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.
Sopranos Elise Brancheau and Shannon Jones, along with pianists Martin Néron and Keith Chambers, presented a thrilling evening of French-themed music in an evening entitled: “Salut à la France,” at the South Oxford Space in Brooklyn this past Saturday, July 14th.
“We wanted this recital to be beautiful even when the political climate is so ugly,” said Jones, of the choice of French-song centered evening.
And beauty the sopranos did indeed present with a highly ambitious, challenging program that included Benjamin Britten, Gabriel Fauré, Viktor Ullman, and a world premiere by composer Martha Sullivan.
Elise Brancheau began the program with Les Illuminations, op. 18 by Benjamin Britten. Brancheau oscillated between coy gaiety and deep desperation in order to illustrate the pathos of poetry imbued with pastoral playfulness and perverse paintings of human freakishness. Martin Néron played the at-times perversely cheerful stylings of Britten with aplomb, supporting Brancheau in a display of skillful duetting. Brancheau navigated the difficult cycle with incredible breath control, musical sensibility, and a shimmering instrument seemingly unphased by the music’s many vocal challenges.
Brancheau’s performance of the world premiere of Lunaire by Martha Sullivan also proved a success.
“The collaboration came about by chance,” said Brancheau of her partnership with Sullivan. “She [Sullivan] reached out to me and said she had always wanted to set these poems [by Albert Giraud].”
Sullivan’s music is lyric and sweeping, and clearly displays her knowledge of the soprano voice. The piano moves between complex harmonies while repeating haunting leitmotifs that linger in the mind long after each musical phrase has ended. The vocal line deftly illustrates the eeriness of each of Giraud’s poems with frequent moments of musical word painting, supported by a thrusting piano part that almost evokes a more sinister Debussy.
Shannon Jones collaborated with pianist Keith Chambers to present Cinq Melodies “de Venise” by Gabriel Fauré. Jones brought a lush and sensual interpretation to Fauré’s songs. Her second selection, a set of Viktor Ullman songs setting the poetry of Louïse Labé, displayed the full depth and range of Jones as a singer, as well as Chambers as a pianist. Jones sang through two songs of unrelentingly high tessitura with clear and striking vocal timbre, while Chambers ripped through the difficult piano accompaniment with nearly unbelievable ease.
Ullman was a striking and poignant choice by Jones, who said of the composer, “He and his works are a reminder of what we stand to lose if we look at people as a race versus a being.”
The evening, skillfully handled by all the performers, was not impressive merely for its excellent musical displays, but for the thoughtfulness of programming and nuanced interpretation of beautiful and meaningful poetry. Each artist had something to say throughout the course of the evening, and the musical choices provoked emotion and discussion in a way that only a meaningfully curated concert can.
Alexis Rodda
