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.
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.
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.
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.’
‘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.’
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 doors at The Metropolitan Opera will not open to live audiences until 2021 at the earliest, and the likelihood of normal operatic life resuming in cities around the world looks but a distant dream at present. But, while we may not be invited from our homes into the opera house for some time yet, with its free daily screenings of past productions and its pay-per-view Met Stars Live in Concert series, the Met continues to bring opera into our homes.
Music-making at this year’s Grange Festival Opera may have fallen silent in June and July, but the country house and extensive grounds of The Grange provided an ideal setting for a weekend of twelve specially conceived ‘promenade’ performances encompassing music and dance.
There’s a “slide of harmony” and “all the bones leave your body at that moment and you collapse to the floor, it’s so extraordinary.”
“Music for a while, shall all your cares beguile.”
The hum of bees rising from myriad scented blooms; gentle strains of birdsong; the cheerful chatter of picnickers beside a still lake; decorous thwacks of leather on willow; song and music floating through the warm evening air.
At a concert in the Cathedral of Saint Joseph in San Jose, California, on August 22, 2014, a few selections preceded the piece the audience had been waiting for: the world premiere of Dolora Zajick’s brand new composition, an opera scene entitled Roads to Zion.
On August 22, 2014, the Cathedral Basilica of St Joseph in San Jose honored the five hundredth birthday of St. Teresa of Avila with a grand concert. Narrator Carolyn Graves read excerpts from the saint’s writings between performances by various artists. After opening with a procession from Benjamin Britten’s Ceremony of Carols, the Teresian Singers, accompanied by the Orchestra of St. James, sang a refreshing rendition of Laureen Grady’s Mothering God.
Mezzo-soprano Dolora Zajick followed it with a version of César Franck’s Panis Angelicus in which she was accompanied by harp, cello, and organ. The overtones of her magnificent voice blended delightfully with the cello obbligato. The Teresian Singers returned with the more modern Virgin of Solitude by Carmelite nun, Claire Sokol. Heidi Lehwalder’s harp provided a bit of lighter dance music by Carlos Salzedo before we heard another of Sokol’s deeply religious pieces, the powerful Living Water.
After the Teresian Strings played the Preludium to Edvard Grieg’s Holberg Suite, Zajick, known so well for her Italian operatic roles, sang Verborgenheit (Solitude), one of Hugo Wolf’s Mörike Lieder. The singer asks the world to simply “Let her be,” so the words fit this program perfectly. The mezzo sang it with a tapestry of vocal color and controlled emotion that left the audience wanting to hear more lieder from her in the future.
Sokol’s Nada Te Turbe (Let Nothing Disturb You) for women’s chorus with orchestra and solo guitar and Edgar Elgar’s Nimrod from the Enigma Variations preceded the piece the audience had been waiting for: the world premiere of Zajick’s brand new composition. The opera scene was entitled Roads to Zion. Performers were: Dolora Zajick, mezzo-soprano; Ya-Li Lee Cheng, soprano; Anthony Elliott, cello; and Joseph Adam, piano. Joel Revzen conducted the Teresian Singers and the Orchestra of St. James Cathedral. The opening phrases of Part I The Soul Yearns, reminded the audience of Teresa’s converso heritage. (Some of the saint’s ancestors were Jewish). As Teresa, the mezzo-soprano sang of a religious experience while the Teresian Singers added excerpts from Psalm 84.
Zajick’s music is melodic, distinctively original, and replete with accessible twenty-first century harmony. The central part of this opera scene, an orchestral interlude entitled A Soul Takes Flight, created an impressionistic atmosphere of floating celestial sound. The finale, A Soul Returns, reminded the listener that today’s believers are the representatives of Christ. For Christians and non-Christians alike, this music created an intense experience. Its impressive orchestration and unified architectural design made it a most fascinating piece.
If this work is indicative of Zajick’s compositional achievement, it certainly whets the appetite to hear more. Although the concert concluded with an excerpt from J.S. Bach’s Brandenburg Concerto No. 3 and the thirteenth century Christo Psallat Ecclesia (Christ Sings Psalms to the Church), it was the music of Roads to Zion that remained in the minds of the audience as they left the concert.
Maria Nockin
Cast and production information:
Composer and Mezzo-Soprano, Dolora Zajick; Composer, Claire Sokol, OCD; Soprano, Ya-li Lee Cheng; Narrator, Carolyn Graves; Stage Director, Paul Kiernan; Organist and Pianist, Joseph Adam; Harpist, Heidi Lehwalder; Guitarist, Matthew Fish. Conductors, Joel Revzen, James Savage, and Anthony Elliott; Orchestra of St. James Cathedral of Seattle. Teresian Singers (Women’s Chorus), Chorus of Carmelite Nuns.