IT’S going to be a big day for
Manchester-based and Royal Northern College of Music trained husband-and-wife
Jan Bradley and Sarah Castle, on August 12.
That’s the date of the world premiere of a
song cycle he’s written for her, and it’s at Carver Church,
Windermere, as part of the Lake District Summer Music festival, which
commissioned the work.
Sarah is the soloist, and Jan performs as a
member of the 4-MALITY Percussion Quartet, which he co-founded in 1999.
“We were asked, after performing in the
festival two years ago, to return with something on the theme of the First
World War,” Jan says. “I said I would set some war poetry, but then we couldn’t
find a space to perform last year – and the invitation was repeated for 2015.
“I was originally thinking of a baritone
voice, but I’m married to an opera singer! It became a setting of three poems,
all written by women, about the war.”
Mezzo-soprano Sarah is well known to
audiences in Manchester,
having sung as Rhinemaiden and Valkyrie for Opera North and the Hallé, and
also in The Mastersingers and other concerts. The couple are both originally
from New Zealand,
and Sarah was recently rehearsing the lead role in Rossini’s La Cenerentola
there while Jan worked on his score. They and their family (Xander, 10, and
Maude, 5) had also been in San Diego
for John Adams’ opera, Nixon In China, shortly before.
“At one time people used to say I was on
holiday all the time, as I often travelled with Sarah as she sang around the
world!” he says. “Now we have kids who want to travel, too. And while I’m
pretty sure you won’t hear any Rossini influences, there could well be some Adams in there.”
The poems in his new work – which he and
Sarah chose together – are by Katharine Tynan (The Young Soldier), Frida Bettingen (Immer Steh Ich
Am Fenster), and Cécile Périn (Les Femmes Du Tous Les Pays).
So the
women of England, Germany and France speak through them about the
war. “The Young Soldier is disturbing, because the woman has lost her man and
she just says she doesn’t need to worry any more,” Jan explains. “The German
one is about the pain of loss, and the French one is quite angry – it calls those
women who sent their husbands and sons off to war ‘unconscious accomplices’.”
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