Cardiff Singer of the World 2009

 Greetings from Wales, where I am ensconced with the BBC putting several thousand subtitles on the broadcast items for the CARDIFF SINGER OF THE WORLD Competition, 2009, coming from St David’s Hall in Cardiff.  Very exciting contest, some terrific singing and wonderful music.  A great privilege to be part of it.  

For me, the fruits of several weeks’ hard work (slotted in between all the other things I have been doing lately!) commissioning and preparing the subtitle translations and editing the titles. 

Halfway through the week at the moment, Round 4 (out of 5) this evening… The Rosenblatt Song Prize Final (a separate competition) is on Friday, the main Final on Sunday.  Day-to-day coverage on BBC4, BBC Wales and Radio 3;  Sunday’s Final is broadcast on BBC2 at 5.30 – don’t miss it!

Martinů’s Juliette, BBC SO/Belohlávek

To the Barbican on Friday 27 March for a concert performance of Martinů’s opera Julietta, or rather ‘Juliette’, as it was given in Martinů’s own French (re-) translation – a slightly odd decision given that the conductor and some of the cast were Czech. Still, the effect of the French vocal declamation was to make the music more than usually reminiscent of Debussy’s Pelléas et Mélisande. Comprehension was ensured thanks to my friend Paula Kennedy’s scrupulous surtitles – which she would have been just as happy to do from Czech!

Kenneth Richardson provided a slick and effective ‘semi-staging’; singers basically wore evening dress and sang from scores, but the action was spiced up with minimal costumes and props, carefully thought out entrances and exits, and subtle lighting. American tenor William Burden was the tireless protagonist, the hapless Michel, who finds himself adrift in a land where no one can remember anything.  Magdalena Kožená was the appropriately distant and mysterious Julietta, looking lovely and vaguely 1930s in a floral frock.

Great character roles from a large cast including Jean Rigby and Rosalind Plowright, Roderick Williams and (outstanding) Andreas Jäggi.

Jiří Bělohlávek conducted the BBC SO in coruscating form – amazing colours and atmosphere. What an extraordinary score! I remember it from ENO in the 1970s (and from my Supraphon LPs), and its hypnotic power remains undimmed. It struck me as an amazing achievement to have written a full-length opera which is uniquely in his own idiom and no one else’s: apart from the echoes of Pelléas and the fact that the spooky opening bars are reminiscent of Stravinsky’s Les noces, one almost never felt ‘Oh yes, that bit’s Puccini, or Verdi, or Richard Strauss…’ as one does with all too many 20th century operas (including Britten!).

Martinů wrote the opera in 1936-7, to a play by his friend the French surrealist Georges Neveux. Martinů is probably an acquired taste, but I love his music. It’s the 50th anniversary of his death, so we are fortunate in getting more of it this year than we usually do.

Great to see a packed hall and so many luminaries in the audience – including, I was happy to see, Chris Hogwood, hotfoot from conducting the dress rehearsal of Dido and Aeneas + Acis and Galatea at the Royal Opera House only a few hours earlier (yes it was a long day).  I reminded Chris that it was he who introduced me to Martinů all those years ago (39 actually) at Cambridge Tech…

There’s a nice review here: http://thoroughlygood.wordpress.com/2009/03/28/juliette-bbcso-belohlavek-martinu/

picture: front cloth from a Czech production of the opera

Salomon Orchestra, 3 March 2009

London has dozens of amateur orchestras, each proclaiming itself ‘the finest amateur orchestra in the capital’.  Well, the Salomon Orchestra really is the finest non-professional orchestra in London.  Founded in 1963, it contains some of the best players on the circuit.  I grew up with these guys (and girls) and a surprisingly large number of them seem to have been in the orchestra for as long as I can remember!  (– which makes one worry where the next generation of really good amateur players is coming from…)

Their concerts are always a treat, and Tuesday’s was something special.  It was interesting to see how many distinguished amateur orchestral players were in the St John’s audience:  many were current or ex-members of Salomon who weren’t actually playing in this concert, but others had come to admire – a sign of the esteem in which this orchestra is held.

Unlike most other amateur bands, Salomon doesn’t rehearse on a weekly basis, but has a series of concentrated rehearsals just before each concert.  This really pays off.  Nor does it have a regular conductor;  this pays off too.  Guest conductor Dominic Wheeler electrified the band into disciplined playing of tremendous precision, energy and musicianship.

The concert opened with Benjamin Britten’s Fanfare for St Edmundsbury – three solo trumpets at corners of the gallery, playing three different fanfares in different keys, separately and then together.  As so often with Britten, a simple trick, but very effective (you think ‘I wish I’d thought of that!’).

Then Britten’s unjustly neglected Violin Concerto from 1939, an ambitious and accomplished work from a 26-year-old composer with a firm grasp of contemporary musical developments across Europe (and the world:  the score was completed in Canada and the USA).  In its breadth and easy authority it reminds me of Bartok’s 3rd Piano Concerto, although there are astonishing echoes (or pre-echoes) of Shostakovich and Prokofiev.

Soloist was the assured and hugely talented Sara Trickey, who conveyed the work’s searing intensity with power and brilliance.  If the last movement seemed to outstay its welcome, that might have been my fault rather than Britten’s.

After the interval, Dvořák’s unfamiliar Othello Overture – alas, unfamiliar to the orchestra too, it seemed:  I guess the rehearsal time had been mostly taken up with the other works on the programme.  But despite uncharacteristically ragged ensemble and some wrong entries, the performance was powerful and compelling, and Dvořák’s sonorities were beautifully conveyed (who else would score a chord for brass with just a cor anglais added?).

Finally, the piece I had come for:  Martinů’s Symphony No. 6

London Phoenix Orchestra — A Little Light Music

Yes, we’re here again! Lev Parikian conducts the London Phoenix Orchestra in a scintillating programme of American and Russian light music, with overtures to two great shows – Gershwin’s Girl Crazy and Bernstein’s Candide – and Gershwin’s brilliant tone picture, An American in Paris.   And there are three nice little pieces by Leroy Anderson (whose centenary was last year), and the so-called ‘Jazz Suite No. 2′ by Shostakovich, which isn’t jazz at all but is, er, a lot of fun (especially for the saxophonists).  Oh, and Shostakovich’s ‘Tahiti Trot’, better know to you and me as ‘Tea for Two’.

(And I get to play the contra!  That was a nice surprise.)

It’s on Tuesday 24 February (which happens to be my birthday) at Cadogan Hall. 

BE THERE!!

I’m still here

Very quick update from the office…

Apologies for news blackout – lost email and internet connection for most of the past month, not fixed yet.

Great Park Lane Group concert at Purcell Room on 9 January – my niece (bassoonist) Rosie’s major London debut, playing John Casken, Anthony Payne, and new pieces by Graham Sheen and Graham Waterhouse. Also a great string quartet (the Solstice Quartet – one to watch:  playing Ligeti, Swayne, Kurtag and Joe Cutler).

Then a lovely weekend away in France – cold and frosty but bright.  Rouen, Dieppe, Varengeville – great sights, super food.

Then (Diana and me both) suddenly smitten by return of gastric flu bug which knocked us out for a few days (and mysteriously gave me a black eye).

Normal service will resume as soon as Virgin.net can get me back up and running at home.  Meanwhile we start rehearsing Die Tote Stadt at the Opera House net week – wow!

Belated Merry Christmas card!

Unfortunately I have been without internet and email over Christmas, so this is rather late, but here is my card for this year, with all good wishes for a belated Christmas and a HAPPY NEW YEAR!

I’ll also post an audio link so you can hear a computerised version of it — though the robot Santas can only sing ‘Ha ha ha’ so it sounds unintenionally somewhat sarcastic.

 

 

Click on this link to hear it:  xmasho08kontaktmp31

Richard Van Allan CBE (1935-2008)

Very sad to hear the news of the passing of Richard Van Allan.

 

A lovely man, witty, charming, generous, modest and totally committed to his art.

 

Who can forget the gallery of characters he played – his sparky Schaunard in La Bohème;  sinister black-voiced Sparafucile in Rigoletto;  oily Pooh-Bah in the Mikado;  hilarious Leporello to Tom Allen’s Don Giovanni;  the Water Sprite in Rusalka, infinitely sad;  wise and cynical Don Alfonso in Così fan tutte;  Claggart in Britten’s Billy Budd, the personification of evil yet somehow vulnerable;  the terrifying Grand Inquisitor in Verdi’s Don Carlos… and so many more.

 

To every role he brought his intelligence, profound musicianship, theatrical instincts, his unmistakable bass voice, and the force of his personality.

 

In later years as head of the National Opera Studio he was able to pass on his immense wisdom and experience.  He was unfailingly kind and generous to all who worked with him or learned from him.

 

He will be much missed.

 

Goodbye, Richard, and thanks for everything.

 

 

photo (c) Zoe Dominic

Phoenix Orchestra — again

Yes, the London Phoenix Orchestra has another concert next week.  It’s a ‘rush hour’ concert at St Andrew’s, Holborn, in the city of London, at 6.30 pm on Tuesday 2 December.  Nice short programme, so we’ll all be in the pub by 7.30 (you included, if you come!).

Catherine Lindley leads the orchestra, Lev Parikian conducts.  Ravel’s stately but slightly weird Menuet Antique is followed by the amazing Ellie Lovegrove in the Haydn Trumpet Concerto, then we finish with an ambitious choice — Messiaen’s L’Ascension.  Extraordinary organ-like textures and dazzling colours.

Don’t miss it!

Erica Eloff at the Wigmore Hall

 

The South African soprano Erica Eloff first appeared on my radar as Fiordiligi in Così fan tutte at Garsington Opera last summer:  tall, poised, magnetic;  a fabulous voice, big, smooth and even;  a commanding presence, and acting which covered the range from comedy to tragedy, always with intensity and controlled emotion.  (And one of her teachers – as with so many rising sopranos, especially at Garsington – was my old chum Lillian Watson.)

So when I had the chance to hear Erica in a Kirckman Concert Society recital at the Wigmore Hall on Sunday, I knew I was in for a treat.

With the young and very impressive James Baillieu – also from South Africa – as her accompanist, she gave us a varied programme in a wide variety of languages, all sung with perfect diction and idiomatic pronunciation.

She began with some Schubert rarities in Italian, Vier Canzonen (D688), and continued in French with Fauré’s Poème d’un jour (three songs), Après un rêve and Fleur jetée, beautifully delivered and very touching.

So far she seemed accomplished if somewhat restrained, perhaps a little nervous (and not flattered by the awful overhead lighting;  Wigmore, can’t you manage something better than this?).  But with her next cycle of songs she was transformed:  Alleenstryd (Outcast:  the Lone Struggle) is a set of six enormously powerful songs in Afrikaans with a strong political message, composed  by Hendrik Hofmeyr (born 1957).  The music was muscular, occasionally thorny, and full of character (James Baillieu told us that the composer was one of his teachers, so the work had a personal significance for him too).  Singing in her own language, Erica Eloff finally came totally alive, bewitching us with a range of moods from despair and cynicism to flirtatiousness, nostalgia, anger and pride.  A tremendous achievement.  CD, please!

After the interval, another country, another language – Edvard Grieg’s six songs in German, Op. 48.  Grieg is such a glorious composer (and hardly given sufficient coverage in 2007, the centenary of his death);  these songs are among his loveliest and best known, and show Grieg’s unerring talent for setting a scene with the simplest of means, not to mention his gift for a great tune.  Again Erica Eloff held us captivated with her flawless singing, her wit and charm, and her alertness to every change of mood.

Finally, Rachmaninov’s Six Songs, Op. 38, gave us yet another language (Russian) and an even bigger range of moods and colours.  An ambitious choice, but one to which she rose impressively, her voice seamlessly beautiful and powerful from top to bottom of a big range.  At the end of the final song, ‘A-oo’, she held her expression of despair, puzzlement and sadness (‘But where are you? … I sing, I search, “A-oo”, I cry’) even throughout the long instrumental postlude.

A lovely little Afrikaans encore sent us away in high spirits, aware that we were witnessing the start of a great career.  Certainly a soprano to watch.  I can’t wait for her next stage appearance, nor her first CD, nor (dare we hope) a place as Miss South Africa at Cardiff Singer of the World?  She deserves it.

Thanks to Matthew Brailsford and the Kirckman Society, and my brother Tony, for the train of circumstances that led me to be part of this event!  And to Erica for her friendly post-concert greetings and glass of bubbly.  And to Diana for the photograph.

for Remembrance Day

Andrew Motion read this poem on BBC Radio 3 this morning.

Lest we forget.

Wilfred Owen — The Send-off

Down the close, darkening lanes they sang their way
To the siding-shed,
And lined the train with faces grimly gay.
Their breasts were stuck all white with wreath and spray
As men’s are, dead.
Dull porters watched them, and a casual tramp
Stood staring hard,
Sorry to miss them from the upland camp.
Then, unmoved, signals nodded, and a lamp
Winked to the guard.
So secretly, like wrongs hushed-up, they went.
They were not ours:
We never heard to which front these were sent.
Nor there if they yet mock what women meant
Who gave them flowers.
Shall they return to beatings of great bells
In wild trainloads?
A few, a few, too few for drums and yells,
May creep back, silent, to still village wells
Up half-known roads.

picture from newmilton.org photo archive — thanks