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 this contribution to Kings Place’s 2018 Time Unwrapped series, ‘co-curators’ composer Nico Muhly and countertenor Iestyn Davies explored the relationship between time past and time present, and between stillness and motion.
Muhly’s Old Bones adopts an idiosyncratic angle from which to reflect upon ‘Time’. Heard here in a new arrangement, conducted by the composer, for harp, celeste and string quartet, the text (by Richard Buckley, Philippa Langley and Guto’r Glyn) narrates the discovery and exhumation of the bones of Richard III in a car park in Leicester in 2012. A fragmented texture suffused with the cello’s pizzicato energy conjures the excitement of detection and revelation - “They dug in that spot, and the leg bones were revealed”. Davies’ composure and narrative focus drew us into the significance of the unearthing, and we soon became as compelled as the onlookers whose transfixed gaze is suggested by the harp’s oscillations and the repetitions of the viola’s melody. The fusion of past and present is embodied in the text itself, with third-person narration from the perspective of the present juxtaposed with first-person observation and reflection from the medieval past. The participant’s resonant announcement, “King Henry won the day”, was celebrated by the assertive lower strings, while the strange, disturbing feelings experienced by the modern-day ‘archaeologist’, “I am standing on Richard’s grave”, were evoked by churning, twisting harmonies. Slowly rising from a sustained pianissimo pause, the dead King himself seemed to reclaim life, “Now you can understand me”, “I’m ready”, the clarity and strength of Davies’ vocal exclamation suggesting the ghostly compulsion to speak from the grave as well as the madness of the modern-day observer: “Everyone else was looking at old bones, and I was seeing the man.”
Muhly’s Clear Music for cello, harp and celeste also unites present and past, being thematically based upon an early choral work by John Taverner, Mater Christi Sanctissima. Unfolding an eloquent opening melody, cellist Sébastien van Kuikj fell from a beautiful high-lying opening to richer, heavier grains of the lower strings, while the entry of the harp and celeste conjured the luminous spaciousness of Renaissance choral polyphony and the towering cathedrals that such music evokes in musical form. Motion for clarinet, piano and quartet similarly builds upon a Renaissance fragment, from Orlando Gibbons’ verse anthem See, see the Word, and the instrumentalists ranged with a rapidly accelerating sweep through vivid terrain.
Interweaved between old and new were instrumental works from the late-nineteenth century. Pianist John Reid opening the concert with the quietly breathing pulse of Satie’s Third Gymnopédie while harpist Sally Price conjured first heavenly light and air, and then ripples of colour, in Debussy’s Danse Sacrée et Danse Profane. Against the sensitive nuance of the piano accompaniment and the low silkiness of Hélèle Clément’s viola obbligato, Davies worked hard to communicate the yearning and fulfilment of Brahms’ Gestillte Sehnsucht (Assuaged Longing) but while there was firm resoluteness and a relaxed power the countertenor struggled to convey the Straussian passion which infuses this lied.
Two works by Thomas Adès made the strongest impression. Written when the composer was just eighteen-years-old, The Lover in Winter (1989) is a delicate miniature song-cycle whose Latin texts speak of the warmth with which love can assuage and transform the cold, bleak season. At the start, the strangeness and menace of this winter world is evoked by the unsettling intervals of the voice’s descending scale, ‘Iam nocetteneris’ (Now the cold harms what is tender). Here, Davies’ pure sound was a shining ray of wintry sunlight, while in the third song, ‘Modo figescit quidquid est’ (Soon all that exists grows cold), a beautiful, blanched tone captured the frozen immobility of the landscape, cracking icicles sparkling in the piano accompaniment. The fire of the lover’s kisses surged through the wavering vocal line at the opening of the final song, ‘Nutritur ignis osculo’, while the fragmentation of text and melody at the close conveyed a quasi-transcendental force: ‘nec est in toto seculo plus numinis’ (there is not in all our age more of the holy power).
Adès’ mysterious Four Quarters (2010) was brilliantly played by the four string players from the Aurora Orchestra. At the start, ‘Nightfalls’ opened up vast vistas of time and space, as high and low lines wove an ethereal web. The rhythmic displacements of ‘Morning Dew’ were skilfully controlled, accents pointedly placed, while in ‘Days’ the instrumental voices piled upon one another creating thick textures and tones of lovely colour, underpinned by the shapely cello phrases. The wildest wanderings conjured by the fiendishly complex 25/16 time-signature of ‘The Twenty-fifth Hour’, representing time spilling beyond the clock, did not ruffle the composure established by Alex Wood’s serene harmonics at the start, against the viola’s brushed chords and the cello’s gentle pizzicato.
Adès’ cycle evokes a tradition of English song stretching back to the Middle Ages and Renaissance, and the recital fittingly closed with Muhly’s arrangement - for an ensemble comprising all the present musicians - of John Dowland’s beautiful lute song, Time Stands Still. Now, Davies’ voice seemed somehow ‘released’, more freely expressive than previously, hovering above and then nestling gently into the muted strings’ cadential consonances. Viola and cello echoed and intertwined with the vocal phrases, while the contrasting harp colour seemed to embody the innate rhetoric and inner debate of the lyrics: ‘If bloudlesse envie say, dutie hath no desert,/Dutie replies that envie knows her selfe his faithfull heart.’
The text of Dowland’s song, which was published in 1603, is laden with emblems which suggest that the lyrics are a panegyric to Queen Elizabeth I - fittingly so, for, looking ahead, if at Kings Place Time will shortly come to a point of rest and silence, then Venus is soon to be awoken and given voice.
Claire Seymour
Iestyn Davies (countertenor), Sally Pryce (harp), John Reid (piano/celeste), Principal Players of Aurora Orchestra
Satie - Gymnopédie No.3; Thomas Adès -The Lover in Winter; Nico Muhly - Clear Music; Debussy -Danse Sacrée et Danse profane; Brahms - Gestillte Sehnsucht; Muhly - Old Bones (world premiere of new arrangement), Motion; Adès - The Four Quarters; Dowland (arr. Muhly) Time Stands Still
Kings Place, London; Friday 23th November 2018.