a controversial video

Posted on October 15, 2009 by vhk10

I went with a friend to the performance of Berg’s Wozzeck at the Royal Festival Hall which ended the Philharmonia and Esa-Pekka Salonen’s City of Dreams season.

I did some background reading for this by digging out my copy of Douglas Jarman’s Cambridge guide to the opera, which I acquired by an unusual route. I learnt a lot from the primary sources and analysis in this book, though there were topics it didn’t really touch on. I would rather that the long and elaborate account of the recovery of Büchner’s play (which doesn’t really have any bearing on the opera except for accounting for the existence of its source) had been dropped or abridged in favour of some discussion of the orchestration, or the allusions to other musical works.

The controversial aspect of this performance was the video which was projected behind the orchestra. I can’t comment much on this, because I decided that there was enough going on without it and decided to ignore it, which was fairly easy to do in the rear stalls. From what I saw out of the corner of my eye I got the impression it neither added nor detracted very much. I think the definitive comment on this video came from The Classical Source.

The performance was semi-staged, with the singers costumed and acting on a strip at the front of the platform. This entailed a certain amount of compromise, with the wood-chopping of the second scene becoming peeling potatoes and not too much dancing in the tavern scenes. But within these limitations there was still room for the essential relationships to come across.

With the orchestra liberated from the pit, it was possible to appreciate just how violent the score can get. (A usually rather neglected group of performers in this work, the chorus, also came over more clearly than they usually do.)

I had come to hear Simon Keenlyside in the title rôle and he did not disappoint, integrating a expressive range of vocal colours and techniques with the body language to match the text, perhaps most tellingly in his realisation of what he had done immediately after the murder. He was well supported by the rest of the cast, several of whom I’d heard in their rôles in other performances.

Four-star reviews appeared in the Telegraph and Guardian.

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Brass in the Abbey

Posted on October 5, 2009 by vhk10

I went to hear the Bath Philharmonia (like the Festival, it’s gone in for abbreviating itself, as BathPhil) in the final concert of their summer series, in Bath Abbey. We lost the programmed Borodin overture, so the first half consisted of Beethoven’s 3rd piano concerto, with Peter Donohoe as soloist. I can’t really decide whether this concerto or no. 4 is my favourite – I think no. 4 may just have the edge. I was happy with the performance except I thought that the final movement was a little rushed.

After the interval came Tchaikovsky’s 4th symphony, with Peter Donohoe now conducting. I’m not very well placed to judge this performance, because I was sat in the quire, behind the orchestra and this distorted the sound considerably in this particular piece. With more players and some general rearrangement, the brass and percussion dominated to such an extent as to smother the wind and strings when they were playing. Let’s just put this down to the quirky acoustic of Bath Abbey, which (as a veteran of singing there) I know well. So before buying a ticket for the quire, check the programme! I’ve found it fine acoustically for early music, a few months ago V-W’s Tallis Fantasia sounded lovely, but Beethoven’s is perhaps the latest full orchestra for which it will work.

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LP to CD

Posted on September 24, 2009 by vhk10

We are facing up to the fact that we really ought to digitise our collection of LPs (200-300 discs), to go ultimately on to CD. Should we invest in a turntable which can link up directly to a PC, or route the sound via our existing hifi (which is reasonable quality Arcam – nearly wrote IRCAM!)? As the collection isn’t huge and we aren’t hifi freaks we don’t want a huge outlay on equipment to do this.
Comments which consist of an advert for the commenter’s product won’t be published.

[what we did is described here.]

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a Prom and a request

Posted on September 12, 2009 by vhk10

My husband and daughter went to Prom 73 – Franz Welser-Möst conducting the Vienna Philharmonic in Haydn’s Symphony no. 98 and Schubert’s Great C major symphony. They enjoyed themselves, though both they and I (who listened on radio) felt that the brass got a little over-enthusiastic on occasion. Here are reviews from the Independent, Telegraph, Times and Guardian.

This has no relevance to music, but I’m just popping a link to an online sponsorship form for a walk we’re doing in a few days time in aid of a local charity .

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A College mailing list

Posted on September 9, 2009 by vhk10

My Cambridge college, Corpus, is proposing to set up a mailing list for its old members who were involved in the Chapel choir or music society. If you’re on it, you’ll get a newsletter and invitations to reunions of the group. Cost £25 a year, which doesn’t seem to include any donation to the funds of the choir or music society, but is purely to cover the costs of running the scheme.

I have sounded out some contemporaries of mine, but some who would otherwise have joined are put off by the cost. This is going to reduce the usefulness to others, because a reunion to which few are invited will be less appealing. Do other colleges run this sort of scheme and what do they charge? I have joined the Friends of Merton College choir in Oxford, but that is specifically to raise money for the choir, although there are some perks as a ‘thank you’ to members.

[The cost was later quietly reduced, though people weren’t actually told! I was told that it partly subsidised refreshments at gatherings, though if you live far away you’re less likely to attend these.]

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Jingling Johnny at Prom 62

Posted on September 5, 2009 by vhk10

I took my daughter to the Proms to hear Mariss Jansons conduct the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra in two symphonies: Haydn’s no. 100, the ‘Military’ and Shostakovich’s 10th.

Both of these works have an in-your-face quality, with an occasional need for shrill, piercing woodwind, which the RCO delivered admirably. There was a theatrical element to the Haydn when some of the percussionists trooped off, Farewell Symphony-style, at the end of the second movement. I wondered whether their contracts allowed them to leave if they weren’t required in the rest of the work, but they reappeared at the very end, walking on stage in a line, with the player at the back waving a contraption which looked like a two-tier cake stand covered in bells and with a couple of tassels dangling from it. I gather that the official English name for this instrument is a ‘Jingling Johnny’.

The Turk inspired the Haydn symphony, but in the Shostakovich you can feel the menacing presence of a Georgian. This symphony is very much in favour and frequently performed, while the Leningrad seems to be taking a back seat at the moment. I heard no. 10 at the Proms three years ago, and while that performance was perfectly creditable, this one surpassed it, not least because of the variety of controlled tone from woodwind (especially in the long, rambling solo melodies Shostakovich loves to write) and brass. I think in particular of the final horn call in the solo movement, when I had to look to check that the player really hadn’t moved further away than before, it sounded so distant.

My daughter commented on how restrained Jansson’s gestures were ‘although for a conductor he’s quite young’ (he’s 66).

Encores were Sibelius (that standard encore piece, the Valse Triste) and more Shostakovich. Now where’s the Proms pond in the arena this year?

Reviews (mostly very good) from the Guardian, Independent, Times and Telegraph. Also this, mostly about the Haydn, from the BBC Proms blog.

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the cathedral with the campanile

Posted on September 4, 2009 by vhk10

I believe that Chichester Cathedral is the only Church of England Cathedral in England with a detached bell-tower.* It’s not in the best of shape, being largely covered in netting at the moment. Perhaps it’s awaiting the attention of the Cathedral’s surveyor of a few years ago, Donald Buttress (could there be a better name?).

I spent two days at the end of the Cathedral Chamber Choir’s week there, getting up at 5 a.m. in order to make the Saturday morning rehearsal. I needed every minute because there was quite a bit of new music for me. Firstly a piece from my wishlist, Parry’s ‘Great’ service. This was only published in the 1980’s which may explain its gradual entry into the repertoire. Actually now I’ve sung it I rather wonder why I was so desperate to do so, but at least I have performed it now. The anthem was also one I’d never sung before, although I heard it earlier this year, Bach’s O Jesu Christ, meins Leben Licht.

On Sunday we paired the Vierne Messe Solennelle with an Ave Verum by Dupré, which was also new to me. It felt like a piece for women’s voices which had been rewritten for four-part choir. At Matins and Evensong we sang a recently-written set of Responses by our conductor, Matthew O’Donovan. Chichester does not patronise visiting choirs by cutting down on the full psalms for the day, so we had plenty of psalmody on Saturday. Sunday evensong posed the greatest challenge; we had booked an organist for the Sunday services but during lunchtime he had an accident and wasn’t able to play evensong. We were able to present an unchanged programme, with our conductor now playing the organ and one of our other conductors conducting rather than singing. The anthem was Elgar’s Great is the Lord, which I tend to confuse with Give unto the Lord and which I was singing for the first time, paired with Howells’ ‘Westminster’ canticles. Emergency re-arrangement of this kind is surely one of the greatest tests of a choir!

We stayed at the University of Chichester’s Bishop Otter College campus. It was an all too brief visit, and not as social as usual – I found myself eating alone more than I’d have liked. Not only are shared meals more fun, but this is also when I get a feel for where people would like to go on future visits, which I’m now planning.

*This is no longer true – it has been pointed out to me that St Edmundsbury has a brand new separate bell-tower, and Chester has had one since the 1970’s. On a recent visit to Salisbury I learned that there used to be a bell-tower there too.

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the Edington Festival: pleasure and sadness

Posted on August 28, 2009 by vhk10

Some friends regularly go to events at the Edington Festival nearby, but I’ve never managed it. This is because it usually clashes with the Cathedral Chamber Choir’s cathedral week and I’m away or not feeling like going to another service. (This year my husband is overseas so I’m needed for childcare).

I enjoy listening to the Festival’s BBC broadcasts though. At the same time, something about the Festival saddens me. It comes over with the impression of ‘bringing music within the liturgy to the West Country where they don’t have it’. It is true that outside the cathedral and abbey foundations round here there are limited opportunities for performing high-quality music during services, especially for adult female singers. But this isn’t necessarily for want of singers.

I think for example of a church near where I live (I have not referred to this church in this blog before) which used to have a ‘special choir’ which met to perform Mass settings and motets occasionally at services. I never had the chance to sing in this choir, because shortly before I moved here there was a change of clergy and the special choir was abolished. I don’t know what goes on musically at that church now.

I suspect that if you gathered the right people together, there would be nothing in the repertoire of the Edington Festival’s choirs that they could not perform, although they might not be able to do it all intensively over one week.

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Flesh coloured tights

Posted on August 26, 2009 by vhk10

These were requested as part of the dress code for my weekend of services with the Erleigh Cantors in St. Alban’s Cathedral. We had a busy weekend which began with a wedding on the Saturday morning as well as the usual round of services. The organ has now been refurbished, though it is still the subject of an appeal.

There were three new pieces for me. Firstly Charles Theodore Pachelbel’s Magnificat, which has the distinction of having been performed at the first documented concert in New York City. It is a pleasant piece with a notable Italian influence. On Sunday morning we sang Lassus’ Ave verum, which I was surprised not to have encountered before and look forward to singing again. Finally on Sunday evening came Leighton’s O God enfold me in the sun, a relatively early work with characteristic spikiness and a strong modern text.

Apart from that there were some favourite pieces such as Purcell’s Hear my prayer, Holst’s Nunc Dimittis and my favourite Reponses, Richard Lloyd’s second setting. (We did the final dismissal from them too!) We brought back Michael Walsh’s Mass of the Holy Trinity, with its top B’s for the first sopranos (at least that is a semitone lower than required for the Langlais last year). Wesley’s evening canticles in E are very firmly imprinted on my memory, since I recorded them when I was a student; unfortunately they are also imprinted at the speeds the conductor of that recording chose, so I had to make a conscious effort not to sing them the way I knew.

Our next meeting will be a weekend in Winchester Cathedral in October.

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Deborah

Posted on July 28, 2009 by vhk10

The Chandos Singers paid tribute to the Handel anniversary by performing this early oratorio. It’s a curious piece, based on one of the biblical episodes that you don’t usually hear about in church; not very much judging under the palm tree, but an awful lot of smiting, one of the more significant pieces of which being carried out by my character, Jael.

Many of the choruses are adapted from earlier works such as Dixit Dominus and the Coronation Anthems, sometimes in a rather disconcerting way so that they veer away from the way you thought you remembered that they went. And I think I now understand some of the point of recitative; it is a useful way of warming up before an aria if you haven’t sung for some minutes.

So that’s Handel, Purcell and Mendelssohn honoured this year – I just need a chance to do some Haydn.

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the 4 part music forum

Posted on July 16, 2009 by vhk10

This has been set up recently by someone I know who runs an on-location recording company, 4 Part Music. He’s keen for people to try it out and to build up a user base. The main subject areas are recording gear, on-location recording, post production, the music business generally, ‘choirs and places where they sing’ and ‘news and events’, where you can promote your own events. It is not necessary for the music discussed to be in four parts – I’m sure threads on plainchant or Spem in Alium would be welcome!

http://4partmusic.co.uk/forum/

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six gunshots

Posted on June 30, 2009 by vhk10

The audience for the ROH’s recent production of Lulu were warned that they would hear these towards the end of the first scene of Act II (though if you don’t already know that this work contains gunfire, you probably also won’t know how long the scene is). What the audience wasn’t officially warned about was that the production dispensed almost totally with a set: costumes were monochrome and apart from a solitary chair, the props comprised a few flowers and weapons, and the portrait (always a bit of a problem) was represented by a beam of light.

This approach divided critics very sharply. The audience at the performance I attended seemed happier; overhearing the comments in the intervals, I detected some Bergnot, but not people asking ‘Where’s the set?’ It’s not the most eccentric staging of the opera that I’ve seen (that was in Hannover a few years ago). Generally speaking I was in favour of this approach as I would rather have less than more distraction from the stage; and there really was plenty of colour – but it came from the orchestra pit.

However, there were times when the lack of props did obscure the action: for example when Lulu delivers her object lesson in how to deal with a commitment-phobe by getting Dr Schön to write a letter breaking off his engagement. And because so much was sung with singers facing directly forward into the stalls, you felt a bit short-changed if you were round the side of the circle, as I was. (Memo to ROH: you need to fix the display of umlauts on the back-of-seat surtitles).

I don’t have much to add what reviewers have said the performances, which coped well with the constraints described above. I would like to single out one minor piece of luxury casting: Philip Langridge, who made the Marquis unbearably creepy.

The production was reviewed all over the place, and I’ll select just a few here, from the Guardian, Telegraph and Independent on Sunday. But discussion spilled outside the usual boundaries: the Spectator printed two reviews, one for and one against, and Guardian readers contributed their opinions.

The performance I attended will be broadcast on BBC Radio 3 next Saturday evening. (The bloodcurdling scream and weapons-grade dissonance in the trailer are not typical of the opera as a whole!)

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