Opus Theatre, Saturday 17 November 2018

Iranian tenor, Ramtin Ghazavi has a rapidly increasing international reputation and thanks to Artist-in-Residence, Oliver Poole so has the Opus Theatre. Bringing the two together was a master-stroke which came to fruition last Saturday with a concert of Italian and Iranian song.

Though much of Ramtin Ghazavi’s repertoire is based on the familiar operatic canon he chose to sing a more interesting programme based around Italian song and, to us, unknown Persian songs.

Paolo Tosti may be a familiar 19^th century Italian composer but less known for the fact that he lived for many years in England and some of the songs we were to hear were written locally in Folkestone!

They opened with his well-known song – A vucchella – moving on to the tolling bell motive of Tormento and the fluid romanticism of Ideale. The songs sat very comfortably for Ramtin Ghazavi as they allow an operatic approach while giving some freedom for a more delicate, sensuous intimacy.

The first half ended with Faure’s Les Roses d’Isapahan with its gentle phrasing and subtle harmony.

After the interval we heard three Persian songs which proved to be heady in their romantic intensity and emotionally forth-right. The last of these – Aay sar kotal-  did not have a piano part so Oliver Poole drew on all his considerable skills to create the accompaniment.

The final section was on more familiar ground with De Curtis’ Non ti scordar di me and Leoncavallo’s Mattinata, where Ramtin Ghazavi almost produced the necessary sob in the voice.

In both halves Olive Poole provided a pyrotechnic solo in the form of Wagnerian arrangements from the Ring Cycle – a lurid reading from Das Rheingold and a more conventional version of the Ride of the Valkyries, both with more notes than he appeared to have fingers.

A wonderful evening needed an encore which followed in the shape of an improvised version of O Sole mio – gloriously created and leaving us all wanting more. When he is appearing at La Scala and The Met we will recall we heard him at the Opus!

Christchurch, St Leonards on Sea, Saturday 10 November 2018

Many choirs trot out Messiah as if they don’t need to do anything because they know it so well. Then along comes Marcio da Silva with a reading fresh as a daisy to persuade us that we have actually failed to pay attention to a masterpiece.

The approach was exhilarating throughout, with tight rhythms and fast pacing, emphasising the narrative line which compels us to move from darkness to light. The opening tenor solo set the seal on the evening with a luxuriously ornamented Comfort Ye and exultant Every Valley.

But who may abide and Oh thou that tellest had bouncy dance rhythms which lifted the impact of the first half before an unexpectedly stately Pastoral symphony, with no hints of rusticity.

The Angels appeared from near silence and disappeared alarmingly in the same way.

Even in the darker sections the rhythmic intensity was not lost. Behold and see brought really tense rhythms while the pace of He was despised was almost dangerously passionate.

The balance between orchestra and singers was remarkable in the often challenging acoustic of Christchurch. The potential difficulty was solved by having the choir wrapped around the instrumentalists in a horse-shoe which meant that all were within easy eye contact and many singers were actually facing each other. This aided both intimacy and accuracy.

How beautiful are the feet was accompanied by solo violin, lute and organ, the wonderfully gentle and simple sounds being totally convincing. By contrast there was furious pace and fire in Why do the nations.

The four young soloists were particularly impressive. Tenor, Mikael Englund had opened so effectively with Every Valley but found venom and awe for Thou shalt break them with an explosive top A for dash them to pieces.  Mezzo Laura Hocking was warmly pleasing in He was despised and bass Lancelot Nomura gave a sterling reading of The Trumpet shall sound with the solo trumpet ringing around the building.  If the crown really goes to Sarah Gilford it was for her unfailing empathy throughout, her sensitivity to the text and the radiant, confidence – spiritual as well as musical – that she brought to I know that my redeemer Liveth.

If the chorus was starting to flag just a little towards the end of a long evening they were never less than impressive and maintained the level of discipline Marcio da Silva imbued throughout. Almost a century ago, Christchurch had a reputation for outstanding musical events. The ghost of those performers must have been delighted with what they heard last night.

St Mary in the Castle, Saturday 27^th October 2018

Considering the status of King Arthur in our national myth it is surprising that there are so few works based on the stories. Purcell’s King Arthur immediately springs to mind, but there is precious little between that and Spamelot. All the more welcome then Keith Beal’s reworking of the Merlin stories which received its world premiere last weekend.

Marcio da Silva briefly described for us at the end of the evening the process by which the event came about which went someway to explain its somewhat surprising presentation. For this was not a straightforward staging. A brief overview might help. The first act was in costume and staged, though the strongly voiced Merlin of James Schouten was singing from the score. The second act  found the cast all in black singing from music stands with a minimum of lighting. The final act brought some of them back in costume though the rest were still dressed as for a concert performance, and there was a projection of war images on the rear curtain.

If the text had been somewhat clearer this may not have mattered but there was a distinct problem with the clarity of diction even when the singing itself was universally excellent.

The layout in St Mary’s was at times beneficial – the singers project well from the centre but less so the further away they are – and the chamber orchestra was placed near the control desk where Marcio had a clear view of all singers and instrumentalists.

Keith Beal’s writing is at its strongest in the duets and ensembles. There are effective confrontations between Merlin and the Nimue of Helen May, and powerful interchanges between her and Caroline Carragher as Morgan La Faye. The Quartet which ends act two and the final ensemble work very well and create an emotive impact which is too often lacking in the monologues.

The orchestral writing is heavy on brass and woodwind, often strikingly so, but the pace often feels relentless with little change of mood or sense of introspection. Like Michael Tippett, Keith Beal is his own librettist, which is a mixed blessing. Clarity at times is starkly impressive but repetitions of What are you doing here? and a love scene which ends with Can’t you see you are the one for me? may work for a musical but seemed out of place in a narrative which is dealing with ancient architypes and mythological characters.

Excellent that Hastings Philharmonic is taking on new and challenging works, even if they may not have quite the impact hoped for.

St Mary in the Castle, Hastings, 18-19 October 2018

There are certain types of music which work spectacularly well in St Mary in the Castle and Baroque music, both vocal and instrumental comes at the top of the list. If one adds to this the presence of The Sixteen, under Harry Christophers, singing Palestrina and James MacMillan and surely it can’t get any better.

Their programme The Queen of Heaven is based on settings of Marian hymns by Palestrina and the contemporary composer James MacMillian, whose gently unfolding a cappella scores are a perfect accompaniment to the earlier works.

The evening opened with the plainsong setting of Regina caeli with eight of the male singers processing from the back of the building while chanting the text. This gave way to the wonderfully mellifluous setting by Palestrina of the Kyrie from the Missa Regina caeli, which floated and lifted gently into the dome above. James MacMillan’s Dominus dabit benignitatem was not a million miles away with its reserved if lyrical approach to the text.

Possibly the only work which may have been known to all present was Allegri’s Miserere but the new version we heard was stunning not only in the beauty of the part singing but the sense of ornamented lines emerging from the quartet in the gallery. Rather than waiting for the obligatory high note (for which we know there is dubious evidence) the improvised approach led us inevitably to the upper notes of the solo soprano, but always within the framework of the musical line, rather than simply as a clever add-on.

To conclude the first half we heard MacMillan’s Videns Dominus with its Scottish rhythms and earthy sense of reality, and finally Palestrina’s Stabat Mater.

The same composer’s Regina caeli opened the second half with a joyous alleluia before a triptych which sandwiched MacMillan’s O radiant dawn between two flowing settings by Palestrina. In contrast to the Allegri, MacMillan’s own setting of the Miserere was the most challenging of his works here on offer, though it maintains great simplicity and beauty of line throughout, opening into an opulent romantic melody towards the end.

The evening concluded almost where it had begun with the Agnus Dei from Palestrina’s Missa Regina caeli, bringing a real sense of faith and hope as the line climbed ever higher.

The following evening brought us Baroque chamber music of surprising intimacy. Given the large spaces of St Mary’s, the softer sounds of gut strings and unamplified guitars needed a higher level of concentration but more than repaid the effort involved.

Hemf Baroque opened with a suite of short works by Blow and his pupil Purcell. The latter’s lovely Rondeau from The Fairy Queen was followed by an equally impressive Ground from Blow’s Venus and Adonis. Jane Gordon was herself the soloist in Telemann’s A minor violin concerto TWV51 which is splendidly engaging for all its brevity. The first half concluded with Bach’s 5^th Brandenburg Concerto. The ensemble were joined by Baroque flautist Neil McLaren but the noteworthy contribution came from harpsichordist Julian Perkins. He played throughout the evening but the Bach work allows him to shine in the extended cadenza for solo harpsichord which Bach obviously wrote for himself to show off his wonderful new instrument. It was most impressive.

A slight change of order for the second half brought us Vivaldi’s Double Mandolin concerto arranged on this occasion for the EdenStell Guitar Duo. If the guitar does not have the bite of the mandolin, particularly in St Mary’s acoustic, it does have great delicacy as demonstrated in the radiant beauty of the second movement which has the soft silence of a hare in the snow.

Corelli’s Concerto Grosso Op6 No1 brought lively interaction from the soloists and led into a rustically enjoyable reading of Vivaldi’s Autumn from the Four Seasons to conclude a wonderful evening. Again the audience was large and enthusiastic – a tribute to Jane Gordon’s organisational skills and ability to bring us some of the finest Baroque musicians alive today.

The Dome, Brighton, Sunday 14^th October, 2018

A joyfully indulgent afternoon to start the new series, and one which celebrated the 50^th birthday of Brighton Festival Chorus.

After a brief welcome from Barry Wordsworth we were whisked into Shostakovich’s Festive Overture, its bombastic jollity setting the mood for the rest of the afternoon. Handel’s Zadok the Priest may lie a little outside the subsequent Parry and Elgar though it did give the choir an opening moment of glory. They were certainly in fine voice throughout, the tenors clear and true, the sopranos fearlessly attacking the top lines. This was very much a romantic approach to Handel, minus the organ and with a modern string sound, but very much in keeping with the Parry and Elgar which was to follow.

The real find of the concert was Parry’s rarely performed masterpiece From Death to Life. Written for Brighton in 1914 it shows a wonderful sense of colour it its orchestration and melodic lines which rival Elgar. The opening section on Death hints at the melancholy of Sibelius while the jolly march of Life sits comfortably with Eric Coates or Percy Grainger. We really need to hear this again.

The first half ended with Elgar’s setting of Psalm 48, written in 1912 and comparable to much of the choral setting in The Apostles or possibly more sedate demons from Gerontius in the second section. The bass chorus took on the solo third part with aplomb before all sections came together for the unfolding glories of the finale.

After the interval, to give the choir a break, we heard Elgar’s Cockaigne Overture in all its brashness and fizz. Barry Wordsworth managed to find real lightness and sparkle here for what can too easily become simply pompous. Maybe it was the thought of the Scene from the Bavarian Highlands which ended the afternoon. Is there anything else in Elgar which is quite as joyous as these settings of Lady Alice’s verse? Though her poems often come in for criticism, here they allow Elgar to delight in lightly flowing lines and warm, sunny harmonies which are a world away from English melancholy. The third and sixth songs are possibly better known in their orchestral arrangements but sung as part of the whole make a far more impressive impact.

In between these two exultant works we heard the brief, reflective setting of O Hearken Thou from 1911 and written for the Coronation of King George V. A surprisingly introspective work for a joyful occasion, its serious nature supports the faith which underlies it.

At the start Barry Wordsworth mentioned that he has recently recorded some lesser known Elgar works with The Brighton Festival Chorus. It will be a recording worth having.

The next BPO concert is on Sunday 11 November with works by Rossini, Beethoven and Dvorak.

St Mary in the Castle, Hastings, Friday 12 October 2018

A simple programme to open the new season but one which demanded a high level of technical expertise as well as extrovert energy.

Roman Kosyakov was the popular winner of this year’s Hastings International Piano Competition and was returning to the romantic repertoire with Brahms’ Second Piano Concerto. However his approach, and one certainly supported by Marcio da Silva in his handling of the score, was dynamic and often aggressive. Roman Kosyakov’s playing is highly percussive, with snapped chords and very tight rhythms, which look forward to the twentieth century rather than relaxing in the romanticism of the mid-nineteenth. While this provided a genuine excitement it did at times seem to skirt over the more reflective passages, with only the finely honed third moment – with beautiful cello solos – bringing us some points of introspection. That Roman Kosyakov can conjure up genuine sensitivity was admirably demonstrated in the brief but gently fleeting encore.

After the interval – and the full house meant that a little more time than usual was needed – we heard Beethoven’s Seventh Symphony. The balance here was even better than it had been in the Brahms and the solo instruments sang out magnificently, fully supported by the string section. Hopefully the orchestra will eventually be able to run to an extra desk for each of the string sections, but it is surprisingly strong at present given the small scale.

Tempi were brisk throughout and the cellos again excelled in the Allegretto with real warmth and depth. There was a lively bounce to the third movement before we hurtled into the finale. The tempi here was perfectly justified by Beethoven’s own markings but more than that was more than within the players professionalism to follow Marcio da Silva’s clipped rhythms and tense phrasing. It was exhilarating.

A splendid start to the new season with a large and enthusiastic audience. Long may it continue!