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."
This was a notable occasion for offering three colossal scores whose execution filled the Albert Hall’s stage with over 150 members of the London Symphony Orchestra and 300 singers drawn from the Barcelona-based Orfeó Català and Orfeó Català Youth Choir, along with the London Symphony Chorus.
It was very much a ‘pictures in sound’ affair, an orchestral and choral jamboree variously capturing the atmosphere of tropical forest, city soundscape and Babylonian excess in three 20th century works, all given efficient direction by Sir Simon Rattle.
The evening began with Charles Koechlin’s rarely heard symphonic poem Les bandar-log, an evocative and eclectic orchestral realisation (a ‘monkey scherzo’) completed in 1940 and inspired by a French translation of Rudyard Kipling’s The Jungle Book which appeared at the turn of the century. Koechlin’s outsize orchestra is often used sparingly with numerous chamber sonorities (including one extraordinary passage for strings employing six different keys) and in his idiomatic portrayal of a troupe of monkeys the composer constructs a satire on newfangled modes and manners of contemporary music, travelling in time to mock French impressionism, serialism and neoclassicism (in the shape of a rather dull fugue). It’s an anarchic and virtuosic score brimming with invention that glows with febrile excitement and mystery, all conveyed with a wry wit from Rattle and a gleefully committed orchestra - the percussion section in their element.
Another seldom heard score followed with Edgard Varèse’s Amériques given here for the first time in its original 1921 version. Often referred to as an urban Rite of Spring, Amériques is an audaciously futuristic work (just as Charles Ives’s Central Park in the Dark was in 1906) which references both Stravinsky and Schoenberg. It’s a vast love poem to Varèse's adopted country, specifically New York where, from his apartment, he could hear “the whole wonderful river symphony which moved me more than anything ever had before”. There was no shortage of evocative shrieks and wailings from an 18-string percussion section, including two wind machines, which with other expanded instrumental groups collectively brought to life the city’s frenzied-sounding activity. But its twenty-five minutes seemed over long, the great sound masses, mechanistic power and loneliness of a distant trumpet (bringing to mind Edward Hopper’s Nighthawks) didn’t quite have the impact I’d anticipated - certainly no deafening onslaught, more a repetitious assemblage of newly-minted sonorities that ultimately outstayed their welcome despite orchestral playing of energy and precision.
This last quality was mostly realised in Walton’s Belshazzar’s Feast for which the composer devised a score of grand proportions (though not as wildly ambitious as Havergal Brian’s ‘Gothic’ Symphony from a few years earlier) including two (antiphonally placed) brass bands which had been rashly suggested by Sir Thomas Beecham prior to the work’s Leeds premiere in 1931. Next to Koechlin and Varèse’, Belshazzar’s Feast seemed almost rather ordinary, yet to pull off this extraordinary work with the necessary degree of conviction is no small ask. By and large it all worked, but even with the combined voices of the adult and youth choirs of Orfeó Català and the London Symphony Chorus their contribution felt occasionally underpowered and the brief semi-chorus passage was not quite as confidently delivered as it might have been. That said, the opening was strikingly assured, with plenty of heft from the men’s voices and the lament of the Jews had just the right degree of fervour. It was the singing of the more jubilant choral writing that never quite convinced, lacking absolute crispness that would otherwise have brought compelling rigour to the proceedings. It didn’t help that Rattle pushed a little too hard for the closing ‘Alleluias’. Yet there were some bewitching moments, not least the jazzy rhythms (finely sung) and ear-tickling percussion that accompanied the worship of the Gods and the haunting writing on the wall with an arrestingly choral “slain”.
Gerald Finley brought to the score his customary polish with his clear-toned baritone, and his ‘shopping list’ itemising the riches of Babylon was sung with emphatic relish. While the LSO provided deft and dancing support under Rattle’s vigorous baton, the performance never quite gripped as much as the music itself.
David Truslove
Gerald Finley (baritone), Sir Simon Rattle (conductor), Orfeó Català, Orfeó Català Youth Choir, London Symphony Chorus, London Symphony Orchestra
Royal Albert Hall, London; 20th August 2019.