into strong ones, and thus seem to undermine a characteristic rhythmic hierarchy. That said, the trumpet playing remains brilliant and glorious, with a fine command of high range, passage work, and ornamental detail.
The recording includes a large number of sonatas in addition to the mass. In part, this reflects Biber’s own instrumental interests, but it also reminds of the degree to which instrumental music figured in festal liturgies. Biber’s sonatas are well represented here, but perhaps the best of the lot is that by Heinrich Schmelzer, the twelfth sonata from his 1662 Sacro-profanus concentus musicus. With grand writing for winds, its sumptuous tuttis, toe-tapping dance figures, ornamental passage work, and forays into the high register are gratifyingly memorable.
Manze and the English Concert evoke the splendor of seventeenth-century Salzburg with great flair. And in so doing, they continue to confirm that the English Concert remains in the front rank of period ensembles.
Steven Plank
Oberlin College