Planet Hugill - A world of classical music

Remarkable variety - interview with Stephen Gadd

noreply@blogger.com (Robert Hugill) — Tue, 18 Jun 2013 00:20:46 PDT

The baritone Stephen Gadd is currently appearing at Opera Holland Park in Cavalleria Rusticana and I Pagliacci before going on to sing Mr Redburn in Glyndebourne's revival of Billy Budd later this summer. Gadd has become something of a welcome presence at summer opera festivals in the UK, turning in a remarkable series of performances including last year's Sharpless in Madama Butterfly at Grange Park (opposite his wife Claire Rutter in the title role) and Robert Storch in Intermezzo at Buxton. I caught up with Stephen just before one of his performances at Opera Holland Park recently to talk about his career.

Remarkably, he admitted that he has no grand plan regarding his career and seems to simply view himself as a jobbing singer, fitting in performances alongside other activities and family life. He talks about the fact that for him, performing only comes alive when he is finally on stage, when he can begin to create a character. He is charmingly depreciating when talking about himself and his work, saying that he has never had the luxury of plan and has always taken what comes.

'Cav and Pag' is Gadd's sixth appearance at Opera Holland Park, and he is complimentary about the way the company is going from strength to strength both in terms of the performances and the way they are developing facilities at the temporary theatre. His double performance this year came about by tragic accident as the last Robert Poulton was due to perform. Gadd was down to sing Tonio in I Pagliacci at Finnish National Opera and managed to fit Opera Holland Park in by commuting between Finland and London as the end of the Finnish performances overlapped with the London rehearsals. He admits that this was somewhat taxing, keep the two performances separate and found he was somewhat inhibited at developing his character in London until the Finnish ones had finished. It was in this context that he said that he did not really start finding a character until the production moved to the stage proper. Adding that he felt lucky that Stephen Barlow, the director of 'Cav and Pag' at Opera Holland Park, was the sort of director who let you find a character yourself.

In a few weeks, Gadd will be starting rehearsal for Billy Budd at Glyndebourne and though he has done other Britten operas (including Peter Grimes and Curlew River) he has neither seen nor heard Billy Budd before. When talking about learning a role, in the context of this forthcoming Mr Redburn in Billy Budd at Glyndebourne, Gadd comments that having a long time to prepare does not necessarily mean that he is prepared earlier. As a boy Gadd was a chorister at Coventry Cathedral which meant that he learned to sight-read easily, so that initial preparation is relatively straightforward. He can pick up a role easily and perform it from the score, but memorisation is difficult. His remarkable run of roles recently has meant that he has always had something to learn, there was always something new on the horizon. But when he performs Balstrode at in Peter Grimes Grange Park Opera next year this, at least, will mean a return to a familiar role. Whereas this year, all his roles were new.

Stephen Gadd studied studied Engineering while a choral scholar at St. John's College, Cambridge, before studying singing with Patrick McGuigan in Manchester at the Royal Northern College of Music. When he left college he starting singing small bass roles such as Colline (in La Boheme) and Angelotti (in Tosca) but he says that this was never really his voice and it was plainly not what he should be doing. He sang the Count in Le Nozze di Figaro at Garsington and at Scottish Opera and realised that this was what he wanted to do. But he had to go abroad to be able to carry on. An audition in Paris led to work there and to further work in France including singing bel canto in Nantes, Queen of Spades and Curlew River in Rouen. This meant being away from home a lot (he met his wife, Claire Rutter, during the Scottish Opera Le Nozze di Figaro) but it was good experience in decent roles.

When asked why he thought he had to go abroad, Gadd comments that there seemed to be neither the volume of work nor the variety of roles in the UK. And variety seems to be something which Gadd enjoys. But he also points out that there are quite a limited number of casting directors in the UK, so that if you get cast in a certain way it can be difficult to shift, and he feels that this happens to the majority of singers at some point in their career.

He also felt that in France, classical music was treated as a far more ordinary occurrence, commenting that you seemed to see more people listening to classical music on mp3 players and such like. He went on to wonder whether the superior quality of British TV meant that in the UK live performance was less highly valued than it is in France.

Besides Mr Redburn, Gadd will also be performing Father in Hansel and Gretel for Glyndebourne on Tour this autumn. Next summer he returns to Grange Park Opera, not only in the new production of Peter Grimes but also as Yeletsky in the revival of Antony McDonald's Queen of Spades.

Stephen Gadd and Janis Kelly in Richard Strauss's Intermezzo
Buxton Festival Opera 2012

Last year, Gadd's stand out performance was as Robert Storch, Richard Strauss's alter-ego in Intermezzo opposite Janis Kelly as his wife Christine. The opera was sung in English and here Gadd returns to the issue of learning a role (echoing Janis Kelly in my interview with her last year). In this most conversational of operas, the English does not quite fit the underlay of the German, making it it trickier to learn. Gadd also comments that the presence of surtitles in English meant that the singers felt extra pressure to ensure the words corresponded to what was projected.

But there is clearly plenty in Gadd's life apart from family and singing, and he is currently preparing to do a PhD in history. Gadd studied engineering at University but even then had a great interest in history. Subsequently a land archaeology project, which was basically a hobby, led to paid work and he found that he wanted to pursue the interest further. It also fits in with his performing as he had lots of time on his hands in Finland, which he used for research and writing essays, whilst he combines his London performances with visits to the National Archives at Kew for research.

When asked about his ideal role, he cannot come up with one. He goes on, however, to explain that at college he wasn't sure that he wanted to be a singer because it meant being away from home a lot. He likes being on stage, but he also likes being at home and if he could choose, it would be to work in the UK. He finds one or two foreign jobs per year are enough and thinks himself lucky that he is able to work in the UK at the summer opera festivals.

He has nothing but admiration for young singers starting out nowadays as he feels that there is a lot less work around. In the period after Gadd left college, concert work was a staple whereas nowadays this seems to be less and the fees from many choral societies have not kept pace with inflation. Also young singers need to be close to London for work, which means that they need a full time job to tide them over and this doesn't work when combined with freelance singing.

But after explaining all the drawbacks, even today, Gadd laughs and admits that he would still be a singer. At university he was sponsored by British Rail and he realised that he did not want to work nine to five all his live. For Gadd it is the variety that counts, the people, the places and the roles.

Stephen Gadd is appearing in Billy Budd at Glyndebourne which opens 10 August 2013, he is also appearing in Opera Holland Park's 'Cav and Pag' which continues in repertory to 28 June 2013. He will be appearing in Glyndebourne On Tour's Hansel and Gretel which runs from 6 October to 3 December at various venues. Stephen Gadd and Claire Rutter will also be appearing in concert at the Buxton Festival on Sunday 7 July 2013.

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Summer temptations - 2014 and onwards with Grange Park Opera

noreply@blogger.com (Robert Hugill) — Mon, 17 Jun 2013 23:50:14 PDT

Currently in the midst of their 2013 summer season, Grange Park Opera, has announced its plans for 2014 and 2015, with some very tempting offerings. As ever the casting offers some strong singers, many returning to Grange Park. Repertoire includes a mix of the well known and the unusual, with Massenet's Don Quichotte getting a rare outing, a production of Saint-Saens Samson et Dalila in the offing as well as Bryn Terfel in a musical.

Claire Rutter, who is currently a fabulous Elvira in this summer's I Puritani, returns next year for Verdi's La Traviata. Rutter has shown herself able to span the range from bel canto through Verdi and Puccini to Wagner, so that it will be fascinating to hear her as Violetta. Alfredo will be played by Marco Panuccio and Giorgio Germont by Damiano Salerno. Panuccio appeared opposite Rutter last year in Grange Park's Madama Butterfly and also impressed as the Duke in the company's Rigoletto alongside Salerno in the title role. Salerno is also currently appearing with Rutter in I Puritani.

Another returnee next year is tenor Carl Tanner who received strong reviews for his Hermann in Queen of Spades at Grange Park last year. He will be repeating his Hermann, but also performing the title role in Grange Park Opera's first Peter Grimes. Also appearing in Peter Grimes will be Georgia Jarman as Ellen Orford, Stephen Gadd as Balstrode with Grange Park Opera regulars Clive Bayley as Bob Boles and Anne Marie Owens as Auntie. American soprano Georgia Jarman sang the four heroines in Offenbach's Tales of Hoffmann at ENO last year, so it will be fascinating to hear her in very different repertoire.

Massenet's last masterpiece Don Quichotte was written for the great Russian bass Feodor Chaliapin. The work receives a rare stage outing at Grange Park next year with Clive Bayley in the title role, David Stout as Sancho Panza and Sara Fulgoni (currently to be heard as Mere Marie in Poulenc's Carmelites at Grange Park Opera) as Dulcinee. In the revival of Antony McDonald's production of Queen of Spades Carl Tanner will be joined by Giselle Allen, Stephen Gadd and Anne Marie Owens.

Looking further ahead, plans for 2015 include Bryn Terfel singing in the musical Fiddler on the Roof, Saint-Saens' Samson et Dalila and Wagner's The Flying Dutchman.

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Guildhall Wigmore Recital Prize

noreply@blogger.com (Robert Hugill) — Mon, 17 Jun 2013 23:34:16 PDT

Martin Häßler

On Friday 21 June 2013, baritone Martin Häßler will be giving a recital at the Wigmore Hall as the recipient of the annual Guildhall Wigmore Recital Prize. The prize annually awards an exceptionally talented Guildhall School musician with a Wigmore Hall recital. On Friday 21 June Häßler will be accompanied by Marek Ruszczynski in a remarkably wide ranging programme which includes Schubert songs (Des Sängers Habe D832, Der Wanderer an den Mond D870, Der Wanderer D493, Bei dir allein D866), Wolf's Mörike Lieder, Mussorgsky's Songs and Dances of Death and Finzi's Let us Garlands bring.

The prize involved Häßler singing in front of a jury which included the Wigmore Hall's director, John Gilhooly, the Guildhall School’s Director of Music, Jonathan Vaughan, and IMG’s Senior Vice President and Co-Director Nicholas Mathias. Martin Häßler is the second prize winner at Thomas Quasthoff's Das Lied, he currently studies at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama. Further information about his recital from the Wigmore Hall website.

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Vermeer and music - sight and sound

noreply@blogger.com (Robert Hugill) — Mon, 17 Jun 2013 01:05:29 PDT

Music seems to be important in Vermeer's paintings and the National Gallery's forthcoming exhibition Vermeer and Music: The Art of Love and Leisure examines this. But they have taken things a little further than just showing us pictures of people playing music, accompanied by learned discussions. They have teamed up with the Academy of Ancient Music and AAM musicians will give performances every hour, on the hour, three days a week during the exhibition, which runs 26 June to 8 September.

There will be three major works by Vermeer on display, each of which portrays a female musician, the National Gallery's A Young Woman standing at a Virginal and A Young Woman seated at a Virginal will be joined by Vermeer’s The Guitar Player, which is on loan from Kenwood House. Vermeer’s The Music Lesson will also be on show, on loan from Her Majesty the Queen.

The exhibition displays 17th-century virginals (a type of harpsichord), guitars and lutes alongside the paintings to offer unique insights into the painters’ choice of instruments, and the difference between the real instruments and the way in which the painters chose to represent them.

The musical performances last 20 minutes and there are planned to be six per day. As a taster there is a Vermeer audio slide show on YouTube.

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Ariadne auf Naxos at Glyndebourne

noreply@blogger.com (Robert Hugill) — Mon, 17 Jun 2013 00:43:54 PDT

Kate Lindsey (Composer) in Ariadne auf Naxos
by Richard Strauss at Glyndebourne. Photograph: Tristram Kenton

Katharina Thoma's new production of Richard Strauss's Ariadne auf Naxos at Glyndebourne was the first new production of the opera there for a long time and, as such, highly anticipated. Thoma is a young German director making both her UK debut and her debut directing Richard Strauss. She, her set designer Julia Muer and costume designer Irina Bartels set the prologue in an English country house during World War 2, with a nod to Glyndebourne's own history. (Seen Sunday 18 June) The prologue concluded with a bomb dropping on the house. The opera proper in the second half was ditched, instead we were back in the same country house which was now a hospital. Amongst the wounded soldiers there was also the composer and Ariadne. The naiad, dryad and echo were nurses, Zerbinetta and her troupe returned as ENSA entertainers and Bacchus was a returning, wounded airman. There were strong performances from the cast with Soile Isokoski as Ariadne, Kate Lindsey as the composer, Ulyana Aleksyuk as Zerbinetta, Sergey Skorokhodov as Bacchus, Thomas Allen as the music master, Wolfgang Ablinger-Sperrhacke as the dancing master and Dmitri Vargin as Harlequin with the London Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by Vladimir Jurowski.

Julia Muer's set for the prologue was attractively realistic and Irina Bartels 1940's costumes were very stylish, though the wartime setting did not seem to add anything to the opera. Thomas Allen was a tower of strength as the music master and his impressively detailed and rather moving performance was one of the things which held the drama together. The other lynchpin in this half was Kate Lindsey's composer. Young, believably boyish and finely sung, Lindsey was the intense key component; highly strung bordering on the neurotic, but with a beautifully bright toned, flexible voice, Lindsey was clearly at home in one of Strauss's great mezzo-soprano roles. Her big solo moment was notable for the intensity and suppleness of Lindsey's voice, and in the scene with Aleksyuk's Zerbinetta, the two developed a strong rapport.

Aleksyuk displayed great charm as Zerbinetta, performing with great poise despite a rather revealing costume. Thoma, in common with many modern directors, seemed to want to reduce Zerbinetta to a purely sexual being though in fact there is more to the character than that. Aleksyuk was nicely supported by her troupe, Dmitri Vargin, James Kryshak, Torben Jurgens and Andrew Stenson, with the addition of Gary Matthewman the young pianist, who acted as the group's accompanist and both here and in the opera proper played part of the orchestral piano part.

Both Isokoski and Skorokhodov did their best with their small comic cameos in this part. Ablinger-Sperrhacke made a delightfully camp dancing master, with Michael Wallace as the wigmaker William Relton clearly relished his role as the major-domo, with Frederick Long as the Lackey and Stuart Jackson as the Officer.

The prologue ended with a bomb dropping on the house and, as the composer had his final pained outburst, the set spectacularly burst into flames, perhaps the most spectacular moment in the whole staging.

So far, so good; though the setting was not particularly illuminating Thoma's personen-regie ensured that the performance was stimulating and satisfying. There was a rather jarring element however, the rear of the stage contained the set of the opera, simply a small desert island with a palm tree and this palm tree drooped suggestively at key moments introducing the sort of pier-end humour which is alien to Strauss and Hofmannsthal.

Things took a rather more worrying turn in the second part, the opera proper. Leave aside the puzzling fact that Ariadne was in bed in an otherwise all male ward (something that would surely have never have happened in the 1940's), and the fact that at the end there was no mythic transformation. Forget also that by turning Zerbinetta and her troupe into ENSA entertainment you removed some of the delicate counterpoint between the two worlds. If we concentrate on the basics, Strauss and Hofmannsthal intended the opera to be about love, with the two women, Ariadne and Zerbinetta, having different and complementary views, but the entire staging seemed to turn on Thoma's view that both Ariadne and Zerbinetta's view of love and sexual relations was pathological.

Ariadne is in hospital because of her fragile mental state and falls in love with another inmate. Zerbinetta articulates the healthy view that you need to stay true to one man at a time, treat him like a god, but there's always another one waiting. But Thoma has the nurses inject Zerbinetta and wrap her in a strait-jacket at the end of Grossmachtige Prinzessin. (In an interview in The Guardian, Thoma said that 'She is not well, not at all. She is obsessed by sex, by men. And during the war, when men and women came together and made love, it all happened very quickly, because they did not know if they would be alive tomorrow. It was a very explosive time – they were dancing on a volcano.') The following harlequinade is played as a highly sexual charade, with the troupe now dressed as nurses (the ward is virtually empty) for their own entertainment. There was a great deal of over-sexualised behaviour, with Zerbinetta's top notes equated with sexual stimulation (another example of pier end humour). Frankly, the whole thing left a bad taste in my mouth.

The problem was that the singing was all so fine and the performances so well attuned to the staging. Isokoski made a very fine Ariadne, though the production meant that she was even more self-absorbed than ever. In the original, the stage shifts between Ariadne and Zerbinetta's realities, but here there was no such shift, just the hospital with Isokoksi marooned on her own and we never really got to see her reality, it was made clear from the outset that she was ill. But Isokoski turned in some very, very fine Strauss singing indeed. Ana Maria Labin, Adriana di Pola and Gabriela Istoc as Naiad, Dryad and Echo were similarly finely tuned to Strauss's writing and produced some finely balance singing.

Aleksyuk was simply brilliant as Zerbinetta, coping with the elaborate coloratura and using it for the director's purpose. She had a great troupe around her, with Dmitri Vargin as a very sympathetic Harlequin, James Kryshak as Scaramuccio, Torben Jurgens as Truffaldino and Andrew Stenson as Brighella.

Thoma has the composer present for much of the second part, he is also an inmate of the hospital clearly shell shocked and obsessed by his score of Ariadne. The scene opened with Lindsey looking intently at the score almost as if the composer was imagining the sounds of the prelude in his head. Lindsey was intensely believable in this act, and having the composer present was a fascinating linking device. But I'm not sure whether it was anything other than a device.

Sergey Skorokhodov was a bit stiff as Bacchus, but then the role is rather impossible and he was meant to be a damage war ace. Whilst his voice was not ideally relaxed, it did have the advantage of being consistent in the entire range. And at the end, he and Isokoski managed a musical transfiguration which was missing in the staging.

Vladimir Jurowski conducting a finely grained account of the score, with some lovely playing from members of the London Philharmonic Orchestra.

Ultimately the production seemed to be more about Thoma's attitude and strange humours, than Strauss and Hofmannsthal's opera. There were some very fine performances indeed, and the post-interval audience loved the rather coarse element to the humour. But Thoma and her team did not ultimately convince, and Strauss and Hofmannsthal's opera remained something of a problem child.
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Appear and Inspire - Edington Festival 2014

noreply@blogger.com (Robert Hugill) — Sun, 16 Jun 2013 00:30:02 PDT

The 2014 Edington Festival of Music within the Liturgy runs from 18 August to 25 August this year. The festival offers four services per day at Edington Priory Church in Wiltshire sung by three choirs, an all male schola cantorum, a mixed voice consort and a choir of boys and men, directed by Peter Stevens, Matthew Martin, Jeremy Summerly and Paul Brough with Benjamin Nicholas as the festival director. The theme of the festival is inspired by the female saints, Julian of Norwich, Teresa of Avila, Teresa of Calcutta, St Cecilia and Teresa of Lisieux.

The music includes Durufle's Requiem Mass, three of Victoria's masses (Massa O quam gloriosum, Missa Dum complerentur and Missa Ave maris stella), motets by Lalou, Lobo, Machicourt, Peter Phillips, Lassus, Rebelo, plus music by Hildegard of Bingen, Purcell, Holst, Finzi, Howells and Tippett. Britten is celebrated with his Hymn to St. Cecilia, Te Deum and Jubilate in C.

Teresa of Calcutta's words are set in a piece commissioned from Neil Cox. A piece by Latvian composer Eriks Esenalds also sets Teresa of Calcutta's words. Other contemporary pieces include music by William Matthias, Matthew Martin and Francis Pott. Though its a shame that a way could not be found of including some of Lennox Berkeley's settings of Teresa of Avila (written for solo contralto and strings).

All the music is performed in the context of the liturgy and in the lovely 14th century priory church. Further information from the Edington Festival website.

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More unwrapping at Kings Place

noreply@blogger.com (Robert Hugill) — Sun, 16 Jun 2013 00:00:05 PDT

Kings Place has run a series of year long themes in which a single composer is Unwrapped (we are currently in the middle of 2013's Bach Unwrapped). For 2014 they have decided to go for something different, Chamber Classics Unwrapped, a series of concerts presenting the top 50 chamber works. The works were chosen with the help of an online vote at BBC Music Magazine, but the results include all the works that you might expect. The advantage of the series is that artists have been given carte-blanche in the programming so that Beethoven is paired with John Adams or Bernard Hermann, Elga with Falla and Brahms, Ravel with Birtwistle, with composers like Ligeti, Panufnik, Turina, Berio, Reicha, and Webern also cropping up. The range of artists is impressive, with old faces like the Dante Quartet, Endymion and the Schubert Ensemble, plus resident ensembles like the Brodsky Quartet, the Aurora Orchestra, the London Sinfonietta and the OAE. Individual artists will include James Ehnes, Jack Liebeck and Sarah Connolly.

There are no major surprises in the repertoire. Number 50 is Nielsen's Wind Quintet, opus 43 (played by Nicholas Daniel and the Haffner Wind Ensemble), number 49 is Sibelius's Voces intimae, opus 56 (played by the Fitzwilliam Quartet), whilst number 2 is Mendelsohn's Octet opus 20 and number 1 is Schubert's String Quintet D956 (both played by the Academy of St Martin in the Fields Chamber Ensemble).

Messiaen's Quartet for the End of Time is there as is Schoenberg's Verklarte Nacht (both played by the London Sinfonietta). Elgar's Piano Quintet (played by Benjamin Frith and the Dante Quartet) is the only English work in the top 50 list. Chausson's Concerto in D for violin, piano & string quartet doesn't make it onto the list, but is paired up with Shostakovich's Piano Quintet played by the Carducci Quartet with Charles Owen and Katharine Gowers. Moeran's String Quartet No. 1 makes it as a companion piece to Schumann's Piano Quintet (played by Julius Drake and the Maggini String Quartet). One work which has not made the cut is Samuel Barber's Dover Beach which I think is a great omission.

There are a series of study days on French Chamber Music, Beethoven's Quartets and Schubert's Final Masterworks.

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Christine Collins Young Artists - Madama Butterfly at Opera Holland Park

noreply@blogger.com (Robert Hugill) — Sat, 15 Jun 2013 03:14:17 PDT

Anne Sophie Duprels
(pciture Fritz Curzon)

The Christine Collins Young Artists scheme at Opera Holland Park was introduced last year, and this year 14 young singers performed Puccini's Madama Butterfly on Friday 14 June 2013, in the production by Paul Higgins (which debuted on June 8) joined by Anne Sophie Duprels in the title role from the main cast. The performance was conducted by associate conductor Natalie Murray conducted. A feature of Opera Holland Park's young artists scheme is that the young singers are rehearsed for the full rehearsal period in parallel to the main performers, this year they were directed by associate director Emma Rivlin. The cast included Luis Gomes as Pinkerton, Maria Fiselier as Suzuki, Ben McAteer as Sharpless, Peter Davoren as Goro and Katie Slater as Kate Pinkerton.

Paul Higgins and designer Neil Irish have created a very traditional Butterfly. Irish's fixed set, with its paper thin walls, was placed high on a platform masking the facade of Holland House and reducing the main acting area whilst providing walkways for subsidiary action. One distinctive feature of the production was the use of movement. French-Japanese movement director Namiko Gahier-Ogawa has created stylised oriental-style movement for the Japanese characters and this became the basic expressive vocabulary for Anne Sophie Duprels.

Visually the production was very spare, with virtually no props, achieving much with very little. For act two, there was a single wooden chair (western style, not Japanese) and an American flag. In common with a number of other recent productions, Butterfly was in Western dress for this act, reflecting the character's close identification with Pinkerton and his religion and culture. At the end, though we heard Pinkerton off-stage we never saw him, the opera closed with Butterfly's body and the blindfolded Sorrow. Credit must also go to Richard Howell's evocative lighting.

Act one opened with Pinkerton accompanied by a pair of his ship-mates and Luis Gomes as Pinkerton made it clear that he was more interested in chatting to his comrades and drinking whisky than in what Peter Davoren's Goro had to say. Gomes has a confident stage manner and gave an easy picture of Pinkerton as thoughtless charmer. By contrast, his interaction with Butterfly was a little stiff, presumably by design. You felt that Duprels' Butterfly was as much in charge as Pinkerton, and when it came to the love duet there was the distinct feeling of Gomes drawing back as if Pinkerton was inhibited by what he had taken on.

Duprels off stage entry was rather too present (sounding almost amplified though I am assured it wasn't), but she gave a magical, entrancing performance. A very slight figure whose physique is entirely apt for the young Japanese girl, this was allied to a voice whose dramatic capabilities have been revealed in Duprels recent repertoire. But her voice was in superb shape, caressing the lyrical line, beautifully focussed and flexible, capable of fining right down. This was a performance which combined in ideal terms the lyric with the dramatic in a way which not every singer can achieve. (Butterfly is 16, but the singer also needs the power for the big moments such as Butterfly's final aria).

Visually Duprels seemed to have taken to heart Gahier-Ogawa's repertoire of movement, and created a character who was nervously on the move all the time. The result could have seemed stiff, but was magical. As I have said, she seems to have had a streak of steel underneath which adjusted the balance of the relationship. The duet which closes act one was thrilling, in the way the drama between the two singers developed, passion only causing Gomes's Pinkerton to relax at the very end.

I have heard Luis Gomes a number of times both at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama and with British Youth Opera. He has always impressed, but this performance was the first time I had heard him in core Italian repertoire (previous operas had been by Britten, Ned Rorem and Smetana). He has a lovely, well produced Italianate voice which he combines expressively with a confident stage manner. His vocal production was gloriously easy throughout the whole range, which is quite something for a young tenor in this style of opera.

In act two, his account of Addio, fiorito asil was finely sung, though his voice does not yet quite rise easily over the orchestra. There was a feeling that his voice still has room to grow, and sensibly he did not try to pressure it, this was a finely managed performance as well as vivid one. His interaction with Duprels, OHP's reigning diva for over 10 years, fairly crackled and this did not seem like a one off performance. I do look forward to Gomes future performances with great interest.

The version used was Puccini's latest one, in just two acts. For the first part of act two, it is Butterfly's relationship with Suzuki which comes to the fore. Maria Fiselier has a lovely rich mezzo-soprano voice, evenly produced and her Suzuki was a miracle of discreet poise, always in the background but providing fine support for Duprels. The two women developed a highly believable relationship and I sense that we will encounter Fiselier in some far more showy roles as her voice develops. She is certainly a singer I want to her again. But of course, as act two develops, it is on Butterfly that our attention stays, though Fiselier provided discreet support throughout.

Duprels account of Un bel di vedremo was finely moving and her final aria was heart rending and the ending shattering. Duprels was miraculously convincing as a the young bride, and your eyes never left her when she was on stage.

The consul Sharpless can sometimes come over as a bit of a dry stick, though Stephen Gadd at Grange Park last year showed that the role can be vividly song (see my review). McAteer was a stiff yet sympathetic Sharpless, his performance emphasised the character's youth and inhibition, combined with a finely sung baritone line. Sharpless isn't a showy role, but McAteer impressed with the way he brought sympathy and musicality to the role, making me interested to learn what the singer can do in other roles.

Peter Davoren was a delightful Goro, rather less nasty than in some performances and certainly far less caricatured. Moon faced, with a charming manner, Davoren also brought a nice slyness to the role and certainly gave hints that he is a fine comic actor.

The smaller roles were all finely taken. Katie Slater was dignified as Kate Pinkerton, Marcin Gesla was an impressive Bonze and Dominic Kraemer a notable Yamadori, with Ian Beadle as the Imperial Commissioner, Alistair Sutherland as the Official Registrar, Ruth Trawford as Butterfly's mother, Joanne Roughton-Arnold as the Aunt, Rebecca Hardwick as the Cousin and Danny Standing as Yakuside.

Natalie Murray conducted with great sympathy for the performers, and drew a nicely judged account of the work from the City of London Sinfonia. There were moments when I thought that her performance was a bit stiff, and that we need it to be a bit more relaxed with an easier flow between phrases. Murray had a nice grasp of the large scale paragraphs, but performing Puccini is as much about the ebb and flow of the small rubatos, and Murray did not yet achieve this. That said, she provided a fine accompaniment to the young singers.

This was a hugely enjoyable performance. Director Paul Higgins and associate director Emma Rivlin is to be congratulated as it was notable for the vivid interaction between the characters and the sympathy which all brought to their characters to create a profoundly moving performance. Anne Sophie Duprels is always a fine dramatic performer, but here interacting with the Christine Collins Young Artists we got something special.

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Still going strong - Ida Haendel in London

noreply@blogger.com (Robert Hugill) — Sat, 15 Jun 2013 01:10:27 PDT

The amazing Ida Haendel will be back in London later this month. Now over 80, she was born in Poland in 1928 and trained with Carl Flesch in London and Georges Enescu in Paris. Her recording career dates back to 1940, she made her London debut in 1937 and has appeared at the Proms some 68 times. On Sunday 30 June 2013 she is the guest of honour at a concert at the Wigmore Hall being given by musicians from the Royal College of Music, then on Wednesday 3 July she will be giving a masterclass at the Royal College of Music's Britten Theatre finally on 5 July she and Rob Cowan will be at the Cadogan Hall where she will talk about her career and play some of the pieces associated with her. You can view the complete 54 minute documentary on her (originally published in 2004) on YouTube.

Wishes, Lies and Dreams in Peckham

noreply@blogger.com (Robert Hugill) — Sat, 15 Jun 2013 01:04:26 PDT

Composer Kate Whitley is back with another one of her pop-up events in Peckham. Wishes, Lies and Dreams is a new work by Kate Whitley for children's choir and orchestra. It will be performed by a choir of 160 primary school children (from John Donne, Bellenden, Peckham Park and Kender schools) and John Donne Community Choir conducted by Christopher Stark in Peckham Rye multi-storey car-park on Saturday 6 July at 7.30pm.

This isn't the first time that Kate Whitley has been involved in a project at the Peckham Rye car park. In 2011 she founded The Orchestra Project (TROSP) which brought a symphony orchestra to the disused multi-storey car park in Peckham to perform Stravinsky’s The Rite of Spring to an audience of more than 1,500. Last year the orchestra toured schools in Peckham, playing to more than 1,000 children in one day, and returned to the car park to perform John Adam's gigantic Harmonielehre. The TROSP Orchestra will be joining in the fun on July 6. Entrance is free, but you need to reserve a ticket. Further information from the event's Facebook page and reserve a ticket at the Eventbrite page.

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Britten-Pears Archive Opens today

noreply@blogger.com (Robert Hugill) — Fri, 14 Jun 2013 06:15:31 PDT

The new Britten-Pears Archive, designed by Stanton William (photo Philip Vile)

The £4.7 million Britten-Pears Archive is opened today by Dame Janet Baker, the singer for whom Britten wrote one of his last major works, Phaedra. The archive is the first such purpose-built composer archive in the UK. The Britten archive is the the most comprehensive collection of any composer in the world. It tells the story of Britten’s creative and personal life in extraordinary depth and breadth, including manuscripts for over 700 pieces of music (including the vast majority of Britten's original manuscripts), diaries, 80,000 letters, countless photographs, recordings, films, costumes, set models, art, books and much more.

The new red-brick archive building is designed by Stanton Williams and it is situated in the grounds of the Red House in Aldeburgh where Britten and Pears lived from 1957. The creation of a dedicated archive has allowed space for the re-creation of Britten’s composing studio, where he wrote the War Requiem and A Midsummer Night’s Dream, in situ. The space freed up on the site has also been used to develop exhibition and education facilities. There is a new exhibition exploring Britten’s life and music with and objects and documents from the Britten Pears Foundations’s rich collections. The exhibition will also be interactive including replicas of the original animal headdresses from Noye’s Fludd, which visitors can try on. The exhibition has been designed to appeal to all members of the family.

Further information from the Britten-Pears Foundation's website.
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Singing the Changes

noreply@blogger.com (Robert Hugill) — Fri, 14 Jun 2013 03:31:15 PDT

Thirty year's ago this month, I agreed to stand in as musical director of a fledgling choir, the Pink Singers, the first lesbian and gay choir in London. The choir had been founded a few months earlier, inspired by the recent visit to London by the New York City Gay Mens Chorus. I was with the Pink Singers for five years and, amazingly, thirty years later the choir is still going strong. In January they had a concert to celebrate their birthday (see my article on this blog) and now they have put together an exhibition, Singing the Changes, which looks at the 30 years of their existence in the context of the changes to lesbian and gay life in the last thirty years. The social landscape was very different in 1983 and the exhibition seeks to capture this, and show how it was reflected in the Pink Singers history.

The exhibition is part oral history, with touch screens enabling you to see and hear interviews with current and former members of the choir, including Mark Bunyan (the founder musical director), one other of the founder members of the choir, myself and two further musical directors. (The choir has had just 6 musical directors in its existence and five of them were at the opening of the exhibition last night). The exhibition has been put together entirely by members of the Pink Singers, including recording and editing the video interviews.

But there are also artefacts, from LGBT history and from the choir's history (including a banner we made for Gay Pride in 1987 which I never thought to see again). Many of the current Pink Singers are under 30 and have no experience of what life was like for lesbians and gay men in the 1980's, or what it meant to join a group like the Pink Singers. The exhibition explores this lucidly and informatively, without preaching, and has come up with some fascinating images and facts. There is also an introductory film to go with the exhibition, but at the opening this wasn't playing as instead we got a lovely performance from the current choir.

The exhibition runs from 14 June to 12 July 2013 at Audit House, 58 Victoria Embankment, Blackfriars (Thursdays and Fridays 6pm-9pm, Saturdays and Sundays 10am-6pm), then 15 July to 18 Augusts 2013 at the Guardian, Kings Place, York Way, London (10am-6pm). Admission is free. Further information from the Pink Singers website.
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The Ring summarised in verse

noreply@blogger.com (Robert Hugill) — Fri, 14 Jun 2013 00:24:13 PDT

When I was a student I was introduced to the music of Wagner and one of the ways that I got to know about the Ring was through Anna Russell's The Ring of the Nibelungs (An Analysis) in which she narrated the story in her own inimitable manner, including singing excerpts. The point about this was that it was both funny and apposite, bits of her descriptions stayed with me and in fact some of the points she made managed to be both hilarious and profound. These points occurred to me when reading Richard Morris's delightful little book, The Nibelung Ballad - The Story from Wagner's Ring, which confirmed that introductions to the Ring cycle don't have to be portentously po-faced.

In just 22 short pages, Morris narrates the story of the entire Ring in verse, capturing the essence of the narrative as well as the back story and something of the stage directions. There are also 13 full page illustrations by his daughter Hetty Morris. There are 84 verses, a total of just 365 lines. Morris uses a basic rhymed four-line structure which has a limerick-like rhythm to it, but he varies things by altering the number of lines in a verse and not always rhyming the way he should. The results are both appealing and clear, you get a strong sense of the Ring's narrative as well as enjoying the verse.

As a sample of what I mean, here are the final verses in the whole book:-

The Rhine overflows and on the tide

the girls recover the Ring.

Hagen, who tries to keep them at bay,

is drowned through their entwining.

The flames career towards the sky

and consume Valhalla above.

The earth and the heavens are purified,

revealing through self-sacrifice

the redemptive power of love.

The language is contemporary and deliberately not arcane, the Rhine Maidens are referred to as Rhine Girls! Hetty Morris's illustrations, in black and white, are atmospheric and quite contemporary in style, the seem to owe a lot to graphic novels and work rather well. I did wonder whether there might be traction in expanding the book to form a full graphic novel.

Richard Morris works in music education and is the former chief executive of the Associated Board of the Royal Schools of Music, has also written poetry for the last 15 years and is an associate director of the poetry journal Magma, and has been attending Ring cycles since his visit to Bayreuth in 1965, so seems well placed to write the poem. He and Hetty Morris have come up with a lovely little book, which illuminates and charms.

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JAM - onwards and upwards

noreply@blogger.com (Robert Hugill) — Fri, 14 Jun 2013 02:51:48 PDT

The last year has been something of a rollercoaster for JAM (John Armitage Memorial). The failure to secure a grant for their 2012 season in Scotland last year put the concerts in jeopardy, made a rather significant hole in the organisation's budgets and made it unlikely that the organisation will, in the short term, return to Scotland. But they have bounced back renewed this year with a season of concerts in London and in Wales, along with concerts and education projects in Kent, all aimed at promoting contemporary music as a living, vibrant part of life. I met up with Ed Armitage of JAM to talk about the charity's recent concerts and future plans.

Innovation seems to be one of JAM's keyword's this year. So that their education project, A Sporting Chance, which involves five schools in the Romney Marsh area will take an inventive approach to the problem of transport. Needing to get pupils from the various schools to Hythe for the event, JAM has involved the area's most distinctive transport system, the Romney, Hythe and Dymchurch Railway which will be transporting both children and parents to the event. More than 500 school children will work with Onyx Brass on the concert, which involves a performance of Bob Chilcott's A Sporting Chance. But around 2000 children in total will experience the work, as the introductory sessions involve the whole school, including year one who are able to experience a taster, whetting their appetite for further involvement in future projects.

JAM has just unveiled its latest commission, Paul Mealor's The Farthest Shore which was premiered in St David's as part of the St. David's Festival and which will receive its English premiere on 2 July at St Bride's Church, Fleet Street as part of the City of London Festival. The concert in St. Bride's involves the BBC Singers and St David's Cathedral Choir, both of whom sang in the work's premiere, alongside Onyx Brass with soloists Claire Seaton and Giles Underwood, conducted by Nicholas Cleobury.

There is a childrens' chorus involved too, and here JAM has taken an open approach with half of the children from the St. David's performance coming to London, joined by children from London schools. Then when the work is performed in Hythe, Kent on 6 July, the London children will be joined by children from Hythe.

Mealor's work represents the culmination of his involvement with JAM, as well as a striking new step for the composer. Mealor first submitted music to JAM's annual call for music in 2002/3 and as a result was commissioned to write Now Sleeps the Crimson Petal in 2010, with discussions for the new work following on from this. In the meantime, Mealor's Now Sleeps the Crimson Petal was transformed into the setting Ubi Caritas which was sung at the wedding of the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge.

Armitage is greatly enthusiastic about The Farthest Shore, calling it a classical music folk-tale. For him it represents a significant step for Mealor as a composer, very different to Mealor's smaller scale anthems for which he is best known.

The Farthest Shore is the first work in a programme which also includes Benjamin Britten's Rejoice in the Lamb and James MacMillan's Cantos Sagrados. Armitage has always wanted to programme Cantos Sagrados but this is the first time he has been able to do so. A strong and powerful work, it is perhaps a little daring to finish the concert with it but in St David's Armitage found that the piece generated a very strong and very positive reaction.

In many way's, this typifies Armitage's ethos with JAM. He is concerned to promote contemporary music but he dislikes the sense that some groups talk down to the audience with middle of the road music. Armitage is concerned to support well written and strongly emotive contemporary music and has found that, if you can get the audience into the concert then they will react in the most surprising ways to challenging music.

Their summer season displays a canny mix of the familiar and the challenging. It involves eight concerts in seven venues in London and Kent, along with education projects. In addition to the Paul Mealor work (being performed in London and Hythe), Onyx Brass are giving a concert of their own in Rye, the Mousai Singers are performing in London and Lydd and there is a programme of music for strings, oboe and tenor at St Mary in the Marsh.

Onyx Brass have a long history of involvement with JAM, but this is the first time that they have given a concert in their own right. The programme is eclectic, ranging from Gabrieli through Handel and Bach to Gershwin.

Mousai Singers is a group of 12 young singers, all currently at University having previously gone through the cathedral choir system, conducted by Daniel Cook. They are performing in St Bride's Church, Fleet Street (11 July) and All Saints Church, Lydd (12 July) with a programme that combines Faure's Requiem with music by Kenneth Leighton, William Matthias and Arnold Bax along with Danny Saleeb's Magnificat. Saleeb submitted music to the most recent JAM call for pieces and is just one example of the way JAM takes up composers and supports them.

Daniel Cook, who takes up a post of sub-organist at Westminster Abbey in September 2012, is just one of a group of conductors and organists who have worked with JAM since they were young and who are now taking the JAM brand, with its ethos of supporting contemporary music, to a wider audience.

Armitage admits that the current season, with the concerts in Kent, is about building links with arts organisations like the Rye Festival. His ambition for 2014 is to combine with arts organisations in the area to put on a festival in the lovely churches in the Romney Marsh area.

The final event of this summer's concerts sees JAM working with students from the Guildhall School of Music and Drama. The oboist Michal Rogalski will be giving a concert with tenor Adam Sullivan and the Heron Quartet, made up of students from the Guildhall School of Music in St Mary in the Marsh on 13 July 2013. The concert displays JAM's familiar mix of contemporary with classical, and also rings the changes with the instrumental forces involved in each piece in a very appealing way. So that that concert includes Mozart's Oboe Quartet, Beethoven's String Trio, Britten's Fantasy Quartet, Vaughan Williams Blake Songs for voice and oboe, Holst's Four Songs for voice and strings, and Judith Bingham's The Island of Patmos for solo oboe.

All these concerts reflect a singular concern to attract audiences to listen to contemporary music, mainly by mixing contemporary with more established pieces. The last year has been an eventful one for JAM, but Armitage remains firm in his belief in contemporary music and in its ability to move audiences. He is keen to inculcate strong reactions in his listeners, you feel that he views anything as better than indifferent. Armitage and JAM, which was founded in memory of his father, are evangelical in their exposition of contemporary music and Armitage's enthusiasm is certainly contagious. Find out more about the JAM summer season at their website.
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Your chance to sing Venetian Vespers

noreply@blogger.com (Robert Hugill) — Thu, 13 Jun 2013 05:06:59 PDT

The Academy of St Cecilia is running a one-day workshop, tutored by Robert King, on Venetian poly-choral music on Saturday 13 July at St. George's Metropolitan Cathedral, Westminster Bridge Road, Southwark, SE1 7HY. There will be rehearsals morning and afternoon, concluding with Vespers at 5.00pm accompanied by the Doge's Players led by Jeremy West. The repertoire is highly enticing, Giovanni Gabrieli's Magnificat a 14 and Laudate Pueri a 12 plus Giovanni Rovetta's De Profundis. All the editions being used are Clifford Bartlett and are included in the cost of the day. The cost is £20, with reductions for members of the Early Music Forum or the Academy of St. Cecilia. Your chance to sing under Robert King, founder of the King's Consort. What are you waiting for? Further information from the Academy of St Cecilia website.

Troy Story

noreply@blogger.com (Robert Hugill) — Thu, 13 Jun 2013 00:18:57 PDT

The Orchestra of the Swan in collaboration with Talking Birds and six Birmingham Schools have come up with Troy Story an 'intergalactic opera'. A community opera which sets the story of Odysseus in the year 3000! Music is by Derek Nisbet who is joint artistic director with conductor David Curtis, with Nick Walker as writer. The schools involved are Brays School,St Patrick's and St Edmund's RC Primary School in Birmingham and Welcombe Hills, Thomas Jolyffe and Wilmcote Primary Schools in Stratford-upon-Avon.

The opera will be performed at Birmingham Town Hall on 9 July, see their website for further details. They have a lovely preview of the event on YouTube, and you can see it after the break.

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Brahms music for cello and piano

noreply@blogger.com (Robert Hugill) — Wed, 12 Jun 2013 23:56:08 PDT

Brahms' first Cello Sonata dates from the early 1860's and reflects the young composer's lyrical passion. This new disc on Somm from cellist James Barralet and pianist Simon Callaghan pairs the work with Barralet's own transcriptions of Brahms' 21 Hungarian Dances. The disc is promised as volume one in a series of Brahms' cello works.

Brahms moved to Vienna in 1863 and struck up a friendship with amateur cellist Joseph Gansbacher and the two would play chamber music together in Brahms' flat. Brahms dedicated his Cello Sonata in E minor to Gansbacher. The work may have been inspired by the fact that Edmund Lalo had just published a cello sonata, but earlier works in the genre by Chopin, Mendelssohn and Beethoven would have been known to the two. Also, the current final movement pays tribute both in its form (a fugue) and its fugue subject to the work of Bach, reflecting Brahms' interest in baroque music.

The first two movements of the sonata date from 1862, when Brahms also wrote an Adagio, a movement he subsequently withdrew adding instead the current finale, Allegro, in 1865. Thus leaving the work without a real slow movement and causing a minor puzzle about where the Adagio ended up, with commentators arguing for its re-use in another work (possibly the Cello Sonata in F major from 1886, but Robert Matthew Walker in his notes speculates that Brahms may have recycled it in the Trio, Opus 40 for Violin, Horn and Piano).

The first movement, Allegro non troppo, is the longest. Here Barralet display the burnished singing tone which he uses throughout the disc. The piano tone is admirably clear, and the two performers bring a nice clarity to the work. This is very much an impulsive young men's performance without any portentousness or over-cooked romantic tone.

Barralet's rich tones contrast nicely with the piano. There is a wonderful impulsion to the passionate moments with nice flexible rubato using lots of small adjustments rather than big gestures. Though the two give a poetic account of the music, there are moments when I wished that they would get go a bit more.

The sonata is marked as being for piano and violoncello, reflecting the importance of the piano part to Brahms. Barralet and Callaghan have a well balanced partnership with good give and take between them.

The second movement, Allegretto quasi menuetto, goes with a nice elegant bounce, with an element of humour and wit which contrasts with the enticing seriousness of the trio section. The fugal final movement, Allegro, is vigorous and delightfully articulated rising to moments of great intensity and power.

The sonata makes considerable demands on both players, demands which they cope with in a delightful insouciance.

The remainder of the disc, some 54 minutes, is devoted to Brahms 21 Hungarian Dances. These were originally written for piano duet, for performance at home, and published between 1869 and 1880. Brahms orchestrated some (and at his behest, Dvorak also orchestrated some for Brahms' publisher), and the composer also arranged some of them for piano solo. Here Barralet has arranged them all for cello and piano in transcriptions which sound convincingly faithful to the originals.

The results have great charm and plenty of gypsy-themed schwung, but also give Barralet a chance to display his soulful side,with some gloriously played melodies. Barralet is well supported by Callaghan's deft piano work and the two make some delightful combinations in the music, combining gypsy passion with delicacy and passion. But at nearly an hour, the Hungarian Dances are perhaps something to dip into rather than to listen to at one sitting. For me, after listen to half a dozen or so their charms rather palled.

The disc comes with an excellent background article by Robert Matthew-Walker, and if you read the small print you notice that James Barralet also edited the disc.

There is some lovely playing on this disc, with the two young players bringing a nice freshness to this music. Most people will want the cello sonata in their library played by the great cellist of their choice, but I think that there is room for this appealing disc as well.

Vivat Brahms!
Johannes Brahms (1833 - 1897) - Sonata for cello and piano no. 1 in E minor, op 18 [24.50]
Johannes Brahms (1833 - 1897) - Hungarian Dances, arr. Barralet [54.34]
James Barralet (cello)
Simon Callaghan (piano)

Recorded at Champs Hill, Pulborough, West Sussex, 25 September 2012 (Sonata), the Old Granary Studio, Suffolk, 11 January 2013 (Hungarian Dances)

SOMM SOMMCD0126 1CD [79.37]

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Rosenblatt on TV

noreply@blogger.com (Robert Hugill) — Wed, 12 Jun 2013 23:46:40 PDT

Four of the 2012/13 Rosenblatt Recitals at the Wigmore Hall were recorded for video for Sky Arts. Dates have now been announced for the transmission of the recitals. So if you missed them live and have access to the Sky Arts channel then American tenor Lawrence Brownlee's recital (see my review) appears on Monday 15th July, 8pm, followed each consecutive Monday by Spanish tenor Joel Prieto (see my review), on 22 July, Greek soprano Dimitra Theodossiou (see my review) on 29 July and Sicilian tenor Antonino Siragusa (see my review) on 5 August. The recitals will be introduced by Suzy Klein, who will also be interviewing the artists. The Rosenblatt Recitals 2013/14 season opens on September 16 at Wigmore Hall with a recital by tenor Celso Abelo. Further information from the Rosenblatt Recitals website.

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Poulenc's Carmelites at Grange Park Opera.

noreply@blogger.com (Robert Hugill) — Sat, 15 Jun 2013 03:31:13 PDT

Francis Poulenc the first Blanche in Carmelites

Francis Poulenc's Carmelites is a remarkable opera. A long work from a composer renowned for his smaller scale pieces, an intensely serious piece from a man whose previous opera was a surrealist farce, and a tonal work written at a time when atonality was becoming the dominant force in contemporary music. It is not an opera that you expect to encounter at country house opera, but then Grange Park Opera is never typical with its repertoire choices. We attended the opening night of John Doyle's production, on 12 June 2013, and I have to declare a little bit of interest in the event as we made a small contribution to the support of the production.

John Doyle and designer Liz Ashcroft's production highlighted the meditative calm of the cloister, the ritual of a religious life and the sheer strength which appertains to it. Ashcroft's set consisted of a single trapezoidal room with a single slot for an entrance. Colours were all muted creams and taupes, including the nuns' habits. Paul Keogan's lighting captured the amazing beauty of the set, and brought out a myriad of colours. It was here that the entire opera took place, in this enclosed world.

The props consisted of little more than three chairs, two sheets, a plank, four candlesticks and a crucifix, and everything was made from these, including the Old Prioress's bed and the altar. The nuns themselves set and re-set the stage, in a calm and almost ritual way, emphasising the contemplative continuity of the cloister. The staging was similarly direct and almost Brechtian, with the Anne-Marie Owens' Old Prioress just walking off at the end of her death scene and many cast members sitting waiting at the side of the room for their entrance.

The directness of the staging and the calm of the cloister meant that any divergence from routine, such as the eruption of the revolutionaries or the death of the Old Prioress, had an almost supercharged effect. The end result was focussed and rather mesmerising. Perhaps because the smallness of the Grange Park stage meant there was no pressure on Doyle to fill the staging with distracting detail, the production had a powerful feeling of the cloister. It felt as if we were overlooking a real ritual rather than a director filling out the action with fussy bits and pieces. This applied from the very beginning, when the scene between the Marquis de la Force (Matthew Stiff) and the Chevalier de la Force (Nicky Spence) was very spare and very formal.

Hye-Youn Lee made a very intense Blanche. This is one of those roles (the Cunning Little Vixen is another) which require a flexible lyric voice but one possessed of a degree of power as well to rise over the rich orchestration. Lee had an element of steel in her voice which meant she could ride the orchestra, but also brought a flexibility and a touching intensity to the part. She might have been intense, but she was not neurotic and there was also a profound dignity to her.

Soraya Mafi was the perfect foil as Soeur Constance, with a bright toned voice and a lovely, charming manner. In complete contrast, Sara Fulgoni's Mere Marie was tall and intense with a serious dignity and profound depth of feeling. Despite her dignity, Fulgoni always the idea that a great deal more was going on underneath. With her richly toned and highly expressive voice, Fulgoni was vivid across the whole range of Mere Marie's part.

Anne-Marie Owens as the Old Prioress had, of course, the most dramatic scene in the opera with her appalling death. Owens was vivid in the Old Prioress's death throes as she lost her faith, making it all the more striking because of the contrast with Owens' severe and dignified demeanour earlier in the opera.

Fiona Murphy was Madame Lidoine, the new Prioress, singing with great vividness and a striking vibrancy of tone. I did feel, however, that visually she did rather blend into the other nuns and that she should have been given some small differentiating mark in her dress. The other small roles were strongly taken with Kathleen Wilkinson as Mere Jeanne and Olivia Ray as Soeur Mathilde.

Nicky Spence showed a nice lyric freedom in his performance, the flexibility which he brought to the role belied its high tessitura. Not for the first time with this opera, I wished that Poulenc had found more for the Chevalier de la Force to do. Matthew Stiff was suitably stiff and forbidding as his father. Nigel Robson made a very strong impression as the chaplain of the convent. Joe Morgan was the 1st Commissary, Johnny Herford an officer, Christopher Cull was the jailer and Monsieur Javelinot, Bragi Jónsson was Thierry and the 2nd Commissary.

One striking aspect of the production was that the above named soloists were the only revolutionaries that we saw. We heard the crowd, but never saw them, the action (apart from the opening scene) took place entirely in the convent or the nuns' cell. And for the amazing final scene, where each walks to their death, they walked into the light streaming through slot which was the only entrance.

Of course the opera isn't really about individual solo roles, it is about the interaction between the characters. Here the cast were admirable in the way that they built the drama from the small motifs of Poulenc's recitatives. Another significant contributory factor was the orchestra. Poulenc used it to punctuate and comment on the action, to bring a richness to the plainness of the vocal lines. And here conductor Stephen Barlow brought out the best in the English Chamber Orchestra in the pit. Barlow had a good grasp of the piece's overall arching structure, so that we never felt we were getting bogged down in detail. But there was still a lot of detail to enjoy, with some fine solo orchestral moments and a rich depth to the orchestration.

Poulenc's opera has a spiritual and theological point to it. Such things are not always comfortable on the modern stage and one of the strengths of Doyle's production was that it sought to illuminate this and not to confuse the issue with side excessive drama or colourful local details.

This was real grown-up opera for grown-ups, with Doyle's thoughtful and beautiful production taking Carmelites seriously, not attempting to score points but to bring out the innate beauty of the piece. The ensemble of strong soloists, aided by Barlow and the English Chamber Orchestra in strong form, created a richly expressive and profoundly moving performance.

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These New Puritans - Field of Reeds

noreply@blogger.com (Robert Hugill) — Tue, 11 Jun 2013 23:58:43 PDT

When I was sent this disc, I have to confess that my heart rather sank when I read of it being classically influenced. I have listened to too much music which exists in that awkward zone between classical, rock and pop but only succeeds in being bland. Thankfully, when I popped Field of Reeds into the player, I was immediately greeted with the distinctive tones of an indie rock band. Music which had a clear integrity and toughness about it, but also some interesting hints of other influences.

These New Puritans was formed by twins Jack and George Barnett and their friend Thomas Hein. Their debut disc Beat Pyramid came out in 2008, with their second Hidden following. During 2010 and 2011 they recreated Hidden in a series of shows which involved the Britten Sinfonia and a childrens choir, and represented their first collaboration with conductor Andre de Ridder. For Hidden Jack Barnett had taught himself to arrange and notate the brass, woodwind and percussion parts.

This interest has developed on this disc, and Barnett cites Stravinsky and Bartok as influences, but if you listen to the disc the sound is all These New Puritans own. The disc features a remarkable array of talent, in addition to the Barnett twins and Hein, they are joined by singers Elisa Rodriges and Adrian Peacock, the Synergy Vocal Ensemble, and an instrumental ensemble conducted by Andrew de Ridder. Other instruments include the magnetic resonator piano invented by Andrew McPherson

The initial recording sessions took place at Studio P4 Funkhaus Nalepastrasse in Berlin, with further sessions in London and the West Country. In another nod to classical music, the recorded sounds are generally in a raw, as Barnett admires the way recordings in classical music are not heavily edited.

All this makes for a fascinating mix. You can sit and pick out influences, but the overall feel as a distinctive and personal voice. The classical influence comes not from the sound world so much as through the depth of the orchestration and the very clear personal vision.

There are 9 tracks on the disc This Guy’s In Love With You, Fragment Two, The Light In Your Name, V (Island Song), Spiral, Organ Eternal, Nothing Else, Dream, and Field of Reeds. The disc was released as 12' vinyl, CD and digital download by Infectious Music on 10 June 2013. Further information from These New Puritans website.

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Around Ariadne

noreply@blogger.com (Robert Hugill) — Tue, 11 Jun 2013 00:43:45 PDT

Die schlafende Ariadne auf Naxos (The Sleeping Ariadne in Naxos),
by John Vanderlyn.

Richard Strauss and Hugo von Hofmannsthal's Ariadne auf Naxos persistently presents directors with a variety of challenges when it comes to staging. The work originated in a re-working of Moliere's play Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme, which Hofmannsthal translated into German with Strauss providing incidental music plus the musical entertainment at the end. This entertainment consisted of the combination of the opera with a commedia dell'arte troupe. This original version of Ariadne auf Naxos proved to be too long and to have too intransigent a combination of spoken play and opera. Strauss and von Hofmannsthal re-worked the play and Strauss provided it with a simpler entertainment much closer to Moliere's original. The operatic combination of Ariadne and Zerbinetta's commedia dell'arte troupe they felt was worth saving. So a prologue was added and the opera that we know today created.

The piece came about as a sort of thank-you present. The director Max Reinhardt (who worked at the Deutsches Theater in Berlin) had come to Strauss and Hofmannsthal's rescue when rehearsals for the premiere of Der Rosenkavalier had gone badly in Dresden. Reinhardt had worked anonymously so they cooked up the idea of writing him a short operatic work to be performed as an intermezzo during a Moliere play which Hofmannsthal would adapt. The whole to be performed at Reinhardt's Berlin theatre. After batting about ideas, Le Bourgeois genthilhomme was fixed on, with the opera not as an intermezzo but to replace the grand ballet which was in the original.

Hofmannsthal included the character of Zerbinetta, in fact lifted from Moliere's Les Fourberies de Scapin, as an afterthought, but Strauss rather fixed on her and quite early on she was allocated her coloratura showpiece. The whole opera grew, with the orchestra expanding from 22 to 37 and Strauss rejecting out of hand the idea that the players might be on stage.

The whole thing got out of hand, the pit at the Berliner Theater wasn't big enough to fit the players needed, other theatres didn't want the work owing to the odd combination of spoken theatre and opera. The premiere ended up being in Stuttgart in January 1912, but the actors on the first night were from Max Reinhardt's troupe though the local one was to take over afterwards, which hardly made for calm and unruffled back-stage atmospheres. Performances followed in Munich, Dresden, Vienna and London; in London the play was translated by Somerset Maugham, Beecham conducted. But all in all, the result was something of a failure, a hybrid which satisfied neither opera-goers nor play-goers and which required significant performers and made for a rather long evening. This first version remains rather rare and is very much festival fare.

For the play, Hofmannsthal had written a short linking scene to smooth things over into the opera. He expanded this into a fully sung prologue, Strauss wasn't thrilled at first but in 1916 he set to and set it. He also made Zerbinetta's big coloratura easier and shorter. The ending too needed work as in the original there is spoken dialogue intermingling with the sung sections.

One challenge for directors is that Strauss's music for the closing pages of the opera, transcends the putative setting. When Bacchus appears we are no-longer in the house of the 'richest man in Vienna' hearing a private performance, but in the opera house listening to Richard Strauss's opera. The result is glorious, but problematical. How do you move from the one to the other in what, essentially, is a very static opera?

The other problem is that of linking the two parts, prologue and opera, how to link them and whether to at all

I was perhaps lucky to have first seen the work in the 1970's at Scottish Opera with a cast which included Helga Dernesch, Alberto Remedios and Janet Baker. It was set in the period of the opera's composition (rather de-rigeur with Strauss at the time). The production was traditional, but imaginative with the opera clearly taking place on the sets that we'd seen back-stage in the prologue. The director also took the rather traditional solution to the ending, simply having the sets disappear using a transformation scene which paralleled the music.

The novelty of Graham Vick's production for English National Opera (in the 1990's) was that it was set in the original period, 17th century France. And starred Donald Sinden as the major domo; he was quite, quite wonderful. Again the production was traditional in the sense that prologue and opera were linked by dramatic logic and setting. For the ending there was a disappearing of the setting and a bringing forward of the two principals (magical when it worked, embarrassing when the details became clunky in revivals). This opera became the house's 'big girls' opera for a long period; we saw Jane Eaglen and Christine Brewer in it.

This production highlights one problem with the ending, if directors get too clever with their transformation, then technical problems can occur during revivals. But you have to put up with that, that's theatre. What this solution gives you is that little bit of theatrical magic which combines with the music.

The most magical production was Covent Garden's new production (directed by Jean-Louis Martinoty) in the 1985 which, on its first outing, starred Jessye Norman as Ariadne, Ann Murray as the composer and James King as Bacchus. Here, for the ending the walls and ceiling gradually dissolved into a gorgeous Klimt-like back-drop. Given that the production included an on-stage 'band' and audience, this required them to gradually drift away too; not quite such a neat idea, but perhaps the only one in the circumstance.

More recent productions have seen the impact of regie-theater on the opera. Christoph Loy's at times spectacular 2002 production for Covent Garden (the one with the infamous black dress), dropped visual the link between the two parts leaving us to make the connections ourselves. Loy set the opera in a woman's bedroom and the biggest transformation of the evening happened not at the end of the opera, but at the beginning of the prologue.

Now Katherine Thoma's new production at Glyndebourne has set the piece in the old Glyndebourne opera house and the second half is....

Well, I'll not prejudge things, we're going to see it in a week or so's time and I'll report back.

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ETO Autumn Season

noreply@blogger.com (Robert Hugill) — Tue, 11 Jun 2013 23:37:47 PDT

Jake Arditti & Paula Sides in
ETO's 2011 Flavio
®Richard Hubert Smith

English Touring Opera's Autumn 2013 season starts on 28 September at the Britten Theatre in the Royal College of Music, where ETO are performing James Conway's production of Monteverdi's Coronation of Poppea (originally seen at the Royal College of Music). The season includes three baroque operas, all of them written for Venice, with Monteverdi's late masterpiece being complemented by Cavalli's Jason and Handel's Agrippina. Cavalli was a younger contemporary of Monteverdi's and Jason was one of the most popular operas in the 17th century. All three operas use the Venetian style of mixing comic and serious characters. Agrippina uses the same characters as Monteverdi's opera, and is regarded as Handel's first major opera, and shows the composer in lively and comic mode.

ETO are working with the Old Street Band who will be accompanying all the operas. All three operas are designed by Samal Blak, with Jason being directed by Ted Huffman and James Conway directing Agrippina. All three operas are being sung in English.

Helen Sherman and Paula Sides (both of whom impressed in ETO's autumn tour) play Nero and Poppea in Monteverdi's opera, with Sides also playing Poppea in Handel's opera. Gillian Webster will be singing the title role in Agrippina.

ETO will be complementing the operatic performances with a pair of concerts in which the ETO orchestra and singers will be joined by regional choirs to perform Music for a Venetian Orphanage, celebrating Vivaldi's music for the Ospedale della Pieta in Venice, and Handel's music for Vespers, which celebrates Handel's vespers music written whilst he was in Rome. The Vivaldi concert will be performed in Crediton and Harrogate and the Handel concert in Rochester, Newcastle and Warwick.

The tour visits eight theatres and another seven churches, cathedrals and concert halls in England until Sunday 24 November, including Rochester, Aldeburgh, Malvern, Crediton, Bath, Harrogate, Durham, Newcastle, Derbyshire, Sheffield, Warwick,Cambridge and Exeter. Further information from the English Touring Opera website.
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Eugene Onegin at Grange Park Opera

noreply@blogger.com (Robert Hugill) — Mon, 10 Jun 2013 23:42:51 PDT

Brett Polegato as Onegin in act 3
of Grange Park Opera' s Eugene Onegin

Stephen Medcalf's attractive and intelligently traditional production of Eugene Onegin was originally seen at Grange Park Opera last year, performed by the Grange Park Opera rising stars (see my review). The production returned this year with Susan Gritton singing her first Tatyana, Brett Polegato as Onegin, Frances Bourne as Olga, Robert Anthony Gardiner as Lensky, Anne-Marie Owens as Madam Larina, Kathleen Wilkinson as Filipyevna and Clive Bayley as Prince Gremin. Martyn Brabbins conducted the Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra.

Designer Francis O'Connor's two-tier set made good use of the stage, with the upper level allowing Madame Larina and her family to look down on the peasants dancing, and provided a way of making scenes like the ball scene look opulent without being crowded on the relatively small Grange Park Opera stage. Medcalf also used the upper level to isolate his characters, so that Polegato's Onegin was alone up there at the end of the dance at Madame Larina's.

Another device by which Medcalf isolated both Tatyana and Onegin was his freezing the action. Each act started with the singers frozen into position; Medcalf took advantage of this at the opening of act 2, to have Susan Gritteon wander about distractedly, emphasising her separation from the party goers. And during Clive Bayley's delivery of Prince Gremin's aria, the chorus froze just leaving Tatyana again to wander around, placing focus on her. This slight stylisation could have been annoying, but Medcalf used it sparingly and the effect worked well.

The set was the same throughout, albeit with a grand spiral staircase being added to the balcony for act 3. The back drop was luxuriant foliage, giving Madama Larina's house creating a the idea of a real country paradise. Paul Keogan's highly effective lighting ensured that the moods of the opera's different scenes were finely reflected in the visual side of the staging. The duel scene was especially notable, staged in the ruins of Madame Larina's party but Keogan's lighting creating an altogether different effect.

Robert Anthony Gardiner and Brett Polegato in the duel scene

Susan Gritton and Brett Polegato as Tatyana and Onegin, both made a strong case for casting the roles with mature singers, each brought intelligence and experience to the role completely transcending the apparent limitations of age differences to their characters.

Gritton was an intensely dignified and self-contained Tatyana. In the first two acts she was convincingly girlish, bringing out Tatyana's dreamy side with a tendency to drift away both physically and mentally. And having an experience singer helps in the letter scene, Gritton's performance was a marvel of balance, poise and intensity. Finely paced, she conveyed the young girl's confusion at this overwhelming passion, bringing out the sheer beauty and vividness of Tchaikovsky's music.

Brett Polegato was stiff and self-absorbed without being grim as Onegin. Sometimes, singers forget that the character is supposed to be charismatic and attractive. There was no danger of that here, you could sense Onegin's attraction. Polegato and Gritton created a strong and believable chemistry and the scene at the end of act 1 where Onegin gives the letter back to Tatyana was unbearable in its intensity.

When Gritton reappeared in act 3, it was hard to believe it was the same person, so convincingly did Gritton's outward display mirror Tatyana's inward transformation. And her anguish in the final confrontation with Onegin was finely drawn, with Polegato superbly desperate. Sometimes this scene can appear to come from a different opera, with the two singers so much more dramatically mature, but here Gritton and Polegato ensured that their characters had followed a clear arc of development and the scene was a highly satisfying conclusion.

Robert Anthony Gardiner was an intense, almost neurotic Lensky. Gardiner has a light, lyric voice which does not yet respond well to pressure. There were moments when you felt that the role might be a step too far at present, but his use of his resources was intelligent and this was a finely drawn performance. Medcalf ensured that the denoument at the end of Madame Larina's party came as the result of the carefully graded development of Lensky's character, with Gardiner even joining in with the end of Monsieur Triquet's solo (sung by Stuart Kale).

Gardiner's solo in the duel scene was touching, but the final duet with Gardiner and Polegato facing each other and gradually walking to a mutual embrace, was stunning.

Frances Bourne was a dark voiced, coquettish Olga. An apt complement to Gritton's Tatyana as well as someone who was obviously quite unsuited to Gardiner's intense Lensky. Anne-Marie Owens made Madame Larina rather more dignified than some, but was touching nonetheless particularly in her duet with Kathleen Wilkinson's entrancing Filipyevna. Clive Bayley gave a very strong performance of Prince Gremin's aria. And Stuart Kale showed what a lifetime's experience can bring to even a cameo like Monsieur Triquet's aria. Nicholas Dwyer was Zaretsky and Jonathan Alley the Captain.

For me, one of the essentials of a production of Eugene Onegin is the dancing. Though the production used six dancers, the chorus also contributed in both Madame Larina's dance and the ball scene, as well as the peasants in act 1, thus ensuring that the dances were a true reflection of community. And Lynne Hockney's choreography made clever use of the space available. The chorus were on fine form in both their singing and dancing.

Having Martyn Brabbins conducting the Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra in the pit paid dividends in an opera notable for its instrumental interludes. Brabbins and the orchestra ensured that Tchaikovsky's orchestra writing was on a fine and expressive level as the rest of the performance. Brabbins gave us a nicely controlled and well structured performance, encouraging some really expressive playing from the orchestra.

Medcalf and O'Connor showed that Eugene Onegin doesn't need clever tricks, and in Grange Park Opera's relatively intimate theatre the intensity of the performances shone through.

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Nimrod Borenstein premieres

noreply@blogger.com (Robert Hugill) — Mon, 10 Jun 2013 09:57:56 PDT

The Philharmonia Orchestra and conductor Vladimir Ashkenazy will be giving the premiere of If you will it, it is no dream, by the Tel Aviv-born London-based composer Nimrod Borenstein. The work, which was commissioned by the Philharmonia Orchestra, will be the opening work in a concert at the Royal Festival Hall on 13 June 2013. The programme also includes Elgar's Violin Concerto with James Ehnes as the soloists, as well as Walton's Symphony No. 1. Borenstein's The Big Bang and the Creation of the Universe was performed by Ashkenazy and the Philharmonia Orchestra in Leicester earlier this year. Borenstein is having a busy time at the moment, at the beginning of July his Concerto for Violoncello and String Orchestra receives its premiere in Belgrade, further information from Nimrod Borenstein's website. Further information on Thursday's concert from the South Bank Centre website.

Summer Music Academy at the Royal Military School

noreply@blogger.com (Robert Hugill) — Mon, 10 Jun 2013 04:23:05 PDT

The Royal Military Academy at Kneller Hall, Twickenham is again holding a Summer Music Academy this year. Running from 4 to 10 August 2013, the event is free to attend and the Royal Military Academy are looking for young people between the ages of 16 to 24, brass and woodwind players and percussionists (though other instrumentalists will be considered) with grade 7+ in their primary instrument. Last year 150 people applied for 60 places and there will be 60 places available this year. The idea is to offer a specialized musical education of the highest calibre combined with an insight to a career in military music. So the academy offers rehearsals with the band and individual lessons with professional musicians alongside a visit to an Army training regiment to learn more about careers in the army, an introduction to physical training (though nothing difficult is promised), career presentations and opportunities to hear the band perform and talk to musicians. There are 22 Army bands across the UK, involving string, wind, brass and percussion players. Army musicians are encouraged to further their musical training by studying for degrees and diplomas, and to play in a wide variety of ensembles. Further information from the Summer Music Academy website.