Monthly Archives: November 2017

Brighton Philharmonic Orchestra – Remembrance Day

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The Dome, Brighton, 12 November 2017

Loosely, but not aggressively, themed for Remembrance Day this concert gave us the works of one composer whose pacificism drove him across the Atlantic, one who served as a medical orderly in World War 1 and one who was killed on the Somme.

Britten’s D Minor Violin Concerto was completed during the composer’s voluntary exile and premiered at Carnegie Hall in 1940. Matthew Trussler, modestly looking like a half dressed, rapidly growing schoolboy in a tight white shirt, played it with verve, maturity and impressive control. It was easy, in this performance, to hear menace and the horror of war in some of the abrupt harmonies and desperate sadness in the lyrical passages. The War Requiem might lie twenty two years into the future but the anger and distress at the futility of it all is clearly there already. Barry Wordsworth ensured this came out strongly although he also, wisely, allowed Trussler his head. The playing in the long cadenza was edge-of-the-seat stuff with exquisitely accurate trills on harmonics and the unusual technique of left hand pizzicato with simultaneous legato bowing. Even the rising and descending scales, of which there are lots for both soloist and orchestra, were made to sound musically compelling here.

The other long work in the programme was Vaughan Williams’s strident, angry fourth symphony which dates from 1935. Wordsworth leant on all the big RVM themes and played up the syncopated passages in the last movement to enjoyable effect. The central scherzo was evocative and carefully managed. For this final work in the programme the orchestra was fully warmed up.

Also appropriate in its wistful way was George Butterworth’s A Shropshire Lad: Rhapsody which opened the second half. Plenty of yearning, lyrical beauty came through some fine playing.

This concert opened with Stokowski’s arrangement of Bach’s Toccata and Fugues (more D minor) which was an odd choice. Yes, it makes a splendid opening – all drama and semiquavers – but it’s hard to listen to it, I’m afraid, without thinking of Fantasia and  irreverently expecting Mickey Mouse to appear. Moreover some of the entries were a bit ragged in the first few moments although by the time we got to the fugue, inspiringly started by the violas, it was all sailing along grandiloquently. If, however, we were meant – in part – to be focusing on Remembrance Day then this work seemed inappropriate.

Two further small observations about this concert, one positive, one less so. First, it’s grand to see and hear a selection of works which make such good use of the tuba and it’s fun to see the enormous mute going in and out of the bell. Well done,   Principal Tuba. Second, I wish they’d sort out that percussive whistle which whispers in the Dome when it’s quiet. You could hear it all too clearly during the Britten. I don’t know whether it’s the heating, air conditioning or something else but it’s always there and needs dealing with.

Susan Elkin

 

Barefoot Opera: L’incoronazione di Poppea

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St Mary in the Castle, 11 November 2017

Monteverdi’s L’incoronazione di Poppea seems uncomfortably relevant with its abuse of power and sex, moral corruption, disdain for the law and sudden death. In the key scene between Seneca and Nero, the Emperor makes it quite clear that the law is only for little people. Those who have power can do what they like – and they do.

That Monteverdi envelops his narrative in such wonderful music is all the more disturbing. At the end, evil is seen to triumph as the radiant final duet is given to the two most corrupt individuals, with no sense that they will ever suffer for their iniquities as would become the norm in later opera.

Jenny Miller’s production universalises the action and Vicky Turner’s costumes create a seemingly egalitarian, if corrupt, society where Poppea is literally the one scarlet woman. The production utilises the space at St Mary’s with subtlety and the voices never lose out regardless of where the singers are placed.

The large cast is drawn from strength with much exceptionally pleasing singing. Sarah Parkin’s Poppea is an easy foil for Lucilla Graham’s slippery Nerone, their voices aptly complementary and radiant in the final pages. Michal Aloni as Ottavia brings a sense of moral worth even as she is emotionally challenged by all around her. Her final scene is genuinely moving, but we know she is lucky to escape alive.  Of the two male leads, Tobias Odenwald lends vocal gravitas to Seneca and his height gives him added authority. By contrast Matthew Paine’s shifty Ottone highlights the ease with which moral laxity can set in. Whether Hannah Jones’ supportive Drusilla will ever be able to make anything of him is left to our imagination.

Of the many smaller parts the two soldiers, Vincent Martinez and Brian McAlea, are particularly impressive vocally and one wished they had more to do. Sarah Dunbar made much of three smaller parts, her acting ability matching a well-focused voice. Natasha Elliot surprised with her gentle comedy and clear articulation as the nurse Arnalta, a part normally taken by an aging tenor!

Lesley Anne Sammons and Nicholas Bosworth accompanied from keyboards which allowed us a range of instruments, with the harp/lute being particularly effective. They were joined by Lucy Mulgan on double bass and Evelyn Nallen on recorders to create a positive small ensemble and one which worked well within the warm acoustic.

There was a large and enthusiastic audience – a pleasure to report given the increasing number of high quality performances we are now experiencing in Hastings.

AUDIENCES CAN SIMULATE BEING PART OF  SIEGFRIED SASSOON INSPIRED OPERA

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Audiences will have the chance to feel part of a new opera inspired by Siegfried Sassoon’s poems with an innovative 360-degree simulated experience of Garsington Opera’s Silver Birch on BBC Arts Digital from midday, Wednesday 08 November.

Part of the BBC Opera Season, this ground-breaking experience from BBC Arts Digital and Garsington Opera entitled Person 181, utilises 360-degree video capture and cutting edge ambisonic audio recording to simulate being part of the community opera. The technology will give audiences the experience of being on stage standing among the cast of 180 performers during a performance of Silver Birch, as well as unique behind the scenes access in the build up to the actual performance.

Silver Birch is an exciting new commission from leading UK composer Roxanna Panufnik, with a libretto by writer Jessica Duchen. Inspired by Siegfried Sassoon’s poems, and the testimony of a British soldier who recently served in Iraq, the piece illustrates the human tragedies of conflicts past and present. The opera chorus includes a variety of first time singers from various community groups including veterans and family members.

Silver Birch is a celebration of music, drama, poetry and dance and brings together professional singers with 180 members of the local community. Designed to appeal to everyone from age 8 upwards, Karen Gillingham, Creative Director of Garsington Opera’s Learning & Participation programme, directs and Douglas Boyd conducts. The production is also supported by Foley Artists from Pinewood Studios.

Person 181 will be available at www.bbc.co.uk/arts along with three short ‘making of’ films, and at BBC Taster http://bbc.in/2lZfc4S

Interview Concert: Duo Arnicans

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St Paul’s Cafe Worthing, 2 November 2017

An unmistakeable magic was weaved into the sound waves and social atmosphere of the latest International Interview Concert at St Paul’s Cafe Worthing. DUO Arnicans’ new programme of seven singing cello pieces, played without a break, took the packed audience into a dream. And then their stirring Brahms Sonata No 2 for Cello and Piano turned from romance into passion the ambience of their connection with their avid listeners.

Cellist Florian Arnicans played from memory the first-half sequence of song and melody beyond words. Suddenly unaccompanied, he played cello legend Pablo Casals’ Song Of the Birds, riveting the full house in his own realisation of the unpublished score after listening himself to an original Casals recording. There were unexpected and revelatory instrumental effects. Then, out of the silence after its concluding sky-high trill, came pianist Arta Arnicane’s stealing steps of the following Habanera by Ravel , creating a halting expectation and sensuality that shot through the audience.

These top-notch young artistes from Zurich ? Florian a German, his spouse Arta a Latvian ? asserted categorically the level of artistry and performance in these innovative, interactive and inclusive concerts. This being the 11th in five years, the Interview Concerts in Worthing are already a precious biannual advancement of the classical music offering in West Sussex.

The musicians’ verbal communication skills in the interviewing lay another dimension on the audience experience. Arta and Florian brought humour, wisdom, insight and candidness in this additional connective and intimate showcase. Questions also came from the audience, who relished the fun when the organisers’ gifts to the artistes came to be opened, so capping entertainment in a compelling combination.

Music – ‘Programme Canción’: “The Cello Sings” – JS Bach, Arioso; Schubert, Ständchen; Mendelssohn, Lied ohne Worte Op.109 (Song without Words);  Dvorak, Melodie; Pablo Casals, Song of the Birds; Ravel, Pièce en forme de Habanera; Josef Suk, Serenade. After the interval: Brahms, Sonata for Cello and Piano No 2 in F Opus 99.

Richard Amey

 

Brighton Philharmonic Orchestra

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In the Brighton Phil’s Remembrance Sunday concert at the Dome on 12 November music by some of Britain’s greatest 20th century composers sits alongside a vivid re-imagining of an 18th century masterpiece.

The orchestra is joined by the violinist Matthew Trusler who performs Benjamin Britten’s emotionally and technically demanding Violin Concerto, mysterious, martial and melodic by turns. Written in 1939 the concerto was heavily influenced by the escalation of hostilities in Europe.

The concert opens with Bach’s Toccata & Fugue (arranged by Leopold Stokowski) familiar to many from the opening scenes of Disney’s Fantasia (1940) when Mickey Mouse shakes hands with The Conductor, Stokowski himself.

Then we have George Butterworth’s evocative A Shropshire Lad which was written in 1913, based on poems by AE Housman. This sumptuous orchestral rhapsody conjures up the rural idyll of Edwardian England that was to change forever in the First World War, where Butterworth was to lose his life in the trenches.

The concert ends with Vaughan Williams’ powerful Symphony No.4 which was written in 1935 as the storm clouds of war gathered over Europe. This craggy and at times ferocious piece is shot through with the composer’s rage, humour and poetic nature.

Tickets (from £12-£38) are available from Brighton Dome Ticket Office in Church Street, Brighton, (01273) 709709 and online: www.brightondome.org 50% discount for students and Under 18s.

Discounted parking is available for BPO concert-goers at NCP Church Street – just £6 between 1-6pm.

 

 

Swansong

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Milton Court Studio, 4 November 2017

Iain Burnside is a commensurate communicator. Witness his often quirky, but always fascinating, programmes on Radio 3 over the years and his 5 star piano playing especially when he’s accompanying and particularly in lieder. Lucky are the students who study with him at Guildhall School of Music and Drama where he is a professor.

Swansong is, at one level, a warm and vibrant recital of Schubert’s last fourteen songs which the Viennese publisher Tobias Haslinger hooked together and marketed – very profitably – as Schwanengesang after Schubert’s death. At another level it’s a piece of musical theatre. Six actors deliver short monologues between the songs so that suddenly we see them from many different angles like a cubist painting. At a third level it’s a real joy to see yet another work devised and directed by Burnside in which the Guildhall musicians work with their counterparts in drama to present something which is as integrated as it is enlightening.

The piece is scored for a singer, a pianist and six actors. In fact here we get two excellent pianists (Michael Pandya and Dylan Perez) and four singers alongside six actors playing characters who all have a view about the composer and/or his songs over nearly two centuries – Brahms, Ivor Gurney, Haslinger, Franz von Schober, a cleaner and a modern student.

Harriet Burns, soprano, brings lots of warmth and passion along with a knowing twinkle in both eye and voice to the opening song Liebesbotschaft. James Robinson’s tenor and both baritones, Andrew Hamilton and Henri Tikkanen pack plenty of drama and colour especially in Die Stadt. All four voices blend well in the final Die Taubenpost.

Each of the actors does a fine job too. Burnside has ignored conventions of period so that all the speech is very modern, along with the costumes. It reminds you – rather neatly – that nothing changes and yes, the laundry maid would have known all about Schubert’s sickness once she started finding mercury stains (“they mix it with lard and rub it on the sores”) on the sheets.  Jordan Angell’s Haslinger is a spivy type who tells the audience to “cut me some slack, will you? And Declan Baxter’s Gurney, complete with authentic Gloucestershire accent, locked in City of London Mental Hospital, is both appealing and pitiful. The trouble with this approach is that without a programme you might struggle to work out who is who but it’s a minor gripe

Overall this is a pleasingly original, high quality hour of music and drama – not quite a concert, not quite musical theatre and not quite an illustrated talk. Maybe Burnside has invented a new performance art form?

SE

Hastings Philharmonic

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St Mary in the Castle, Saturday 4 November 2017

The first choral concert of the season from Hastings Philharmonic brought together an eclectic programme which proved to be both well balanced and finely honed.

Just to prove that Marcio da Silva is not totally indispensable to the ensemble, the string orchestra played Mozart’s Serenata Notturna K239 without him at the podium, which is certainly authentic for the period. Leader Angela Jung guided them with ease from the first desk and maintained a brisk tempi throughout and a continuing sense of warmth and affection for the score. The solo work was exemplary and even off-stage fireworks failed to crash the musical line.

Britten’s Cantata Misericordium dates from soon after the War Requiem and uses similar, if cut-down, forces, with the tenor and baritone soloists balancing the weight of the chorus. Set in Latin, it was good to find we had a complete translation and were thus able to follow the sensitivity of the setting. A non-conformist approach to the parable of the Good Samaritan, it stresses the humanitarian rather than spiritual aspects of the story, though it is difficult to ignore the obvious modern, and overtly spiritual, aspects of the whole piece. The choir had obviously wrestled with the setting, which is not an easy sing, but managed to do justice to the piece and produce a number of moments of real splendour.

After the interval the orchestra excelled themselves in a ravishing performance of Elgar’s Serenade for Strings.  Though I have known the work for more than half a century I can’t recall the slow movement more beautifully played. The beauty of Elgar’s line encloses hints of the transience of life – never edging over into the melancholy which came so often in his later works, but hinted here nevertheless.

Two psalm settings by Holst seemed almost prosaic by comparison though that would be an insult to fine pieces, finely performed. The choir were far more comfortable here and ready for the leap into Schubert’s Mass in G D167, which he wrote at the tender age of 18. Though a brief work it is full of radiant music, allowing the soloists to shine again as they had earlier. Soprano Helen May filled the building with richly glowing tone, the top of the voice thrilling as it floated above the choir.

In the Britten, tenor Kieran White and baritone, Jolyon Loy, had taken the parts written for Peter Pears and Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau with great sensitivity and beauty of line. The final moments of sleep now seem to reflect the War Requiem and there is a moving outcry from the wounded Jew as the musical line mirrors Gerontius. In the Schubert they were equally adroit and moving.

Throughout, Marcio da Silva brought what we have come to expect of him – precision and passion. We are lucky to have him with us.

The next Hastings Philharmonic concert is on Saturday 2 December at Christ Church St Leonards when the Baroque choir will sing Stabat Mater’s by Pergolesi and Scarlatti.