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.
![Annette Dasch [Photo © Manfred Baumann]](http://www.operatoday.com/Annette_Dasch.png)
Daniele Gatti opened the first series of Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra’s season with a slightly uneven performance of Mahler’s Resurrection Symphony. With four planned, this staple repertoire for the RCO meant to introduce Gatti to the RCO subscribers.
After a tepid beginning, the concert was still very much worthwhile for the deeply moving vocals of the superlative Groot Omroep Choir in a stunning finale, where Gatti’s opera skills made for an unforgettable, sublime experience. Annette Dasch dazzled in her soprano role, while Ms. Cargill equally impressed.
Mahler’s Second Symphony premiered in Berlin in 1895. In October 1904, the Austrian conducted his work twice at the Concertgebouw. So whenever the RCO performs this piece a mythological dimension layers the experience. Tonight especially so, as Daniele Gatti performed it for the first time here. Expectations were ambivalent. Though he has great synergy and communicates intensely conducting, his performances have the tendency to be hit or miss. I have heard him perform a dreadful Schumann symphony on the same evening with a mind blowing Berg’s Violin Concerto. His Mahler’s Third and Sixth left a lot to be desired, but his already legendary performances of Mahler’s Fifth and Ninth earned him the job.
Karen Cargill [Photo by K K Dundas]
Tonight with Mahler’s epic work, he grew in his role throughout the performance. With each following movement more sturdy, the music excelled in quality. Gatti’s fortissimo explode delightfully from the percussion and brass. His pianissimo passages simmer tensely. However, in between those extremes Gatti’s Mahler felt flat, even a bit superficial. Mr. Gatti’s conducting style is too polished, too refined.
With Simon Rattle and the Berliners last year, the rawness of Mahler’s Second made your skin crawl: those strings burned fiercely giving the music a serrated edge. Gatti’s finesse is impressive to see, but the music lacks depth in its resonance. Though I have to admit, Dominic Seldis, headbanging and riffing with his bass section, offered a pulsating momentum with throbbing intensity.
The Allegro Maestoso opening in particular suffered from a lack of intensity. With each reintroduction of the opening, Gatti’s fortissimo surges provoked plenty of goosebumps, but brilliance lacked in the subtly shrill moments. As result of the missing ferocity, the Andante moderato and its delicate “Ländler” dance did not have the strikingly upbeat contrast and pastoral whimsicality. Mr. Gatti’s elegant though overly elaborate conducting style again polished away the Scherzo’s incisiveness.
The transition into the fourth movement missed its disarming effect. When he conducted this work during his reign of the RCO, Mariss Jansons elevated the Urlicht (Primeval Light) movement into a heightened state of serenity; though it seems highly unfair to compare Gatti already to Jansons. Ms Cargill’s thick, voluptuous vibrato sang the lied from “Des Knaben Wunderhorn” that always resonates powerfully in the Concertgebouw. Tonight, almost with religious mysticism.
Concertmaster Vesko Eschkenazy made his violin sing exquisitely moving during his solo passages, while Vincent Cortvrint’s piccolo solo richly illuminated. The offstage musicians also added an engaging stereophonic effect to experience as they relocated off stage and were heard from different locations.
Annette Dasch stole the show in the finale as she and Cargill offered intense contrasts to each other. Dasch’s powerful voice has no problem mastering the tricky vocal acoustics of the hall, and contributed to the overall sublime finale. Right before the calm of the glorious ending, a cellphone managed to disrupt ever so briefly. The timing was impeccable, but thankfully it only rang one time.
Together with the awesome Groot Omroepkoor, Dasch and Cargill enriched the collective spirit of the finale as they sang the words from Mahler’s adaptation of the poem Die Auferstehung. It left me with wet eyes and less skeptical toward the future with the still developing Gatti and the RCO.
David Pinedo