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Welsh National Opera: 2012-13

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Performances of Welsh National Opera’s critically acclaimed new production of La bohème continue this Autumn Season together with the return of Ben Davis’s seaside-set Così fan tutte and Katie Mitchell’s fully staged version of Handel’s oratorio Jephtha.

WNO’s MAX department take doctor’s orders and bring music to the wards of a hospital for year two of our North Wales residency.

La bohème

Alex Vicens returns as Rodolfo and is joined by Giselle Allen as Mimi in Annabel Arden’s 1913 inspired pre-war production.  Highly praised by critics and audiences alike when it opened in Cardiff this summer, these further performances will see La bohème tour extensively in Wales and England.  This production also features David Kempster as Marcello, Piotr Lempa as Colline, Daniel Grice as Schaunard and Kate Valentine as Musetta.

Michelle Walton and Shaun Dixon will perform Mimi and Rodolfo at some performances.

Simon Phillippo will conduct, with Andrew Greenwood taking over the baton in Liverpool and Bristol.

Così fan tutte

A young cast features in Ben Davis’s 1960s British seaside version of Così fan tutte with Elizabeth Watts as Fiordiligi, Cora Burggraaf as Dorabella, Joanne Boag as Despina and Andrew Tortise as Ferrando.  In a change to previously advertised casting, Gary Griffiths returns as Guglielmo.  Gary, who recently won the chance to represent Wales in the BBC Cardiff Singer of the World competition 2013, received critical praise for his interpretation of the role when this production was first performed in 2011.

Mark Wigglesworth will conduct all performances except in Llandudno, when James Southall will conduct.

Jephtha

British tenor Robert Murray makes his WNO debut in the title role of this revival of Katie Mitchell’s Jephtha. Set in a war ravaged 1940s Europe, Jephtha sees Fflur Wyn returning to the role of Iphis which she last performed for WNO in this production in 2006. The cast also includes Alan Ewing as Zebul, Diana Montague as Storge, Robin Blaze as Hamor and Claire Ormshaw as Angel.  Andrew Radley will perform the role of Hamor in Birmingham.

Paul Goodwin conducts, Thomas Blunt will conduct the performance in Bristol.

Full details from www.wno.org.uk

Holy Trinity, Hastings: Lunchtime concerts

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The summer series continues with the following events Wednesdays at 1.00pm

Further details from www.holytrinitychurchhastings.org

18 July              The Lucinda Sheppard School

25 July               Without Rhyme or Reason – Susan Griffiths-Jones & Nigel Howard

1 August            Jonathan Bruce, cello, & Timothy Willsone, oboe

8 August            Gary Marriott, tenor with Duncan Reid, piano

15 August          Thomasin Trezise, Toby Simms and Kenneth Roberts

22 August           Lucy Ashton, Anya Williams, Imogen Willets with Ivora Rees

29 August           Robert Weatherburn, International Concert Pianist

All Saints Hastings Organ Concerts: 1

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Richard Eldridge  9 July 2012

A large and appreciative audience were in attendance for the opening concert in the 24th annual season of organ concerts at All Saints Church. These concerts have a loyal local audience and also aim to attract visitors to the town during the summer. The Father Willis organ was once again to be heard in all its glory, on this occasion by former parish organist Richard Eldridge.

By his own admission Richard’s programme was rather overbalanced in favour of the loud and fast. There were some fine virtuosic performances but, for me, it was the more reflective moments that  were the most satisfying.

A slightly erratic rendition of Murrill’s Carillon was a good opener followed by Bach’s Prelude and Fugue in A minor BWV 543. Richard seemed much more at home with Mendelssohn’s Sonata No 2 which allowed for more contrast in pace and registration, including a chance for the clarinet to speak out.  A bright and breezy performance of Stanley’s Voluntary No 8 in A minor was very pleasing and included some exposure for the beautiful choir flutes. Franck’s majestic Piece Heroique came next, allowing Richard’s knowledge of the All Saints organ a chance to come to the fore with numerous changes in registration and much excitement (if again a bit on the fast side).

After the interval the performer’s own arrangement of material from Wagner’s Mastersingers Overture and then Percy Fletcher’s well-known Festival Toccata. This was followed by perhaps the most interesting item in the programme. Anwyn by P Homes is based on Welsh mythology and Richard felt very at home with this piece full of interesting and sometimes ethereal harmonies and registration, as well as passages of excitement and rhythmic intensity. Two contrasting pieces by Lefebure-Wely brought the programme to an end – a quiet Andante and one of the two famous Sorties – this one in Eb – always a crowd pleaser but again did it have to be so fast? A much quieter performance of Shubert’s Marche Militaire was a welcome encore.

Richard engaged the audience well throughout the evening with his often humorous anecdotes and explanations despite a breakdown with the sound system.

It is to be hoped that subsequent concerts in the season are as well attended. We heard that plans for the next (Jubilee) Season are already well underway. SP

Next Monday at 7.30pm D’Arcy Trinkwon

Bath Mozartfest 2012

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Bath’s Mozartfest celebrates its 21st anniversary this year.Events run from 9 – 17 November and teh box office opens from 30 July.

Highlights include Samuel West narrating The Carnival of the Animals and the LPO playing works by Schumann, Mozart and Tchaikovsky. There is also a fine line up of chamber music events throughout the week.

Full details are available from the festival website www.bathmozartfest.org.uk

Bach’s Musical Offering in Pevensey

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Friday 13 July, 8.00pm

For the fifth year running, Neil McLaren and his group of talented and internationally acclaimed professional musicians will be coming to St Nicolas Church to entertain and enthrall us. Alison Bury, violin, Catherine Rimer, ‘cello and Tom Foster, harpsichord, with Neil on flute will re-create the atmosphere of the “Sans Souci” palace in the mid-18th century with a performance, by candlelight, of J S Bach’s “Musical Offering”. You are invited to bring a picnic to enjoy in our churchyard from 7.00pm. Wine and soft drinks will be available, and entry to the concert will cost a very reasonable £10.00. You can pay at the door, but call 01323 764449 to reserve your places.

Stephen Page: Organ Matinee

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Hastings Unitarian Church, 9 June 2012 

With its showpiece eighteenth century Snetzler organ, handsomely refurbished, its mentors Dr Brian Hick and organist Stephen Page felt the time was ripe to present something a little different in middle-of-the-road music. The result attracted a most appreciative Saturday afternoon audience, just enough familiar music to give assurance, just enough lesser-known to prove a talking-point.

J S Bach’s Prelude in G major BWV 568 as an opener, and Mozart’s Andante for Musical Clock fulfilled the former, and Arthur Wills’ Lullaby for a Royal Prince and Fisher’s Preludes & Fugues in D & Eb the latter.  A complete change to near-present day came with Charles Williams’ Devil’s Galop.  Williams was a highly respected writer of film music, and this piece saw long service as the theme for the BBC’s radio series Dick Barton – Special Agent. ‘Galop’ in this sense refers not to a horse letting off steam but a nineteenth century in-the-round ballroom dance.

The programme ended with an organ favourite, Lefebure-Wely’s Sortie in E flat, ‘sortie’ being the equivalent of what is known as a ‘chaser’, a fast, loud piece traditionally played by the orchestra at the end of a performance to hurry the audience out of the theatre.

Not that this audience wanted to leave.  On Saturday they were only too anxious to have a few words with Brian and Stephen about the venture, regarding which Stephen explains, ‘We had found there was an audience for something slightly different combining ‘serious’  and ‘light’ music and we hope these concerts prove it.’

Saturday’s certainly did. The next is on Saturday August 11th at 2.30 p.m.in the Unitarian Church in South Terrace, off Queen’s Road.  Admission free with donations .  You will be very welcome. MW

Widor: The Organ Symphonies Vol 1

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Charles-Marie Widor: Organ Symphonies No 6 & 5

Joseph Nolan; Cavaille-Coll organ of La Madeleine, Paris

SIGNUM SIGCD 292        72.35

The most encouraging thing about this new release is that it is Vol 1 which implies we will eventually get all of Widor’s symphonies from Joseph Nolan. While there are many recordings of these works, Joseph Nolan brings an enthusiasm and vitality to them which are enhanced by the acoustic of La Madeleine.

It is a cliché that the building is the most important stop on any organ but for this recording it seems particularly important. We are always aware of the position of the instrument within the building and the rich sonorities which the space creates. All the more important for a symphonic organ – inaugurated in 1842 – which needs a generous acoustic and a sympathetic recording if the full ambience of the instrument is to flourish.

It certainly does here, not only in the more dramatic movements – the recording ends with the Toccata everybody knows – but in the quieter, more lyrical passages. I particularly enjoyed the bright registration for the Intermezzo  from the Sixth Symphony.

In the Fifth Symphony, the Allegro cantabile has a beautiful solo voice and the Adagio creates a gentle sense of drift which is very appealing.

The booklet gives us satisfactory notes on the works and the organ itself, but I would have liked a breakdown of the registration to have been included. It may be too late for future issues, but would be the icing on the cake. Here’s to the second volume. BH

Wexford Festival Opera amends 2012 Festival Programme

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Wexford Festival Opera, renowned for staging rarely-performed or unjustly neglected operas, had hoped to produce Francesca da Rimini by Saverio Mercadante at the 2012 Festival. Although Francesca da Rimini was written in 1831 it had never been performed, as the opera house it was written for burned to the ground before the opera could be produced. While a hand-written manuscript of the opera is in existence, it has never been printed. Attempts by Wexford Festival Opera to have a critical performing edition of the manuscript published in time for the 2012 Festival became fraught with unanticipated difficulties and forced the organisation to change its plans.

Wexford Festival Opera amends 2012 Festival Programme

However, Artistic Director David Agler has several operas waiting in the wings and is delighted to announce that the rarely-performed Italian opera, L’Arlesiana by Francesco Cilèa will now open the 61st Wexford Festival Opera on Wednesday, 24 October, 2012.

L’Arlesiana is a melodrama in three acts to a libretto by Leopoldo Marenco, first performed on 27 November 1897 at the Teatro Lirico di Milano in Milan. L’Arlesiana tells the story of Federico, a farmer, who is madly in love with a woman from the village of Arles (l’arlesiana) and becomes entangled in a love-triangle. The opera is based on the play L’Arlésienne (1872) by Alphonse Daudet. Soon after its première, L’Arlesiana fell into oblivion but enjoyed a revival in the 1930s when it benefited from political support through Cilèa’s personal contact with Mussolini. While the opera as a whole isn’t well-known, most opera-lovers will be familiar with the tenor aria, È la solita storia.

Wexford Festival Opera will also stage Le Roi malgré lui by Emmanuel Chabrier, sung in French and A Village Romeo and Juliet by Frederick Delius, sung in English as originally announced. Full details of the creative teams and cast will be announced shortly, as will the details of the daytime performances of ShortWork operas, concerts and recitals.

The 61st Wexford Festival Opera is grant-aided by the Arts Council, Fáilte Ireland, and Wexford County & Borough Councils.

 

61st Wexford Festival Opera

Wednesday, 24 October – Sunday, 4 November, 2012

PRIORITY BOOKING commences Tuesday, 8 May, 2012

GENERAL BOOKING commences Tuesday, 5 June, 2012

L’Arlesiana by Francesco Cilèa (1866 – 1950)

24, 27, 30 October, 2 November

Le Roi malgré lui by Emmanuel Chabrier (1841 – 1894)

25, 28, 31 October, 3 November

A Village Romeo and Juliet by Frederick Delius (1862 – 1934)

26, 29 October, 1, 4 November

Lost & Sound

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London Music Masters (LMM), a music charity providing music education to inner-city primary schools and violin awards for young emerging professionals, launches the first London-wide musical instrument recycling campaign – LOST & SOUND. The campaign is a rallying call for supporters to donate disused violins, cellos, trumpets, flutes and clarinets for distribution to LMM Bridge Project children aged 5-9, in some of the capital’s most deprived boroughs.

LMM believes that every child deserves a chance to play a musical instrument. By launching a London-wide initiative, LOST & SOUND aims to bring greater awareness to the importance of music education in primary schools and breathe life into old instruments. The initiative will help LMM to save money on instrument purchase and hire, allowing the charity to focus its resources on high quality teaching.

Initially the instruments will be loaned to Bridge Project children in the three primary schools in Lambeth and Westminster where the Bridge Project is currently active. Surplus instruments will be offered to local music services, hubs and other relevant charities. LMM will aim to work with its creative partner organisations (London Philharmonic Orchestra, Southbank Centre, Royal College of Music and Wigmore Hall) to raise awareness of the campaign.

Anyone interested in donating an instrument should contact Rachel Wadham, Bridge Project and Marketing Manager, on 020 7267 7982 / rwadham@londonmusicmasters.org

Opera North; Die Walküre

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 Birmingham Symphony Hall, 30 June 2012 

The second instalment of Opera North’s semi-staged Ring Cycle came to Birmingham to a rapturous ovation. It was well deserved. In over half a century of Walküre performances, I can’t recall a line up of Valkyries as effective as that which hit us at the start of Act 3. Not only were the individual singers exemplary, but their combined strength, within the Symphony Hall acoustic, was thrilling in a way that is rarely true of the opera house.

Part of their success was certainly down to conductor Richard Farnes who has a vision of the work which over-arches individual scenes to give a sense of narrative drive which takes us through to the final Magic-Fire music. He seems to be able to get his singers to give more and more as the evening progresses rather than fade from exhaustion as is too often the case. Bela Perencz as Wotan was outstanding in this. Starting act two rather lightly, almost conversationally, he built the voice to the point where the end of the act had shattering power – and an authority which carried all the way through to the end.

If this implies the earlier acts were weaker it is not so. Alwyn Mellor’s radiant Sieglinde and the heroic tones of Erik Nelson Werner’s Siegmund, were matched by the fierce blackness of Clive Bayley’s Hunding. It is a long time since I have heard a Hunding who had such sinister cynicism in his voice, and for whom the outcome was not self-evident.

Katarina Karneus persuaded us that Fricka really does have a case that needs answering and that, in real terms, Wotan does not address the issues – he simply subverts them, blaming all around him rather than accept his own responsibilities.

In the title role, Annalena Persson brought passion, youth and fire. Her voice is thrilling and her war-cry electrifying.

Dame Anne Evans acted as consultant for the staging which is stylised but effective. The triple screen does not deflect from the action, though there are times when the surtitles are out of kilter with the score. But this is a very minor point in an evening which was an unqualified success. Next year Siegfried! BH