The Oxford Lieder Festival

Posted on October 31, 2014 by vhk10

This has been going on during the last 3 weeks of October. It seems to be bucking the current trend and flourishing, with a large number of concerts, talks, masterclasses and other events. What are they doing right? What could Bath learn? (We were promised ‘a number of structural and creative changes for 2015, to be announced after this year’s programme’ but this announcement hasn’t been made yet, which isn’t a good sign.)

Obviously it’s a specialised festival, focusing on a genre that is inexpensive to stage, although the programme does include an orchestral concert. Oxford is also larger than Bath, with a purpose-built concert venue in the Holywell Music Room and a strong music department in its University. And I don’t know how Oxford’s festival gets its funding. But somehow I feel what makes the difference is the people behind the event; I don’t just mean the planning committee, but ‘friends’ of the festival who can provide expertise, advice and contacts. I don’t know the people who run the Oxford Lieder Festival, but they are clearly well connected in the musical world or have access to people who are. I somehow sense that behind the Bath International Music Festival and its artistic director is a group of people few of whom are interested in classical music (I can’t speak for jazz, world/folk music and other types of music which are included in the Festival), and who aren’t involved in listening and/or performing. Just a couple of the right sort of friends could make a big difference. In particular, Bath’s troubles appear to date from soon after Richard Hickox died, and I don’t think this is wholly a coincidence.

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They shall laugh & sing

Posted on October 28, 2014 by vhk10

This is the inscription outside the new song room at Norwich Cathedral, which I visited for a weekend with the Erleigh Cantors. It was good to be somewhere with plenty of space, proper replica stalls and a decent accompanying instrument, after a couple of Cathedral visits where the rehearsal facilities really weren’t up to the job. I wonder though whether the song room gets very hot in summer; we had to open all windows and skylights to prevent overheating.

This weekend contained a lot of music that was new to me. Somehow Monteverdi’s Christe, adoramus te had eluded me. Gabriel Jackson’s Responses were also new, and later in the same service came Andrea Gabrieli’s Magnificat for three choirs. We brought choir 3 out and put them between Dec and Can with their backs to the screen. The logistical problems of the piece were compounded by an edition that was determined to fit two systems on a page, and achieved this by small print and two parts sharing a stave throughout. This was paired with Rachmaninov’s setting of the Song of Simeon (sung in English). A good moment to say goodbye to a long-standing 2nd bass who is retiring from the choir and who was thanked for his ‘deep commitment’ to it. Our anthem was In Exile by Sumsion. I’m not a Sumsion fan, but this piece takes the rambling meanderings which I normally find irritating and makes them into a feature, illustrating the lamenting of the Psalmist. However it also lets the performers in for descending-semitone hell.

At the Eucharist our setting was Walton’s Missa Brevis. A curious piece which has turns of phrase from lots of other works by Walton (we had fun spotting some of these and comparing notes). And he clearly wasn’t sure whether it should be accompanied or not. The motet was Mawby’s Ave Verum; both pieces were again new to me.

At Sunday evensong we brought out Richard Shephard’s Liverpool Canticles, which we did a few years ago. I couldn’t help noticing echoes of both Luonnotar and Fauré’s Requiem in these. Finally yet another new piece for me: Howells’ Thee will I Love. This was written a few years after Take him, earth, for cherishing, but avoids some of the difficulties of that piece because it’s accompanied, with difficult chords prepared in the organ part. It’s still long and tricky though.

Choir members got a discount in the refectory which was useful as my usual way of fixing lunch in a Cathedral city on a warm day – to go to the market and buy something savoury – failed totally. Norwich has a large market but all the savoury food seemed to be of the greasy spoon variety, and the only bakery stall did only loaves and cakes. Nor could I find a bakery elsewhere. Where do people in Norwich buy bread? (Maybe it’s an East Anglian problem in particular, as when we spent a few months in Cambridge some years ago, it was impossible to buy decent, non-Chorleywood bread in the city centre.)

I noticed a peculiarity about this Cathedral: memorial tablets in the triforium (the ‘first floor’ level gallery which runs down each side of the building alongside the quire). These cannot be deciphered from below. Was the triforium once put to practical use? Were the tablets moved from elsewhere? Or did people not mind that the inscriptions on them could not be read?

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How to protest

Posted on October 26, 2014 by vhk10

Regular readers may recall that a couple of years ago I went to a choral concert, but left half-way through. I’d sung with the choir in a concert a few months earlier, and had hoped during the interval to re-arrange an audition for it while choir and audience mixed over drinks, but no one from the choir even said hello to me.

Not long ago I bumped into someone I knew from that choir (who hadn’t been in that concert, or at least hadn’t been mixing with the audience in the interval). I told them what I’d done and why. They were quite shocked by this, and I think were going to talk to the chairman of the choir.

So it seems this is a good way to let your feelings be known – certainly more effective than just not going to concerts of a particular group at all, as there could be all sorts of reasons for staying away. As long as you don’t mind missing the second half of the concert.

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An idea for a Bath concert hall?

Posted on October 10, 2014 by vhk10

Oxford, like Bath, lacks a purpose-built concert hall for anything larger than chamber concerts, using the Town Hall, Sheldonian Theatre and churches and chapels. This is due to change as St. Edward’s School is planning to open a concert hall seating 1,000 in 2016. The hall will be available to the wider Oxford community as well as being used by the school. There’s a news item from last year here; my information is more recent.

Now there’s an idea! Bath missed a trick when the recent Southgate development didn’t include any venues, and in the past there have been proposals to build one in Victoria Park (in the 19th century), south of the Abbey (proposed during the First World War), and near the railway station (the 1945 plan). The Forum seats 2000 but is far from ideal for concerts, largely because of the distance between performers and audience (it was designed as a cinema). The Abbey seats several hundred (plans are afoot to increase this by moving tombs etc.) but is not wide enough to accommodate a full-size orchestra comfortably. The Guildhall and Assembly rooms are chamber-music size. But there are five independent schools in the city which are frequently embarking on large capital projects to renew and upgrade their facilities. Could one of them do what St. Edward’s is planning to do and provide Bath with the concert facilities that people have been asking for for decades?

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Vivaldi in Box

Posted on October 1, 2014 by vhk10

I was invited (via a contact at the children’s school) to sing in a performance of Vivaldi’s Gloria in Box, just east of Bath with Ian Phipps and the Bybrook Players and Singers. This is a work I’ve managed to miss out on – the only time I’ve performed it before was a come and sing in Derby. I was due to do it with Bristol Choral Society about a year ago, but pulled out in order to do another concert (whose programme was then changed, but that is another story).

As it’s a work that everyone is assumed to know, the rehearsal was more or less just a run through. So I still don’t feel all that familiar with the piece. The programme also included viol da gamba music played by Vanessa Coode and the first performance of a cello concerto written and played by a colleague of my husband’s, Mathew Penrose.

As my singing is largely outside Bath these days, I was looking forward to renewing contact with musical Bathonians. There were several other former members of the Chantry Singers present, but a large number of the choir came from outside the city, some having travelled quite a distance!

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A return to the Royal Festival Hall

Posted on September 30, 2014 by vhk10

The Royal Festival Hall is beginning to feel like a home from home for me. Quite literally in one sense – because I grew up in a house where many furnishings had been purchased around the time of the Festival of Britain, that spindly style (lovingly preserved in the RFH interior) is hard-wired into me at a deep level as the way things ought to look.

We were back to perform Berlioz’ Grande Messe des Morts, conducted by Esa-Pekka Salonen, as the opening concert of the Philharmonia Orchestra’s season. The headline choir was the Gloucester Choral Society, together with the Philharmonia Voices (who also provided a semi-chorus for the Quaerens me), with members of Bristol Choral Society.

The previous time I performed this was with a (good) amateur orchestra, but you hear so much more with a top-notch professional one. For example, the Offertory makes much more sense.

With one possible exception this must be the highest-profile occasion I’ve ever performed in. It was widely reviewed:

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The Kinshasa band

Posted on September 29, 2014 by vhk10

The Kinshasa Symphony Orchestra, founded 20 years ago, visited the UK for a four-concert tour. We were invited to join them for the final concert in Bristol, in the finale of Beethoven 9.

They brought their own strong choir with them, whom we heard in some Congolese sacred pieces. We also heard a couple of movements from a symphony by a member of the orchestra; these felt rather more like part of a suite. The European pieces were Finlandia, the last two movements of the Symphonie Fantastique (a few days after I last heard it!) and the Beethoven (just the last movement was performed); these pieces were conducted by Jamie Phillips, the Congolese ones by Armand Diangienda.

Colston Hall was almost full (and it seats some 2000!) and the audience was not only a bit younger and more ethnically diverse than some we perform to, but also contained a number of Bathonians I recognised. In my experience it takes something a bit special to lure people over from Bath to concerts in Bristol, even if the concert is well publicised in Bath (someone had got to my local deli with flyers before I did!). Something to reflect on if getting to choir practices and concerts proves to be awkward or inconvenient – these players and singers face far greater obstacles.

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Fitting in Prom 68

Posted on September 22, 2014 by vhk10

My family realised that time was running out for getting to a Prom this year and so some of them went to Prom 68, the Cleveland Orchestra with Franz Welser-Möst.

This concert wasn’t all that well attended (they had been worried about getting in) but proved to be well worth while. The Brahms (Academic Festival Overture and First Symphony) was well played though the interpretation didn’t take any risks (similar views are expressed in the reviews below).

Between them came a new piece Flûte en suite by Jörg Widmann, written for and played by Joshua Smith. This alluded to various other pieces of music in which the flute is prominent, finally settling for Bach. The family enjoyed it without finding it very substantial. ‘Not weird enough’ was my husband’s verdict.

Reviews:

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Ten favourite anthems

Posted on September 14, 2014 by vhk10

I’ve been invited to name my ten favourite anthems. Like most people I can’t come up with a definitive list, though I think half of the following would be on any list of mine. I have excluded liturgical settings, even if they get used as anthems.

Gibbons, O clap your hands. I believe this was written when he got an Oxford DMus. and he certainly deserved it on this showing.

Gesualdo, O vos omnes. Much of my favourite music is radical, and this piece would remain so even if I were to hear it after a day of listening to Second Viennese School.

Purcell Jehova, quam multi sunt hostes mei. There would be more Purcell if I’d allowed myself more than one piece per composer.

Blow, Salvator mundi. About as near as I can get to a second piece by Purcell!

Wesley, The Wilderness. A great Cathedral classic.

Parry, Hear my words, ye people. And another one. Does anyone do the opening of this with a semi-chorus as Parry requested?

Vaughan Williams, Lord, thou hast been our refuge. An almost Janáček-like sensitivity to the rhythms of the text. And that heart-stopping moment when the trumpet comes in (especially if it’s a real trumpet).

Poulenc, Videntes stellam. Some composers lost what was best about their music when they wrote for the Church. Poulenc found a voice that was Catholic and yet utterly his own.

Walton, Drop, drop, slow tears. Still can’t believe how young he was when he wrote this.

Finzi, Lo, the full, final sacrifice. A cult piece when I was a student.

I’m willing to reveal the pieces that didn’t quite make the cut, over a drink. Actually, relatively little church music makes me feel like falling to my knees, although I am about to perform one piece that does – Berlioz’ Requiem.

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Starry anthems in Gloucester

Posted on September 13, 2014 by vhk10

I joined the Cathedral Chamber Choir on and off for part of its week in Gloucester Cathedral. On the Tuesday we sang Jonathan Dove’s Seek him that maketh the seven stars. I’d guess that this isn’t in the repertoire of the Cathedral choir, because it made a great impression on a verger, who went off to find a recording on YouTube. Friday’s evensong was an early music one with Daniel Purcell’s canticles paired with Gibbons’ O Clap Your Hands, and an uncut Psalm 69: ‘Let his habitation be void’ and so on.

On Saturday things livened up a bit, as we sang at the wedding blessing of the Dean’s brother. Most of the music was standard wedding fare, but the couple requested an arrangement of Take That’s Rule the World (Stardust). This arrangement was musically quite complicated with descants etc., although the Cathedral organ was not the ideal accompanying instrument. At the end the guests applauded, which has never happened to me after an anthem before – but why not have a secular response to a secular piece? Anyway I can’t fault the taste of a couple who gave their son the same very unusual name as my elder boy. Later that afternoon we sobered up by singing Leighton’s First Service and Walton’s Set me as a seal (which was among my own choices of wedding music).

Gloucester now has a nave altar and choir stalls, so no need any more to sing Osannas directly into the ears of people walking past you on their way to and from communion. Our setting was new to me – Victoria’s Missa Simile est Regnum, sung from a combination of two editions in different keys.

Our final service was the Cathedral’s annual Royal British Legion service. I’m curious to know whether other Cathedrals have such a service, independently of Remembrance Sunday – I’ve never come across one before. It wasn’t specifically a service to commemorate the centenary of the outbreak of the First World War. We had a modified order of service with no chanted psalm (always the first thing to go) and extra hymns including the National Anthem and I vow to thee my country (I can count the occasions on which I’ve sung this hymn on the fingers of one hand). We were accordingly constrained in our choice of anthem and used Ireland’s Greater Love. I’ve sung Howells’ Gloucester canticles just about everywhere, but this was the chance to sing them in Gloucester. It is rather special to bring music to the place for which it was composed, but I imagine Cathedrals don’t encourage visiting choirs to do so, otherwise they’d get the same pieces all the time. At the end of the service we had a guard of honour in the cloisters.

(N.B. Visiting choirs at Gloucester need to think about how much space they might need. The rehearsal room in the visitors’ centre is not large, though this time they had made space by removing the tables – on previous visits the knees of Dec have touched the knees of Can when the choir sat down! We took care to book the Parliament Rooms, but the booking was quietly changed back to the visitors’ centre without our being consulted. So if you book the Parliament Rooms, keep checking that the booking stands before you come.)

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a super chorus for Bath?

Posted on September 9, 2014 by vhk10

I’ve just been reading a recent issue of Bath Life in which they interview Will Dawes, the director of music at Bath Choral Society. He expresses a wish to pull together various local choirs as a ‘super chorus’. ‘There are so many brilliant singers in the area, and sometimes it feels as though the groups are competing, when we could achieve something amazing by collaborating’.

Now there really was something a bit like this until about ten years ago – the Bath Festival Chorus. I wonder whether he knows about this bit of Bath’s musical history? Sadly I think that too much time has gone by to reconstitute the chorus with its membership as at 2005 (when it last performed), although I think many of those people are still around. Another concert which collected singers from all over was the performance of Mahler 8 in the 2000 Bath Festival. The difficulty with any such venture is the organisation – how are singers to be selected? when and where will they rehearse? what will the financial model be? who will keep track of contact details and ordering/distributing/collecting the music? and so on. Even a one-off concert would require a lot of work behind the scenes.

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Prom 44: Strauss, Elgar and Berlioz

Posted on September 5, 2014 by vhk10

I don’t think I’ve been in the Arena for a sell-out Prom before. I was sold my ticket with seconds to spare before I squeezed into the Arena. A popular programme, and I heard a fair few Australian accents in the audience for the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra conducted by Andrew Davis. As it happened this programme featured two composers I’m going to be performing in the autumn, so it was a good way to get into the mood.

Hard to avoid Richard Strauss completely this year, as he has the monopoly on major anniversaries. I have tried to minimise exposure, reasoning that if I ration the amount I will get about the right dosage. His Don Juan opened the concert, with a zippy performance. The Elgar Cello concerto, with Truls Mørk as soloist, was a complete contrast in mood. I don’t actually know it all that well, and I have to confess to preferring earlier Elgar to later (ducks hastily). This particular performance lacked a bit of momentum though and seemed to drag in places. As I heard the end of it, echoing the beginning, I wondered whether Elgar thought the Great War had achieved nothing (as my grandfather, who served in it, did).

I’ve managed never to go to a performance of the Symphonie Fantastique, despite being a Berlioz fan. This was a chance to put this right and this performance was again full of verve (like the Strauss, this piece records a lover’s eventful life story) and a nod to the peformance practice of the era in some portamento which you don’t usually hear. I gather some repeated passages were omitted though and I think I’m used to hearing them, particularly in the fourth movement.

The orchestra was more than up to the demands of the music, although I felt occasionally there was some shrill woodwind. The brass playing though was excellent, and the strings silky.

The encore was Percy Grainger’s Handel in the Strand. I had to suppress the thought that lots of percussion was used because Grainger liked being hit himself; the arrangement appears to be by someone else.

Reviews:

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