BBC Symphony orchestra and chorus

Barbican Hall, 15 May 2015

With all the commemorations for the First World War I cannot recollect any recent performance of Sir Arthur Bliss’ Morning Heroes, first heard in 1930 as a memorial not only to the dead as a whole but in particular to his own brother, and a reflection on his own suffering on the Somme. With its striking choral settings, pitched somewhere between The Kingdom and Belshazzar, and its sumptuous orchestration you might have expected a large number of choirs to have taken it up but it appears not to have happened. All the stranger when one considers the impact of the work in the concert hall.

Perhaps it is the need for a strongly focussed orator? Here the BBC had marshalled the services of Samuel West, whose incisive and virile tones proved to be ideal for the passages from the Iliad and the more introspective notes of Wilfred Owen. The choral setting is demanding but not over-complex, allowing the text to carry with ease. Unlike Britten, Bliss is constantly aware of the allure of warfare. For all that men die, they are attracted to the bombast and pageantry of the build-up, and the excitement of attack. It is the women for whom there is great sensitivity, whether it be Andromache in the opening section or the poignancy of the warrior’s wife in Li Po’s Vigil.

Sir Andrew Davis has a deep commitment to British choral music and proved this yet again, convincing us that this is a work which can stand alongside any of the great works of the twentieth century.

This would have been enough for most listeners in itself but the concert had opened with two works by Berlioz. The Royal Hunt and Storm from The Trojans is familiar, but rarely in concert do we have the privilege of a full chorus for the height of the storm. It was splendid!

Then came La mort de Cleopatre. Is there anyone better in this work today than Sarah Connolly? I recall Janet Baker singing it many years ago with electrifying impact but this was in another league altogether. It also proves that a great singer can simply stand and sing to convey the intensity of the score, without any need for histrionics or semi-staging. Her careful crafting of the text, the sense of emotional melt-down, was impeccably controlled to the point where she dies before our eyes – a moment of real pathos and great beauty.

The concert is available via the Iplayer for 30 days but given the quality I would hope the works will be released on CD for posterity – they certainly deserve it.

 An  Invitation from Jonathan Kester

Although I live and work far away in the Antipodes, in Perth on the west coast of Australia to be precise, I have been invited to contribute to Lark Reviews.

A recording is available through the link below once the live link ends
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Handel-Faramondo-Emily-Fons/dp/B00MVT8O3I/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1433770222&sr=8-2&keywords=faramondo

Faramondo was a rarely performed opera adapted and re-scored by Handel and performed for the first time in London in 1738. Its lack of popularity since is due to two factors. The first is its convoluted and somewhat obscure plot and the second is because it originally required four castrati singers in some of the lead roles. Even for its first performances Handel could only afford one castrato to sing the title role because he engaged one of the most famous and expensive singers of the day, Gaetano Majorano, known as “Caffarelli”.  The other castrato roles had to be sung by women.

The advent of so many fine counter-tenors during the past 10 years or so has enabled many baroque works to be restored to the classical music repertoire and Faramondo is one that has now been recognized for the musical masterpiece it really is.

Recently, I went to Brisbane to attend a weekend training and, to my delight, discovered that, while I was there, The Brisbane Baroque Festival was taking place and included 5 performances of Faramondo.  This Australian premier was the Gottingen Baroque Festival stage production and was recorded by the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (see the link above). It was unforgettable. I actually couldn’t fault any aspect of its presentation. Every member of the cast in singing roles acted with complete conviction and sang with an astonishing level of faultless accuracy and embellishment of the score both in the recitatives and especially in all of the wonderful arias.

This opera can be seen on YouTube in a concert performance recorded in 2009. Some of the world’s finest counter-tenors take the leading roles under the baton of Diego Fasolis with Max Emanuel Cencic in the title role. Philippe Jaroussky and Xavier Sabata are also in the cast. (The performance is available on CD through Virgin Classics.)

Having been used to listening to and watching Max Emanuel Cencic as Faramondo on YouTube I did wonder how I’d take to listening to a woman singing the title role in the Gottingen production in Brisbane. I needn’t have worried because the American mezzo Jennifer Rivera sang the role with a passion, a clarity and vocal agility that even the wonderful Max Emanuel Cencic was not able to offer in the YouTube version.

If anyone on your side of the planet can arrange for the Gottingen Festival production of this marvelous opera to be performed in London or elsewhere in  England I urge you to do so. Anyone attending who enjoys Handel’s music will find it a truly memorable and deeply satisfying experience.

Our thanks to Jonathan for his review and enthusiasm. We’ve known each other for almost sixty years, but reviews and comments from further afield are always welcome from those who come across exciting and noteworthy events.

London Coliseum, 9 May 2015

Mike Leigh has known The Pirates of Penzance since he was a child and let us say from the outset that his first staging of the work is a triumph on all levels. Where so many directors would attempt to up-date it or make it relevant, he takes it at face value, giving it a freshness that even those of us equally immersed on G&S found surprising. We can add to this the reality that G&S is nowhere near as popular, or as frequently performed, as was the case fifty years ago. Consequently it was a delight to see so many young people in the audience clearly encountering Gilbert’s wit for the first time – as many as there were those of us having to supress the desire to turn the whole event into a Sing-along-Pirates.

Not only is Mike Leigh’s direction fast-moving and witty throughout, it has exceptional clarity so that the text and lyrics are easily heard – useful when on the first night the sur-titles seemed to have a life of their own. Alison Chitty’s designs brought an equally fresh approach with their deep pastel blues and mauves, for a set which was on one level entirely abstract and yet reflected children’s toys in its simplicity. The pirates’ ship at the start was a stroke of genius. And all of this lit with subtlety by Paul Pyant.

Where most revivals of G&S rely on singers from the Musical stage, here we had operatic voices which could do justice to Sullivan’s lyricism. Claudia Boyle has a secure coloratura which allows her Mabel to drop Donizetti onto the Cornish coast with aplomb while her acting has a roguish charm – no wilting heroine here. It would have been good to feel that her Frederick, Robert Murray, was equally virile but, while he sang well, he did not cut as dashing a figure as the other men.

Musically the evening hinges on three basses, Andrew Shore’s fleet-footed Major General, Joshua Bloom’s Pirate King cast in the mould of Brian Blessed, and Jonathan Lemalu’s Sergeant of Police, whose likeness to Ronnie Barker was at times disconcerting. When Sullivan is sung so well there can be no doubt of his stature as a composer, and the patter songs are matched by the simple delicacy of Ah lead me not to pine and the intensity of the Pirate trio.

The only unexpected characterisation was Rebecca de Pont Davies’ deeply Cornish Ruth. Taking the text at face value she carries an ear trumpet because she is hard of hearing and, for all the Pirates desire early on to get shot of her, they are only too happy to share a picnic given the chance to do so.

The ENO chorus were loving every minute of it and what a pleasure to find double the number of men in act two rather than having to split them in half across pirates and policemen. The ladies danced well in Francesca Jayne’s free-flowing choreography and were unfased by the speed of How beautifully blue the sky.

David Parry keeps the tempi brisk throughout but never at the risk of blurring the text. Would that all G&S were at this level. I wonder if this Pirates will run as long as Mikado? I will be surprised if it does not.

BBC Symphony Orchestra, Jiri Belohlavek

Barbican Hall, 2 May 2015

Such are the vagaries of fashion that even today Smetana’s tragic opera Dalibor is rarely heard, yet when it is its impression is overwhelming. This is the composer at his most romantic and heroic, able to translate the shifting emotions of the narrative into long sweeping musical paragraphs within which there are frequent moments of outstanding beauty. Dalibor’s reflection of his death and rapid meeting with his dead friend Zdenek, the intensity of the love duet and the nuanced choral settings are just of few obvious examples. The changes in style, which at first can seem unnerving, are, on reflection, in keeping with the social setting. The long first act, and the opening of act three, are both formal public gatherings, while most of the rest of the work is intimate and personal. Smetana matches the orchestration to the event so that while we may feel as if the opening is close to Lohengrin the whole work is not focussed that way and any Wagnerian moments are accidental rather than deliberate.

The chorus are important but always distanced, physically so in the Barbican Hall, and this seemed appropriate. Even the lusty Mercenaries chorus, harking back to Weber’s Huntsmen, are somehow off-stage even when at their most enthusiastic.

The Czech cast were probably about as good as one could wish for. Dana Buresova’s Milada has a ringing top to the voice and a subtle sense of humour when she needed it in the prison scenes. Richard Samek proved an heroic Dalibor, even if there were occasional moments when his voice seemed under strain. No such problems for Ivan Kusnjer’s King who dominated the evening and made political sense of Dalibor’s death even if the story may beg for a happier ending.

There are few better interpreters of Czech music than Jiri Belohlavek and he rose to the challenges of the score with absolute conviction. The BBC Symphony orchestra responded with an extrovert enthusiasm which convinced us that this really is a work which should be in the regular canon.

It was being recorded for later transmission but no date is currently available. Keep a look out for it and save it – you will not regret it.