tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-34885528909740116352024-03-07T01:17:31.762-08:00Manchester Classical MusicRobert Bealehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11086797323057150801noreply@blogger.comBlogger327125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3488552890974011635.post-84127782642967851252024-03-07T01:16:00.000-08:002024-03-07T01:16:35.575-08:00The Royal Philharmonic Society Awards 2024, at the Royal Northern College of Music<p> </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"> <a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiwqAC3mGkJlTC0O6pWwVmobGZFQfzpIyu-hPP-jD4cF19WeuNMdjk-unnB1tKB2_ogxY-uVXBaPEeildLoWAcd74GhExYg1oe04FjC1NH-Lk9XrH19ArHQWBLqMBpNLLMx0z9a2w88p7R4yfNmpk3vPO7G5KMDcX-WCjbnZEtbUm1QIHxt0zNUwuoSbKY/s400/Nicky%20Spence_RPS%20Awards%202024_CR%20Lee%20Isserow,%20Vessel%20Studios%20(400x337).jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="337" data-original-width="400" height="185" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiwqAC3mGkJlTC0O6pWwVmobGZFQfzpIyu-hPP-jD4cF19WeuNMdjk-unnB1tKB2_ogxY-uVXBaPEeildLoWAcd74GhExYg1oe04FjC1NH-Lk9XrH19ArHQWBLqMBpNLLMx0z9a2w88p7R4yfNmpk3vPO7G5KMDcX-WCjbnZEtbUm1QIHxt0zNUwuoSbKY/w220-h185/Nicky%20Spence_RPS%20Awards%202024_CR%20Lee%20Isserow,%20Vessel%20Studios%20(400x337).jpg" width="220" /></a> <a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjdb3I-v62mgb-XtDmFX6Ryb_2djzsVnKVT-rUzkaTmKw8PZZ-F77OWf45iaiv68LzE9qsBTTK7hXworoDhf0cOkhwFhdsojL552woneqjJzkqo9WRaj13L8MdVLZrD0bgCuDfGuCE_WvqBCaamC9bgjTRfYEJJcHIvFh-t4SomJcLiLZS6G_LnmEvctZg/s400/Jasdeep%20Singh%20Degun_RPS%20Awards%202024_CR%20Robin%20Clewley%20(400x321).jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="321" data-original-width="400" height="186" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjdb3I-v62mgb-XtDmFX6Ryb_2djzsVnKVT-rUzkaTmKw8PZZ-F77OWf45iaiv68LzE9qsBTTK7hXworoDhf0cOkhwFhdsojL552woneqjJzkqo9WRaj13L8MdVLZrD0bgCuDfGuCE_WvqBCaamC9bgjTRfYEJJcHIvFh-t4SomJcLiLZS6G_LnmEvctZg/w231-h186/Jasdeep%20Singh%20Degun_RPS%20Awards%202024_CR%20Robin%20Clewley%20(400x321).jpg" width="231" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"> <a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEielNP06PZ1pMtrBOO2Zu8jeBCfI4rZb55JEpvWbBZRRX687MuIg61TW6ILaX0wVKKH_tp4iwN33wkNjB0LBYUxx5QXJsUK7Egpnkq8LHXR3w6fBViBmI9ArB_AiSpFNAi5dUPRY50eEMZpTUvv50l9G47wasektjdhwX9Q4peSVLnCE60vgY2u4b2YE7o/s400/Roman%20Grigoriv,%20Olga%20Diatel%20and%20Illia%20Razumeiko_RPS%20Awards%202024_CR%20Lee%20Isserow,%20Vessel%20Studios%20(400x317).jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="317" data-original-width="400" height="172" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEielNP06PZ1pMtrBOO2Zu8jeBCfI4rZb55JEpvWbBZRRX687MuIg61TW6ILaX0wVKKH_tp4iwN33wkNjB0LBYUxx5QXJsUK7Egpnkq8LHXR3w6fBViBmI9ArB_AiSpFNAi5dUPRY50eEMZpTUvv50l9G47wasektjdhwX9Q4peSVLnCE60vgY2u4b2YE7o/w217-h172/Roman%20Grigoriv,%20Olga%20Diatel%20and%20Illia%20Razumeiko_RPS%20Awards%202024_CR%20Lee%20Isserow,%20Vessel%20Studios%20(400x317).jpg" width="217" /> </a><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgDELaI1XYDPigdRUvUDHHIphd2ktuTfDTB1HWsFbmTATzub-twR_-zr1Pw2Qrj7rIrLHXVSavltPprDVDHCD-3uRHf-mUb2_xz9cGCXCmolTgqwCIirhijsYqhCfLVNOYAhNIIMQakMfMeiyLQ0dNo7v1G6sO5tvy0i8DGQ_iDDN7v9HOkVhghA98LrVM/s400/Derwent%20Brass_RPS%20Awards%202024_CR%20Lee%20Isserow,%20Vessel%20Studios%20(400x352).jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="352" data-original-width="400" height="174" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgDELaI1XYDPigdRUvUDHHIphd2ktuTfDTB1HWsFbmTATzub-twR_-zr1Pw2Qrj7rIrLHXVSavltPprDVDHCD-3uRHf-mUb2_xz9cGCXCmolTgqwCIirhijsYqhCfLVNOYAhNIIMQakMfMeiyLQ0dNo7v1G6sO5tvy0i8DGQ_iDDN7v9HOkVhghA98LrVM/w198-h174/Derwent%20Brass_RPS%20Awards%202024_CR%20Lee%20Isserow,%20Vessel%20Studios%20(400x352).jpg" width="198" /></a><br /><br /></div><br /><div style="text-align: center;"><b style="font-family: arial;">L-R from top: Nicky Spence; Jasdeep Singh Degun; Roman Grigoriv, Olga Diatel and Illia Razumeiko; and Jack Capstaff at the RPS Awards</b></div><p></p><p><br /></p><p></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US">The Royal Philharmonic Society held its
awards ceremony at the Royal Northern College of Music on Tuesday night (5
March) – the first time they’ve ever done them out of London. And here are my
awards for the highlights of the show:<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Wingdings;">l</span><span lang="EN-US"> The ceremony began with <i>Conversation in the Forest</i> by Keiko
Abe, performed by “The Sound of Manchester” – Delia Stevens and Le Yu (aka
Aurora Percussion Duo), with Andrea Vogler, David Hext, Harriet Kwong and Paul
Patrick.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Wingdings;">l</span><span lang="EN-US"> Most entertaining acceptance speech of the night was from tenor
Nicky Spence (winner, Singer category), pointing out that he’d been up for the
award more than once before and “I was beginning to think I was Pippa Middleton”
and telling the tale of how his mother (also present) and he stayed in a youth
hostel when he first auditioned for the Guildhall School – sharing a room with
bunk beds and, as both were “under-ambitious in terms of BMI”, it became a test
of faith for the party on the underneath.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US">Nicky Spence <span style="background: white; color: #242424;">and his husband, pianist Dylan Perez,</span> also entertained
with a rendition of Noel Coward’s <i>Don’t put your daughter on the stage, Mrs
Worthington</i>, which opened the second half of the night (it all finally ran to
45 minutes behind schedule).<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Wingdings;">l</span><span lang="EN-US"> Jasdeep Singh Degun – <span style="background: white; color: #242424;">the
first sitar player ever to win an RPS Award – </span>was both winner of the
Instrumentalist category and composer/leader in the final item: <i>Veer</i>,
with Harkiret Bahra, tabla, and RNCM musicians Leda Mileto, Chris Karwacinski,
Beth Willett and Clara Hope Simpson (aka the Aestus Quartet) and Joana Moura, double
bass.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Wingdings;">l</span><span lang="EN-US"> The Opera and Music Theatre award was won by Huddersfield
Contemporary Music Festival’s presentation of <i>Chornobyldorf</i>, which <span style="background: white; color: #242424;">brought the whole Ukrainian cast and
company of the opera to Yorkshire for its UK premiere.</span> <span style="background: white; color: #242424;">Ukrainian composers Illia Razumeiko and
Roman Grigoriv travelled from Kyiv to receive the award.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Wingdings;">l</span><span lang="EN-US"> <span style="background: white; color: #242424;">And the most eloquent
acceptance speech was from Jack Capstaff, music director of Derwent Brass, the Derbyshire
brass band which won the “Inspiration” category for non-professional ensembles –
the only award decided by public vote (all nominations for it this year being
for those based somewhere north of Watford). Bearing in mind the band world’s
intense competitiveness, he said, with their foibles – “and there are many” – bands
had always been good at creating access to music making for grass-roots
communities, and it was down to a groundswell of support that Derwent had won
the vote.</span><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US">Other details:<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Wingdings;">l</span><span lang="EN-US"> <span style="background: white; color: #242424;">“Manchester Classical”,
the weekend mini-festival last summer that brought together the Hallé, BBC
Philharmonic, Manchester Camerata, Manchester Collective, RNCM and others, was
presented with the Series and Events Award, having brought thousands of
citizens to the Bridgewater Hall. Accepting the award, Hallé boss David Butcher
said the city was unique in its collaboration between different organisations,
and “when you work in partnership, brilliant things happen”.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Wingdings;">l</span><span lang="EN-US"> <span style="background: white; color: #242424;">The Gamechanger
Award went to the Irene Taylor Trust and its artistic director Sara
Lee for using music to help people affected by the criminal justice system
and in marginalised areas of society. <o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Wingdings;">l</span><span lang="EN-US"> <span style="background: white; color: #242424;">The<i> </i>Impact
Award was presented to disabled musician Clare Johnston and Drake
Music Scotland for <i>Call of the Mountains</i>, a collaboration with
Kazakhstan’s Eegeru ensemble, which culminated in a collective performance in
Edinburgh.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Wingdings;">l</span><span lang="EN-US"> <span style="background: white; color: #242424;">Finnish composer Kaija
Saariaho, an icon of contemporary music who died in 2023, was given the Large-Scale
Composition Award for her acclaimed opera <i>Innocence</i>: a portrait
of lives changed by a high school shooting (it was staged by the Royal Opera).
Her son, Aleksi Barrière, who was the opera’s co-librettist, collected the
trophy.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Wingdings;">l</span><span lang="EN-US"> <span style="background: white; color: #242424;">The BBC Singers were
recognised for the quality, style and imagination they bring to a range of
endeavour, receiving the Ensemble Award. <o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Wingdings;">l</span><span lang="EN-US"> <span style="background: white; color: #242424;">François-Xavier Roth received
the Conductor Award for his work with the London Symphony Orchestra
and his own ensemble, Les Siècles; the Chamber-Scale Composition
Award went to Laurence Osborn for <i>TOMB! </i>premiered by
the GBSR Duo and 12 Ensemble at the Norfolk and Norwich Festival; the Storytelling
Award went to Leah Broad for <i>Quartet</i>, a book about four female
composers; and the Young Artist Award was presented to mezzo
soprano Lotte Betts-Dean</span></span><span lang="EN-US" style="background: white; color: #242424; font-family: "Calibri",sans-serif;">.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US" style="background: white; color: #242424;">PS:<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US" style="background: white; color: #242424;">Having
once been part of a partly similar awards shindig myself, it was like a
reminder of old times to see how these things are put together. You invite all
your nominees and their friends to come to swell the crowd, but you keep the
winners’ names confidential, of course … and then you worry that some of the
chosen winners have not committed to being there. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US" style="background: white; color: #242424;">With
performers, one trick is to invite them to do a turn in the ceremony – which on
the whole they will accept and seriously commit to (see above for examples).
But sometimes, when it’s a clear turn-down because they have engagements
elsewhere, you simply have to tell them they’ve won, swear them to secrecy and
get them to film an acceptance speech in advance, feigning surprise, etc., etc.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US" style="background: white; color: #242424;">When
it’s the backroom and admin people (or movers and shakers, as they like to
think of themselves), sometimes they, or their underlings, will say: “I could
come, but I’m very, very busy and it would help to be tipped off, just
privately, if being there in person will really be worth it” – in other words, “Have
I won, because I’d love to make a speech in front of my peers and admirers, but
otherwise it’s not worth it?” That’s the tricky one. I must admit to having
stooped that low with those guys, sometimes.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US"><o:p> </o:p></span></p><br /><p></p>Robert Bealehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11086797323057150801noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3488552890974011635.post-92040737180872101692023-10-13T01:26:00.001-07:002023-10-13T01:26:08.600-07:00Review of Hallé concert conducted by Anja Bihlmaier with soloist Maxim Rysanov<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhBP_wu09B_9BrpamO5Dg5paoSBAxwNHfjSp6arVB-Z6TGBcVD-o5_3rTykuCgpYQtdfMEAFzf3MMGajUI3FDURlmtmUqPgWpZKZmNvCC8njeTCLxgy-TX9j0mNUGutpNz0LSazR6ahXxNt2TI41KVbBi-xYmFFOXMj4VezSGClCiF4z_uztKU_TRqUKLU/s600/Anja%20Bihlmaier%20(600x474)%20r%20Nikolaj%20Lund.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="474" data-original-width="600" height="253" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhBP_wu09B_9BrpamO5Dg5paoSBAxwNHfjSp6arVB-Z6TGBcVD-o5_3rTykuCgpYQtdfMEAFzf3MMGajUI3FDURlmtmUqPgWpZKZmNvCC8njeTCLxgy-TX9j0mNUGutpNz0LSazR6ahXxNt2TI41KVbBi-xYmFFOXMj4VezSGClCiF4z_uztKU_TRqUKLU/s320/Anja%20Bihlmaier%20(600x474)%20r%20Nikolaj%20Lund.jpg" width="320" /></a> </div><div style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-small;"><b>Anja Bihlmaier cr Nikolaj Lund</b></span></div><p><br /></p><p>It was Beethoven’s Fourth with zip at the Hallé
last night, as Anja Bihlmaier showed her credentials as a conductor of the
present day, taking the tempo markings very much at face value and, with the
orchestra in fine fettle almost from the first bar, creating a performance of
neatness and beauty.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US">She had 40 strings for the entire programme,
which also began with Beethoven, in the form of the tone-poem-like <i>Leonora
no. 3</i> overture. I’ve heard it done with more operatic atmosphere – there were
only the briefest of pauses, for instance, in this performance to follow the
off-stage trumpet calls – but I think she wanted it to be as coherent as
possible as a musical structure. It certainly had a fiery <i>presto</i> to
finish.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US">In between the Beethoven pieces there was
Maxim Rysanov with Bartók’s Viola Concerto (as completed by Tibór Sérly) –
played with artistry and assurance and gathering a fair old head of steam in
the gypsy-style passages of its finale – and followed by an encore for the
soloist, himself Ukrainian-born, and the Hallé strings led by Roberto Ruisi:<span style="background: white; color: black; mso-color-alt: windowtext;"> </span></span><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Myroslav_Skoryk" style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; orphans: 2; overflow-wrap: break-word; text-align: start; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="background: white; color: black; mso-color-alt: windowtext; text-decoration: none; text-underline: none;">Myroslav Skoryk</span></a>’s <i>Melody</i>, a piece
which has become a symbol of lament and horror at the Russian invasion of
Ukraine.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US">After the break came Unsuk Chin’s <i>subito
con forza</i>, a short series of shocks and surprises apparently inspired by
Beethoven’s music, in which a notable feature was versatility of Erika Öhman on
various percussion instruments (which, in addition to her role as timpanist for
the rest of the programme, makes her worthy of the woman-of-the-match award for
this show).<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US">The Beethoven symphony began in what could
have been Haydn style and went on to a pretty perky <i>Adagio</i> and a lively
work-out in the Scherzo, with only slight let-up in the tempo for the trios.
The last movement danced away from the very first note and ended with a fine
effect of contrast – one of Beethoven’s own surprises. I was impressed by the
playing, shown in a number of points in the evening but supremely in that
finale, of the guest principal bassoon, Todd Gibson-Cornish.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhpSDxrU6kYF57sFkcFt6MxmIKFUzCu-jNQugvhVEXPwAkKrYMfOwxuZimO9njvufxIin266owrc7gQh0W6ZqdsO4W3vpHDf64BNFgfHWt27AXEONgj6V4mnKJ9o1DehdDOXoX15kbCsEkmN3XPhL882dgRqItbr_npXzxQCAiAF74J9d94_KkwTgybcSE/s400/Maxim%20Rysanov%20(400x366).jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="366" data-original-width="400" height="293" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhpSDxrU6kYF57sFkcFt6MxmIKFUzCu-jNQugvhVEXPwAkKrYMfOwxuZimO9njvufxIin266owrc7gQh0W6ZqdsO4W3vpHDf64BNFgfHWt27AXEONgj6V4mnKJ9o1DehdDOXoX15kbCsEkmN3XPhL882dgRqItbr_npXzxQCAiAF74J9d94_KkwTgybcSE/s320/Maxim%20Rysanov%20(400x366).jpg" width="320" /></a></div><br /><div style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-small;"><b>Maxim Rysanov</b></span></div><p></p>Robert Bealehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11086797323057150801noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3488552890974011635.post-91435389754560909242023-04-21T01:55:00.004-07:002023-04-21T01:56:23.486-07:00 Review of Hallé concert with Antje Weithaas conducted by Christian Reif<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"> <a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgFTOyQGOUg-dzXdV82Z33VKkHQ_93yxkUkH8g_aCE2qqJkcpH2VVPrZW-xvPDeHbPYfVWC_T6dXyFPt_zfTNkcg_1O8k6gy6frjCx_U6anzOUlR2Nb7IejI_HgORNkCsEWuGpMRxeJgD6ALjSUiMcKMBipFUoJZ5lUZcHTY6MiXlPQEymhlM2WMHeo/s400/christian_reif_credit-simon-pauly-7%20(359x400).jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="400" data-original-width="359" height="374" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgFTOyQGOUg-dzXdV82Z33VKkHQ_93yxkUkH8g_aCE2qqJkcpH2VVPrZW-xvPDeHbPYfVWC_T6dXyFPt_zfTNkcg_1O8k6gy6frjCx_U6anzOUlR2Nb7IejI_HgORNkCsEWuGpMRxeJgD6ALjSUiMcKMBipFUoJZ5lUZcHTY6MiXlPQEymhlM2WMHeo/w334-h374/christian_reif_credit-simon-pauly-7%20(359x400).jpg" width="334" /></a> <span style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-small;"><b>Christian Reif (cr. Simon Pauly) </b></span> <br /></div><p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US">The extended platform was in use again at
the Bridgewater Hall to accommodate the full forces of the Hallé Orchestra in
Stravinsky’s <i>The Rite of Spring</i> (which was the main marketing label for
this concert). It was a worthy reading under conductor Christian Reif, who has
the ability to inject a near-theatrical magic into everything he touches.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US">There was particular gravity and feeling in
the slower dances of the first part of <i>The Rite</i>, a real sense of mystery
as the second part began, and excitingly realized tension in the conclusions to
both segments. The piece has attained the sanctity of set-text authority as an
archetype of modernism these days (and modernism is now a matter for history
books), but even if it shocks less than it did 110 years ago it can still pack
a punch.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal">But the greater interest for me personally
was to encounter another work by Dobrinka Tabakova, the Hallé’s
artist-in-residence this season – in this case <i>Pacific</i>, from her Earth Suite,
a set of pieces begun when she held a similar job recently with the BBC Concert
Orchestra, and apparently still in progress as an open-ended set. Giving music eco-titles
is a useful strategy today (it helps arts organisations tick boxes for their
funders), but her description of this piece, written as the Covid pandemic
began, as permeated by “some of the anxiety and uncertainty of that time” made
more connections with the sounds we heard.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US">It begins with spooky tapping, silence and
low hums, before a kind of chorale for muted trombones and then the sound of
the strings: followed by a sequence of melodic lines for differing combinations
of wind instruments, some highly extended, against a plodding choral
accompaniment, which builds to a broad climax before dying away quite rapidly.
It’s an easy structure to follow and has a quality of confidence and
restfulness that outweighs any others.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US">The earlier elements in the programme were
Falla’s Interlude and Dance from <i>La Vida Breve</i>, piloted by Christian
Reif with a sure hand, casting enchantment in the former from the simple
ingredients of unison strings, solo clarinet, and so on, and keeping a steady but
perfectly danceable pulse, without over-emphasis of its “Spanishness”, in the
latter.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US">And a wonderful solo for Bartók’s <i>Violin
Concerto no. 2</i> came from Antje Weithaas. She had no problem with the full
strings strength (nearly 50) of the Hallé, as Reif kept the orchestral sound under
precise control, and amid all the virtuosity and fireworks there was
tenderness, eloquence and poise.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiPIhRazcXiAd8KEuljhB70ISpZKPJZTqcbYbRysK6q1csy4LWh8SuNdMVKSu_olFbIiXrvVhjRzjnPDwgXRM47jgBvwJZFfMx6UobGiIeHF2i0MBj_YlyMgKYCs1cjeL2JEtQj3qh_GXUjcX1Rv5Dp_YBf1-9VruDftTlVF6UMVRbkH3ukA79V3hEs/s400/Antje_Weithaas_c_Kaupo_Kikkas_1%20(396x400).jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="400" data-original-width="396" height="349" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiPIhRazcXiAd8KEuljhB70ISpZKPJZTqcbYbRysK6q1csy4LWh8SuNdMVKSu_olFbIiXrvVhjRzjnPDwgXRM47jgBvwJZFfMx6UobGiIeHF2i0MBj_YlyMgKYCs1cjeL2JEtQj3qh_GXUjcX1Rv5Dp_YBf1-9VruDftTlVF6UMVRbkH3ukA79V3hEs/w346-h349/Antje_Weithaas_c_Kaupo_Kikkas_1%20(396x400).jpg" width="346" /></a></div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-small;"><b>Antje Weithaas (cr. Kaupo Kikkas)</b></span></div><br /><span lang="EN-US"><br /></span><p></p>Robert Bealehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11086797323057150801noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3488552890974011635.post-24043970527074280782023-02-24T03:10:00.007-08:002023-02-24T03:10:48.462-08:00Review of Hallé concert with Boris Giltburg and conducted by Alexandre Bloch<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiT64b1mgPlnubhNKVTdVOrhMLtYcFWoHe5EO0Yd9sss6eEGFNexUBM52NbssSQtN2N0LAVan4682A-aX0HczOnAf78VCBTS63ipUYRbQsi-LWBT2N-ZXWoNkNh1U5VXFQIK9Dt0vgMv9-cm9chA9uYAX05kmvFq9YihTCnKBpzIoNvr2XrniU7oabQ/s400/Boris%20Giltburg%20cr%20Sasha%20Gusov%20(400x309).jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="309" data-original-width="400" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiT64b1mgPlnubhNKVTdVOrhMLtYcFWoHe5EO0Yd9sss6eEGFNexUBM52NbssSQtN2N0LAVan4682A-aX0HczOnAf78VCBTS63ipUYRbQsi-LWBT2N-ZXWoNkNh1U5VXFQIK9Dt0vgMv9-cm9chA9uYAX05kmvFq9YihTCnKBpzIoNvr2XrniU7oabQ/w414-h320/Boris%20Giltburg%20cr%20Sasha%20Gusov%20(400x309).jpg" width="414" /></a></div><div style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-small;"><b>Boris Giltburg cr Sasha Gusov</b></span></div><p>The Hallé like to bill each concert with a
title these days: what good luck that this one was given that of the music played
in its second half, Lutosławski’s <i>Concerto for Orchestra</i>, as the conductor,
soloist and piano concerto originally advertised had all changed by the time it
happened.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US">So we had the chance to witness Alexandre
Bloch’s debut with the orchestra. He’s no stranger to Manchester, though, having
been a junior conducting fellow at the Royal Northern College of Music, after
the Paris Conservatoire. He won the Donatella Flick Conducting Competition in
2012, and I remember his part in the 2013 Chester Festival, appearing with
Manchester Camerata, which was followed by a move to the London Symphony Orchestra
as assistant conductor.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US">He too the Hallé through Debussy’s <i>Prélude
à L’Après-midi d’un faune</i> first, with the opening magically played by Amy
Yule, starting from a very gentle <i>piano</i> but highly varied in dynamic as
it proceeded. With the orchestra limited to 40 strings (as it was also for the
concerto that followed) and the rich tones of Marie Leenhardt’s harp, the
textures of this music were beautiful, and its phrasing was delicate while rhythmically
quite brisk and always precise.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US">Boris Giltburg – a welcome guest in the
past – appeared to play Chopin’s <i>Piano concerto no. 2</i>. He’s played a lot
of Rachmaninov in his time (including here with the Hallé) and did not hesitate
to use the power of the piano at times in this one, but he, too, can produce
wonderful delicacy and dramatize the changes in sound the score requires. The Hallé
wind were on exceptionally fine form for their solos in this piece. And we got
an encore from Giltburg in a gorgeously sweet version of Chopin’s E minor <i>Étude</i>.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US">Overall it was still a short-ish programme,
but Alexandre Bloch compensated for that with a brief lecture, illustrated by
his own singing voice, on the Lutosławski before it was played. In performance –
now with 60 strings, six percussionists and all the other resources the score
prescribes – it was intensely colourful and brilliantly delivered, with the
kind of instrumental virtuosity that conceals the height of the skills on
display, and rhythmic energy constantly to the fore. The long, final <i>Passacaglia,
Toccata e Corale</i> was passionately built to its climax, with brassy
splendour and a near-devotional intensity from the strings.<o:p></o:p></span></p>Robert Bealehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11086797323057150801noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3488552890974011635.post-44628213088067139672023-02-17T01:07:00.001-08:002023-02-17T01:07:44.236-08:00Review of Hallé concert with Ian Bostridge and conducted by Kahchun Wong<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgD52nxn_guxrYSJRs45FMmV_G6kLSrNoLnrnmGRQj9iSe-0V7SlkZ3EbNAc9AhpGwBL0foiG9wvRaS4WSgEpZp7awGbOH6wNWQ_0GEHcBl9MWzLFXMFc1u_TQ7s7ds3--xDSaKOlg6L2yUy8t_cSnlC-dkUKWyXQVpwJWhX5DY20xahW6tgutBfrE_/s600/Kahchun%20Wong%20A%20(Photo%20by%20Angie%20Kremer)%20(600x426).jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="426" data-original-width="600" height="274" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgD52nxn_guxrYSJRs45FMmV_G6kLSrNoLnrnmGRQj9iSe-0V7SlkZ3EbNAc9AhpGwBL0foiG9wvRaS4WSgEpZp7awGbOH6wNWQ_0GEHcBl9MWzLFXMFc1u_TQ7s7ds3--xDSaKOlg6L2yUy8t_cSnlC-dkUKWyXQVpwJWhX5DY20xahW6tgutBfrE_/w386-h274/Kahchun%20Wong%20A%20(Photo%20by%20Angie%20Kremer)%20(600x426).jpg" width="386" /></a></div><div style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-small;"><b>Kahchun Wong (cr. Angie Kremer</b></span>)</div><p><br /></p><p>Kahchun Wong’s concert with the Hallé was a
really interesting one – in the end, not so much for what it had appeared to
offer on paper, but for what it gave in practice.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US">The paper interest was a UK premiere: Sofia
Gubaidulina’s <i>The Wrath of God</i>, written in 2019, an 18-minute piece for
very large orchestra (four Wagner tubas as well as four horns, two bass
trombones, two tubas and a lot of percussion). It’s about the day of judgment,
and suitably scary. It’s very loud a lot of the time, though there are
beautiful and delicately mysterious softer passages too, one for strings and
gong, one for strings and solo horn, followed by clarinet, piccolo and
glockenspiel, then solo violin. Those I appreciated: but the predominant impression
was that this somewhat episodic piece keeps making you think it’s all over,
then showing you that it’s not.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US">The remaining ingredients in the programme
were mainstream 20<sup>th</sup> century music. Britten’s <i>Serenade for Tenor,
Horn and Strings</i> featured the peerless and extraordinary voice of Ian
Bostridge, alongside the Hallé’s principal horn, Laurence Rogers. Between them
(and Kahchun Wong) they gave the lovely song cycle about evening and night with
many a dramatic twist. Bostridge frequently uses his voice in a
quasi-instrumental way, with intensive emphasis on some notes and lines: in the
Elegy (Blake’s “O Rose, though art sick!” and Dirge (the anonymous “Lyke-Wake
Dirge”), particularly (the latter has its own evocation of the day of judgment,
so that made plenty of sense). Rogers matched him for expression and played the
virtuosic part with consummate skill. And in the final Sonnet (Jonson’s “Hymn”,
to the Moon) we heard more of a kind of portamento in the Bostridge voice on
rising phrases that seems to carry a frisson of dread, even in the most re-assuring
music. Never a dull moment with these artists.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US">Shostakovich’s <i>Symphony no. 5</i> is
probably the favourite among his entire set and very much a repertoire work for
symphony orchestras now. The challenge for any conductor, I think, is to catch
some sense of ambiguity in it, to set against the clearly tuneful, attractive
and agony-to-ectasy journey that it appears to be on the surface. Kahchun Wong
did that very effectively: in one sense he dramatized it a bit more than others
might (in the first and last movements), but the main characteristics of his
interpretation were an assured and idiomatic approach to its rhythms, a peak of
intensity which made the impassioned Largo, the third of its four movements,
the unforgettable emotional heart of the piece, and a highly strategic change
of tempo in the finale (beginning with the horn solo) that brought a huge
weight of sadness into the midst of the triumphalism and ensured that stolidity
persisted to its end, sound and clamour notwithstanding. It’s a way of
conducting that would have been second nature to the great maestros of the
first half of the 20<span style="font-size: 13.3333px;">th</span> century – the time this music was born – and gives
a sense of proportion and shape that are impossible to replicate by any other
means.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>Robert Bealehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11086797323057150801noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3488552890974011635.post-11502324186864802932022-10-28T01:48:00.003-07:002022-10-28T01:48:40.055-07:00Review of Hallé performance of Verdi's Requiem, conducted by Sir Mark Elder<p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjflwuATfAOW3fihHbvmUtGDMZE6T6_PgEzT8vHqugcyS_CP4JpS3ARQlPLokoVs5hOwFyNequMlEMKfT2HsOtTqCcQc9ZuvnSL3GbVVn1TbRhbM1VN0SMfD1TUBLZFmIYcOQwu8zOpAAHQc8XSk1opuodpsBUfj5ps0K73CEiLKEhEHFVBfuvxir8J/s600/12.Halle_RVW8_May2022_Credit_Bill_Lam_The_Halle%20(600x408).jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="408" data-original-width="600" height="267" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjflwuATfAOW3fihHbvmUtGDMZE6T6_PgEzT8vHqugcyS_CP4JpS3ARQlPLokoVs5hOwFyNequMlEMKfT2HsOtTqCcQc9ZuvnSL3GbVVn1TbRhbM1VN0SMfD1TUBLZFmIYcOQwu8zOpAAHQc8XSk1opuodpsBUfj5ps0K73CEiLKEhEHFVBfuvxir8J/w392-h267/12.Halle_RVW8_May2022_Credit_Bill_Lam_The_Halle%20(600x408).jpg" width="392" /></a></div><p style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><b>Sir Mark Elder conducting the Hallé</b></span></p><br />Verdi’s Requiem has often been described as
an “operatic” setting of a sacred text.<p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US">There’s no doubting that Sir Mark Elder
sees it that way. It makes fairly frequent appearances in concert programmes,
but of all the versions I’ve heard I don’t think there’s been any quite as
determined to make it into a drama as this.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US">Each of the soloists is known for their
prowess in Italian opera, and it seems each had been encouraged to see their
role in this performance as a character study of some sort, whether pronouncing
judgment, pleading for mercy, or floating to the heights of beatification.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US">When it came to the big choral and
orchestral highspots, all was spectacle – the <i>Dies Irae</i> with not one but
two big bass drums, and especially the <i>Tuba mirum</i>, with <i>Aida</i>-style
stage trumpeters appearing on high, to properly put the fear of God into us. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US">The opening of the whole work was so
minimalist as to be almost inaudible (pity so many of the audience decided to
show their appreciation with paroxysms of coughing at that precise moment),so
much so that the stentorian sound of the men leading off with Te decet hymnus
was quite rough by comparison.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US">It was all much appreciated for its
showmanship, and the contribution of the soloists. Natalya Romaniw was a
heavenly prima donna, wonderfully sustaining her purity of tone and accuracy to
the very end of the <i>Libera me</i>. If the Romantic notion that anyone can be
saved through the love of a good woman was what Verdi had in mind there, her
voice exemplified it.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US">Alice Coote, too, so imperious in her
depiction of the Last Judgment in the Sequence, was the perfect Secunda Donna
when it came to the <i>Agnus Dei</i>, which was one of the most beautiful parts
of the whole performance. Thomas Atkins shone as every Italian tenor at prayer should
do, in <i>Ingemisco</i>, and James Platt caught something of the pleading tone
of Germont father in his singing of <i>Confutatis maledictis</i> (though in
ensemble his foundation of the harmony didn’t always seem quite precise
enough).<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US">Whatever Verdi did or didn’t believe about
the hereafter, he got something right with his setting of the <i>Sanctus</i> in
this work: the dwelling place of God must be a scene of supreme rejoicing,
which is what he caught in that wonderful fugue for double chorus. For me, it’s
the climax of the whole work, though Sir Mark took it quite gently, with rhythmic
life – unusually – somewhat lost in the part-singing for some of the time …
until the last glorious cadence. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US">This work should always be something
special for the Hallé: its founder, not known for operatic ventures into the
Verdi canon particularly, was quick off the mark in appreciating it when it
first appeared: he gave it here in Manchester in spring 1876, only about a year
after Verdi, with his hand-picked Italian troupe, had toured it to London (and
thus performed the British premiere). But Hallé was almost certainly the first
to do it with all-British forces.<o:p></o:p></span></p>Robert Bealehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11086797323057150801noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3488552890974011635.post-48343726553886912822022-10-17T01:21:00.007-07:002022-10-19T07:10:34.601-07:00Review of BBC Philharmonic 'centennial' concert<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgtUGsnQUeqaRxs4F9LDgr2U-s7qxYKItbV1p5aYVCSxxxFXBxtgOAXj6GZEplSRRcRbHeZ3D-41NKtKUNesGWRtLLScR2QXBxsfLfFaEzE6yfH1t6g69N0CRCgWA1nJEo7EqnmogeacceDH8CkIzYZPzLPQrHDc9F-RGLRF21lws1uvxahb5O8u-py/s600/Eva%20Ollikainen%20conducting%20the%20BBC%20Philharmonic%2015%20October%202022%20(600x400).jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="400" data-original-width="600" height="322" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgtUGsnQUeqaRxs4F9LDgr2U-s7qxYKItbV1p5aYVCSxxxFXBxtgOAXj6GZEplSRRcRbHeZ3D-41NKtKUNesGWRtLLScR2QXBxsfLfFaEzE6yfH1t6g69N0CRCgWA1nJEo7EqnmogeacceDH8CkIzYZPzLPQrHDc9F-RGLRF21lws1uvxahb5O8u-py/w484-h322/Eva%20Ollikainen%20conducting%20the%20BBC%20Philharmonic%2015%20October%202022%20(600x400).jpg" width="484" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><b style="font-family: arial;">Eva Ollikainen conducting the BBC Philharmonic</b></div><p>Calculating the age of an orchestra is a
funny business. You might think that continuous existence as a group who played
together under the same name, with slow membership changes over time, would be
definitive.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US">By that standard the BBC Philharmonic is
still quite young. Even allowing for changes of name (via the BBC Northern
Symphony Orchestra and the preceding BBC Northern Orchestra), but looking for its
existence as a body of players on full-time contracts, you can’t go before 1942,
or, allowing for almost universal freelance orchestra membership in earlier
times, only back to 1934, when its players were basically those of the Hallé
anyway (and also appeared as the Liverpool Philharmonic). Before that there was
a BBC Nonette – the “Northern Studio Orchestra” – although attempts had been
made in 1930 to establish something bigger.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US">So how do we get the idea that the
orchestra’s lifetime stems from the 2ZY radio station in Manchester of May 1922,
which started even before the BBC existed? (It’s not too long since Margaret
Wyatt wrote a little book for the BBC called <i>BBC Philharmonic: A celebration
1934-1994</i>, so even by that count the Phil is 88 years old now).<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US">Only on the basis that a body that employs
musicians can “own” an orchestra, even if it’s simply paying for one-off concerts, and using various names from time to time (“2ZY Orchestra” and “Northern Wireless
Orchestra”, from 1926). <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal">
</p><p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US">It’s been considered thus before – Charles Hallé
employed his band from 1857 to 1895 either from gig to gig or on six-month contracts
(though for many years he paid some a weekly wage for that winter season), and
it was most often known as “the Manchester Orchestra” then.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US">Never mind: the BBC in the North West is
celebrating 100 years of paying musicians to perform for it, which is a good
thing whether you call that having an orchestra or not. The Philharmonic marked
this with a great performance of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony in the Bridgewater
Hall, conducted by Eva Ollikainen. It was full-bodied Beethoven, with 60 strings
and effectively triple woodwind, and the vocal line-up of Tuuli Takala, Kitty
Whately, Steve Davislim and Simon Shibambu, abetted by the CBSO Chorus, made a
strong body indeed.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US">Big bodies can still be light on their
toes. Ollikainen brought energetic <i>tempi</i> to the first two movements,
resulting in playing of incisiveness, vehemence even, and the timps pounded by
Paul Turner were emphatically prominent in both. The Adagio was all suavity and
songfulness, and the finale eloquent, full of gloriously realized counterpoint
and surging and bounding in rhythmic energy to its climax.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US">Before it there were just two short
orchestral pieces; the first the overture, <i>Chanticleer</i>, by Ruth Gipps,
which the orchestra has recently recorded. Written in 1944, it’s a bit of a
stop-start piece, but with plenty of instrumental colour. Oddly enough, its
fairly conventional mid-century harmonies end on a strange cadence – as if it
was meant to lead straight into the opera it was originally written for.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US">Present-day composer Erland Cooper wrote
his <i>Window over Rackwick</i> to a BBC commission, and it had its world premiere
in this concert. It’s a kind of tribute to Peter Maxwell Davies, the son of
Salford who was associated with the Philharmonic for many years, inspired by
the Orkney spot where he had his home, and setting a poem by his friend and
collaborator, George Mackay Brown. The soprano soloist was pure-toned Héloïse
Werner.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US">It’s like a simple, oft-repeated song
refrain, beautiful to hear in its string chamber ensemble garb, and, like Max
himself, very pleasant to encounter, but leaving you in no doubt of his being amply
content with his own company. <o:p></o:p></span></p>Robert Bealehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11086797323057150801noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3488552890974011635.post-62485577697794970912022-10-13T03:42:00.001-07:002022-10-13T03:42:10.343-07:00Review of Hallé concert with Tami Pohjola, conducted by Taavi Oramo<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi2m16966IGG9X2MhedMvqMWSOhuB4msjbPmYYAxdOhFsxNyWDuP6Tw95Zq3YUoIKT2odnFypJUE0Ukxi7DLC2lh6vWmDvOin_oJXpW5pau_SLtu3f1zdm1P8QVHDXDoltD7m8YpUA6WcxKWKtyCsIgqzXZ7ALww60djd-D3L2Xpa8PK17UMlj-CtS6/s600/Tami%20Pohjola%20and%20Taavi%20Oramo%20pictured%20with%20the%20Halle%20Credit_Tom_Stephens%20(600x439).jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="439" data-original-width="600" height="308" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi2m16966IGG9X2MhedMvqMWSOhuB4msjbPmYYAxdOhFsxNyWDuP6Tw95Zq3YUoIKT2odnFypJUE0Ukxi7DLC2lh6vWmDvOin_oJXpW5pau_SLtu3f1zdm1P8QVHDXDoltD7m8YpUA6WcxKWKtyCsIgqzXZ7ALww60djd-D3L2Xpa8PK17UMlj-CtS6/w421-h308/Tami%20Pohjola%20and%20Taavi%20Oramo%20pictured%20with%20the%20Halle%20Credit_Tom_Stephens%20(600x439).jpg" width="421" /></a></div><p style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-small;"><b>Violinist Tami Pohjola and conductor Taavi Oramo </b></span><b style="font-family: arial; font-size: small;">pictured with the Hallé</b><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: small;"> (credit Tom Stephens)</span></p><p><br /></p><p>This week’s repeated Hallé programme (I
heard it on Wednesday afternoon) was an intriguing one. Not so much for the headline
works – Mendelssohn’s <i>Italian</i> symphony and Sibelius’ Violin Concerto – but
for the two overtures by women composers added to those, and the two guest
artists.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US">They were both Finnish and young, and going
places. The conductor was Taavi Oramo and the soloist Tami Pohjola.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US">She is a wonderful player. She has both a gorgeously
lyrical sound and some very big tone, allied with formidable technique. Standing
against around 50 strings in the <i>tutti </i>orchestra was no problem, and the
first movement cadenza was not just confidently negotiated but heartfelt in
style. That makes a difference: the slow movement, too, was soulful in spades,
and the finale much more than a mere fireworks display.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US">Oramo ensured that the orchestral role in
the concerto had plenty of emphasis, energy and expression, and the Hallé wind
players lightened the atmosphere with their usual expertise.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US">The two overtures were Fanny Mendelssohn’s
in C major and Louise Farrenc’s no. 1 in E minor. They were near-contemporaries
in life, and the overtures are near-contemporary in date – but, for me, there
was a world of difference. Fanny Mendelssohn, for all her technical
accomplishments, seems to borrow effects from others (Mozart, and maybe even Beethoven
at some points) but has a tendency to repeat herself in shortish phrases, and
her harmonic progressions are not always too adroit. Taavi Oramo made sure her
writing was pushed along to create real tension, but even he could not make this
overture into more than a curiosity.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US">Louise Farrenc, on the other hand, was a
composer of imagination and originality, as well as technical accomplishment.
Her harmonic changes are sure-footed and she writes remarkable counterpoint
almost throughout, so that her themes intertwine to great effect. What a pity
she doesn’t seem to have written very much more for orchestra than this and one
other overture.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US">Felix Mendelssohn, the <i>Italian</i>’s
composer, gave us a masterepiece and it’s now a familiar one. I specially liked
the charm Taavi Oramo and the musicians drew from the <i>Con moto</i> third
movement (a Goldilocks tempo there, with some very individual touches from the
horns), and the finale was definitely fast and furious – perhaps a tad too much
...</span></p>Robert Bealehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11086797323057150801noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3488552890974011635.post-45600157072312291122022-09-22T04:32:00.004-07:002022-09-22T04:34:48.574-07:00Review of Hallé concert with Guy Johnston, conducted by Delyana Lazarova<p> </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj6MbTkVGRaEqTDnE10Jmm10RX4fNhTTzrwBBEAvuTMjwCV5HcSOBrOv08yKoFp9wSSyKtnbqymW7Lnulo7KzJUEd0Q6GzNdzajDzBfXZfYmL00ZyU22_Tp8A4snTRr6pBjXPMxDV8bIyKTIQOgXf-vUVnvl44CO0p6McICqM0yJzm77lpHrq2g5Kdm/s400/Delyana%20Lazarova%20%20Halle_TchaikPath_Sept22_credit_Alex_Burns-the_halle%20(392x400).jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="400" data-original-width="392" height="401" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj6MbTkVGRaEqTDnE10Jmm10RX4fNhTTzrwBBEAvuTMjwCV5HcSOBrOv08yKoFp9wSSyKtnbqymW7Lnulo7KzJUEd0Q6GzNdzajDzBfXZfYmL00ZyU22_Tp8A4snTRr6pBjXPMxDV8bIyKTIQOgXf-vUVnvl44CO0p6McICqM0yJzm77lpHrq2g5Kdm/w393-h401/Delyana%20Lazarova%20%20Halle_TchaikPath_Sept22_credit_Alex_Burns-the_halle%20(392x400).jpg" width="393" /></a></div><div style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><b>Delyana Lazarova conducts the Hallé </b></span></div><p></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">There could have been few orchestral works
more appropriate to reflect our thoughts after the death of a sovereign than
two we heard played by the Hallé yesterday.</span></p><p>
</p><p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US"><span style="font-family: arial;">Neither was planned with such an event in
mind, but Dobrinka Tabakova’s Cello Concerto has a central movement that ends
in so still and elegiac an atmosphere as to seem as if written as a meditation
on profound loss, and Tchaikovsky’s Sixth Symphony is itself a journey into finality
and silence.</span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US"><span style="font-family: arial;">Delyana Lazarova, the assistant conductor
to Sir Mark Elder, conducted this opening concert of the 2022-23 season,
beginning it, and others, by playing the National Anthem. It wasn’t the
stirring version, begun with a side-drum call to arms, that older audience members remember
from the years last century when war was still a keen memory, but Britten's, with a quiet
beginning, as befits the prayer it really is.</span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US"><span style="font-family: arial;">We were soon into the whirl of Ravel’s <i>La
Valse</i>, begun under Lazarova’s baton in a manner as rhythmically numinous as
it was in other ways, but soon full of impetus and precision, the richness of
its textures fully realized and the tensions effectively rising to its
shattering close.</span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US"><span style="font-family: arial;">Dobrinka Tabakova, now the Hallé’s artist
in residence, was present to hear Guy Johnston play the solo in her concerto of
2008. It’s a readily appreciable piece: three movements, clear themes and
motifs, harmonious chording and real tunes. What a refreshment to hear new
music like that! It’s also very hard for the soloist, who’s frequently up in
violin register in the early part of the piece, by Guy Johnston was unabashed
by those demands and brought eloquence and sweetness to the melodies – especially
the lovely dialogue with solo viola in the central movement.</span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US"><span style="font-family: arial;">The Tchaikovsky symphony is one most
listeners and all players will have been familiar with for years. I’m a child
of the 1960s, when conductors (including John Barbirolli) were more inclined to
use tempo flexibility as a vehicle for expounding structure, and Lazarova’s safe
and steady tempo for the third movement (<i>Allegro molto vivace</i>, it says)
ensured crisp and accurate articulation but lost out a bit in the hysteria department,
which can be an important part of the symphony’s emotional journey (the finale
has even been “diagnosed” by the learned as exhibiting clinical evidence of
hysteria in the way those chromatic upward rushes are shared from first to second
violin parts in the score).</span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US"><span style="font-family: arial;">The first movement was magisterially
presented, careful baton beating bringing springy rhythms throughout and
brightness and brilliance characterising the development part of its structure.
The last pages were beautifully intense and tragic.</span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US"><span style="font-family: arial;">The orchestra was led by Magnus Johnston
(Guy’s brother, as it happens), and though several of the regular section
leaders (noticeably in the strings) weren’t present, the guest principal
bassoon, Daniel Handsworth, made an eloquent contribution to his solos in the
Tchaikovsky symphony.</span></span></p><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgtOmKTnlSdSv-8VQkye6_rbFEmGwKY_qy8wW8TSzBlsGD8n1sCTCSIkJjAtsqRzWrMC--RaqdTix__JJWzPeBg1c-aUVvLlciSzEHwRF3HZlnzaMnMAC0YpIPWumrsuSY0th4eWWZZLkOiMfHCQ-Y6JTJICc7h_ijgyaA45EVCroYbqplfcNeVgYNM/s400/Guy%20Johnston,%20Dobrinka%20Tabakova%20%20Halle_TchaikPath_Sept22_credit_Alex_Burns-the_halle%20(400x267).jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="267" data-original-width="400" height="273" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgtOmKTnlSdSv-8VQkye6_rbFEmGwKY_qy8wW8TSzBlsGD8n1sCTCSIkJjAtsqRzWrMC--RaqdTix__JJWzPeBg1c-aUVvLlciSzEHwRF3HZlnzaMnMAC0YpIPWumrsuSY0th4eWWZZLkOiMfHCQ-Y6JTJICc7h_ijgyaA45EVCroYbqplfcNeVgYNM/w408-h273/Guy%20Johnston,%20Dobrinka%20Tabakova%20%20Halle_TchaikPath_Sept22_credit_Alex_Burns-the_halle%20(400x267).jpg" width="408" /></a></div><div style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><b>Guy Johnston and Dobrinka Tabakova acknowledge</b></span></div><div style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><b>applause after the performance of her cello concerto</b></span></div>Robert Bealehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11086797323057150801noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3488552890974011635.post-55582687409287787562022-08-09T01:27:00.000-07:002022-08-09T01:27:06.910-07:00Reviews of the National Gilbert & Sullivan Opera Company at Buxton<p><span style="font-family: arial;"></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; font-size: x-large; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiHrQdk19uUQ5lIPCo7jPMwr_Pf5PZrPhMJ9XhTD7VuLYuOZ5Acl_10Q3KBt7HolGsZou55-Q4Ncl8PExM1_hcgfjx7fslB2BMtNCAlkmKw3vXGjhBU0_VZrcOfIk8sfq9Z9Xy6GiW1EBXMKmrFx27QOwHkFEGa4O65duWq_-jy_eVEUUZo4kLrUtcs/s800/Emily%20Vine%20(Mabel)%20and%20chorus%20in%20the%20National%20Gilbert%20&%20Sullivan%20Opera%20Company's%20production%20of%20The%20Pirates%20of%20Penzance%20at%20Buxton%20Opera%20House%202022(800x533).jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="533" data-original-width="800" height="344" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiHrQdk19uUQ5lIPCo7jPMwr_Pf5PZrPhMJ9XhTD7VuLYuOZ5Acl_10Q3KBt7HolGsZou55-Q4Ncl8PExM1_hcgfjx7fslB2BMtNCAlkmKw3vXGjhBU0_VZrcOfIk8sfq9Z9Xy6GiW1EBXMKmrFx27QOwHkFEGa4O65duWq_-jy_eVEUUZo4kLrUtcs/w516-h344/Emily%20Vine%20(Mabel)%20and%20chorus%20in%20the%20National%20Gilbert%20&%20Sullivan%20Opera%20Company's%20production%20of%20The%20Pirates%20of%20Penzance%20at%20Buxton%20Opera%20House%202022(800x533).jpg" width="516" /></a></span></div><div style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><b><span style="font-size: x-small;">Emily Vine (Mabel) and chorus in the National Gilbert & Sullivan Opera Company's</span></b></span></div><div style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><b><span style="font-size: x-small;">production </span></b><b><span style="font-size: x-small;">of The Pirates Of Penzance at Buxton Opera House 2022</span></b></span></div><span style="font-family: arial;"><b style="font-size: x-large;"><br /></b></span><p></p><p><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;"><b>The Pirates of Penzance</b></span></p><p></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US">The Gilbert & Sullivan Festival is back
at Buxton – hurrah! A full week of performances at the Opera House there
precedes two weeks of continued festival in Harrogate, so there’s the best of
both worlds for G&S lovers.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US">The shows diary is very much the same as it
used to be in the days when Buxton had the festival to itself: a different title
almost every day, with the festival’s own National Gilbert & Sullivan Opera
Company leading the way (they’re also doing <i>Iolanthe</i> and <i>Utopia Ltd</i>,
a relative rarity), plus the pick of the crop of other specialists in the Savoyard
repertoire – this week that’s <i>The Gondoliers</i> (Forbear! Theatre), <i>The
Mikado</i> (Peak Opera), <i>HMS Pinafore</i> (Opera della Luna), and Charles
Court Opera with their own concoction called <i>Express G&S</i> plus <i>Patience</i>.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><i><span lang="EN-US">The Pirates of Penzance</span></i><span lang="EN-US"> was done with the familiar painted sets but re-costumed for
director Sarah Helsby Hughes’ fresh take on the piece. She kept all the
original script and music, but sent us on a kind of time-warp to the 1930s,
where, even if professional pirates still looked the same, Major-General Stanley’s
daughters were beach belles in Act One and appeared in fluffy nighties for Act
Two, and lovers Mabel and Frederic at one point transformed into Fred Astaire
and Ginger Rogers. There was plenty of dancing by a gifted cast and chorus
(choreographer Eleanor Strutt), and just a few knowing tweaks of the familiar
lines and situations. I loved it, and the Opera House audience hardly ever
stopped laughing.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US">The music was in the expert hands of John
Andrews (of Red Squirrel Opera fame) and the playing by the festival’s own
National Festival Orchestra was unimpeachable – a small but well balanced
ensemble, under a conductor who knew that getting the words across was the
thing that mattered most.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US">The principals line-up was, as ever before,
a mix of new talent and experience. Stalwarts from the old days included Bruce
Graham as Sergeant of Police, Louise Crane as Ruth and James Cleverton as the
Pirate King – all needing no introduction to the faithful and completely on top
of their jobs. Matthew Siveter, as the Major-General (in a kind of Boy Scout
uniform, to suit the time-warp), has already made his reputation in the G&S
field and proved just how with a superbly rapid “I am the very model …” patter
song.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US">RNCM-trained Aidan Edwards was an extremely
strong and clear Samuel, and the three lead daughters, Catrine Kirkman, Kate
Lowe and Alexandra Hazard, vamped things up delightfully. And for Frederic and
Mabel we had two classy singers: David Webb’s tenor never less than noble and
Emily Vine’s soprano hitting the high notes with panache.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US"><o:p> </o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US"><o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;"><b>Iolanthe</b></span><o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US">Iolanthe was the first of this year’s shows
performed by the Gilbert & Sullivan Festival at Buxton and in John
Savournin’s production very much follows the formula of tradition-with-tweaks.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US">Nothing to frighten the horses or the purists
(no re-wording of “Oh, Captain Shaw …”, for instance), despite the fact that of
all the G&S canon its references today seem furthest removed from the present-day
world: we don’t even have a proper Lord Chancellor now, and our House of Lords
is far from being made of blue-bloods alone.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US">But a visit to the festival at Buxton or
Harrogate is almost like travelling back to Victorian/Edwardian times anyway,
and no one seems to worry about a storyline whose point is all to do with a
long-gone legislative and judicial establishment, with a Lord Chancellor in
charge of wards of court and membership of the house of peers requiring nothing
other than breeding – add to that the romantic Victorian fascination with
fairies and you are soon into an innocent fantasy world with its own rules
entirely.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US">There’s just the occasional sharp-eyed reflection
on the nonsense (I liked Phyllis’s response to Strephon’s revelation that he
was half-fairy and only half-man, as Emily Vine snapped out her line: “Which
half?”), and today you can hardly avoid a titter over the line “She’d meet him
after dark, inside St James’s Park, and give him one …”, but that’s as far as
the double-entendres go.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US">Merry Holden is the choreographer, and the
ever hard-working cast and chorus have moves that require some co-ordination and
sometimes recall the much-loved skipping around of the old D’Oyly Carte
routines (in “If you go in, you’re sure to win”, for instance – which got its
equally traditional encore). The music was again in the expert hands of John
Andrews, with the National Festival Orchestra providing flexible and sympathetic
accompaniments.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US">And stand-outs among the principals, for
me, were Matthew Palmer (Strephon), an excellent young tenor still at the
outset of what should be a very successful career, and Meriel Cunningham
(Iolanthe), who has a rich mezzo-soprano tone and real clarity. Matthew Kellett
enjoys rattling off the patter as the Lord Chancellor; Matthew Siveter has his
spot of glory as Private Willis; Emily Vine is a winsome Phyllis and Amy J
Payne an imperious Queen of the Fairies; and Ben McAteer and Hal Cazalet enjoy prancing
their way through as Earls Mountararat and Tolloller. <o:p></o:p></span></p><br /><p></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US"><o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: large;"><b>Utopia Limited</b></span><o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US">One of the orchestra members was using the
audience loos (which are few anyway) before the show at Buxton on Friday night,
so I asked him whether they didn’t provide enough of them backstage.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US">“Yes,” he said, “but they’re all full of
the turns, warming up their voices.” <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US">A tangential illustration of one facet of
producing Gilbert & Sullivan’s next-to-last operetta, <i>Utopia Ltd</i> –
there are an awful lot of “turns”, i.e. people in the cast.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>That’s probably one reason why it’s not done
very often.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US">So credit where it’s due: the International
Gilbert & Sullivan Festival, this year beginning at Buxton and moving on to
Harrogate, did us all a good turn by offering the first fully staged professional
revival of it (apart from the D’Oyly Carte’s one attempt) back in 2011, and here
it is again.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US">Jeff Clarke, of Opera della Luna fame, is
the director, with Jenny Arnold his inventive choreographer, and <a name="_Hlk110679888">John Andrews conducts the G&S Festival’s own National
Symphony Orchestra.<o:p></o:p></a></span></p>
<span style="mso-bookmark: _Hlk110679888;"></span>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US">The piece may, when written in the early
1890s, have been a bit derivative of past Gilbert-Sullivan glories: Gilbert’s
plot is about a distant island that decides to improve itself by adopting all
the benefits of Victorian English society – the rulers (and some members) of
the Army and Navy, a lawyer, a county councillor, a Lord Chamberlain, and a
crafty businessman on the make, and of course there’s much flouncing around in
posh costumes and drinking of cups of tea. Cue jokes at the expense of all of
that, and there are references in the script (and in the score for the latter
of them) to both <i>The Mikado</i> and <i>HMS Pinafore</i>. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><a name="_Hlk110677802"></a><a name="_Hlk110677531"><span style="mso-bookmark: _Hlk110677802;"><span lang="EN-US">Clarke has removed the
locale from the “luxuriant and tropical landscape” of the original book to a
generally Middle Eastern one, with palms and porticoes. </span></span></a><span style="mso-bookmark: _Hlk110677802;"><span lang="EN-US">He leaves it to the
expertise of performers such as Robert Gildon and Giles Davies (as the Wise Men
of pre-reform Utopian society) and Ben McAteer to get the story over in Act
One, which they do with excellent diction, and there is a delightful character study
from Monica McGhee (as Princess Zara, the daughter of the kingdom who returns
from Girton College, Cambridge, to share all she’s learned of enlightened
society) – she’s absorbed the Queen’s English so much as to sound like the Queen
herself.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-bookmark: _Hlk110677802;"><span lang="EN-US">Meriel
Cunningham and Rachel Speirs (the latter stepping up from chorus duties to take
the role on 5 August) portray her sisters, the young princesses Nekaya and
Kalyba as feisty young ladies with their own ideas … an aspect of Gilbert’s young
heroines that’s increasingly drawn on these days.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-bookmark: _Hlk110677802;"><span lang="EN-US">Where
Clarke really gets into his stride is the early part of Act Two, with nice
touches from lighting designer Matt Cater for a night-time setting, and Anthony
Flaum, as Captain Fitzbattleaxe of the First Life Guards (who we soon learn is Princess
Zara’s love interest as well as security detail), is very funny as the romantic
tenor singer who’s never quite able to deliver when he’s not in the mood. That’s
soon followed by a song for the British gentlemen who represent the “Flowers of
Progress” – complete with visual props, a mock encore and present-day references
to the NHS and fuel prices in its final verse.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-bookmark: _Hlk110677802;"><span lang="EN-US">Of
these Britishers I admired Tim Walton’s highly theatrical Lord Chamberlain and
the cockney wide-boy given by Paul Featherstone as businessman Mr Goldbury, and
Katharine Taylor-Jones also impressed as The Lady Sophy – the nearest <i>Utopia
Ltd</i> gets to an elderly bossy-woman role. Cameron Mitchell, Aidan Edwards,
Stephen Godward and Ciarán Walker all make strong contributions.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><br /></p><p></p><p></p>Robert Bealehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11086797323057150801noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3488552890974011635.post-22313716956063242092022-07-18T09:02:00.002-07:002022-07-18T09:03:31.632-07:00Review of Albert Herring at Clonter Opera<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US"></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; font-weight: bold; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj0ht_Niy9KlAFBMbAH_niwsAJV5osPpTJ-67P1FkoDDPJ3Dg7xnqJnGCQdNRHjYoio-QCkLMI7GbreFcvrJkB_EoE1psj48UneGtnIG_ktVWByTvzcgorsJX8UYlpx7iVijnMxA41I_6QbbWDTZ9ah-8dIGkk6vMBgl1KZ8yAGJTPkAoBLVsjwCsXP/s400/Jack%20Roberts%20(Mr%20Upfold),%20Flora%20Birkbeck%20(Florence%20Pike),%20Erin%20Rossington%20(Lady%20Billows),%20Jordan%20Harding%20(Mr%20Gedge),%20Thomas%20Stevenson%20(Supt%20Budd),%20Lydia%20Shariff%20(Mrs%20Herring)%20and%20Daniel%20Kringer%20(400x267).jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="267" data-original-width="400" height="362" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj0ht_Niy9KlAFBMbAH_niwsAJV5osPpTJ-67P1FkoDDPJ3Dg7xnqJnGCQdNRHjYoio-QCkLMI7GbreFcvrJkB_EoE1psj48UneGtnIG_ktVWByTvzcgorsJX8UYlpx7iVijnMxA41I_6QbbWDTZ9ah-8dIGkk6vMBgl1KZ8yAGJTPkAoBLVsjwCsXP/w541-h362/Jack%20Roberts%20(Mr%20Upfold),%20Flora%20Birkbeck%20(Florence%20Pike),%20Erin%20Rossington%20(Lady%20Billows),%20Jordan%20Harding%20(Mr%20Gedge),%20Thomas%20Stevenson%20(Supt%20Budd),%20Lydia%20Shariff%20(Mrs%20Herring)%20and%20Daniel%20Kringer%20(400x267).jpg" width="541" /></a></div><b><div style="text-align: center;"><b><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-small;">Jack Roberts (Mr Upfold), Flora Birkbeck (Florence Pike), Erin Rossington (Lady Billows), Jordan Harding (Mr Gedge), Thomas Stevenson (Supt Budd), Lydia Shariff (Mrs Herring) and Daniel Kringer in Clonter Opera's production of Albert Herrin</span>g</b></div></b><span style="font-family: arial; font-weight: bold;"><br /></span><p></p><p class="MsoNormal"><b><span style="font-family: arial;">Eric Crozier and Benjamin Britten, after
Maupassant</span></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US"><b><span style="font-family: arial;">Clonter Opera<o:p></o:p></span></b></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US"><b><span style="font-family: arial;">Clonter Opera Theatre<o:p></o:p></span></b></span></p>
<p><b><span style="font-family: arial;">14, 16, 17, 19, 21 and 23 July 2022, 2 hours
35 minutes plus supper interval (30 minutes, or 70 minutes in some performances)</span></b></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">I love it when an opera company announces <i>Albert
Herring</i>. It’s an affectionate send-up of the hypocrisies and absurdities of
rural British life, almost like <i>The Archers</i> set to music.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US"><span style="font-family: arial;">Not precisely the same, of course, but you
have the figures of the vicar, the police superintendent, the headmistress of
the village school, the mayor, the titled lady who lives in the big house and
her housekeeper – and the younger generation: lovebirds Sid and Nancy, and a
few schoolchildren.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US"><span style="font-family: arial;">Then there’s Albert. He’s the son of the
greengrocer’s shop owner, Mrs Herring, and a young man very much under his
mother’s thumb. The story begins when the worthies are seeking a girl of pure
and impeccable character to be their Queen of the May … but none of the
candidates actually qualifies, on moral grounds. Only shy Albert seems to be an
innocent – so they make him King of the May.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US"><span style="font-family: arial;">Sid and Nancy spike his lemonade with rum
at the village fete to celebrate his coronation (what better piece could have
been chosen in this year of jubilee fetes left, right and centre?), and with
his prize money in his pocket, all unknown to everyone and particularly his
mum, Albert goes out on the razzle that night. <o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US"><span style="font-family: arial;">What happens next you need to see the opera
to enjoy best, so I won’t spoil it, but this is operatic comedy, one of the
best ever written. It’s a demanding piece, too, but Clonter Opera, the
finishing school based on a Cheshire farm near Jodrell Bank, helping young
singers find a bridge between conservatoire training and the professional
world, has put all its resources into this production and come up with
something rather special.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US"><span style="font-family: arial;">It's one of the few mainstream operas that
a small-scale but well-equipped theatre such as Clonter’s can put on with the
orchestral score exactly as written, as Britten wrote it for just 13 players,
and the professional Clonter Sinfonia do sterling duty in the pit, under the acute
and supportive baton of music director Philip Sunderland.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US"><span style="font-family: arial;">The production by Michael McCaffery, sets
the story in 1947 – that was the year of the first performance, just 75 years
ago – rather than 1910, and the set and costume design by Bettina John quietly
underscore an important aspect of the score: the post-war sense of rejuvenation
that was sweeping through Britain at the time. This is an opera that tells us,
without ever stating it out loud, that the older generation, with their
prejudices and stuffiness, are on the way out, and the future belongs to the
young; and John’s design has detailed and authentic-looking sets of dull and
faded interiors, contrasting with brightly coloured (and sometimes near-surreal)
costumes for the characters who parade through them. The Clonter stage revolve
is skilfully used to produce successive backdrops, as in the original scenario,
and we hear the full musical entr’actes that cover the scene changes (one
reason why the full running time is quite long).<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US"><span style="font-family: arial;">As a vehicle for young voices to show their
potential and young performers their abilities, <i>Albert Herring</i> could
hardly be bettered. The character studies of <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Erin Rossington (Lady Billows), Flora Birtbeck
(Florence Pike), Jordan Harding (Mr Gedge), Jack Roberts (Mr Upfold) and Thomas
Stevenson (Supintendent Budd) were all engagingly realized and strongly sung,
and I think that Rosalind Dobson (Miss Wordsworth) has a particular gift for
comedy, with just the right touch of exaggeration and an ability to keep
reacting in character. <o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US"><span style="font-family: arial;">The three children were each played by
first-year students of the Royal Northern College of Music – Eirwen Roberts,
Myome Mortimer-Davies and Samuel Horton – who enjoyed their opportunities for
fun and games; and Lydia Shariff, as Mrs Herring, was able to convince us (more
than most) that she was a generation older than her real age.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US"><span style="font-family: arial;">But the stand-out performances in a gifted
ensemble were from Daniel Kringer, as Albert, Thomas Chenhall, as Sid, and Frances
Gregory, as Nancy. Albert is a difficult role to play: he’s not a village
idiot, rather a young man who’s never had a chance to spread his wings until
the incidents the opera portrays, and he shames his elders in the end. Daniel
Kringer’s voice quality was very durable and his diction excellent, and his
acting showed Albert learning from his experiences, right through to the
fascinating line, “I didn’t lay it on too thick, did I?” (which leaves us wondering
whether he’s smart enough to have been kidding the lot of them with his lurid account
of a night on the tiles).<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US"><span style="font-family: arial;">And in this he’s in cahoots with Nancy and
Sid, the young couple who are well aware of the ways of the world, and the
flesh. Thomas Chenhall and Frances Gregory showed themselves to be mature
voices and accomplished actors, well equal to the world of the professional
stage – in which they’re each already busily engaged.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US"><o:p><span style="font-family: arial;"> </span></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US"><o:p><span style="font-family: arial;"> </span></o:p></span></p>Robert Bealehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11086797323057150801noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3488552890974011635.post-25127168042929845242022-07-15T08:45:00.003-07:002022-07-15T08:45:25.085-07:00Reviews of Buxton International Festival operas 2022<p><span style="font-family: arial;"></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; font-size: x-large; font-weight: bold; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhAFKKHZt60UzLrUYjLRxoyg2jtbPhNVkDovQ-WfHQjAH6DMM2n-ofumGzQyHYwspEawyXOQ4xMCA_fb_3RIXclF9Iyhq8JcWOR_t4rpCHdijTvMSDXZ8ELmNdKh5UX4873pmPYlxJ626PkLlfK30Pf8Oj8lPWsxy42uYNdrXQAnCNqCIpdAZ4fcHdZ/s800/Buxton%20La%20Donna%20del%20Lago%20M%C3%A1ire%20Flavin%20as%20Elena%20(red%20dress)%20Credit_%20Genevieve%20Girling%20%20(800x462).jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="462" data-original-width="800" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhAFKKHZt60UzLrUYjLRxoyg2jtbPhNVkDovQ-WfHQjAH6DMM2n-ofumGzQyHYwspEawyXOQ4xMCA_fb_3RIXclF9Iyhq8JcWOR_t4rpCHdijTvMSDXZ8ELmNdKh5UX4873pmPYlxJ626PkLlfK30Pf8Oj8lPWsxy42uYNdrXQAnCNqCIpdAZ4fcHdZ/w553-h320/Buxton%20La%20Donna%20del%20Lago%20M%C3%A1ire%20Flavin%20as%20Elena%20(red%20dress)%20Credit_%20Genevieve%20Girling%20%20(800x462).jpg" width="553" /></a></span></div><span style="font-family: arial;"><b><div style="text-align: center;"><b><span style="font-size: x-small;">La Donna del Lago at Buxton International Festival: Máire Flavin as Elena (red dress) </span></b></div><div style="text-align: center;"><b><span style="font-size: x-small;">Credit Genevieve Girling</span></b></div><div style="text-align: center;"><b><span style="font-size: x-small;"><br /></span></b></div><div style="text-align: center;"><b><span style="font-size: x-small;"><br /></span></b></div></b><b style="font-size: x-large;">La Donna del Lago</b></span><p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><b><span style="font-family: arial;">Tottola and Rossini, after Walter Scott</span></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US"><b><span style="font-family: arial;">Buxton International Festival<o:p></o:p></span></b></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US"><b><span style="font-family: arial;">Buxton Opera House<o:p></o:p></span></b></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US"><span style="font-family: arial;"><b>8, 12, 15,17, 22 July 2022, 2 hours 50
minutes</b><o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US"><o:p><span style="font-family: arial;"> </span></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US"><span style="font-family: arial;">After the outright cancellation of 2020 and
constrained conditions of 2021, Buxton International Festival is back and
firing on all cylinders this year. And its operatic flagship is a masterwork by
Rossini.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US"><span style="font-family: arial;">Written in 1819, it was inspired by Walter
Scott’s poem, <i>The Lady of the Lake</i>, and is an early example in European
opera of full-blown Romantic ideas coming to the fore – war and peace, love and
rivalry, wild and remote locations, supposed ancient traditions and figures
from the past. There’s even a reference (not taken from Scott) to characters in
the writings of the mythical Scottish bard, “Ossian”, a literary fake that hoodwinked
most people at the time.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US"><span style="font-family: arial;">And musically we find Rossini on the cusp
of using new-fangled Romantic language in his otherwise cute-and-classical writing:
off-stage horn calls, tremolando strings, the sound of the harp to convey local
colour (no matter that there’s nothing specially Scottish about it). At the
same time he was going all out for popular appeal, and one of the climactic
numbers is a competitive duet for love-rival tenors in which the dramatic
tension is reflected vocally by bursts of repeated high Cs (and more) from both
of them.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US"><span style="font-family: arial;">The story is fairly simple: Elena (the Lady
in question) is the daughter of a chieftain whose loyalty used to lie with the
King but who’s now mixed up with rebel Highlanders. He’s betrothed her to their
leader, but she really loves another. The King, disguised, comes across her and
falls for her, too (hence the two-tenors rivalry). Battle goes badly for the
rebels, but Elena seeks to save her father and her true love, and in the end …
Well, I won’t give it all away.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US"><span style="font-family: arial;">Director Jacopo Spirei and designer Madeleine
Boyd have staged the opera in a way that conveys general impressions – ragged clothes
for the Highland warriors, shiny techno-style costumes for the King and his
forces; a interior/exterior set to provide the lakeside locale for the first
act and a geometric, power-lit coldness for the King’s palace in the second … showing
there’s a clash of cultures as well as of loyalties, a nice gloss on the
storyline. The use of a tiny model boat to represent what the script says is
Elena’s offer to her visitor of a trip across the lake got a bit of a titter from
the audience – but what else can you do on a stage like Buxton’s?<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US"><span style="font-family: arial;">What you need for this opera to work is two
tenors with first-class Italian-style top registers: tick – Buxton has Nico
Darmanin and John Irvin. You also need a really good bass-baritone and a virtuosic
wide-ranging mezzo (for the trouser role of Elena’s warrior true love: tick –
Buxton has David Ireland and Catherine Carby. And above all you need an utterly
wonderful soprano as Elena: Buxton has Máire Flavin, and her rondó finale at
the end brings the whole thing to a triumphant close, as it did on the first
night in 1819 and needs to every time.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US"><span style="font-family: arial;">So the casting is top-class. So is the chorus,
all 22 of them plus some minor role singers, too. Buxton has nobly managed so
often in the past with a small-scale body, but at last it’s great to hear a
full-throated crowd of them in the bright Opera House acoustic.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US"><span style="font-family: arial;">And the musical direction, by festival
artistic director Adrian Kelly, is full of energy and impact. The Northern
Chamber Orchestra plays with precision and panache, and the whole thing rattles
by with both brilliance of coloratura technique and glorious tone production from
all the principals. <o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US"><span style="font-family: arial;">(Giulio Cilona conducts on 12, 15 and 17
July).</span><o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US"><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US"></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US"><span style="font-family: arial;"><span style="font-size: large;"><b>Antonio e Cleopatra</b></span><o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: arial;"><b>Ricciardo and Hasse</b></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US"><span style="font-family: arial;"><b>Buxton International Festival<o:p></o:p></b></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US"><span style="font-family: arial;"><b>Buxton Pavilion Theatre<o:p></o:p></b></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US"><span style="font-family: arial;"><b>13, 16, 20, 22 July 2022, 1 hour 25 minutes</b><o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US"><o:p><span style="font-family: arial;"> </span></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US"><span style="font-family: arial;">This is Buxton International Festival’s
second fully home-grown opera production for 2022. <i>Antonio e Cleopatra</i>
is a “serenata” – a baroque mini-opera employing a tiny orchestra and a smaller
cast … the title tells it all, as there are just two of them.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US"><span style="font-family: arial;">It was written in 1725 by Johann Hasse, a
German who, like Handel, had his first successes in Italy, and created for
production in Naples – then part of the Holy Roman Empire of the Habsburgs.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US"><span style="font-family: arial;">As the state museum in Vienna will proudly
tell you, the Habsburg imperial crown, inherited from Charlemagne, has symbols that
show supposed continuity from the Caesars, and this piece makes the point by
having Cleo and Mark Antony finally console their unhappy lot (after the battle
of Actium) by looking to a future world ruled by Kaiser Charles VI and his
missus, Kaiserin Elisabeth. Very loyalist, if a tad historically unlikely.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US"><span style="font-family: arial;">So how to present a two-acter in which the
lovers (both written for high voices) spend the whole time telling each other
how they feel, and nothing actually happens? This is baroque opera, and the convention
is that each aria (always in <i>da capo</i> repeat-the-beginning-after-a-middle-section
form) represents one emotion only – despair, anger, renewed love, determination,
regret, resignation, heroic fatalism, etc. The succession gives the singers opportunities
to show what they can do in each mood, and that’s the drama.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US"><span style="font-family: arial;">Director Evangeline Cullingworth (with the
help of designer Grace Venning) seems to find parallels in the agonies of a penniless
(or even homeless) young couple of the present day. We’re in a near-bare bedroom,
and they have nothing but the clothes they stand up in and one big suitcase of a
few remaining treasured things. These turn out to include bits of Roman armour,
a pair of angel wings, some wigs, theatrical costumes, imitation pistols and
hair brushes. Perhaps they have been acting in some dead-end theatre, as finally
they dress up in full Carry On Cleo mode for the suicide pact that ends the
piece?<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US"><span style="font-family: arial;">The props, of course, give them something
to do as they emote their way through Hasse’s arias (plus a couple of duets,
one to close each act), with all those repeats. The vocal music is extremely
taxing, though, and the quality of the two singers – Thalie Knights, as Antonio,
and Ellie Neate, as Cleopatra – is what the audience has come to hear. They are
top-class young artists, well able to embellish their repeats tastefully, and
in Ellie Neate’s case making the most of her frequent bursts of high-powered top
notes (originally written for Farinelli). The first-act closing duet, “Un solo
sospiro”, verges on the Handelian in its variety of emotive resource and showed
the two both at their best.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US"><span style="font-family: arial;">Musical direction from the harpsichord is
by Satoko Doi-Luck, with a tireless in-period string quintet beside her.</span><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US"><o:p> </o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US"><span style="font-family: arial;"><b><span style="font-size: large;">Viva la Diva</span><o:p></o:p></b></span></span></p><b><span style="font-family: arial;"></span></b><p></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: arial;"><b>Donizetti after Sografi, English version by
Kit Hesketh-Harvey</b></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US"><span style="font-family: arial;"><b>Salzburg State Theatre in association with
Buxton International Festival<o:p></o:p></b></span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US"><span style="font-family: arial;"><b>Buxton Opera House<o:p></o:p></b></span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US"><span style="font-family: arial;"><b>10, 14, 19, 21 and 23 July 2022, 2 hours 55
minutes</b><o:p></o:p></span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US"><span style="font-family: arial;"> </span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US"><span style="font-family: arial;">It’s good to see that Buxton International
Festival can laugh at itself. Here we have an adaptation of material originally
written to be a comic opera about opera, by Donizetti, turned into a tale of
the auditions, rehearsals and final chaotic performance of a piece by the “High
Peak Festival” – guess what that might be.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US"><span style="font-family: arial;">There’s the aspiring hopeful from the Royal
Northern College of Music, the heavyweight star soprano with equally nasty
minder from eastern Europe, the mezzo who flounces out to be replaced by the
grande dame of the local musical scene, the tiny Italian tenor with a sore
throat, the dodgy impresario who can’t quite find the cash to pay everyone on
time, and the hapless director trying to hold it all together.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US"><span style="font-family: arial;">So far, so good, as ideas. In practice, <i>Viva
la Diva</i> turns out to run 40 minutes longer than they estimated when the
festival programme was printed, and it’s not quite as funny as it thinks it is.
Maybe that’s to do with the inevitable in-jokes of opera singers sending themselves
and their colleagues up, maybe it’s because Kit Hesketh-Harvey’s English words
to fit around Donizetti’s tunes, full of internal rhymes and cleverness, still aren’t
as tight as a script for a comic opera should be (he also gets extended mileage
out of imagined absurd surtitle translations of an Italian libretto – OK first
time but not worth doing over and over). Maybe the extra length is to do with preparations
for the second act, which is technically quite ambitious, but if you’re going
to do an exercise in The Opera That Goes Wrong (as this does), you have to be
sure we know which bits are gags and which are not.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US"><span style="font-family: arial;">There was a feeling of improv creeping in,
as if the presence of a male in drag (George Humphreys, stealing the show as
supposed contralto Lady Agatha Wigan) turns everything to panto in British theatreland.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US"><span style="font-family: arial;">Many of the rest of the cast are capable of
strutting their stuff as genuine bel canto singers, and I suppose they needed
to have the opportunity to prove it, but the progress of the plot is slowed by
rather too much Donizetti in the process. So full marks to everyone for singing
really well at times and acting funny at others, to conductor Iwan Davies and
repetiteur Katie Wong for both being and portraying their roles, to the
Northern Chamber Orchestra for both their excellent playing and for pretending
to go on strike, and to director Stephen Medcalf and the technical team for
everything that went wrong properly.</span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US"><br /></span></p>Robert Bealehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11086797323057150801noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3488552890974011635.post-61704159349089431072022-06-13T02:48:00.000-07:002022-06-13T02:48:08.997-07:00Review of Opera North's Parsifal at the Bridgewater Hall<p> </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhjHqS1xOo-pQgijwTVTQ25LMWkMhWRcMoZhdexmDdOzzOkvm4Fxca0jlIsCefFllqi_RSDzavs32nUJta5P2RO_aAOtLuwGVX-gVtbeSAiabNHqrof7ZAzEA3FzFWF_4VNJqsKXwPaNikrbYeoV-e4V3mvjoNIHC3syx19OeSfloHakX_Gi9tD9XXP/s600/Richard%20Farnes%20conducts%20the%20Orchestra%20of%20Opera%20North%20in%20Parsifal.%20Photo%20credit%20Tom%20Arber%20(600x400).jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="400" data-original-width="600" height="292" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhjHqS1xOo-pQgijwTVTQ25LMWkMhWRcMoZhdexmDdOzzOkvm4Fxca0jlIsCefFllqi_RSDzavs32nUJta5P2RO_aAOtLuwGVX-gVtbeSAiabNHqrof7ZAzEA3FzFWF_4VNJqsKXwPaNikrbYeoV-e4V3mvjoNIHC3syx19OeSfloHakX_Gi9tD9XXP/w438-h292/Richard%20Farnes%20conducts%20the%20Orchestra%20of%20Opera%20North%20in%20Parsifal.%20Photo%20credit%20Tom%20Arber%20(600x400).jpg" width="438" /></a></div><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-small;"><div style="text-align: center;"><b>Richard Farness conducting the Orchestra of Opera North in Parsifal</b></div></span><p></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US">The first of Opera North’s concert hall
presentations of <i>Parsifal</i> was a magnificent musical
experience, but, to anyone who saw the fully staged version in Leeds, it also showed
how much the resources of a real theatre were absent.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US">Of course you never miss what you didn’t
know about. The soloists – and, particularly, those with lesser roles now
honoured with red chairs of their own front-of-stage – were all keenly able to
convey character and emotion through simple gestures and intelligent
positioning alone, and the story was easier to follow in some ways by using one’s
own imagination than when interpreting a director’s spin presented as
graphically as this had been.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US">“Think, when we talk of horses, that you
see them …” said Shakespeare’s prologue to <i>Henry V</i>, and it was that sort
of exercise. Think, when Parsifal says <span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 12pt;">he’s</span> holding a spear, that he really is, and so on.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US">What’s more, the Bridgewater Hall acoustic
added a dimension of clarity and thrill to the sound of singers and orchestra
that few theatres could emulate. Wagner designed the whole work to be a kind of
quasi-religious experience, and the hall’s near-cathedral-like resonance helped
give that feeling.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US">But perhaps the leading Flowermaidens, seated
in black dresses, could not manage to be alluring quite as much as the
writer-composer might have liked, and the full chorus, powerful in numbers and
voice as they always are, looked the same in serried ranks, whether personifying
chaste knights, temptresses or the angelic host.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US">As in some other Opera North concert-hall
versions of operas, without even electronic projected settings (and they used
only the minimum stage lights, not the full available rig) the music was the
point, and the whole point. Richard Farnes, seen this time in a centre-stage spotlight,
was visibly the Wagner conductor par excellence, guiding every note and nuance,
pacing the whole huge structure with both dramatic excitement and meditative
depth, and the orchestra played wonderfully for him. They, and he, know that it
often matters to hold the decibels down a little bit so that voices can be
heard without strain, but when they (especially their warm and wonderful brass)
really opened up, the result was spine-tingling. And the chorus, too, made
glorious sound.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US">The principals, as I’ve said in another
place, are about as near to a dream line-up as you could get, and every one of
them was on form for this performance. Brindley Sherratt sustained his rich
tone throughout the marathon but also managed to grow older for the final act
by stance and demeanour alone; Derek Welton made Klingsor a really
vicious-looking but wonderful-sounding baddie; Robert Hayward was noble and
affecting as Amfortas, and </span><span style="border: none windowtext 1.0pt; color: #201f1e; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-border-alt: none windowtext 0cm; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB; padding: 0cm;">Katarina Karnéus conveyed remarkable depths of
psychology while singing superbly. Both she and Toby Spence (who filled the
space with some ringing top notes) seem to have abandoned the beatific grins of
the Leeds first night and found a subtler way of portraying blessedness: that’s
good.<o:p></o:p></span></p>Robert Bealehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11086797323057150801noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3488552890974011635.post-16018856993771007812022-06-11T01:25:00.009-07:002022-06-11T01:31:58.546-07:00Review of Concerto Budapest with Angela Hewitt<p> <a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgmj0RsEB59ApxVGgeWocZVqujM4LxVVp2W8xVHjDxGWOG1bz8HdGvPBBxbbXSqQmP7b-dpwnuMEKZHbxE2GFHczRmLRtc6KJJhK1c-s3iN8m_F4xr2s16xfcitbvisYAbfETT8PS-t_w6_QbUu5GmgWkCOnINZpD0_MbQ2lEL1qVRfruazFMWrinkG/s2065/Angela%20Hewitt.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1299" data-original-width="2065" height="223" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgmj0RsEB59ApxVGgeWocZVqujM4LxVVp2W8xVHjDxGWOG1bz8HdGvPBBxbbXSqQmP7b-dpwnuMEKZHbxE2GFHczRmLRtc6KJJhK1c-s3iN8m_F4xr2s16xfcitbvisYAbfETT8PS-t_w6_QbUu5GmgWkCOnINZpD0_MbQ2lEL1qVRfruazFMWrinkG/w356-h223/Angela%20Hewitt.jpg" width="356" /></a></p><span style="font-family: arial;"><div style="text-align: center;"><b>Angela Hewitt (cr Fotograf Ole Christiansen)</b></div><div style="font-size: small; text-align: center;"><b><br /></b></div></span><p></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US">Touring international orchestras are back,
thanks to the mighty IMG, and the Bridgewater Hall mustered a small but very
enthusiastic audience to welcome Concerto Budapest (formerly the Hungarian
Symphony Orchestra) and its chief conductor and artistic director, András
Keller, along with Angela Hewitt, the peerless pianist who is always a draw in
her own right.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US">The programme offered to Manchester
(slightly different from other venues so far on the tour) had two pieces full
of folksong and dance and two mainstream classical ones. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US">Top of the menu was Kodály’s <i>Dances of
Galánta</i> – played for the first time on the tour but no doubt
bread-and-butter to these musicians back home. Their string tone is rightly
something to be proud of, and the eight celli made a superb start to the piece
(the following string playing wasn’t as clean and precise as the Bridgewater
Hall acoustic really needs, but it takes a little time to adjust to it – there’s
an awful lot of side-to-side resonance in this hall). The music has something
of the sound of traditional ‘gypsy’ bands in it, and by the fast bit near the end
there were grins all round – they were enjoying doing it.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US">Enescu’s <i>Romanian Rhapsody no. 1</i>,
played after the interval, had much of the same feel to it (and gave the
percussionists of the orchestra something to do: their two harps and a most
self-effacing pianissimo triangle made their delicate contribution).<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US">But before that there was Angela Hewitt. You
could hardly get more mainstream than Mozart’s <i>Piano Concerto no. 23</i> in
A major (K488), and she plays it with good old-fashioned well-pedalled
smoothness and grace. The orchestra, too, was suavity personified, and its
principal bassoon had his best vibrato to show off, along with the principal
oboe’s most expressive style, in the second and final movements.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US">Angela Hewitt’s playing is beautifully
proportioned and finely calculated. Mozart’s (his own) first movement cadenza
brought a flash of drama to the narrative … and I loved the way (being a
director-from-the-keyboard herself on other occasions) she conducted the
players back into action herself at the recapitulation. She played the gloriously
elegiac central Adagio <i>una corda</i> but with some surprise emphases to
stimulate the imagination.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US">To remind us of her expertise in
interpreting baroque keyboard music for the modern piano, she returned with an
encore in the shape of a Scarlatti sonata.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US">Last there was Beethoven’s Fifth. Strings
were slightly reduced for this (they had been cut right down for Mozart), but
there were modern timpani. There was plenty of energetic articulation in the
opening movement, and intriguing crescendos on held notes from the wind
players. The speeds of the remainder were mainly brisk, though sometimes
variable in a nicely Romantic way, and the horns and trumpets (three of the
latter, with shared duties on the top line, to keep their sound brightly
dominating everything else) made a powerful contribution.<o:p></o:p></span></p>Robert Bealehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11086797323057150801noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3488552890974011635.post-32755182364934184722022-05-23T02:42:00.004-07:002022-05-23T02:44:13.191-07:00Review of Northern Chamber Orchestra with leader Nicholas Ward and soloist Craig Ogden<p> </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhtjWd8vNIkM-8rCkJ8zAEJeSFn7jcu4aoFYoWjPUxQplCXogz6OEQNfuzVVYlftJYdddsOcHR5tj103-D3WqMBy4I6ExX04Wy62Kv4MBUd8Yab4aKgEBUSc5MJTpdsdiVJBpiYEpJ0i5yXLXsbCXJHJjeMejjlkuKDSNkLAbdwaFbubjvYY4nS3kfv/s600/NCO%20leader%20Nicholas%20Ward%20(1200x857)%20(600x480).jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="480" data-original-width="600" height="192" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhtjWd8vNIkM-8rCkJ8zAEJeSFn7jcu4aoFYoWjPUxQplCXogz6OEQNfuzVVYlftJYdddsOcHR5tj103-D3WqMBy4I6ExX04Wy62Kv4MBUd8Yab4aKgEBUSc5MJTpdsdiVJBpiYEpJ0i5yXLXsbCXJHJjeMejjlkuKDSNkLAbdwaFbubjvYY4nS3kfv/w239-h192/NCO%20leader%20Nicholas%20Ward%20(1200x857)%20(600x480).jpg" width="239" /></a><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjHN6I1ZohYjq3-qE61qmLQY7MTHdG8qOygTck_FULm-QfswuBcAR7W0fOQX1XeiHXQgnpRMLAnNangoXTWkNkhz1u_23l53RXm6kOG5dfA1e32EFO6AaREeUl0L0-BawhFImMBCc07eMqqS_R9YImsnBQpAC_NVni03-k_euyrOdcCrG7Jc4KPZZUS/s400/Craig%20Ogden%20credit%20Jon%20Super%20(400x370).jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="370" data-original-width="400" height="193" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjHN6I1ZohYjq3-qE61qmLQY7MTHdG8qOygTck_FULm-QfswuBcAR7W0fOQX1XeiHXQgnpRMLAnNangoXTWkNkhz1u_23l53RXm6kOG5dfA1e32EFO6AaREeUl0L0-BawhFImMBCc07eMqqS_R9YImsnBQpAC_NVni03-k_euyrOdcCrG7Jc4KPZZUS/w214-h193/Craig%20Ogden%20credit%20Jon%20Super%20(400x370).jpg" width="214" /></a><br /><span style="font-family: arial;"><b>Nicholas Ward (left) and Craig Ogden</b></span></div><p></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US">The highspot of the weekend Manchester Guitar
Festival at Chetham’s School of Music was a concert on Sunday afternoon by the
Northern Chamber Orchestra in the Stoller Hall, featuring Craig Ogden as
soloist in both Malcolm Arnold’s <i>Guitar Concerto</i> and Peter Sculthorpe’s <i>Nourlangie</i>.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US">But the concert – a repeat of one given in
Macclesfield Heritage Centre the night before – was important for another
reason: it was the final performance by the NCO with Nicholas Ward as leader
and artistic director. Nick has been in the leader’s chair since 1984, and I’ve
followed the fortunes of this remarkable ensemble, player-led both organizationally
and musically, throughout that time. His departure is a wrench.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US">Nick’s whimsical and sometimes far-ranging
spoken introductions to the music played in their concerts have long been a welcome
part of their special atmosphere: you know that this is real chamber music, played
by friends among friends. His inspiring musical contribution, literally leading
by example, has also been something to savour, making the sound of the NCO one
that can vary from subtlest intimacy to extraordinarily big effects. There was
one right at the start, as for this performance he had a strings strength of
17, augmented to 27 by musicians from Chetham’s School for the opening <i>Fantasia
on a Theme of Thomas Tallis</i>, by Vaughan Williams – one of three wonderful
examples of string writing on the programme. Designed for a cathedral acoustic,
the varied textures and sense of the past brought to new life were equally
entrancing in the bright, reflective Stoller Hall, and this was no routine performance
but full of passion.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US">Percy Grainger’s setting of the Londonderry
Air (<i>Irish Tune from County Derry</i>, as he called it), with a horn added to
the texture, was equally beguiling. Then we heard a special piece for the
occasion: the NCO’s own composer-player James Manson’s <i>Bânjöeš Yètí</i>, based
on a Moldovan folk tune but completely in the English pastoral tradition in
nature, with lovely roles for solo clarinet, horn and flute – and, of course, a
violin solo.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US">And so to the guitar pieces. The Arnold
concerto should be heard much more often: it’s got sweet and wistful tunes in each
of its three movements, of the sort he crafted so well, and the central one of
the three is both long and rather mysterious, partly like a score for a Hitchcock
thriller (as it’s been described), with portamento slides on the violins and the
menace of thudding bass notes – but also by turns energetic and finally haunting.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US">Craig Ogden’s mastery of his instrument
needs no endorsement from me: his playing is always crystal-clear, super-sensitive
and beautiful to listen to. And so it was again in Sculthorpe’s piece, which
brings on an array of percussion (thunder sheet, gong and cymbals included) to
present its ingeniously developed themes.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US">Finally it was strings alone again, for
Elgar’s <i>Introduction and Allegro</i>. For me it’s one of the most glorious
things ever created, and the sound of Nick Ward and the NCO playing it, <i>molto
sostenuto</i> and <i>molto espressivo</i> (as it says towards the end) is the
way I shall remember the enriching time that his leadership of this orchestra
has given us.<o:p></o:p></span></p>Robert Bealehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11086797323057150801noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3488552890974011635.post-2360702767139698992022-03-28T02:17:00.001-07:002022-03-28T02:17:48.941-07:00Review of Jean-Efflam Bavouzet with Gábor Takács-Nagy and Manchester Camerata at the Stoller Hall, Manchester<p> </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiFO6ogl3zcUAPB5fleqZeYV6ljlJtN47z0PZlHVnH_PomolgxbTqJUjQFWYxKgwRtPNPcmG58ui9N5r3YwUSCcvAksCsLwipAp1JNhdiqWykSwvC_u0OC4KBxf0BRoGRAMqVu4IOD3xDtY8aUzkgqjgE9pZfCTX1igNTC0vOsa8t4CrgyH9jV6qkHz/s600/G%C3%A1bor%20Tak%C3%A1cs-Nagy%20and%20Jean-Efflam%20Bavouzet%20(600x351).jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="351" data-original-width="600" height="187" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiFO6ogl3zcUAPB5fleqZeYV6ljlJtN47z0PZlHVnH_PomolgxbTqJUjQFWYxKgwRtPNPcmG58ui9N5r3YwUSCcvAksCsLwipAp1JNhdiqWykSwvC_u0OC4KBxf0BRoGRAMqVu4IOD3xDtY8aUzkgqjgE9pZfCTX1igNTC0vOsa8t4CrgyH9jV6qkHz/s320/G%C3%A1bor%20Tak%C3%A1cs-Nagy%20and%20Jean-Efflam%20Bavouzet%20(600x351).jpg" width="320" /></a></div><br /><p></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US">Mozart’s late piano concertos are among his
greatest and subtlest creations, and consequently both immensely rewarding and,
by the same token, very challenging.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US">The ongoing recording project by Manchester
Camerata under its music director, Gábor Takács-Nagy, with Jean-Efflam Bavouzet
as soloist, brought a fascinating concert at Chetham’s on Friday night. Word
had clearly got around: there was hardly a spare seat to be found.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US">Takács-Nagy and the orchestra, led by
Caroline Pether, got things off to a fizzing start with the <i>Marriage of
Figaro</i> overture – contemporary with the C minor concerto, K491 and no. 24, which
was to follow it. It was meant to be a fresh take on a familiar piece, said the
maestro, and so it proved. With 20 strings in total, the balance was bound to favour
clarity in the wind lines, and they emerged prominently, even from a big round
sound underpinned by modern timpani.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US">Big sound was a characteristic of Bavouzet’s
approach to the concerto, too, with plenty of pedal used on the Schimmel instrument
to underscore the music’s tragi-Romantic qualities. He knows how to be
self-effacing, too, and let the woodwind soloists have their fair share of the
limelight, but the piano has necessarily to claim much of it. He had a grand
and dramatic first movement cadenza to offer (by Hummel), which contributed to
the solemn and weighty effect. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US">The slow movement of K491 is a puzzle: such
a simple, seemingly childish, opening tune surely requires some decoration, but
how much? Bavouzet began very modestly, indeed making it seem a mere formality,
and though the ingenuity increased (and there was more in the finale), I wasn’t
quite convinced it was being used to heighten the emotional impact of the music
(as classical embellishment really should). The finale itself presents its
problems, and conductor and soloist must have decided it needed some drama to
finish, with a touch on the accelerator when the minor key signature returned.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US">The second half of the concert began with a
real curiosity: an overture for a play by Goethe (<i>Erwin und Elmire</i>)
written by Princess Anna Amalia von Sachsen-Weimar-Eisenach, a contemporary of
Mozart. Made-up name, I thought when I first saw it (we are near April Fools’
Day, after all), but apparently she did exist. Was it a bit cynical to dig up
her efforts under the ABO Trust’s programme to promote historical women
composers? The fact that her composition, a pleasant exercise in <i>Empfindsamkeit</i>,
survived probably only illustrates another inequality (of aristocrats versus
mere professional musicians) in her day. But at least – unlike Mozart – she
believed in the employment prospects of second flutes.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US">The other piano concerto was no. 25 in C
major, K503. It had all the virtues of the previous Bavouzet/Takács-Nagy major
key concerto interpretations – lightness of spirit, conversational interplay
between soloist and orchestra, well crafted contrasts and, in this case, a bit
of a tempo change in the first movement to energise proceedings. The big
cadenza (by the young American virtuoso Kenneth Broberg) was a real turn, involving
a near-quotation of <i>La Marseillaise</i> which encouraged many a chuckle
among its listeners.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US">In the lovely Andante slow movement Bavouzet
soon began to charm with some melodic embellishment, very tasteful again. The
finale was full of brilliance and romped home with a dizzying sprint of an
Allegretto.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>Robert Bealehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11086797323057150801noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3488552890974011635.post-28004622979800191432021-11-27T03:34:00.000-08:002021-11-27T03:34:04.472-08:00CD review<p><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 18px;">It's almost Christmas again, and here's a suggestion for something to get for a pianist who wants to venture into the unknown a bit ...</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;"><i><span lang="EN-US" style="color: black; font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 13.5pt;">Eric
Craven: Pieces for Pianists volume 1 (performed by Mary Dullea, Métier msv
28601).<o:p></o:p></span></i></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US" style="color: black; font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 13.5pt;">Eric Craven is a composer who knows his own mind but doesn’t
impose his own will. These 25 short pieces for piano, published in ‘progressive’
order like an old-fashioned collection of classics designed to be an aid to learning,
are notated in an unusual way.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US" style="color: black; font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 13.5pt;">There are no key signatures (though the score is entirely precise
about which notes are to be played and their relative time values, and there
are bar lines) and the performer can decide their own tempo, dynamics,
phrasing, articulation and pedalling. Craven calls it ‘</span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 13.5pt;">my Non-Prescriptive
Low-order format’.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 13.5pt;">Mary
Dullea is a distinguished musician and recording artist who appreciates the
freedom this gives in executing them and the element of improvisation and potential
continuing variation that’s essential to their realization in practice.
Recording them inevitably archives one particular way on one particular day,
and I was a bit surprised at first how little extra characterization she seeks
to impose on the music in these versions – but I guess she’s keen to let the
music ‘speak for itself’ even under Eric Craven’s conditions.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 13.5pt;">She
rightly divines echoes of a variety of other composers’ styles to be found in
them, and just occasionally you ask yourself why she took certain decisions
(such as keeping the pedal down for a bar or bars when a seemingly sequential or
parallel passage had different treatment) … but the point of the recordings,
which vary in duration from 1 minute 20 seconds to 4 minutes 49 seconds, is
really just to say ‘Here they are – make of them what you will’, and I can only
repeat that invitation.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US" style="color: black; font-family: "Arial",sans-serif; font-size: 13.5pt;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>Robert Bealehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11086797323057150801noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3488552890974011635.post-90237328314388105942021-11-05T03:32:00.001-07:002021-11-05T03:32:51.122-07:00Review of the Hallé concert with Marc-André Hamelin and Ryan Wigglesworth, at the Bridgewater Hall<p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhX7KNW-II2aU9SjkhdL01ZI6z5CRPfoIpYJBNygCNIgRVnOM55ZGSRKLc0TgEz18LYsLLFN6I-zyUGW7o7HMhzqRVPSr5ZBtkHEGBpnyYanH8h-sXWY1P7IprO5hJtRhDahNCusvrOSAo/s400/Marc-Andre+Hamelin+credit+Sim+Cannety-Clarke+%2528400x266%2529.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="266" data-original-width="400" height="273" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhX7KNW-II2aU9SjkhdL01ZI6z5CRPfoIpYJBNygCNIgRVnOM55ZGSRKLc0TgEz18LYsLLFN6I-zyUGW7o7HMhzqRVPSr5ZBtkHEGBpnyYanH8h-sXWY1P7IprO5hJtRhDahNCusvrOSAo/w410-h273/Marc-Andre+Hamelin+credit+Sim+Cannety-Clarke+%2528400x266%2529.jpg" width="410" /></a></div><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-small;"><div style="text-align: center;"><b>Marc-Andre Hamelin (credit Sim Cannety-Clarke) </b></div></span> <p></p><p>Ryan Wigglesworth is one of those musicians
who are practically perfect in every way. The greatest thing to come out of
Sheffield, musically, since Sterndale Bennett, he’s pianist, conductor,
academic and composer.</p><p>
</p><p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US">So with him as Artist in Association the Hallé
get lots of options. Last night we witnessed two of them: him as composer, and
as conductor in charge of his own work as well as that of others. His Piano Concerto
was premiered at the BBC Proms in 2019 with the brilliant Marc-André Hamelin as
soloist, and Hamelin was here in Manchester to play it again.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US">I can’t pretend that I’d expect it to
become a popular favourite (the whole idea of concerto as solo showpiece with
big tunes, originating in vocal aria forms and making great box office in the
19<sup>th</sup> and pre-Second World War 20<sup>th</sup> centuries, seems to
have rather run out of steam more recently), but it gave both pianist and
orchestra plenty to think about – and it rewards its audience with four varied
movements which rarely lose concision in concept or expression.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US">The third of four movements (where the
orchestra is reduced to strings and harp and the piano sings a Polish folk
song, with decorative imitation of itself, both higher and fainter) is in many
ways its centre of gravity – probably its longest section in terms of pure duration.
Before it there’s a brief, prelude-like movement with long-breathed string
phrases and then a Scherzo with almost helter-skelter perpetual motion from the
piano; after it there’s a finale more in traditional piano-v-orchestra-battle
style, which ends as the piano “wanders” (Wigglesworth’s own word) to a close
on a single, very low, note – not really destined to produce any roar of
applause.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US">Two of the concerto’s movements have the
same names as two of the pieces of incidental music Mendelssohn wrote for <i>A
Midsummer Night’s Dream</i> in 1843, which formed the opening of the concert
(done in the order they would come in the play): both a Scherzo and a Nocturne,
which were both played as the little jewels they are by the Hallé under Ryan
Wigglesworth’s baton (and led by Paul Barritt). He has a calm and precise stick
technique which on this occasion gave rise to delicate, lively, dynamically
flexible and precisely articulated playing, full of charming touches in part-playing
balance and first foot-tappingly joyful and then gloriously rich and romantic.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US">And finally there was Schumann’s Symphony
no. 2: romanticism of a kind that followed very soon afterwards but with bigger
architectural ambitions. British writers of Schumann’s own generation used the
word “Schumannism” as a one-word cypher for over-wrought expression and neuroticism
in music (as they considered it), but Ryan Wigglesworth knew how to handle its
idiom: the waxing and waning emotional intensity of the first movement became a
structure of slowly evolving optimism, despite shocks and surprises along the
way, and its unorthodox finale seemed to keep slowing to a halt, as if unsure
how to find the right frame of mind, before it suddenly got there.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US">But the third, <i>Adagio espressivo</i>,
movement is what makes this symphony worth hearing, really: it’s a song without
words to begin with and end, and there was, as in the Mendelssohn, lovely
playing from the Hallé’s gifted wind principals.<o:p></o:p></span></p><br /><p></p>Robert Bealehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11086797323057150801noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3488552890974011635.post-34435748410663977182021-10-31T09:26:00.005-07:002021-11-04T01:31:41.560-07:00Review of Manchester Camerata's livestreamed 'Mozart in Motion' concert at the Stoller Hall<p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhrxNV2gbxEisWWXILCwGU3eN_KOSyONflobz8EC88beZhVKkRNbLOJ3r1fScuEzbt_rVy9GL59dBRsp9Z0K3RdB0EqwuRQAYkYGw3c4j6BjQQo3ko_autBBPnzr6TlaJyk1ryKmG6zFh8/s1920/Dimitri+Sitkovetsky+and+Timothy+Ridout+play+Mozart+with+Manchester+Camerata.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="985" data-original-width="1920" height="190" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhrxNV2gbxEisWWXILCwGU3eN_KOSyONflobz8EC88beZhVKkRNbLOJ3r1fScuEzbt_rVy9GL59dBRsp9Z0K3RdB0EqwuRQAYkYGw3c4j6BjQQo3ko_autBBPnzr6TlaJyk1ryKmG6zFh8/w371-h190/Dimitri+Sitkovetsky+and+Timothy+Ridout+play+Mozart+with+Manchester+Camerata.jpg" width="371" /></a></div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-small;"><b>Alexander Sitkovetsky and Timothy Ridout play Mozart with Manchester Camerata</b></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><b style="font-family: arial; font-size: small;"><br /></b></div><div><br /></div>Mozart played by Manchester Camerata is
always a treat, and in addition to their recent public concert at the Stoller
Hall they did another one last
Thursday in the same hall – this time empty of people in the auditorium but
live-streamed as ‘Mozart in Motion’.<p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US">Alexander Sitkovetsky shared the direction
with Jean-Efflam Bavouzet, as each appeared as director-and-soloist</span> – and Sitkovetsky
directed the ‘Jupiter’ symphony, from the leader’s position (and jumping up out
of it), for good measure. Caroline Pether was alongside him as ever-alert
leader in the first two items: the <i>Sinfonia Concertante</i> for violin and
viola (with Timothy Ridout as viola soloist) and Piano Concerto no. 9 (the Jenamy,
or ‘Jeunehomme’ as it’s long been called).</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US">Nicely presented in the hands of Apple
& Biscuit Productions, with Camerata principal flute Amina Hussain filmed
in the hall stalls doing a brief introduction and later talking to Jean-Efflam Bavouzet
about the concerto, and Caroline Pether ushering in the symphony, it was an
extraordinarily good night of music-making.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US">The string <i>Sinfonia Concertante</i> (K364)
is one of those pieces of youthful Mozart that’s pure pleasure from start to
finish. Sitkovetsky and Ridout faced the orchestra from the front of the stage
(why turn away from them with no one in the audience seats?) and were a
superbly matched duo, neither stealing the limelight but both bringing lyrical
beauty and eloquence to their role. The Camerata players followed suit, with
suave and graceful playing that was also neatly pointed where necessary and had
real weight and attack in its crescendi – and could turn sombre on a sixpence,
too. The slow movement had a lovely lilt and long, smooth phrasing, and the finale
was great fun, perky and playful.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US">For the piano concerto (K272), Bavouzet,
too, could face the orchestra, and his performance had all the distinction I
remember from their concert performance of it together in September 2019. The
piece reached depths of expression in the slow movement that he’s explored so
well before, and the finale had all its pace and exuberance again. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The piano (it’s got a big tone anyway) was
pretty closely mic’d for Mozart – it may sound like that to performers in a ‘normal’
concert, but the on-screen experience should, I think, match that of an audience
sitting at a distance as we usually do.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US">The Symphony no. 41 (K551) is a winner is
any circumstances and was given exemplary treatment under Sitkovetsky, the wind
players as ever providing much of the distinction to the sound. That amazing
finale bubbled and bounced – it never fails to lift the spirits.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>Robert Bealehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11086797323057150801noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3488552890974011635.post-36562331747736606422021-09-20T11:48:00.001-07:002021-09-20T11:48:28.939-07:00Review of Maestro Glorioso, by John Holden <p> </p><p class="MsoNormal"><i><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif;">Maestro
Glorioso: Ten Essays in Celebration of Sir John Barbirolli, by John Holden (Kennington,
the Barbirolli Society, 2021). Price £20.<o:p></o:p></span></i></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif;"><o:p> </o:p></span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">It’s
amazing how the magic of John Barbirolli’s conducting still entrances, 50 years
after his death.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif;">Partly
that’s because of the recordings he made in the later years of his life,
captured as they were with the technical quality to be completely rewarding in
today’s digital age. But for those of us who saw him in person, in action,
there’s more than that, something completely mesmeric about his personality and
platform manner that never leaves the memory.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif;">Who
can forget his entrances, hand on breast in ‘Little Corporal’ style (and he
would never even walk on to a platform unless there was complete silence in the
auditorium), his royal-style waves, his conducting of the National Anthem
facing the hall as if daring all present to join in – and of course the
electric charge in his every movement once the music proper began?<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif;">He
was a ‘showman’, people said. Yes, but a showman in the service of great music:
everything arose from his earnest, sincere dedication to his craft. And he was a
complete professional: performances that often seemed full of spontaneity were
prepared in painstaking detail and rehearsed so lovingly that the music <i>felt</i>
spontaneous, and the ‘affection’ and even ‘indulgence’ that critics described
in his readings were always finely calculated and intentional. There was a
feeling about so many pieces that when you heard the way Barbirolli did them,
there could really be none better.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif;">That’s
an aspect of what Raymond Holden has described in these anniversary essays,
published recently by the Barbirolli Society. He brings the insights
of a practising conductor and the thoroughness of a scholar. Some of his
chapters (which are based on his lectures, broadcasts and articles over the
years) comprise details of Barbirolli’s life and career that are relatively
well known and available in other sources – though always cogently assembled.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif;">But
the most interesting chapters, to me, are those where he analyses the marked performing
scores that JB used, now available to researchers in the British Library, and
the outcomes of his preparation as we hear them in some of his greatest recorded
performances – in Mahler’s ‘Resurrection’ symphony, Bruckner’s eighth and Elgar’s
<i>In the South</i> in particular. You can see his musical mind at work – not just
in his ever-meticulous bowing of the strings’ parts (which he never tired of
and which undoubtedly had much to do with the famous ‘Barbirolli sound’),
but also in his tempo calculations and dynamic control. </span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif;">His approach to great
musical structures was one common to the great 19<span style="font-size: 13.3333px;">th</span> century maestros
from Richard Wagner onwards and also the early 20<span style="font-size: 13.3333px;">th</span> century
conductors from whom JB learnt directly – ‘architectonic’ is a word Raymond Holden
uses frequently to describe it – and saw tempo change as essential to building
shape, and highlighting each work or movement’s supreme climax (look at Mahler’s
scores to see how he intended these to be patent in performance).<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif;">The reference
notes to these essays are magisterial and many-faceted: though one little
oversight seems to have crept in, as he describes Barbirolli’s famous 1964 recording
with the Halle of Elgar’s <i>The Dream of Gerontius</i> as a ‘studio recording’,
though I think there are those who still remember it being made, at least
mainly, in the Free Trade Hall.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Arial",sans-serif;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>Robert Bealehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11086797323057150801noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3488552890974011635.post-65260542850697462262021-07-31T01:27:00.012-07:002021-07-31T01:42:01.665-07:00Review of the Hallé's filmed concert at the Bridgewater Hall, released 29th July 2021<p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj6iST0eV_mGZBN5DwxJpEjBvfSTT-YQjYfK-ZoSJe3IXWCWDXZsmb60ZrdUKvkfHxYeArMaTfF4wLcOerxrhV17o5MZtHqjoU-rgOFbCrZNDPW2FUKI_m-BvCWpMM7s21I7F7H0ucj5zI/s2000/halle_summer_concert_firebird_jul2021_credit_the_halle.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1333" data-original-width="2000" height="365" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj6iST0eV_mGZBN5DwxJpEjBvfSTT-YQjYfK-ZoSJe3IXWCWDXZsmb60ZrdUKvkfHxYeArMaTfF4wLcOerxrhV17o5MZtHqjoU-rgOFbCrZNDPW2FUKI_m-BvCWpMM7s21I7F7H0ucj5zI/w549-h365/halle_summer_concert_firebird_jul2021_credit_the_halle.jpg" width="549" /></a></div><div style="text-align: center;"><b style="font-family: arial; font-size: small;">Sir Mark Elder conducts the Hallé in <i>The Firebird</i> suite </b><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: small;">c.The Hallé</span></div><p></p><p>The Hallé ‘Summer Season’ of live music in
Manchester has included streamed film versions of three of the concerts, and
the final one, which I had to miss seeing in person, is now available. Sir Mark
Elder conducts and the programme is all Russian music: Rimsky-Korsakov,
Rachmaninov and Stravinsky.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US">A ‘Russian night’ was often a popular
formula in the orchestra’s summer Proms a decade or so ago, but this was no set
of Tchaikovsky and others’ greatest hits: though Stravinsky’s <i>The Firebird</i>
suite would be a draw any time, the other two pieces are comparative rarities
and it was a great idea to include them.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US">As through the entirely filmed ‘Winter
Season’, the production standards of this document of the orchestra’s playing
are extremely high. The virtuosity of the camera operation and mixing and the
splendour of the recorded sound are almost the equal of the musicians’ playing
in itself. And again there are bits of chat between items, from Sir Mark and a
number of orchestra members and staff, which are fascinating to hear and bring
light to the whole experience. There’s also something unexpected, both at the
beginning and the end: the former a rather superfluous succession of thank you
statements from and about Siemens for their sponsorship (not that those are
undeserved, but they dampen the atmosphere a bit at the start) – the latter I’ll
tell you about later.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US">Rimsky-Korsakov’s suite from his opera <i>The
Tale of Tsar Saltan</i> proved a rich mine of sonic jewels and musical
storytelling. Its opening depiction of the Tsar setting out on a journey leapt
into life with precise and spritely jollifications, and the following seascape
(not completely unlike the one in <i>Scheherazade</i>) had plenty of subtlety
in Sir Mark’s reading – the rolling billows had to be kind enough for a
princess and baby to survive floating on them in a barrel, according to the
story. The music worked up a head of steam, however, for the finale’s picture
of golden-helmeted knights and their galloping steeds, in which the orchestra, led
by Kanako Ito and spread out on the extended stage as so often before in their
lockdown era, sounded magnificent.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US">Rachmaninov’s <i>The Rock</i> is an early
work and interesting if only for the signs of the genius to come, but it was
played with such care and love that the beginnings of his extraordinary gift
for uncurling, everlasting melodies proved a wonderful vehicle for the woodwind
players and for heartstring-tugging tone from the violins. And the sweet and
thrilling sounds continued in Stravinsky’s <i>The Firebird</i> suite (1945
version), the Final Hymn, dramatically punched out in its emphatic ending, no
less than the thunderous Infernal Dance.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US">One of the memorable things about these
filmed performances (and I seemed to notice it more in this than most others)
is the chance to see the conductor as the orchestra see him … and indeed in
close-up, too. It’s an experience in itself, and gives you an insight into the
art of the musician who never makes a sound but enables all the others to do so
as one.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US">And the unexpected final bit? Rimsky-Korsakov
wrote <i>The Flight of the Bumble Bee</i> for <i>The Tale of Tsar Saltan</i>,
though it’s not in the suite. It comes as a bonus (or an encore if you like to
think of it so) at the end of the film.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US"><i>The recording of the concert is available until
29 October: link thehalle.vhx.tv/products/</i><o:p></o:p></span></p>Robert Bealehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11086797323057150801noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3488552890974011635.post-3166111551366520462021-07-16T03:11:00.003-07:002021-07-16T03:11:16.406-07:00Review of The Barber of Seville at Clonter Opera<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgs-ps3vR9rCKp3R1dgAjW1U-2Y4cbx_Tg6MGeoIIZm4xl6v9cwTE6nlo2x-ttDJVyybfH7J9KnLbyVFXbmvt5leh6VjAa6FEk1LX99oeSf_NgYGLaco9z_Jgfr-KSEG398fahD-jYW3Wo/s1200/Elsa+Roux+Chamoux+as+Rosina+in+Clonter+Opera%2527s+production+of+The+Barber+of+Seville.+credit+Edward+Robinson++%25281200x865%2529.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="865" data-original-width="1200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgs-ps3vR9rCKp3R1dgAjW1U-2Y4cbx_Tg6MGeoIIZm4xl6v9cwTE6nlo2x-ttDJVyybfH7J9KnLbyVFXbmvt5leh6VjAa6FEk1LX99oeSf_NgYGLaco9z_Jgfr-KSEG398fahD-jYW3Wo/s320/Elsa+Roux+Chamoux+as+Rosina+in+Clonter+Opera%2527s+production+of+The+Barber+of+Seville.+credit+Edward+Robinson++%25281200x865%2529.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-small;"><div style="text-align: center;"><b>Elsa Roux Chamoux as Rosina in </b></div><div style="text-align: center;"><b>Clonter Opera's production of </b><b>The Barber </b></div><div style="text-align: center;"><b>of Seville. Credit Edward Robinson </b></div></span><p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US">The “Glyndebourne of the North” really came
up trumps on Thursday evening, with the smell of haymaking in the air (Clonter
Opera’s base is surrounded by farmland) and glorious sunshine to revel in.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US">I don’t remember choosing to have a picnic
outside there before (there’s always space inside for dining, too), but it was
the natural choice as well as the advisable one in these Covid times. Inside,
the seating was well spaced on alternate rows, the only slight worry being that
here, as in some other classical venues I’ve noticed, the clientele includes
some geriatrics who don’t seem to realise that wearing a face covering means
you actually cover your face, not just dangle it from your chin.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">The production of <i>Il Barbiere di Siviglia</i>
(in Italian, with English sur-title translation) was lively and entertaining.
Director Greg Eldridge (who has had a special post created for him at Covent
Garden) must be responsible for that, but the youthful cast were also very much
to be credited, working hard and singing with distinction.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Of them, the standout was Henry Neill, as Figaro.
He sang the same-named role in Mozart’s <i>The Marriage of Figaro</i> (which,
based like this one on Beaumarchais, continues the story begun by <i>The Barber</i>)
for Clonter in 2017, making a big impression, and has gone on to an
international career. The other low-voiced roles – Dr Bartolo (Adam Maxey) and
Don Basilio (Benjamin Schilperoort) – were also powerfully sung and comically
adroit.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Rosina, the heroine, was a very feisty
Latin lady in Elsa Roux Chamoux’ interpretation (exactly as she should be) and
showed a lovely mezzo tone, and Samuel Kibble, taking the taxing role of Count
Almaviva with wit and charm, is a very promising tenor. George Reynolds,
filling up the cast as variously Fiorello, police officer and notary, is
another excellent baritone, and Faryl Smith – who really only gets her solo
chance in one aria near the end – proved a great dumb-show actress, a fine ensemble
singer and estimable solo soprano. Philip Sunderland conducted the small
Clonter Sinfonia in great style and kept everything well controlled.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">And the set, designed by Bettina John, was
something special for Clonter: a revolve! They don’t have much a stage to put
one on, and it has to be hand-operated like a children’s playground roundabout,
but it gave the opportunity for four little interiors to be represented, with
doors between some of them, and was cleverly exploited at every turn.</p>Robert Bealehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11086797323057150801noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3488552890974011635.post-25016077532360963412021-07-14T02:28:00.005-07:002021-07-14T02:28:33.827-07:00Review of Acis and Galatea by the Early Opera Group at Buxton International Festival<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiYGwGWXPy6zBoeedgt7Efm41JDLxnJzXudfTXpAnS94yxBrb01YmWPAJ-h5pw6pBaSgFVZxaZSC2stiVqNFJHE5MoOAXXXwdSqP1WhDCx6H9hi2HDD0KP_43eXQibQqHJokttN8vTzqlk/s800/Samuel+Boden+as+Acis+and+Anna+Dennis+as+Galatea+in+Acis+%2526+Galatea%252C+BIF+Credit_+Genevieve+Girling+%2528800x544%2529.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="544" data-original-width="800" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiYGwGWXPy6zBoeedgt7Efm41JDLxnJzXudfTXpAnS94yxBrb01YmWPAJ-h5pw6pBaSgFVZxaZSC2stiVqNFJHE5MoOAXXXwdSqP1WhDCx6H9hi2HDD0KP_43eXQibQqHJokttN8vTzqlk/s320/Samuel+Boden+as+Acis+and+Anna+Dennis+as+Galatea+in+Acis+%2526+Galatea%252C+BIF+Credit_+Genevieve+Girling+%2528800x544%2529.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-small;"><div style="text-align: center;"><b>Samuel Boden as Acis and Anna Dennis as Galatea </b></div><div style="text-align: center;"><b>in the Early Opera Company's Acis & Galatea </b><b>at </b></div><div style="text-align: center;"><b>Buxton International Festival. Credit Genevieve Girling</b></div></span><p>Handel’s “serenata” for five singers and
small orchestra is a lovely piece of concisely varied musical invention, the
product of the necessities of a particular time and place but richly crafted
and beautiful to listen to.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US">It can be done with very little production
resources beyond imaginative vocalists (there was a great little version from
the St Asaph Festival years ago which popped up at Manchester Cathedral and
featured live doves for the “pretty warbling choir” and a bovver-booted Christopher
Purves as Polyphemus in one of his first professional roles after being part of
Harvey and the Wallbangers).<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US">It's based on a snippet of Ovid, as versified
by John Gay of Beggars’ Opera fame (and probably other authors): a pastoral
myth about a nymph and a shepherd whose amours are disturbed by the cyclops,
resulting in death of said shepherd (Acis), and comforting of said nymph
(Galatea) in the thought that his spirit lives on in a bubbling stream.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US">That’s it, really. So how do you turn it
into an opera fit for a festival such as Buxton’s? The Early Opera Company’s production
directed by Martin Constantine goes for the sensual delights of a “Human
Sciences International Symposium 1962” as the reconceived setting. Academic gatherings
can have their romantic side – Open University residential weekends used to be
known for it, I’m told – but the concept does seem to stretch the original
material a bit.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US">Acis, Galatea, Polyphemus and the two
friends who offer them advice (the five combine for choral numbers) are
represented by the convenor and contributors of the symposium, and their investigation
of the “worldly and unworldly love” of Handel’s piece develops into fiercely
competitive lustfulness on the part of the Polyphemus character, and of course
a physical attack on “Acis”, whom “Galatea” really fancies much more.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US">It all starts calmly enough, as these
things do, but by the time the two innocents are singing “Happy, happy we” they’re
getting quite frisky, and their nemesis makes his first move by squelching
Galatea’s pet caged songbird. The monster Polypheme’s “trusty pine” (club) is
his brolly here, but he finds a real rock to hit his rival with, as in the
original scenario.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US">There are some nice touches, such as the
way “Polyphemus” tries a spot of meditation as a way of dealing with his anger
(unsuccessfully), but I didn’t get why the built environment gave way to a surprise
field of corn for the consolatory ending.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US">Musically, though, the performance under
conductor Christian Curnyn was practically perfect in every way, and Anna Dennis,
Samuel Boden, Jorge Navarro Colorado, Edward Grint and David de Winter all sang
with great distinction.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US">Further performances are on 18 and 20 July.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>Robert Bealehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11086797323057150801noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3488552890974011635.post-76904247996042796702021-07-14T02:22:00.003-07:002021-07-14T02:24:16.181-07:00Review of Pauline Viardot's Cendrillon at Buxton International Festival<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhAWnIRRwwGoCasYyMrb7452sofIJnENgi8eqOaJoFzy4-3jWSFOZBTUTHbq5wR1TiSj7OeIsMa-YOzMYsTwH0l18hwIDUOjyNPZg8WxyfG9JZVjdM4UK3cjQ2skIcphctWk1l6llQZUNs/s800/Nikki+Martin+as+Cendrillon+in+Cendrillon+BIF+Credit_+Genevieve+Girling+%2528800x571%2529.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="571" data-original-width="800" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhAWnIRRwwGoCasYyMrb7452sofIJnENgi8eqOaJoFzy4-3jWSFOZBTUTHbq5wR1TiSj7OeIsMa-YOzMYsTwH0l18hwIDUOjyNPZg8WxyfG9JZVjdM4UK3cjQ2skIcphctWk1l6llQZUNs/s320/Nikki+Martin+as+Cendrillon+in+Cendrillon+BIF+Credit_+Genevieve+Girling+%2528800x571%2529.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-small;"><div style="text-align: center;"><b>Nikki Martin as Cendrillon at Buxton International </b></div><div style="text-align: center;"><b>Festival. Credit Genevieve Girling</b></div></span>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US">Pauline Viardot’s reputation in her day was
as a performer: one of the great mezzos of the 19<sup>th</sup> century, she was
the sister of Maria Malibran, whose untimely death after a Manchester Musical Festival
vocal sing-off in 1836 is sometimes, rather ill-adroitly, clung to as a
distinction in the city’s cultural history. She also lived in a cheerful ménage-à-trois
with her husband and the novelist Turgenev.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US">Atta-girl! She spent much of her time in
the company of the aristocratic and cultured elite, as did most serious
artists, and of course she taught private pupils (ditto, ditto).<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US">Her compositional gifts, though
considerable as befitted someone good enough to take lessons from Liszt, seem
to have been practised mainly in creating entertainment for her own salon and giving
her pupils performance opportunities along the way.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US">Hence her piano-accompanied comic opera (a
piece with spoken dialogue), <i>Cendrillon</i>, written in the early years of
the 20<sup>th</sup> century when she was in her eighties. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US">It’s not Offenbach or Gilbert and Sullivan,
but it’s not very far away. There’s a succession of charming and pleasant ditties,
with some duets and ensembles of which the most notable is a sextet that ends
Act One. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US">The “Young Artists” of Buxton International
Festival – mainly studying in Manchester’s halls of musical academe – have brought
her adaptation of the Cinderella story back to life, under the direction of
festival head of music Iwan Davies, who accompanies. Director is Laura
Attridge, who has provided adapted dialogue in English though the musical
numbers are sung in the original French (side-titles translate), with design by
Anna Orton, costume design by Michelle Bristow and lighting by Rachel E Cleary.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US">The story is a mild-mannered version of the
familiar European Cinderella, as told by Perrault and set to music by bigger
names than Viardot. So the sisters are not so much ugly as vain, and not even
very nasty, and Prince Charming appearing disguised, mainly as his own
Chamberlain (Buttons, as we now know him) is simply assumed from the start. Prince
Charming is a woman’s “trouser” role, and the main event at the ball is when
the girls are each invited to sing (Viardot leaves it to the performers to
select their own contributions here, and Iwan Davies has the sisters sing the
Barcarolle from <i>The Tales of Hoffmann</i>, while Cinderella gives us a slice
of Massenet) – though we learn later that dancing came into it, too.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US">But Cinders’ father really is a Baron Hard-Up,
and Viardot’s text makes much of the fact that he’s not much of a real baron
because he once made his money as a grocer – in <i>trade</i>, my dear!<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US">It’s all frothy and sentimental stuff, and,
on the occasion I saw it, was very well sung by Pasquale Orchard (Le Fée),
Nikki Martin (Cendrillon), Camilla Seale (Prince Charming), Olivia Carrell and
Flora Macdonald (the sisters), Ross Cumming (the Baron), and Andrew Henley (the
Chamberlain).<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US">Further performances are on 16 and 24 July.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>Robert Bealehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11086797323057150801noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3488552890974011635.post-2296572986004275072021-07-14T02:17:00.004-07:002021-07-14T02:17:24.376-07:00Review of Dido's Ghost at Buxton International Festival <div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi_xa4kKhajEUx_Rf-W1aRV74le9UkbtNZ2VkLn-c0aQ-wX0iTiiR0EP4qG7BWyqsQDjiSDL_Syo9-L3lub6wYYPKgQem-VvLOie0ytolq1tQmRDr6lJUCHuUoWwUcJ2zhUE6mjkOLMhfo/s1200/Isabelle+Peters+as+Dido+and+Anna+in+Dido%2527s+Ghost+at+Buxton+International+Festival.+Credit+Genevieve+Girling+%25281200x801%2529.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="801" data-original-width="1200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi_xa4kKhajEUx_Rf-W1aRV74le9UkbtNZ2VkLn-c0aQ-wX0iTiiR0EP4qG7BWyqsQDjiSDL_Syo9-L3lub6wYYPKgQem-VvLOie0ytolq1tQmRDr6lJUCHuUoWwUcJ2zhUE6mjkOLMhfo/s320/Isabelle+Peters+as+Dido+and+Anna+in+Dido%2527s+Ghost+at+Buxton+International+Festival.+Credit+Genevieve+Girling+%25281200x801%2529.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><span style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-small;"><div style="text-align: center;"><b>Isabelle Peters as Anna in Dido's Ghost </b></div><div style="text-align: center;"><b>at Buxton International Festival, </b><b>Buxton </b></div><div style="text-align: center;"><b>Opera House. Credit Genevieve Girling</b></div></span><p>Purcell’s <i>Dido And Aeneas</i> (book and
lyrics by Nahum Tate, otherwise mainly known for penning “While Shepherds
watched”) has long been recognized as a masterpiece on the cusp of the change from
masques to real opera in English.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">But it’s quite short, part of the original
music is lost, and no one quite knows how it was presented in its day, apart from
a version at an all-girls boarding school. It does contain one utterly moving
song: Dido’s Lament, as it’s often known, beginning “When I am laid in earth …”</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">How can we bring it on in a version for
today, except by quite a lot of imaginative reconstruction and restoration,
possibly inserting bits of other music by Purcell or even his contemporaries –
as Jonathan Miller did in the production seen at Buxton Festival in 2008 and
(rightly) welcomed internationally?</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Errollyn Wallen has come at it quite
differently. With text by Wesley Stace (aka John Wesley Harding), she’s
composed her own chamber opera, set some time after the Tate-Purcell snippet
from Ovid’s <i>Fasti</i>, and taking up aspects of the classic original to ask
What Happened Next?</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Into that she dovetails the original <i>Dido
and Aeneas</i>, almost complete, as a “masque” staged at court by Lavinia, the
second Mrs Aeneas, to recall the broken love affair that he, now king of the New
Troy in Italy, can never forget (and the curse that goes with it). Dido’s lookalike
sister, Anna, has turned up on his shores, and she becomes Dido, while Aeneas
acts himself. Of course nothing can possibly go wrong.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">The piece was co-commissioned by BIF, premiered
at the Barbican last month and is on its way to the Edinburgh Festival, among
other places. It’s performed by the Dunedin Consort, the superb Scottish specialists
in baroque music, directed by John Butt – so you get the Purcell score
performed with scholarly authority and typical liveliness, but Errollyn Wallen’s
instrumentation adds modern percussion including a xylophone, and a prominent
role for bass guitar. It’s an intriguing update of the textures of baroque
music, where the balance of free-flowing melody and independent bass line is
the key to much beauty (and never more so than in the original Dido’s Lament).</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">The composer intertwines her own music with
Purcell’s and uses references to it, too: her witches’ dance has a short,
pounding bass guitar riff as Anna is woken from Lavinia’s spell. Aeneas sees
Anna (or is it Dido?) and the accompaniment starts the Lament, but he sings it
and she adds a counter-melody. The Lament finally emerges in full from Aeneas’s
lips as he prepares to end it all, and the chorus sing Purcell’s finale (with a
little postlude from Wallen).</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">On the first night at Buxton, Isabelle
Peters stepped up from the chorus to take the role of Anna/Dido, in place of
the unwell Idunnu Münch. Peters, a WNO associate artist, was an outstanding Dorabella
in a Royal Northern College of Music production of <i>Cosí fan Tutte</i> in 2016
and for those in Manchester had already made an impression as Rapunzel in the
Royal Exchange Theatre’s <i>Into The Woods</i> shortly before. She is a gifted
actress as well as an excellent singer, and unhesitatingly carried all the
dimensions of the part on this occasion. Jessica Gillingwater brought incisive
vocal strength and presence to the role of Lavinia, and Nardus Williams found an
individual characterization of charm to Belinda, along with the richness of timbre
that’s already charmed opera and concert audiences widely. Add to those the two
witches’ performances from Lucy Goddard and Judy Brown of the Dunedin Consort
ranks, and you have an exceptionally strong female line-up for John Butt to
direct. Matthew Brooks’ Aeneas likewise sang strongly and with emotional awareness
throughout, and Timothy Dickinson (Elymas) and Dunedin’s David Lee (Ascanius)
were no less committed.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>Robert Bealehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11086797323057150801noreply@blogger.com0