Category: Festival-conference

‘More Beautiful Music – More Beautiful Places’

Post author By EMR2015
Post date October 2, 2018
No Comments on ‘More Beautiful Music – More Beautiful Places’

D James Ross reviews the 2018 Lammermuir Festival

A Right Royal Recital

Our ears were still ringing from the BBCSSO’s magisterial account of Bruckner’s 7th Symphony in St Mary’s Collegiate Church, Haddington, in the opening concert of the 2018 Lammermuir Festival, as we settled for an event on the opposite scale. Bach scholar, keyboard player and conductor John Butt had chosen the intimate setting of Gladsmuir Parish Church for his mid-afternoon account with explanations of Bach’s Musical Offering. With the help of seven instrumentalists from the Dunedin Consort, Butt explained and illustrated the context, structure and style of the modest three-part Ricercar, the ten Canons, the Trio Sonata and the magnificent six-part Ricercar which make up Bach’s BWV 1079. The performance opened with the three-part Ricercar played on harpsichord by Butt – this is Bach’s memory of the work he improvised on the spot for Frederick the Great on the melody provided to him by the King, the notoriously wayward Thema Regium. Even the great improviser Bach was stumped when asked for a six-part elaboration – the King had to wait until he received his presentation copy of the full set, whereas we only had to wait until the end of an enthralling afternoon.

Butt’s commentary was both erudite and witty – most of the hilarity was intentional, although forgetting his performers’ roles and indeed names, declaring, ‘Well they all look the same to me!’ was vintage Butt. The musical contributions by his players were technically superb and delightfully varied in texture, involving as they did performances on the violin, cello, viola da gamba, flute, oboe, oboe da caccia and bassoon. A particular highlight was Huw Daniel and Georgia Brown’s delicious account on violin and flute, sympathetically accompanied by Jonathan Manson on cello and John Butt on harpsichord, of the central Trio Sonata, in which Bach goes out of his way to demonstrate his mastery of the galant style. The growing richness of the textures throughout the concert culminated in the group’s concluding account of the iconic six-part Ricercar, for which wind and strings combined and gambist Alison McGillivray took to violone to underpin this concluding tour de force. An event which may have looked a little dry in the brochure turned out to be wonderfully entertaining and informative, and it was a tonic to hear some of my fellow audience members humming the Thema Regium as we all left.

Miserere and More

How do you solve a problem like Allegri? This was the issue facing Rory McCleary and his Marian Consort in their programme entitled Miserere and featuring the 2011 setting by James Macmillan as well as the ubiquitous setting by Gregorio Allegri. As a musicologist, McCleary is well aware of the problematic nature of the standard edition of the Allegri, and yet it would be a brave ensemble, which would eschew entirely the stratospheric if entirely synthetic solo soprano ‘moments’. The solution they came up with, pragmatic if not entirely convincing, saw the post-Mendelssohn solo verses alternating with the ‘original’, while a solo tenor sang the chant to the Tonus Peregrinus and the chorus actually sang Allegri. With the audience in position, it turned out acoustically that the solo ensemble would have been better placed at the east end of the 15th-century Whitekirk Parish Church rather than the west, but overall the chorus/solo/chant alternation worked well. A further unexpected issue emerged only at the end of the concert when the ensemble presented an exquisite account of James Macmillan’s Miserere, based upon the ‘modern’ Allegri – Macmillan alludes regularly to the standard narrative chant normally used for the Allegri, which of course due to the earlier choice of the Tonus Peregrinus we hadn’t actually heard!

A searing and imaginative 2018 setting by Gabriel Jackson of Stabat Mater receiving its Scottish premiere, was given a blistering performance by the ensemble. This was probably the most striking music of the evening, but the earlier repertoire including lovely readings of Palestrina’s eight-part Stabat Mater and five-part Ave Maria as well as a very fine eight-part setting by Victoria of Super flumina Babylonis proved the highlights for me. In this Renaissance repertoire the consort found a lovely balance and sang in a wonderfully rich and declamatory style – like many young vocal ensembles, the Marian Consort are not averse to a touch of vibrato, but the sound is generally well-focussed and expressive. An enthusiastic response from a capacity audience elicited a serene account of an eight-part setting of Jesu Redemptor by the Portuguese Renaissance composer Estêvào Lopes Morago.

Charms of the Clavichord

Strictly speaking, the clavichord is not really an instrument designed for public performance – its subtle tone and very low volume level mean that it pleases primarily the performer. However, in pursuit of ‘beautiful music in beautiful places’, the Lammermuir team had persuaded Edward and Anna Hocknell to make available their exquisite 16th-century country house, Fountainhall, for a recital by Julian Perkins. And the period intimacy of the first-floor room proved the perfect venue for what turned out to be an enchanting afternoon concert.

Appropriately enough, Perkins opened with a delightful account of Byrd’s Lord Willobies Welcome Home during which we became quickly accustomed to the clavichord’s soft but subtle voice. By way of contrast, Perkins performed the same piece on a charming Arnold Dolmetsch spinettino, an instrument which had once appeared alongside celebrity puppet Muffin the Mule! Perkins’ amusing and informative commentary introduced a darkly impressive Partita by Johann Froberger, two enigmatic sonatas by Domenico Scarlatti and the G-minor Suite by Handel. The latter played a clavichord in his childhood, and Perkins quite reasonably proposed that some of his more conservative ‘Germanic’ keyboard works were conceived on, and perhaps even for, the instrument.

The second half of the concert was in many ways the more intriguing part, consisting as it did of later music actually written for the clavichord, an instrument which continued to enjoy the attention of musicians up to our own times – Edward Heath celebrated taking the UK into Europe by performing Bach on his clavichord! Herbert Howells wrote a not inconsiderable body of work for the instrument, which proved to draw equally effectively on the Elizabethan and Edwardian worlds he knew so well. More recently, Stephen Dodgson has taken a more radically modern approach to the instrument in two Suites for Clavichord. We heard the second, in which the composer builds on the fascinating conceit of fanfares heard at a distance, which the versatile clavichord with its slight brazen after-tone evoked perfectly. As the recital concluded with a set of four Preludes and Fugues from Bach’s ‘48’, I was struck by just how dynamically and tonally versatile this modest instrument can be, and how in the right hands and in the correct setting the effect is simply magical. This was confirmed by a ravishing revisiting of the C-major Prelude, whose subtly rippling arpeggios gave us an encore to treasure.

Consonant Consones

Lennoxlove House, the residence of the Duke of Hamilton, was already long established when Fountainhall was just a glint in its architect’s eye, and its magnificent 14th-century barrel-vaulted Great Hall was the spectacular setting for a morning recital by the Consone String Quartet. In the six years since its foundation at the Royal College of Music, the Quartet has been exploring classical and early romantic repertoire on period instruments, championing in particular the early Schubert quartets and the chamber music of Luigi Boccherini.

Thus it was that they opened with Boccherini’s G-minor Quartet, a two-movement work with a wonderfully soulful Larghetto and a perky and rustic-sounding Minuet. Poor Boccherini has acquired the reputation of being a musical light-weight, but this near contemporary of Haydn is capable of genuinely touching melodies and engaging textures which suggest that his chamber music is deserving of more attention. The first half concluded with early Schubert, his C-major Quartet D46, which opens with a intriguingly dark fugal figure and continues to surprise with striking flashes of originality. The concluding Rondo features a genuine ear-worm, which we were all humming as we headed for interval refreshments, surrounded by the beautiful Hamilton art collection.

Another two-movement Quartet from Boccherini opened the second half – after the Danish String Quartet’s epic account of Beethoven’s op 132 Quartet a couple of days previously, a two movement work seemed eminently desirable! The ensemble had chosen another contemplative work in F-minor, and it duly worked its charms. The concert concluded with the second of Mendelssohn’s op. 44 Quartets, and its E-minor tonality made up a full afternoon of minor Quartets! As in the other works, the distinctive tone of the gut-strung instruments played with classical bows and authentic bowing techniques made perfect sense of the compositional style, with a wonderfully mellow singing tone combining with a thrilling attack without the shrillness sometimes associated with metal strings. The Consone String Quartet are worthy champions of their period instruments and of their chosen composers, and I found myself confirmed in my enthusiasm for the gut-strung sound as well as being newly inspired to investigate further the chamber music of Boccherini.

The first-class authentic/period instrument concerts in the Lammermuir Festival programme are of course just one strand of a dynamic and varied celebration stretching over ten days and incorporating a plethora of lovely venues. In addition to the concerts I reviewed in detail, I also enjoyed a wonderful concert in St Mary’s Haddington by the internationally renowned Scottish Chamber Orchestra directed by Cristian Macelaru. Performances of Mozart’s Haffner Symphony and Beethoven’s Second Symphony employed period brass and percussion instruments as well as historically informed bowing to bring this music vividly to life. It was a mark of this remarkable orchestra’s versatility that their accounts of Prokofiev’s Classical Symphony and Nielsen’s acerbic Clarinet Concerto with superb young soloist Mark Simpson were also stunning. Simpson returned a few days later to direct the SCO wind section in a programme including Mozart’s magisterial Partita for 13 Wind Instruments.

The Last Things – A Grand Finale

So how to bring this ninth Lammermuir Festival to a suitably spectacular conclusion? St Mary’s Collegiate Church was once again the venue, and the musical shoulders on which this responsibility fell were those of Stile Antico. This famously conductorless vocal ensemble enjoy an enviable reputation in the Early Music scene, and in this final Festival concert we were given a memorable demonstration of how this had been achieved. They had compiled a concert of Funeral music featuring Heinrich Schütz’s masterly Musikalische Exequien and J S Bach’s epic motet Jesu, meine Freude, but intriguingly including Renaissance polyphonic works in Latin which still featured prominently in Lutheran services in Bach’s Thomaskirche in Leipzig. These included the familiar Ecce quomodo moritur justus by Jacob Handl and Ego sum resurrectio by Hans Leo Hassler, as well as unknown but highly competent works by Ludwig Daser and Johann Knöfel. The former’s modestly dignified setting of Media vita and the latter’s richer In te Domine speravi were both impressive.

Stile Antico produce a wonderfully precise and intensely focussed sound, with a remarkable pinpoint accuracy and unanimity, which belies the absence of a conductor and seems to rely on a thorough familiarity with the music and an almost telepathic empathy. Their habit of standing in positions which ensure that they are never next to the others singing the same part also seems counterintuitive, but this scheme, most frequently involving boy/girl/boy/girl positioning like a mixer dinner-party, works spectacularly well. The group’s chosen repertoire saw every member of the choir singing a solo of one kind or another, and as a choir director I was struck by the great variety in the tone quality of the individual voices. All the more remarkable that they blended so perfectly in a full consort sound, and with no hint of vibrato! Mention should also be made of the excellent instrumental contributions in the Schütz – wonderfully incisive and expressive playing on the theorbo by James Aikers, and fine sympathetic performances on the chamber organ by Oliver-John Ruthven and on the violone by Kate Aldridge, both of whom also made a valuable contribution to the Bach.

A fine opening account of Lassus’ Justorum animae established the group’s superlative ensemble credentials, but in the course of the Schütz this was complemented with frequently ornate one-to-a-part sections, in which the singers rose to the challenge of a more solistic style, frequently decorating their lines in an impressive and authentic manner. Although the Bach motet was probably the most spectacular music of the evening, it was the Schütz, which I found most involving and indeed deeply moving. However it was with the pared-down poise and elegance of an Elizabethan hymn in our ears that we left the 2018 Lammermuir Festival, as a lavish and well-deserved ovation persuaded the ensemble to leave us with Thomas Campion’s powerful Never weather-beaten Sail.

Plans are already underway for next year’s Lammermuir Festival, which will be its 10th anniversary year. The organisers are faced with the enviable challenge of improving on an event, which has made such imaginative use of wonderful venues, filling them with appreciative audiences anxious to hear the distinctive, first-class performers they have managed to engage. Onwards and upwards!

Festival-conference

Early Nights in Edinburgh

Post author By EMR2015
Post date August 18, 2018
No Comments on Early Nights in Edinburgh

D James Ross at the Edinburgh International Festival 2018

A Pair of Period Pianos

To be able to host two of the four ‘big beasts’ of the early piano world within four days of one another is the prerogative of an international festival, and we were uniquely privileged to be able to compare recitals by Ronald Brautigam and Robert Levin at Edinburgh’s attractive Queen’s Hall. Brautigam was playing a beautiful Erard piano of 1837 from the collection of Edwin Beunk, an instrument which was a feast for the eyes much admired by the audience before the recital even started. It turned out to be an equal aural treat, when Brautigan opened his performance with Mendelssohn’s Rondo capriccioso. A full tone in the middle register, with an added edge in the bottom range and a delightfully light upper register allowed the instrument to reveal the innermost secrets of the works by Mendelssohn and Chopin which made up the programmne, while Brautigam’s stunning technique and deft pedalling provided further revelations. Chopin’s B flat minor Scherzo op. 31 provided a brilliant introduction to the two Nocturnes of opus 27, where I have never heard the distinctive undulating arpeggios performed with more clarity and eloquence. Mendelssohn’s impressive Variations sérieuses op 54 brought the first half to a spectacularly virtuosic conclusion.

The Six Songs without Words op 19 proved a wonderfully melodic opening to the second half, with the venerable Erard fairly singing out Mendelssohn’s lyrical melodies, while Chopin’s op 60 Barcarolle and op 57 Berceuse continued in a similarly gentle vein. Brautigam’s wonderfully compelling and flamboyantly executed performance concluded appropriately with Chopin’s showy Polonaise-fantaisie op 61 – a compositional and performance tour de force. A further delightful Barcarolle provided a suitably calming encore.

The Queen’s Hall also hosted an all-Mozart recital by Robert Levin, this time on a modern copy by Paul McNulty of an 1805 fortepiano by Anton Walter & Sohn. The contrast in sound between this instrument and the 1837 Erard was striking, as Robert Levin conjured wonderfully silvery tones from an instrument which turned out to have a wonderfully percussive bass register and a charmingly rapid decay. In his witty verbal introduction, Levin cited a keyboard tutor by CPE Bach in which he advocates lavish ornamentation of repeats and valuably provides examples, which prove to be radical departures from the originals. Levin pithily explained why he was playing from printed music – ‘I need to know what not to play in the repeats!’ With improvisation high on the agenda, Levin had compiled an ingenious programme juxtaposing three Mozart sonatas with the composer’s flamboyant Four Preludes K284a. The recital opened a short piece reconstructed by Levin from a liminal fragment notated in a manuscript of the composer’s Grabmusik. The cascades of scales and arpeggios in the Preludes seemed to prefigure the keyboard fireworks of Chopin, and surely provide us with a rare window on Mozart’s much-admired skills as an improviser. Levin’s own stunning powers of improvisation in the repeat sections of the Sonatas were nothing less than breathtaking, surely showing the way for future performances of these concert staples. Mozart’s own piano arrangement of the overture to Die Entführung aus dem Serail gave full rein to the clashing bass register, seeming almost to beg for one of the pianos of the time which featured Turkish percussion effects! If Levin’s laudable decision to group the pieces together and his slightly annoying mannerism of rushing to cadences led to a slightly breathless impression, this was a recital which was never less than exciting and frequently absolutely thrilling. An enthusiastic ovation elicited an unusual encore – Levin had transcribed the music from the famous portrait of the boy Mozart in red livery and looking hauntingly straight at the viewer. It turned out to be a youthful showpiece, surely designed to advertise the boy’s precocious compositional skills.

A Biblical Epic

If you will forgive the innuendo, Samson uncut is surprisingly huge. This became apparent as we sat down to the Dunedin Consort’s performance of Handel’s oratorio, which was projected to last no less than four hours. Written around the same time as Messiah, Samson has never enjoyed the success it deserves, and with the exception of the last two numbers, the spectacular show-aria Let the Bright Seraphim and the ensuing chorus Let their Celestial Consorts all unite little of the music has entered the standard repertoire. As I sat through a series of very fine arias and choruses I found myself musing upon why this vintage Handel isn’t more mainstream. One problem is that all the drama happens off-stage – Samson is already blinded and defeated when we first encounter him, and the concluding destruction of the temple is reduced to ‘noises off’. The unrelentingly melancholy subject, only very latterly transformed to triumph, also makes for painful listening. I found myself tearing up as Samson considered his blindness, singing heartrending words by blind Milton to moving music by Handel, already losing his sight, and who also would be blind within a few years. Paul Appleby’s account of the air Total Eclipse, as indeed his interpretation of the complex character of Samson, was immensely powerful, while his vocal technique in a long and demanding role was stunning. Sophie Bevan in the dramatically thankless role of Delila was simply superb as she purred, trilled and cooed her way through her seduction aria With plaintive notes, earning her the only individual ovation of the evening. Matthew Brook’s well-gauged Manoa, Samson’s father, was a powerful presence. Alice Coote, by contrast, seemed less comfortable in the role of Micah, composed by Handel for Mrs Cibber, although she did grow into the part as the piece advanced. Mhairi Lawson was an excellent stand-in second Philistine/Israelite Woman, and Hugo Hymas was vocally well cast as Israelite/Philistine Man. Of course, Louise Alder gets the best music in the show, Let the Bright Seraphim, a wonderfully sparkling show-stopper of an aria with obligato clarino trumpet, which is a gift to a soprano with the technique to enjoy it to the full. Wisely employing the Harry Christophers solution of segueing from the b-section of the aria straight into the concluding chorus ensured that the piece came to a terrific climax, and a deafening and extended ovation from the Usher Hall audience

As always with the Dunedin forces it seems, the orchestral playing was consistently superb under the detailed direction of John Butt, with wonderfully expressive string playing and fine contributions from bassoon, oboes, trumpets and a pair of wonderfully rumbustious horns, not always pinpoint accurate but infectiously energetic. Thomas Pitt and Stephen Farr provided unerringly supportive continuo playing, while the latter was also the organ soloist in the movements from Handel’s organ concertos that graced the intervals. This was a fascinating Dunedin experiment, copying Handel in filling intermissions with instrumental works, on this occasion on a copy by Goetz and Gwynn of an organ owned by Handel’s librettist Jennens, during which the audience was encouraged to walk around and chat. You will be pleased to hear that your reviewer selflessly eschewed a visit to the bar to move to the front to hear the organ more clearly! Perhaps the ultimate jewel in the crown of this superb performance was the singing of the Dunedin Consort chorus, twenty-four young singers who produced an impeccably accurate and wonderfully gleaming sound throughout. This was a lot of Handel to take in at one go, but it was very good Handel and wonderfully performed by Edinburgh’s local Baroque heroes, the Dunedin Consort.

A Beggar’s Opera for our times?

As the late great Nikolaus Harnoncourt said in a verbal introduction to a period performance of Haydn’s Surprise Symphony, ‘What would musicians have to do to surprise an audience to the same degree as an audience of the time was surprised by a loud chord?’. Leaving the question hanging, he started the piece, letting off a loud indoor firework at the relevant moment in the slow movement, smiling conspiratorially as the audience, aware of the recent terrorist bombings, screamed in shock. In many ways it is depressing how easily Gay and Rich’s social satire, The Beggar’s Opera transfers to our own times. However the version performed in the King’s Theatre by the instrumentalists of Les Arts Florissants and the actors of Théâtre des Bouffes du Nord used a modernised edition by Ian Burton and Robert Carson in which much ‘f-ing and blinding’, street dancing, drugs deals, texting and social networking sought to place the piece in the same shocking relationship with a modern audience as the original work had enjoyed with the 18th-century public. And I think with a few reservations that it succeeded very well.

The stage was filled with a sheer cliff face of cardboard boxes at the foot of which slept a beggar, and through the action the boxes provided a very serviceable set of props and settings for the action. An onstage band of period instrumentalists sat at boxes with tablets propped up on them with their music, and provided beautifully energetic accounts of the ballad airs and dances. The singing actors of the cast coped generally very well with the musical aspects of the show, although just once or twice the geography of the set led to timing or tuning going a little adrift. Evoking a mixture of Eastenders and TOWIE (Google it…), Robert Burt as Peachum and Beverley Klein as his wife provided wonderfully sleazy central characters, always teetering on the edge of violence. Kate Batter’s vulnerable but equally sleazy Polly and Benjamin Purkiss’s dashingly macho Macheath were strongly characterised, while the host of whores, gangsters and corrupt officials that seethe around them were vividly brought to life by a gifted and versatile cast. The athletic street dancing of the behoodied gang was particularly effective.

To my mind, it was a mistake to cut the Beggar and his prologue, as the lack of framework left a problem at the end, not convincingly solved by a change of government and all the beggars becoming cabinet ministers – ironically not as preposterous a conclusion as Gay and Rich’s original cynically contrived ending. Indeed the wit and cynicism of the 18th-century original shone through this performance, which remained almost entirely true to the narrative and many of the resonances of the text, while retaining the original song texts with just a few minor tweaks. As promised in the promotion, the musical dimension did have a fine improvisatory quality, in which the two Baroque violins, viola, cello and double bass joined by a recorder, an oboe, an archlute and percussion all directed from the harpsichord by Florian Carré sounded wonderfully spontaneous and energetic. If the band occasionally came across as a little underpowered against the ‘mic’d up’ voices in the theatre acoustic, the playing was always wonderfully expressive and imaginative, with very effective elaborations and ornamentation.

This riotous outing at the end of my Festival visit seemed a million miles away from the world of the elegant period piano recitals with which I have begun, but this has got to be the chief joy of an international festival, which can offer such variety even within the realm of early music. And bear in mind that while I was attending events in the ‘official’ Festival, on the Fringe elsewhere in town the Edinburgh Renaissance Band were wowing the crowds with innovative early programmes, and Cappella Nova were filling Greyfriars Kirk with the distinctive tones of Robert Carver!

D. James Ross

Tags Baroque, Classical, Opera, Oratorio, Romantic

Festival-conference

Itinéraire Baroque 2018

Dordogne, France 26-29 July 2018

[dropcap]O[/dropcap]f many surprising features of the summer of 2018, few have excelled the strange experience of travelling from a parched, sun-scorched Britain basking in (or suffering from) an extreme heat-wave to the lush green of the equally sun-blessed woods and rolling hills of the Périgord vert, the most northern region of the Dordogne. It is there that the Itinéraire Baroque festival founded 17 summers ago by Ton Koopman takes place in the villages and hamlets of the area, invariably utilising the many Romanesque churches that adorn the Périgord vert.

The programme for my third visit to Itinéraire Baroque (my account of the 2016 festival can also be found on this site) had Spanish culture as an overarching theme, although no Spanish music featured in the opening concert on 26 July at the Romanesque (although much altered) abbey church of St Cybard in Cercles. Given by members of the Amsterdam Baroque Orchestra under Koopman, it did, however, adhere to what was virtually a subtext of the festival – music for exotic instruments or unusual instrumental combinations. Thus this concert included concertos by Telemann for oboe d’amore and two chalumeaux, by Gregor Werner (Haydn’s predecessor at Esterhazy) for two organs and two chalumeaux and a concerto for trombone by Albrechtsberger, the Classical style of which stood in stark contrast to the surrounding Baroque repertoire. In addition, the pleasingly light-voiced tenor Tilman Lichdi sang a folk-like strophic song of Werner and an undistinguished extract from one of his oratorios. Neither tested him to anything like the same extent as Bach’s Cantata No.55 ‘Ich armer Mensch’, where technical fallibilities were at times cruelly exposed. Nonetheless, the concert made for an enjoyable start to the festival, especially in the well-played Telemann concertos and Alessandro Marcello’s well-known Oboe Concerto in D minor.

St Cybard is very much ‘home base’ of the Festival, its delightful linden- shaded square filled during its course by ‘Café baroque’, where food, drink and stalls selling local bio produce are located. Such facilities proved much in demand at the lunchtime concert the following day, played by the chamber ensemble L’Astrée, who with soprano Julia Wischiewski gave a programme of Vivaldi trio sonatas and chamber cantatas. The instrumental part of the concert provided for me the most satisfying music making of the festival, with vital, well-articulated playing by violinist Paola Nervi and cellist Rebecca Ferri in quicker movements and truly eloquent playing in slower movements such as the exquisite Sarabanda of the Sonata in D minor, RV27, where the interplay between the two was totally engaging. I much liked, too, the tasteful ornamentation added to repeats. Despite some expressive singing and confident execution of passaggi, the cantatas were less satisfying. Wischiewski’s soprano was too often unevenly produced, her diction less than clear, while her ornamentation was often waywardly unstylish.

Following an afternoon devoted to a lecture on Spanish Baroque music and a concert devoted to music and dances in period costume from Spain and southern France – neither of which I attended – the evening concert found Koopman and his wife (and former pupil) Tini Mathot giving a recital for two organs and two harpsichords entitled ‘The Master and his Pupil’. Thus we heard music by, among others, J. S. Bach (the Prelude and Fugue in C, BWV 547, curiously played on harpsichords rather than organ) and W. F. Bach (a solo Concerto in F), Armand-Lous Couperin, who was taught by his father Nicholas, one of the great Couperin dynasty, and Antonio Soler, the most famous pupil of Alessandro Scarlatti. It was Soler who provided the meat of the programme, in quantity, if not substance, too much of his music being inconsequential, at times to a degree of banality. Both here and in organ works by Cabanilles and Perez de Albeniz the portative organs used by Mathot and Koopman were a monochrome substitute for the colourfully exotic sound of Spanish organs of the period.

The Saturday of the festival gives it its name and (to the best of my knowledge) unique feature, the day consisting of staggered visits to six venues, in most cases a small rural church of Romanesque origin. At each of these a short concert – preceded by a brief introduction to the building – is given by performers who remain in the same location for the day. It however started in the town church of Mareuil, where before being divided for the tour a large audience assembled to hear a selection of solo recorder music from Jacob van Eyck’s ‘Der fluyten lustof’ (well played by Reine-Marie Verhagen), music with which I confidently expect to be punished for all eternity should I end up in one of the circles of Dante’s Hell. Our first stop was the little church at Graulges, Romanesque at heart, but much restored. Judging from reaction I heard, the concert of 17th-century Italian and Dutch sonatas played by the gifted Ensemble Clematis was probably the most popular of the day. To me, however, it was a further depressing example of how young players still ignore the difference between all-purpose period instrument string playing and the special demands of 17th-century music. This applies especially to an ensemble like Clematis that specializes in this repertoire, when it can only be viewed as the lazy option that is to be deplored.

If this was a disappointment, the following event in the beautiful little chapel of St John the Baptist in the village of Puyrénier came as a pleasant surprise. Here Fred Jacobs, one of the doyens of the lute world, played a beguiling recital of works by Sor (mostly) and Giuliani on a Romantic guitar built in 1820. This is not repertoire I have explored in any depth, but here was struck by the sheer inventiveness of Sor in particular and the beauty of tone Jacobs produced throughout, especially in more contemplative pieces like the Cantabile, op 42/1.

Following a lunch break, the first of the afternoon concerts took as back to the outskirts of Mareuil and the church Saint Sulpice, where the Swiss ensemble Albori Musical played works by Vivaldi and Telemann and a sonata by Pierre Prowo formerly attributed to Telemann. Moderately accomplished playing failed to disguise the fact that the rhythmically four-square and often somewhat inexpressive performances rarely caught fire.

© Jean-Michael Bale: Franziska Fleischanderl

There was nothing inexpressive about the penultimate visit to the charming simplicity of the little church of Connezac, once the chapel of the eponymous chateau. Within its intimate surroundings the Austrian dulcimer player Franziska Fleischanderl illustrated with captivating charm its capabilities both in her playing and introductions. Particularly interesting was the great difference in sonority dependent on whether the instrument is plucked or struck with hammers, while the range of subtly modulated sound that can be cajoled from it in the hands of an obvious expert was strongly projected.

The final concert took place en plein air alongside the walls of the largely 15th-century Chateau D’Aucors. Given by Dutch group Camerata Trajectina, it introduced a programme based around the 16th-century struggle of the Netherlands to free itself from Spanish domination. Much more interesting historically than musically – it included a number of what we would today term protest songs – it was entertainingly projected by the experienced Heike Meppelink (soprano) and Nico van der Meel (tenor).

An early flight the following morning determined that I missed the final concert, a typical Koopman mix of Bach Orchestral Suites and Brandenburgs. But once again Itinéraire Baroque, with its loyal and enthusiastic audience playing a full part, had proved a captivating experience that can be enthusiastically recommended to anyone seeking an unusual musical holiday in one of the most beguiling parts of the Dordogne. https://www.itinerairebaroque.com/

Brian Robins

Tags Baroque, Classical, Renaissance, Romantic

Festival-conference

The Saintes Festival 2018

Post author By EMR2015
Post date July 24, 2018
No Comments on The Saintes Festival 2018

[dropcap]A[/dropcap]lthough a veteran of French music festivals, particularly during the decade-plus one we lived in France, Saintes is one I had never previously visited until this year. Situated in the south-west in the departement of Charente-Maritime, Saintes dates back to the days when it was the first Roman capital of Aquitane, a past still in evidence today in the shape of the imposing Arch of Germanicus (AD18-19) and an amphitheatre dating back to AD40-50. Other architectural treasures include the late-Gothic cathedral of Saint-Pierre, which lies to one side of the attractive old town and the Abbaye aux Dames, originally the site of a Benedictine order of nuns founded in 1047.

It is this last that is of the most interest to this report, for today it is the home of what is known as ‘la cité musicale’, a complex centred around the abbey church, a building that has survived many a vicissitude during the course of its long history, and the 17th century residential block. Today, as at Ambronay, that is put to service for the accommodation of visiting performers and other visitors, while its ground floor also incorporates an auditorium used for smaller-scale concerts.

A constant feature of the annual festival, held this year over nine days in the middle of July, is a focus on the music of Bach, while 2018 also paid special attention to British composers and artists, among the latter Carolyn Sampson, to whose concert we’ll return below. On most days large audiences, most of whose members appear to come for at least several days (we constantly saw the same people during the three days we were there), have a choice of four concerts. While the emphasis is on Baroque music or that of later periods played on period instruments, the festival is not exclusively devoted to early music, as names such as Debussy, Kurtag, Ligeti and Xenakis readily testify.

This applied, too, to the first concert we attended after arriving on 19 July. Carolyn Sampson has long been one of the treasures of the British early music scene, but here, capably accompanied by the pianist Joseph Middleton, she was on rather less familiar territory in a programme of 20th century English song. I have to confess it is a long time since such repertoire formed part of my regular listening and I fear that even Sampson failed to win me over to Walton’s Songs for the Lord Mayor’s Table or three of the Façade settings; indeed in the case of the latter I’m still wondering what the audience made of the French translations of Edith Sitwell’s bizarre verse. Groups by Bridge and Quilter fell pleasingly on the ear given Sampson’s consummate artistry, but it took Vaughan Williams’ ‘Orpheus with his lute’ and a dreamy ‘Silent Noon’ (some exquisite mezza voce here – and indeed elsewhere) to strike at the heart.

The later evening concert, a free performance of Handel’s Water Music and the Harp Concerto, op 4/6 arranged for flute by conductor Hugo Reyne, had been scheduled to take place in the abbey gardens, but doubtful weather necessitated it being moved to the abbey. Given by Reyne’s orchestra La Simphonie du Marais and accompanied by the conductor’s introduction (he appeared wearing a yachtsman’s cap) and commentary – we were shown what horns and natural trumpets look like – the concert would doubtless have worked much better outside. As it was the juxtaposition of Reyne’s childish jokes, some hair-raisingly fast tempos and some less than persuasive playing (some of the wind playing was rough enough to sink the barge) made for an irritating end to a long day. To be fair, it has to be recorded that the capacity audience loved it all.

Ronald Brautigam & Le Jeune Orchestre de l’Abbaye aux Dames, dir. Michael Willens © Sébastien Laval

One of the most admirable features of the Saintes Festival is the encouragement it gives to the development of young musicians. Since 1996 the festival has had its own period instrument orchestra, Le Jeune Orchestre de l’Abbaye aux Dames. Formed to perform Classical and Romantic music, its membership is international and it has had the advantage of working under conductors such as Christopher Hogwood, Marc Minkowski and, especially, Philippe Herreweghe, who from 1981 to 2002 was artistic director of the Festival. This year it gave three concerts, the one we heard at the early afternoon concert on 20 July being devoted to composers who existed ‘in the shadow of Beethoven’ and the great man himself, represented by his Piano Concerto no. 4, magisterially played on an unidentified large grand fortepiano by Ronald Brautigam. The quasi-recitative central movement came off especially well, while the Rondo finale was launched with great verve. The young orchestra, some 60-strong played with a youthful panache and splendid finish under the baton of Michael Willens. Earlier the orchestra responded with engaging fervour to the early romantic freshness of E T A Hoffman’s Ondine overture with splendidly alert playing, the wistful reprise of the principal subject lingering particularly in the mind. An immensely satisfying concert concluded with another rarity, the Symphony No. 4, op 60 by Jan Kalliwoda. Dating from 1835, the work explores all the typical gestures of the full-blown romantic symphony: the mysterious slow introduction rising from the bass, the long sustained horn calls in the Romanze second movement, while also paying due homage to the composer’s native Bohemia in the Harmoniemusik writing of the finale. If the work carries a suggestion of déjà vu, it nonetheless makes for agreeable listening, particularly when played with as much vitality as it was here. The evening brought an even greater rarity, a performance of Issé, the first opera – and in the view of many of his contemporaries the best – of André-Cardinal Destouches. Originally composed in 1697, it was heard here in a revised version dating from 1708. Since I’ve reviewed the fine performance by Les Surprises under their director Louis-Noël Bestion de Camboulas elsewhere, I’ll here merely record that regrettably it was done with significant cuts and that there will be an opportunity to hear it again with a more starry cast at Versailles in October.

The final morning of the Festival brought further uplifting evidence of the encouragement offered to youthful music making, in this case at an even earlier age. During the week-long course of the Festival, some 60 children aged between 7 or 8 and adolescence rehearse a programme presented twice to audiences in the Auditorium on the last day. It is not a repertoire for faint hearts either, several of the items requiring part singing and one very much in a contemporary idiom. But what is especially heartening was the introduction of the great classical repertoire, so, for example, the older children sang Purcell’s ‘Sound the Trumpet’ (with very good English diction), and two extracts from the Pergolesi Stabat Mater. Given the timescale, the results the tutors achieved were little short of astounding.

Early afternoon found us back in the abbey for performances of two of Bach’s Missa breve’s, BWV 234 and BWV 236. They were given by the ensemble Vox Luminus, here comprising three singers per part and directed from among the basses by Lionel Meunier. The orchestra, Andrew Parrott would be pleased to learn, numbered slightly more than the singers, though not on the scale of his ratio. One of the advantages of being directed unobtrusively from the choir is the special need for the singers to be fully aware of what is happening in the other parts. Here that paid off in performances that were at their best in the choral sections, where balance was also excellent. The opening entries of the Kyrie of BWV 234, for example, were beautifully judged, the succeeding chromatic writing splendidly exposed. With the exception of the ‘Domine Deus’ duet in the same Mass, beautifully done by soprano Caroline Weynants and alto Jan Kullmann, solo sections were less satisfying, several soloists displaying weak tone and poor articulation of ornaments. The orchestra played admirably throughout.

If revisiting repertoire long neglected was something of a theme of my visit to Saintes that was never truer than at the last concert, given by Herreweghe and his outstanding Orchestre des Champs-Élysées. Never anything like a perfect Wagnerian, I have reached that stage of my life when I’m not that concerned about listening to his music. So I faced the prospect of a performance of the Wesendonck Lieder with, shall we say, muted expectation. How wrong I was! Given by the Dutch soprano Kelly God, this was a glorious performance of these Tristan und Isolde-related songs, with their glutinously decadent poetry. The overwhelming beauty of God’s singing was that it avoided totally any such viscous implications, the tone soaring with a purity and lack of intrusive vibrato that made for endlessly engaging and enthralled listening. The final act of the 2018 Festival was a performance of Bruckner’s Symphony No. 4. Bruckner’s symphonies, with massive organ-inspired sonorities, huge unisons and constant ebb and flow of extremes of sound are of course made for just such a building as the Abbaye aux Dames. Herreweghe’s breadth of conception, allied to the sharper focus possible with period instruments made this a performance as memorable for the delicacy of the string playing in the Andante (ii), for the thrilling horns in the Scherzo (iii) or the overwhelming climaxes of the opening and last movements. It made for a fitting climax to what I hope was the first of many visits to the hospitable Saintes Festival.

Brian Robins

Tags Baroque, Classical, Romantic

Festival-conference

The Pride of Lammermuir

D James Ross at a flourishing 2017 Lammermuir Festival

The Orlando Consort on Pilgrimage
My first concert at the Lammermuir Festival, in lovely East Lothian east of Edinburgh, was the first of two concerts on the theme of the Pilgrim’s Way, a performance by the Orlando Consort of music by Dufay and his contemporaries. The main work featured was appropriately Dufay’s setting of the Ordinary and part of the Propers for the Mass for St James. St James the Greater, the son of Zebedee, was buried in Compostela, and his cathedral there became an important focus for pilgrimage.

Looking back over the whole concert with its motets and chansons by Dufay and songs by Binchois (his close friend and colleague), Ockeghem, Compère and Jean Tapissier it was clear that the Mass was not part of the group’s standard repertoire, and there was unfortunately some distinctly dodgy intonation and a general lack of focus. This was a great pity as the Mass was probably the finest music in the programme – fortunately things settled down a lot in the second half. Particularly impressive were the virtuosic exchanges between alto Matthew Venner and tenor Mark Dobell. As many of the audience remarked, there was something intensely moving about the synchronicity of music and venue – the magnificent Parish Church of St Mary in Whitekirk in which we heard it dates from the same early decades of the 15th century. This beautiful building has an ideal acoustic for this music, and was packed for the occasion. Warm and protracted applause elicited an encore from a slightly later era, Antoine Brumel’s beautiful setting of Sicut lilium inter spinas. Tenor Angus Smith managed the most elegant segue into CD sales I have ever heard by pointing out that Medieval pilgrims liked to go home from pilgrimage with souvenirs, and that we could do the same! Neat.

A Flavour of Vienna with the Quatuor Mosaïques
A real feather in the cap for the Lammermuir Festival is a residency by one of the finest period ensembles in the world, the Quatuor Mosaïques, and their inaugural concert in the lovely neo-Romanesque St Baldred’s Church, North Berwick saw them presenting their core repertoire, quartets by Haydn and Mozart. Opening with the second of Haydn’s opus 20 quartets, they showed the master of the genre already confidently deploying the four instruments with flair and confidence, deftly ending his piece with an unexpected and impressive fugue. Sitting right in front of the performers, I felt involved in the group’s unique chemistry, and was very aware of the purity and immediacy of the vibrato-free timbre of their gut strings and period bowing – violinists Erich Höbarth and Andrea Bischof’s long sustained high notes seemed simply to hang inert in the air before re-engaging with the texture.

Haydn’s sixth opus 33 Quartet finds the composer already firmly established as the master of the genre, expressing himself characteristically and yet definitively through this new medium. The Quatuor demonstrated the supreme coordination and technical assurance that they have developed in thirty years of playing together, while their authentic set-up seemed to give us a direct line to eighteenth-century Vienna.

Listening to Mozart’s Dissonance Quartet K465 with which the Quatuor Mosaïques concluded this revelatory concert, it is hard to imagine the great difficulty the composer professed to have with the genre. The writing is so assured, the harmonies so daring, the textures so innovative that it seems to the innocent listener that Mozart must have enjoyed the same facility as he did in the other musical forms he attempted. The key to this enigma lies perhaps in the group’s encore, given in response to rapturous applause, which was an exquisite little Adagio rejected by Mozart from one of his early quartets – even the contents of the hyper-critical Mozart’s wastepaper basket are worthy of attention. At any rate the beguiling transparency of the Quatuor’s interpretation of the ‘Dissonance’ Quartet, and the unadorned almost raw immediacy of their sound brought us afresh to this wonderfully inventive music. Watching the group play live, one is made very aware of the emotional narrative in which they are all completely invested, one moment bubbling with hilarity, the next wrought with threat or even tragedy. A lifetime playing this music on the instruments of the time has given them an unparalleled perspective on this repertoire, which is why I have entrusted them with the job of being my guide through the Beethoven ‘Late’ Quartets – a body of six ‘problem’ works which I have never got the measure of. Excitingly, the group have just committed them all to disc over the last two years and they were available ‘pre-release’ at the concert. Naturally I invested, in anticipation of more revelations.

The venue for the Quatuor Mosaïques’ second concert was the remarkable arts and crafts style Chalmers Memorial Church in Port Seaton, a maritime church in the style of Pugin with various sea creatures stencilled on every available surface. The Quatuor started where they left off last time in the history of the quartet, opening with the effusive first Quartet of Mozart’s set dedicated to Haydn. Again assurance and invention shine through from first to last, and the Viennese ensemble seemed to have a natural affinity with Mozart at his most imaginative and positive.

Next came a genuine novelty and a nod in the direction of ‘Lammermoor’ with Gaetano Donizetti’s 17th String Quartet – who knew that the operatic composer had composed any string quartets, let alone eighteen?! This is music from Donizetti’s youth, and it turned out to be tuneful if rather formulaic, with occasional prescient forays into a more convincing operatic world, and some genuinely original passages in the Larghetto. Sadly, appearing in such august company, the work came across as rather passé for the 1820s, and even a little banal.

Back to the realm of genius, and the Fifth of Haydn’s opus 76 Quartets. These are works notable for their virtuosic and occasionally vertiginous first violin line, but this held few terrors for Erich Höbarth, whose deft bowing made literally light work of the challenges. This Fifth Quartet is the one whose Largo so captured the imagination of audiences that for a while it was known as the ‘Largo Quartet’, and it is easy to see why this lyrical movement, played with enormous intensity by the ensemble, appealed to such an extent. More so than hearing the group’s recording of the piece, I was made aware of some very odd almost haunting passages, such as the trio of the Minuetto. It would be a real mistake to regard Haydn as in any sense conventional, and the familiarity of the Quatuor Mosaïques with his music allows them to explore every unsuspected nuance. This was another stunning and revelatory master-class in quartet playing, rounded off, after tumultuous applause from another capacity audience, by a soothing Haydn encore. It was salutary to see that even these gods of the string quartet world are human, as they initially started out on two different encores simultaneously – I hope that this rare moment of discord can be edited out before the concert is broadcast on Radio 3 towards the end of November!

The Quatuor Mosaïques visited the charming Aberlady Parish church for their third and final concert for the Lammermuir Festival, ending as they began with Mozart and Haydn. They opened with the delightfully fresh opus 156 by the 16-year-old Mozart – in fact he had first tried his hand at quartet writing two years earlier at the age of fourteen! The set of six quartets written in 1772 and 1773, were composed in blithe innocence of the work of Haydn, and exude an uninhibited youthful confidence. Not without sophistication, they are nevertheless a long way from the later masterpieces, achieved according to their composer through much travail. The Quatuor and the audience delighted in the lightness of touch and effortless whimsy of the three-movement K156.

When the ensemble segued into Haydn’s opus 20 no 5 Quartet, we instantly felt the hand of experience. Written in the same year as the Mozart, the opus 20 Quartets were the product of a forty-year-old mind, and ‘Papa Haydn’, barely into middle age, was still subject to Sturm und Drang and youthful inventiveness, while the fugal tour de force finale of the Fifth Quartet seems brilliantly to be knitting the Baroque and Classical eras together. The Quatuor’s interpretation of this work was intensely powerful, bringing out its remarkable structural devices as well as its sheer élan.

The group concluded their residency by welcoming violist Alfonso Leal del Ojo on board for a performance of Mozart’s K515 String Quintet, which proved to be the highlight of the whole series. Dating from Mozart’s last years, the quintets are a vehicle for the composer’s most profound ideas, and most striking for me was the highly inventive way he used the additional instrument, permitting double imitation between the two violins and the two violas, also creating a faux mirror image of this between the two violas and the second viola and cello. Sometimes it was only the evidence of the eyes that confirmed that there were ‘only’ five instruments playing! It is no mean feat to slot into a quartet already playing at the top of their game, but Mr del Ojo was instantly part of the Mosaïques’ distinctive sound and dynamic. The thunderous applause which greeted this musical and performance tour de force reflected appreciation for the whole remarkable series of concerts. Bravi!

My appetite for the final Quatuor Mosaiques’ performance had been whetted by a memorable recital earlier in the day by cellist Alban Gerhardt in the most exquisite venue so far, the 14th-century Great Hall of Lennoxlove Castle. Against the backdrop of the spectacularly barrel-vaulted and acoustically stunning space, Gerhardt performed the first and last of Bach’s Cello Suites, overcoming finger cramps to deliver magisterial accounts on his full-voiced modern set-up cello. The most spectacular part of the recital for me, and I suspect for the rest of the audience, was his account of the Kodaly Sonata. In this wild music, snatched raw from the Hungarian Puszta and sounding untamed and belligerent, Gerhardt’s cello roared, danced, whispered and rhapsodised by turns. Intensified by the medieval stonework, the sound was magnificent and almost overwhelming. Being able to wander round iconic paintings of Mary, Queen of Scots, James VI, George Buchanan and other luminaries of Scottish history was just a special bonus.

Youth to the fore in minimal Mozart and contemporary polyphony
Although Mozart was only 18 when he composed his opera buffa La finta Giardiniera he was already an experienced operatic composer, and in the Lammermuir Festival performance at Brunton Venue 2 by Ryedale Festival Opera and the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment Experience Ensemble there was a similar synthesis of youth and expertise. The youth of the singers brought an authenticity to the fraught web of relationships in the plot, while their young voices along with the period instruments of the Ensemble lent the project the ultimate seal of authenticity. If inexperience led one or two of the singers occasionally to fight the rather dead acoustic, on the whole the voices were very pleasing both in solo, duet and ensemble contexts. It was in these latter sections, involving occasionally all seven voices in animated exchanges, that we could hear the seeds of the great operatic ensemble writing to come.

The performers had chosen to sing in English, using a new translation by John Warrack, which ranged between deft and funny modern-speak to frankly grammatically more clunking moments, which due to the libretto’s repetition kept coming back to haunt us. Notwithstanding the added accessibility, I think there is an undeniable case for leaving lighter works such as this robed in the beauty and dignified obscurity of Italian! It would be invidious to single out individual singers for praise, as the young cast demonstrated a consistently high level of vocal accomplishment and dramatic skills, genuinely involving the audience in what is a pretty preposterous story. Very simple staging, acted out in front of the minimal orchestral forces, added to the sense of spontaneity and made for a most enjoyable evening.

Youth was also very much to the fore as I resumed pilgrimage with a concert by Tenebrae in the magnificent ‘Lamp of Lothian’, the 14th-century Collegiate Church of St Mary’s in Haddington. The average age of the performers, already strikingly low, was further reduced by the participation of the National Youth Choir of Scotland Chamber Choir in a work specially commissioned this year by Tenebrae from Owain Park specifically to involve a variety of young vocal ensembles. Melded from a host of related texts and drawing on a wide range of musical styles, Park’s Footsteps had passages of luminous beauty, which stuck in the mind. Both vocal groups blended beautifully, a remarkable testimony to the Scottish choir’s founder and guru, Christopher Bell, who rightfully took his share of the applause.

The second part of the concert consisted of the virtuosic vocal masterpiece Path of Miracles by Joby Talbot celebrating the pilgrimage to Santiago in texts from the Mediaeval “Codex Calixtus” and the Latin liturgy as well as text by the librettist Robert Dickson. Tenebrae under their director Nigel Short have quite simply set new standards for the performance of unaccompanied choral polyphony, and their exquisitely precise and clear sound, maintained flawlessly for an hour, was instrumental in its accuracy and reliability and laser-like in its intensity. Talbot’s piece, bewilderingly eclectic in its musical influences, places huge demands on singers, each of whom is a soloist but also part of a larger blended whole, and this remarkable virtuoso ensemble rose magnificently to the challenge. Unfortunately, in the final sections of the work a whistling hearing aid in the audience clearly disturbed the singers and one or two of the audience, including me. As audiences age, this is a growing problem, and a very thorny one to address – naturally hearing aid users have the right fully to hear the music, but equally so do performers and other audience members.

As the singers moved portentously round the building, as if enacting some profound liturgical drama, it struck me that pieces like this, interweaving ancient liturgies, pilgrims’ song and world music, are creating new pseudo liturgies for our post-religious times – spiritual experiences facilitated without the inconvenience of faith or even belief. It is ironic that as church attendance and religious faith generally have declined, the public appetite for abstract spiritual experiences has rocketed, a fact underlined by the thunderous response to Tenebrae’s masterly performance.

Dunedin Consort provides a grand finale
The finale to the 2017 Lammermuir Festival was grand in every sense, being an impressive performance of Handel’s youthful oratorio Il trionfo del Tempo e del Disinganno, composed in 1707 during the 21-year-old’s Italian visit. Notwithstanding the rather conservative text in which stylised characters vie with one another, this early oratorio is not all it seems. In fact, the young Handel is warming up for his stellar career as an operatic composer, while the seemingly emblematic figures in fact interact like operatic characters. Already a gifted and experienced composer, Handel audibly delights in the forces at his disposal and is never musically more creative and imaginative than he is here. The sheer confidence of some of the musical ideas is stunning, while from the arch-recycler we also hear the roots of much later repertoire, including an almost perfectly formed prototype of the iconic ‘Lascia ch’io pianga’, given a ravishing performance by Emile Renard as Piacere, originally a role for male soprano. Renard also stunned us all with her virtuosic aria ‘Come nembo’, while fellow soprano, the crystal-toned Joanne Lunn, gave an exquisite account of the part of Bellezza. Nicholas Mulroy and Hilary Summers seemed perhaps less ideally vocally cast as Tempo and Disinganno, but gave heartfelt accounts of their generally darker music.

Equally impressive was the playing of the Dunedin Consort’s Baroque orchestra, from which emerged superb solo contributions by principal oboist Alexandra Bellamy, leader Cecilia Bernardini, organist Stephen Farr and principal cellist Alison McGillivray. Under the direction of John Butt, both the vocal and instrumental forces exuded Baroque expression, while wonderfully authentic and thrilling ornamentation provided the icing on the cake. This gala evening playing to a packed St Mary’s Collegiate Church Haddington picked up on several of the themes of this year’s Lammermuir Festival, not least the theme of youth which had run like a thread through the programme. Although it is so much more than this, the Lammermuir Festival has become one of the most important platforms for early music in Scotland or for that matter the UK. After a week of superlative international performances in lovely and atmospheric settings I can see why it has attracted such accolades and continues to enjoy such success. And perhaps the ultimate accolade – at the first concert I attended, the Orlando Consort’s Pilgrim’s Way, I spoke to a member of the audience about why she had come. She knew nothing of 15th-century polyphony, but said she ‘trusted the Festival’ and had been utterly beguiled by the synergy of music and venue. Surely this is what festivals should ultimately be all about!

Sincere and profound apologies to James, the festival and the artists for the long overdue uploading of this review; somehow it was filed and forgotten about.

Tags Baroque, Classical. Romantic, Festival, Medieval, Renaissance

Festival-conference

Mainly Early Nights in Orkney

Post author By EMR2015
Post date July 7, 2018
1 Comment on Mainly Early Nights in Orkney

D James Ross at the 2018 St Magnus International Festival in Orkney

Sonoro, Rachmaninov Vespers, St Magnus Cathedral
In his opening comments to the 2018 St Magnus International Festival in Orkney, Festival Director Alasdair Nicolson emphasised the need for constant innovation, and indeed a glance through the Festival programme revealed a stimulating selection of contemporary and early chamber music events – perhaps in this respect suggesting a return to the original aims of the event. Having said that, the Festival opened with the Rachmaninov Vespers, a work which could now be regarded as decidedly mainstream. More properly termed the All-Night Vigil, this work nowadays enjoys a degree popularity its composer could hardly have dreamed of, and the choral ensemble Sonoro, founded by their director Neil Ferris in 2016, seemed to have no difficulty in filling St Magnus Cathedral for their performance. But why you may be asking have I included it in my review of early music? Sonoro is by no means an ‘early music’ choir – indeed their group notes declare the aim that ‘each singer be free to use all of their voice.’ The resulting full, dynamically varied sound includes a degree of vibrato, particularly at the upper end, and an element of the operatic. But what could be more authentic for a performance of Rachmaninov? The performance omitted Rachmaninov’s settings of ‘Amen’, which open two of the numbers, thereby neatly sidestepping the issue that Rachmaninov seems to have intended that his work be performed liturgically in sections and in a context of harmonised chant, for which the ‘Amens’ provide a conclusion. On the other hand, the programme notes provided an evocative outline of the liturgical context in which the music belongs. Two wonderfully idiomatic soloists helped to set the scene, while the almost opaque wall-of-sound of the loudest passages contrasted magically with hushed episodes, all moving under Ferris’s direction with an impressive blend and unanimity. If just occasionally the distinctive writing for contrabasses (the distinctive Russian Oktavists) seemed a little under-powered, relying on a single voice, this was a thoroughly convincing performance which brought out the subtle nuances as well as the sheer raw Russian power of Rachmaninov’s remarkable choral masterpiece.

Aarhus Sommeropera & the Danish Sinfonietta, Telemann Pimpinone, The Orkney Theatre
Danish ribaldry was to the fore in Aarhus Sommeropera and the Danish Sinfonietta’s performance of Telemann’s comic opera Pimpinone in Kirkwall’s magnificent new Orkney Theatre. Sung in a racy new English translation by Christopher Cowell, the sexy maid Vespetta, vivaciously portrayed by Berit Berfred-Jensen, had to outmanoeuvre a computer nerd Pimpinone, played with credible techy awkwardness by Jesper Mikkelsen, kitted out with horrendous ‘Denis Healey’ eyebrows. Both performers proved expert vocalists, giving a sparkling account of Telemann’s witty and fast-moving score. From the huge Baroque frock which parted to reveal Vespetta in scene 1, Jan Magaard’s direction and Ivar Gjerøp’s design, with some witty back-projection also moved slickly and imaginatively, coping as well as can be reasonably expected with the standard modern issue of Baroque comic opera – a surfeit of music and limited action and narrative drive. (Might it have been worth considering not slavishly singing da capos of every single aria?)

The strings of the Danish Sinfonietta under the detailed direction of David Riddell provided able and highly sympathetic support, as well as contributing appropriate instrumental episodes. Telemann had composed his comic opera as an interval entertainment between the acts of Handel’s opera seria Tamerlano, but in the way of such things it was the interlude which caught the public imagination, and soon it was being played on its own. To accommodate this new circumstance, the ever-versatile Telemann instructed that instrumental music be played between the three scenes, and in this performance the Danish Sinfonietta obliged with Telemann’s D major Violin Concerto, which the composer had written for the intervals of Richard Keiser’s opera seria Nebucadnezar. The solo part was played in beautifully authentic Baroque style by Mo Yi, who reprised her winning account of the work in the Sinfonietta’s two concerts later in the Festival. Incidentally, the Sinfonietta’s delightful recital in the Cromarty Hall in charming St Margaret’s Hope also featured two fine arias, which Telemann had composed for interpolation into his production of Keiser’s Nebucadnezar. Operatic composition is one of the few aspects of Telemann’s career which has not yet received its due attention in modern times, and Aarhus Sommeropera and the Danish Sinfonietta have made a convincing case for his operas being brought more generally into the spotlight.

Ensemble Perpetuo, Goldberg Variations plus, St Magnus Cathedral
Late-night concerts in the magnificent 12th-century Cathedral of St Magnus featuring esoteric repertoire have become a feature of the Festival, and my next concert was a performance by Ensemble Perpetuo of the string trio arrangement by Dmitri Sitkovetsky of Bach’s Goldberg Variations. This was preceded by a sequence of five freshly commissioned works by contemporary composers, inspired by the Bach – highlights for me were a toe-tapping reel by Alasdair Nicolson and a beguiling lullaby by Donald Grant, which led movingly and seamlessly into the Goldberg Aria. The Bach drew considerable virtuosity from violinist Fenella Humphreys, violist Simon Tandrëe and cellist Cara Berridge, but the decision to play the whole programme as one continuous span placed huge demands of stamina and concentration on all three, and occasionally the intonation suffered a little. However, the commendably authentic Baroque approach to the Bach, with minimal vibrato and tasteful ornamentation, made this a very powerful cumulative experience, enhanced as we walked out of the Cathedral well after 11pm into a magically light Orkney summer night.

The Alehouse Sessions, Barokksolistene, Stromness Town Hall
The Barokksolistene is a remarkable ensemble, who under the direction of Bjarte Eike stage highly animated period instrument performances of Baroque music. Their three presentations at the Festival proved to be nothing less than mesmerising, a thoroughly integrated blend of top quality authentic performance (all played from memory), theatre, dance, story-telling and thematic deconstruction. Their first show in Stromness Town Hall, The Alehouse Sessions, took as its thesis the fact that with the advent of the Cromwellian Commonwealth court and theatre musicians deprived of employment took to taverns where they played and sang for a new audience. Drawing on popular material, particularly from Playford’s Dancing Master and Purcell’s compositions as well as music by Neil Gow, they gave extended treatments on ensembles of stringed instruments, strutting all the while around the stage like rock stars. Steven Player stepped out of the ensemble to present a series of stunning period dances, while Thomas Guthrie put down his Baroque violin to sing a few songs with a very pleasing voice, while inhabiting utterly and passionately the texts he was singing. With more than a passing resemblance to comedian Harry Hill, the multitalented Guthrie held the audience spellbound. This wonderfully organic performance, ranging from the deeply touching to the downright bawdy, ended appropriately enough with an ingenious slow-motion tavern brawl!

Purcell’s Playground, Barokksolistene, St Magnus Cathedral
Their next performance in St Magnus Cathedral saw them bring a little more decorum to the music of Purcell. More superb playing, wonderful singing and dynamic dancing, but this time something quite intriguing – a Purcell air was slowly deconstructed as the players moved off the stage and moved around the cathedral, before both music and ensemble moved back into place again. It has to be said not everyone was convinced by this radical approach to early music, and I would have to mention the modern string bass and modern percussion, which appeared side-by-side with the authentic gut-strung violins, viola and cello and baroque guitars and portative organ/ harpsichord, but I have to say I was completely won over. As with all three concerts, the price of a wonderful spontaneity was some ambiguity as to just what was being performed – I gathered from one of the group members that the ensemble have around three hours of music in reserve for an hour-long concert from which the programme is selected on the night. When I asked how they managed to hold in mind all the scores as well as complex choreography and a number of other tricks, such as the risky trick of freezing and then resuming in complete unanimity, my ‘mole’ simply and modestly told me they had been playing it all for a long time! In addition to the tour de force of the remarkably deconstructed piece, I was also moved almost to tears by the group’s account of the C-minor Fantasia no 7 where each passing discord was unbearably heartfelt in a way I have never experienced before.

Tall Ship Tunes, Barokksolistene, Statsraad Lehmkuhl
The venue for the group’s third concert had impressively arrived in Kirkwall Harbour just two hours before the concert – it was the magnificent Norwegian tall ship Statsraad Lehmkuhl! Recalling the Festival’s declared mission of innovation, to secure the participation of this wonderfully relevant venue for a programme by the Barokksolistene of Tall Ship Tunes was a real coup. Employing their customary heady blend of dance, song and instrumental music, the group performed sea shanties, hornpipes and international reels to a highly appreciative audience, augmented by some of the crew of the sailing ship, who joined in lustily with the shanties! The Barokksolistene with their stunning individual virtuosity and flawless sense of ensemble, their versatility and their sheer personable enthusiasm have been the revelation of this year’s St Magnus International Festival for me.

This wonderful latterday concert flottant highlighted one of the issues which the Festival faces. While the attractive and small-scale venue afforded by the tall ship had sold out early, few of the other events I attended were filled to capacity, the result, I understand, of increased ticket prices – the reluctant response in turn to reduced funding. It seems to me an enormous shame if this distinctive Festival in its 41st year, problematically remote geographically but which makes superb use of its distinctive island environs, is to be starved of funding. This was a week buzzing with innovation, and I truly hope that the St Magnus International Festival will be allowed to remain the jewel that it is in the crown of Scotland’s Festival circuit.

Tags Baroque, Festival

Festival-conference

Ambronay Festival – 2017

[dropcap]I[/dropcap] have probably rehearsed the pleasures of Ambronay sufficiently frequently in EMR to run the risk of repeating myself. So suffice it to say here that it remains the most enchanting and most welcoming of any early music festival venue known to me. To return to Ambronay and its abbey regularly feels tantamount to visiting family and friends. It is always something of a surprise to me that British early music enthusiasts largely have yet to discover the festival that takes place throughout weekends in September every year, given the international quality of the performers and its ease of access from Lyon (just over 50km) with its international airport.

This year’s festival bore the title ‘Vibrations : Souffle’, difficult to render in English since both words can have different meanings, but possibly something along the lines of ‘emotional breaths of wind’. Major events featured included a Monteverdi Orfeo conducted by Leonardo Garcia Alarcón; a recital by Philippe Jaroussky and Christina Pluhar’s L’Arpeggiata; an operatic recital by Karina Gauvin; Handel’s La resurrezione with Accademia Bizantina under their director Ottavio Dantone; a concert of spatial polyphony with the outstanding French ensemble Correspondances directed by Sébastien Daucé; and, for the third year running, a recital of Monteverdi madrigals with Les Arts Florissants and Paul Agnew. Additionally audiences could have found many smaller concerts, lectures and a lively and varied fringe that draws families and locals into the festival experience.

My choice this year fell on the second weekend, covering 21 to the 23 September. In recent years the festival has tended to spread its wings more, taking a number of events out of Ambronay into the surrounding area and this year our first concert (21 Sept) was held in the church of the famous medieval fortress village of Pérouges, some 20 kms away. It featured the ensemble Les Esprits Animaux (LEA), here joined by the cors de chasse of David Guerrier and Anne Boussard in a programme entitled ‘A la chasse’. In the event the hunting element was a relatively minor component of the programme, only one work, Telemann’s Overture in F, TWV 44:8 making specific reference to hunting calls and motifs. The hunting horn is of course a notorious beast to control and if some of the playing was somewhat wayward – especially in Vivaldi’s F major Concerto for 2 horns, RV538 – the players deserve plaudits for courage. In honesty, though, it has to be said that the most satisfying parts of the evening came from the pieces or movements in which the horns were not involved. I first heard LEA at Ambronay in 2011, when they were young artists in residence, at the time praising the ‘strong group personality’. Six years on the players have matured into a truly outstanding chamber ensemble that now plays with real finesse and finish without having lost any of the vitality and evident pleasure they derive from making music together. Among many memorable moments were a delicious, enchantingly elegant performance of Boismortier’s ‘Premier ballet de Village’ and a witty and – in the slow movement – exquisitely shaped performance of Vivaldi’s ‘Il Gardellino’ Flute Concerto, RV428, with LEA’s flautist Élodie Virot as soloist.

Les Esprits Animaux with David Guerrier & Anne Boussard, cors de chasse. © CCR Ambronay

The only concert the following day took place in Ambronay’s principal venue, the abbey church that lies at the heart of what is today the cultural centre complex. Comprising principally of a selection of operatic arias mostly featuring ladies in (often considerable) distress, it was given by Canadian soprano Karina Gauvin supported by Le Concert de la Loge under Julien Chauvin, who lead from first violin. The concert was of distinctly variable quality. Gauvin opened with two fierce, furious coloratura arias for the enraged Juno from Graupner’s Dido, Königin von Karthago (1707), in the event an unwise choice that might have been heard to better effect later in the programme when the voice had warmed up. As it was the lack of control, wayward intonation and excessive vibrato spoiled the undeniably dramatic impact of Gauvin’s powerful singing. She was much more effective in the succeeding pair of arias from Alessandro Scarlatti’s late masterpiece, Griselda (1721). Here Gauvin caught the pathetic nuances of ‘Finirà, Barbara sorte’ to touching effect, while finding the note of pride that is a part of the character of the sorely put-upon Griselda in ‘Figlio! Tiranno!’ Here as elsewhere ornamentation was sparse and there were no attempts at a trill in cadenzas. Best of all were a powerful, tragically dramatic account of Alcina’s ‘Ah! mio cor! and one of the encores, an account of ‘Will the sun forget to streak’ from Handel’s Solomon in which Gauvin seemed to find a poise not always evident elsewhere. On their own account Le Concert de la Loge contributed several orchestral extracts and accompanied Gauvin with an icy precision at the opposite polarity to the joyous playing of the previous evening.

Karina Gauvin with Le Concert de la Loge, director Julien Chauvin (violin). © CCR Ambronay

The final day of this year’s visit (23 September) provided two concerts, that in the late afternoon featuring the Consone Quartet, one of the young ensembles in the eeemerging competition at Ambronay in 2016. Then I thought their playing of Haydn’s profound late op 77/1 String Quartet showed considerable promise but would eventually benefit from the quartet’s own developing maturity. Now they opened with another rather earlier Haydn quartet, that in C, op 54/2. It was a good performance, with well-judged tempos and some expressive playing in the second part of the Adagio section of the final movement. But leader Agata Daraskaite did not always cope well with the high-lying violin part written for Johann Tost and the performance as a whole would have benefited from a more nuanced approach. It also really should not be necessary for players to re-tune between movements in a work of this length. The Consones seemed in some respects more at home with the romantic lyricism of Schubert’s well-known A-major Quartet, D 804 ‘Rosamunde’. The opening movement was laid out at a moderate tempo that allowed full reign to its inherent expressivity, while the famous ‘Rosamunde’ Andante was given a gracious flow that found room to incorporate a yearning wistfulness. There was an appealing swing to the Menuetto, while the final movement was given a strong rhythmic impetus that accentuated the German dance-like opening theme.

La resurrezione – l to r: Emőke Baráth (Angelo), Camille Poul (Maria Maddalena), Delphine Galou (Maria Cleofe), Ottavio Dantone (dir), Martin Vanberg (San Giovanni) and Lisandro Abadie (Lucifero). © CCR Ambronay

Two years ago Ottavio Dantone and his Accademia Bizantina gave a superb Handel Jephtha at the Beaune Festival, a performance that surprised me by displaying a depth and breadth that I’d not always previously associated with a conductor whose interpretations have at times seemed a touch brittle and or even eccentric. That he seems to have now grown beyond such things was triumphantly underlined by the evening’s performance devoted to an oratorio dating from the other end of Handel’s life, La resurrezione, premiered in Rome in 1708. The demands of the two works are of course totally different. While Jephtha is suffused with the radiant translucent wisdom of Handel’s last years, La resurrezione is the work of a fledgling genius transformed and inspired by his encounter with Italian culture. Dantone caught the spirit of Handel’s youthful exuberance to near-perfection, giving the remarkable accompagnati with which the work abounds full dramatic reign. In these and the arias, many of them demanding virtuoso singing, Dantone was supported by an outstanding solo team, among whom the Angel of the wonderful Hungarian soprano Emőke Baráth stamped her authority from the outset with a dazzling ‘Disserratevi’, every display of coloratura passage work articulated with gleaming accuracy. Lisandro Abadie’s Lucifer was projected with impressive strength and character, his bass having a sufficiently wide range to do justice to the sepulchral low notes incorporated in the role. Camille Poul, a replacement for the indisposed Hasnaa Bennani, sang an affecting Maddelena (Mary Magdalene), shaping her arias with real sensitivity, even if her lower register lacked strength, while the other Mary, Cleofe (Cleophas) was vividly communicated by the experienced alto Delphine Galou, whose attention to text, music and drama were throughout exemplary. Completing this exceptional line up, the San Giovanni (St John) of Martin Vanberg was notable above all for its refined musicality, the voice owning to a cultured liquid lyricism also capable of accurate passaggi. Add to these remarkable assets superbly alert and beautifully finished playing by Accademia Bizantina and this was a performance that confirmed Ottavio Dantone’s now established place as one of today’s leading Handel conductors.

Brian Robins

Tags Baroque

Festival-conference

D James Ross at the Edinburgh International Festival 2017

Post author By EMR2015
Post date September 6, 2017
No Comments on D James Ross at the Edinburgh International Festival 2017

The Full Monteverdi and More

[dropcap]T[/dropcap]he 450th anniversary of Claudio Monteverdi’s birth has seen a blossoming in performances of his music, and the Edinburgh International Festival played its part by hosting a number of Monteverdi 450 events, clustered round a major presentation of his three surviving operas directed by Sir John Eliot Gardiner. The cycle, semi-staged in Edinburgh’s magnificent Usher Hall, opened with Orfeo, Monteverdi’s earliest surviving foray into the genre and one of the earliest of all full operas.

One of the chief advantages of this mode of presentation is that the full orchestra is onstage with the singers, allowing the subtleties and full-colour range of the various period instruments to permeate the texture. In the case of Orfeo, these include a full string section, a generous complement of cornetti and sackbuts, recorders, dulcian and a plethora of continuo instruments including Baroque guitars, chitarroni, harpsichords, organs, harp and viol. The full richness of Monteverdi’s carefully nuanced sound-world was allowed to develop before our eyes as well as our ears, while the instrumentalists were also able fully to interact with the singers.

The various soloists and chorus singers used the whole stage area including the organ loft at the back to dramatise the powerful story of the demi-god musician Orpheus and his doomed quest to retrieve his wife Euridice from Hades. The demanding part of Orfeo was taken by a silky-voiced Krystian Adam, whose beautifully expressive tenor voice, deft vocal ornamentation and convincing dramatic presence made him the perfect protagonist. His account of the famous show aria “Possente spirto”, a vehicle for the vocal virtuosity of the creator of the role, Francesco Rasi, was mesmerising. Also both vocally and dramatically impressive was Gianluca Buratto, whose characterisation of Caronte the boatman of the underworld was utterly convincing. The proceedings had opened with the fresh voice of Hana Blažiková in the role of Musica, who in addition to engaging the audience in the story accompanied herself at one point on the harp, an instrument which Orfeo surprisingly made no recourse to in spite of the references to a lyre in his recitatives. Ms Blažiková also proved a haunting Euridice, while the brief role of the Messaggera who imparts the tragic news of Euridice’s demise, was lent wonderful gravitas by the superb voice of Lucile Richardot, who would be an unforgettable Penelope the following night in Il Ritorno d’Ulisse in Patria.

Impressive as all the guest soloists were, also dovetailing perfectly with the chorus when necessary, it was the ensemble singing and solo contributions of The Monteverdi Choir, which constituted the highlight for me of this remarkable performance. They are to my mind simply one of the finest vocal ensembles in the world, and showed their astonishing versatility by morphing into a dream opera chorus with pinpoint vocal precision and their customary gleaming tone. Under the inspired direction of Eliot Gardiner, one of the leading exponents of Monteverdi’s music, this minimalist performance on which he had collaborated with Elsa Rooke, Isabella Gardiner and Rick Fisher, had an iconically definitive quality.

It is a mark of the depth of talent in his vocal and instrumental forces that a quick reshuffle of personnel allowed Sir John to stage Il Ritorno d’Ulisse in Patria the following evening. Hana Blažiková stepped easily into the virtuoso role of Minerva, raining blizzards of vocal ornaments, while Furia Zanasi, whose moving duet with Orfeo as Apollo the previous evening had been memorable, transferred capably to the title role of Ulisse. His wife Penelope, was as I mentioned, sung by Lucile Richardot, to me the vocal discovery of the project and whose wonderfully strong lower register lent her portrayal of the beleaguered queen an overwhelming pathos. Her clamouring suitors were splendidly characterised as were the various interfering gods and goddesses, while the previous night’s Orfeo, Krystian Adam, made for a lively and convincing Telemaco. It would also be unfair not to mention the individual tour de force by Robert Burt as the comically gormandising Iso. Again the minimalist staging proved ideal, while the idea of Penelope herself forming the shape of the bow which must be bent by the suitors and which is eventually mastered only by Ulysses, was nothing short of brilliant. Perhaps more obscure was the recorder player Rachel Becket abandoning her crotchets for crochet, spending her bars rest weaving and unweaving a woollen web, clearly an allusion to Penelope’s famous stratagem to stall the suitors. Perhaps not many audience members even noticed the recorder player’s industry, and most would have dismissed it as a rather cheeky distraction.

In our lives, only 24 hours had elapsed since Orfeo, but in Monteverdi’s life some thirty years had passed and he was now an old man. His orchestra had become much more of a conventional Baroque orchestra, and he was able to draw on a lifetime of compositional experience to animate the story of Ulysses’ return. This powerful masterpiece of his maturity includes some of his most impassioned writing, and the concluding duet between the eventually reconciled Ulysses and Penelope is both musically prescient and in this performance incomparably moving.

This veritable Monteverdi ‘Ring Cycle’ came to conclusion with the enigmatic L’Incoronazione di Poppea, an opera dating from the last year of the composer’s life. It is a work with a very modern feel to it – not one of the characters is likeable, evil triumphs over justice and ultimately we are asked to join in the celebrations for the coronation by a monstrous Roman emperor of his conniving mistress. I suspect the earliest Venetian audiences would have shared few of our qualms, and would probably easily have identified with the amoral universe presided over by a cynical pantheon of selfish and high-handed gods. In fact, this opera is thrillingly immediate in its amorality, and attention moves from the trivial complications of human relationships to the more sweeping themes of power and desire.

The only remotely sympathetic character, the philosopher Seneca, leant huge dignity and gravitas by Gianlucca Buratto (our Caronte in Orfeo) was disposed of before the mid-point of the opera, the chorus of his imploring friends providing one of the emotional high-points of the first part. The wronged Ottavia, was characterised strongly by Marianna Pizzolato, who cleverly showed the flaws as well as the virtues of Nero’s rejected first wife. Like Ottone, her one-time lover, and his new mistress Drusilla, she survives to be sent into exile. You will note that Monteverdi’s last opera prepares the way for myriad Baroque operas in which the plot complications verge on the impenetrable! As all the characters seem equally despicable, attention moves to the way they express themselves musically, and in this respect Carlo Vistoli’s Ottone, Anna Dennis’s Drusilla and Lucille Richardot’s hilarious nurse Arnalta, counterpointed by Michal Cierniawski’s cross-dressed Nutrice were all memorable.

In the two lead roles, Hana Blažiková, (previously our Musica and Euridice) was superb as the ambitious scheming Poppea, but the voice of the evening for me was the remarkable male soprano voice of Kangmin Justin Kim. Originally a castrato role, the part of Nerone is normally these days sung by a woman, but recent developments in the world of falsetto singing have brought a few male singers into the soprano tessitura. Mr Kim is one such, and the astonishing effect of his penetrating, perfectly pitched and impassioned voice, particular when duetting in the same range with Poppea and wreathed in the tones of cornetti was simply stunning. As with all of the principals, Kim threw himself into his role with enormous energy and commitment, and we were privileged to be given a genuine glimpse of the stellar popularity of the great Baroque virtuoso castrati.

L’Incoronazione may probably be deemed the least effective of the three surviving Monteverdi operas, slow to start and prolix in plot, but in this production with this remarkable cast and instrumental forces it rose to a breath-taking climax, which proved a fittingly magnificent climax to a glorious week of Monteverdi. Opera is of course just one facet of the multi-talented Monteverdi, and as part of the Queen’s Hall concert series of the EIF Robert Hollingworth’s early music ensemble I Fagiolini joined forces with the English Cornett and Sackbut Ensemble for a performance of the master’s Vespers music. The 1610 Vespers has become something of a cult classic – ironically since many musicologists would point out that it probably ought not even to be regarded as a unified performance piece – but imaginatively Hollingworth has compiled an ‘alternative’ Vespers drawn mainly from Monteverdi’s 1641 publication Selva Morale e spirituale. In a much tauter, more modern style than the 1610 music, these psalm settings showcase the virtuosity of solo and duetting voices against a backdrop of a pair of virtuoso violins, brass ensemble and continuo. The Monteverdi pieces are interspersed with music by his contemporaries Ludovico Grossi da Viadana, Frescobaldi, Ignazio Donati, and by masters of the previous generation Palestrina and Giovanni Gabrieli.

The charming Monteverdi settings, including the lovely Beatus vir, were beautifully performed, with subtle ornaments, heightened drama and exquisite focus and intonation. Particularly ear-catching were the group’s high tenors Hugo and Benedict Hymas, whose full-voiced accounts of alto lines were stunning. Hollingworth acknowledges his debt to the pioneering work of Andrew Parrott and his Taverner Consort, and this performance was fully the equal of Parrott’s groundbreaking 1980s recording of this material, but taking account of recent musicological developments. There is always a danger when you interleave the music of your chosen composer with the work of unfamiliar masters that it might outshine it, and this was certainly a possibility in the case of Donati’s ravishing setting of Dulcis amor Jesu, while for me the magnificence of Gabrieli’s 14-part Magnificat stole the show. Less effective was the account of Palestrina’s Ave verum corpus, with the top line in a highly ornamented version by Giovanni Bovicelli. This was played on a rather wheezy mute cornetto along with male voices, but as Bovicelli was a singer and presumably wrote his passagi as a vehicle for himself, it would have been lovely to have heard this sung. That a singer with the necessary skills was available was clearly demonstrated when tenor Matthew Long gave a barnstorming performance of Monteverdi’s Salve O Regina – cascades of vocal ornaments recalled the operatic fireworks we had enjoyed earlier in the week – bringing this hugely impressive concert to an unforgettable conclusion.

What does a reviewer, sated with a veritable banquet of Monteverdi, seek out to cleanse his musical palate? The Chiaroscuro Quartet seemed the ideal solution, and when their Queen’s Hall recital opened with wonderfully rarified accounts of three of the Contrapuncti from Bach’s Art of Fugue my Monteverdi detox was already underway. If ever the virtues of using period instruments were in doubt, the group’s account of Haydn’s sixth opus 76 quartet provided decisive evidence. The lightness of touch stemming from the use of gut strings and period bows, meant that most of the issues, which can bog down performances of this work, simply didn’t arise. The young musicians, already eminent soloists in their own right, simply flew through the piece in a perfectly poised flurry of brilliance. Their technical assurance allowed the audience to focus on Haydn’s compositional inventiveness and wit – at several points, titters actually rippled round the hall – and their entertaining reading elicited ecstatic applause.

We came back to a different world for the second half of the concert, which featured Schubert’s disturbing Death and the Maiden Quartet. This time the period instruments lent a raw power to Schubert’s explosive music, and – playing with an almost unbearable intensity – the four musicians brought out the full drama of this unsettling work. The brief passages in the major key seemed oddly and disturbingly shallow, while the darker episodes seemed all the darker for the shadowy ambience of the gut strings. At the end of this impressive performance, I was left considering the many ways in which period instrument and authentic vocal performances have not just consolidated the work of the 1980s and 90s but have brought the presentation of early music to new heights of excellence, and at the same time to a wider audience.

Festival-conference

“From Luther to Fasch – in four days flat”

Post author By EMR2015
Post date May 30, 2017
No Comments on “From Luther to Fasch – in four days flat”

The 14th International Fasch Festival in Zerbst/Anhalt, Germany, 20-23 April 2017

[dropcap]W[/dropcap]ith Lutherans around the world celebrating the 500th anniversary of the Lutheran Reformation in 2017, the International Fasch Festival organizers based in Zerbst/Anhalt had adopted “From Luther to Fasch” as their 2017 motto – and with good reason. In 1522 Martin Luther had preached in Zerbst, and in 1644 the principality of Anhalt-Zerbst was the only one in Anhalt to become exclusively Lutheran. In 1722 Johann Friedrich Fasch (1688–1758) was appointed Kapellmeister and put in charge of music at the Zerbst court. But he identified with another religious movement popular at the time, Lutheran Pietism, and, in 1726/27 had also spent several months composing vocal music for the Catholic court of Dresden. What impact, if any, did the confessional landscape of his day have on Fasch’s output and musical style?

It was up to the individual performers, ensembles, and conference participants to ponder that question. The opening concert on Thursday, 20 April, featured the fiery Main-Barockorchester Frankfurt, directed by Martin Jopp. They set the tone of the entire festival with a programme entitled “Luther, Fasch and Frau Musica”, as actor Raphael Kübler recited carefully selected texts about and by Martin Luther in between splendid instrumental music by Fasch (and one piece by Zelenka to cleanse the palate). My favourite was a newly edited orchestral suite in B-flat Major by Fasch. Thanks to the Central German Radio, MDR, listeners around the world could tune in to enjoy a live broadcast of the concert. Earlier that evening, the 2017 Fasch Prize was awarded to Prof. (em.) Manfred Fechner (Jena) for his 50-plus years of contributing to Fasch scholarship. One of the major driving forces of the Fasch Renaissance in the former German Democratic Republic, Fechner has also worked together closely with two other Fasch Prize recipients, Ludwig Güttler (1999) and Ludger Rémy (2015). Congratulations!

The two-day conference on “Fasch and the Confessional Landscape of his Day” began on 21 April in a new location, a lovely meeting room on the third floor of the local Sparkasse bank near the former court church, St. Bartholomäi. Members of the Main-Barockorchester Frankfurt opened with a trio sonata by Fasch to welcome scholars and visitors from Germany, Great Britain, and Canada. A surprisingly honest welcome speech by the Zerbst mayor, Andreas Dittmann, followed. This town’s ongoing commitment to the Festival since 1993 is both remarkable and admirable. Zerbst (population ca. 22,000) regularly and successfully competes with other Baroque music festivals such as Handel in Halle, Telemann in Magdeburg, and Bach in Köthen.

The keynote address in 2017 was presented by Michael Maul (Bach-Archiv Leipzig). He examined the various Lutheran educational institutions that had shaped Fasch’s career path, especially prior to his arrival in Zerbst in 1722. By way of a humorous soccer analogy, Maul argued convincingly that Fasch and many of his peers were products of the splendid educational institutions that Luther had spearheaded in the 16th century, in particular the top-notch Kantoreien (church choirs) and, of course, the Thomasschule in Leipzig from which Fasch graduated in 1708.

Historian Jan Brademann (Evangelische Landeskirche Anhalt, Dessau) then emphasized that while Anhalt-Zerbst’s multi-confessional landscape may have brought with it certain problems, they would not necessarily have affected Fasch’s creative output as a composer. A new primary source related to Johann Baptist Kuch, Fasch’s predecessor as Kapellmeister, was introduced by Rashid-S. Pegah (Berlin). Kuch had left Zerbst in spring 1722, after been ordered to pay a large amount of money to the mother of his child, the feisty Maria Agnes Amelang. She had successfully lodged a complaint against him with the local (Lutheran Orthodox) church court, the Zerbst Consistory. J. F. Fasch’s “Catholic” music was at the core of an investigation carried out by Gerhard Poppe (Koblenz/Dresden). He focused on settings of the Ordinarium Missae that Fasch had composed for the Dresden court, adding a nostalgic touch when he used an actual record player for his musical examples.

Chorales featured prominently in presentations given on Friday afternoon by Gottfried Gille (Bad Langensalza) and Brian Clark (Arbroath, GB), Fasch Prize recipients in 2015 and 1997, respectively. Using a bi-confessional lens because Reformed Lutherans were allowed to worship alongside Orthodox Lutherans in Zerbst, Gille had painstakingly examined multiple extant 17th- and 18th-century Zerbst hymnals. He stressed the presence of chorales whose texts had been written by poets with an Anhalt-Zerbst connection. Clark introduced two such individuals – Prince Johann Adolph von Anhalt-Zerbst and Johann Betichius – in his paper. Clark also clarified that a set of autograph parts by Fasch from the Musikstube Zerbst in Dessau (Z 100, A33), previously assumed to be related to the 1738 Zerbster Cantional, belongs, in fact, to Fasch’s 1730/31 cantata cycle. Nigel Springthorpe (London, GB) then reassessed the cantata repertoire that was performed at the Zerbst court chapel between 1749 and 1765. He argued in favour of Johann Georg Roellig (1710–1790), Fasch’s successor, having taken over that responsibility from Fasch around 1755.

A late afternoon concert followed, with conference participants and Festival visitors alike being enthralled by the Italian ensemble Zefiro. The five performers brought the house down or, more precisely, the sold-out Fasch Saal located on the second floor of the Zerbst Stadthalle, the historic former riding hall of the princely family of Anhalt-Zerbst. Their expertly executed programme consisted of delightful chamber music by Fasch, Telemann, Stölzel, and Zelenka, selected from the famous 1743 Zerbst “Concert-Stube” court music inventory. But it was Lotti’s “Echo in F major” that put a smile on everyone’s face, courtesy of oboist and ensemble director Alfredo Bernadini. He pretended to have forgotten his music, only to leave the room and play it backstage, as per the title of the piece.

Niniwe vocal art, an all-female German ensemble based in Leipzig, fired up the audience inside the chilly Zerbst palace during the traditional “Fasch Midnight” crossover concert (actual starting time: 9 pm). The turnout was disappointingly small, especially compared to the afternoon, when about 150 people toured the palace to view the impressive, ongoing renovations and improvements carried out by the local Zerbst palace society. My favourite? The fantastic observation platform on the roof top.

The second, shorter conference day began with a paper by Marc-Roderich Pfau (Berlin). He identified a new cantata cycle by Christoph Förster (1693–1745). His Evangelische Seelen-Ermunterung (composed between ca. 1738 and 1745) was performed at the Zerbst court chapel during Fasch’s tenure as Kapellmeister, specifically on Sunday afternoons in 1749/50. Next, Beate Sorg (Darmstadt) investigated the so-called “Dresden” cantata cycle; it had been premiered at the Zerbst court chapel in 1726/27. She suggested that Fasch had not only copied cantatas by Christoph Graupner (1683–1760), his former composition teacher, to include them in the “Dresden cycle”, but also put the latter together himself. Evan Cortens (Calgary, Canada) examined Graupner’s background and musical training as a composer of opera. They made him the perfect choice as Kapellmeister for Ernst Ludwig, Landgrave of Hessen-Darmstadt, who was keen on having church cantatas take the place of opera as the principal musical event at his court.

The final conference session dealt with princely funeral music. Drawing from a multitude of extant primary sources, Barbara M. Reul (Regina, Canada) identified a new “Fasch-Spielstätte”, i.e. a local venue where works by Fasch were performed. In addition to performing two cantatas required for memorial services at the court chapel, the court Kapelle premiered two more sacred works during special memorial events held at the local university, the Gymnasium Illustre (aka “Francisceum”). Reul also introduced a hitherto unknown autograph letter by Fasch from 1737 that reflects his noble employer’s generous financial nature. Irmgard Scheitler (Würzburg), an expert in German literature, then zoomed in on Fasch‘s 1747 funeral cantata for Prince Christian August, Catherine the Great’s father, a comparatively new genre at the time. She emphasized the high quality of the text, courtesy of the resident Zerbst court poet J. G. Jacobi, with its surprisingly affective and intense lyrics and eloquent imagery. Finally, Maik Richter (Halle/Saale) contextualized his sensational discovery in summer 2016. Eleven previously unknown letters written by Johann Friedrich Fasch and Anhalt-Köthen court officials from 1755 relate to three funeral cantatas for Prince August Ludwig, texts of which Richter recently located as well. Had Fasch taken on the role of Oberhofkapellmeister of the entire Anhalt region? This would certainly explain why the court of Anhalt-Köthen failed to appoint a successor for J. S. Bach during Fasch’s tenure in Zerbst, argued Richter.

The Ratssaal, a performing venue inside Zerbst’s historic town hall, a former Kavaliershaus, was a fitting backdrop for an afternoon concert with Dorothee Oberlinger. The well-known German recorder player had brought along four special “friends”, among them Zefiro’s Alfredo Bernardini and his violin-playing daughter. They performed virtuosic quadro sonatas, i.e. music that features three to four independent melodic lines scored for a variety of instruments, including strings, woodwinds and Basso continuo. By hearing Fasch alongside Vivaldi, Telemann, and (the younger) J. J. Janitsch, the audience could appreciate how the Zerbst Kapellmeister’s compositions fared in the musical “style universe” of the late Baroque.

On Saturday evening, the Rheinische Kantorei and Das Kleine Konzert, directed by Hermann Max, presented a splendid concert at the Trinitatiskirche, yet another venue where music by Fasch had been performed during his tenure in Zerbst. Recorded by Deutschlandfunk for broadcast on 7 May 2017, the concert programme captured the “confessional landscape” lens of the conference best, particularly Fasch’s Missa in G Major (Kyrie, Gloria, and Credo only). This gorgeous work, edited by Brian Clark specifically for the 2017 Fasch Festival, as well as two psalm settings in Latin by Fasch, truly exemplified his ability to make “Catholic” texts come alive in an Orthodox Lutheran performing environment. A CD based on this concert is in the making; it will hopefully include the newly-edited overture suite in seven movements by Fasch which opened the evening – and perhaps also the entire overture suite by G. P. Telemann that was advertised in the programme booklet. The Zerbst audience only got to hear the first movement, followed by the conductor’s apologies for overestimating the concert’s total length.

On Sunday morning, 23 April, about 20 people braved the cold and gathered at the Fasch Memorial Stone on the “Neue Brücke” street, where Fasch had rented a place in the 1740s. The festive worship service at the St. Bartholomäi Church up the street that morning was broadcast live by the Central German Radio as well. At its heart was the modern-day premiere of a cantata by Fasch from 1731 by the Zerbst Kantorei, once again edited by Brian Clark. “It is always very special to perform Fasch’s music in Zerbst”, one of the choir members told me afterwards. This sentiment was echoed by bassoonist Peter Whelan from Ireland, who – “finally!”, he said – got to play instrumental music by Fasch during the closing concert in the Aula of the Zerbst Francisceum (formerly the Gymnasium Illustre ). Whelan is a member of the Barocksolisten München ensemble who presented a musical “Grand Tour” on which many a young noble embarked to increase his knowledge of art and culture in Western Europe. The most popular place was Italy which Fasch, to his great disappointment, never managed to visit in person. But he “spoke” perfect Italian in his chamber music, which the ensemble translated perfectly for modern ears, having paired it with Fasch’s “idols” Vivaldi and Telemann.

Overall, the 2017 Fasch Festival offered truly superb performances with highly attractive concerts programmes more or less focused on the overall “Luther to Fasch” motto. The efforts of the Fasch Society on the day prior to the official opening also deserve an honorable mention. Like in past festival years, a multitude of Zerbst primary and secondary school students met at the largest performance venue in town and learned about Fasch’s life and works via a short, humorous play (apparently, he was constantly interrupted when trying to compose music!), live music by youths studying at the local Zerbst music school, and a children’s dance group dressed up in Baroque costumes. As far as the conference papers are concerned, they will be published with Ortus as vol. 15 of the Fasch-Studien (with abstracts in German and English) at the end of 2017/in early 2018.

The next Fasch Festival will highlight music and musicians connected to Anhalt-Zerbst. Ensembles interested in performing in Zerbst/Anhalt at the end of April 2019 are kindly requested to send an e-mail with programming suggestions and a preliminary budget to IFaschG@t-online.de, attention: Bert Siegmund, president.

Barbara M. Reul

Tags Baroque

Festival-conference

Eeemerging at the 2016 Ambronay Festival

Post author By EMR2015
Post date October 13, 2016
No Comments on Eeemerging at the 2016 Ambronay Festival

The Consone String Quartet in performance — The Consone String Quartet, Photograph: © Bertrand Pichène

[dropcap]A[/dropcap]s noted in my report of the 2015 Ambronay Festival, an excellent reason for going to the last weekend of the festival in early October is its incorporation of a ‘festival within a festival’, the competition for young early music ensembles held under the auspices of eeemerging, an EU initiative (and, no, I’m not going there). Each concert of some 45 minutes length takes place before a team of judges from Ambronay’s festival partners and an enthusiastic audience, which is also encouraged to participate by selecting its own winner. Once again six ensembles were chosen, this year from 47 applications (down on last year). Once again the first, perhaps most important, thing to say is that it is immensely uplifting to see so many exceptionally gifted young musicians involved in this kind of exercise.

That said these gifts do not always take right the direction, as the opening concert on the morning of 8 October demonstrated. This was given by Nexus, an ensemble consisting of two recorders, cello and keyboard playing 17th-century Italian works by Legrenzi, Castello, Marini, in addition to featuring vocal items by Merula, Barbara Strozzi and Monteverdi sung by mezzo Marielou Jacquard. Sadly, as with one of the ensembles last year, Nexus showed scant evidence of having paid attention to 17th-century style, their performances showing little sign of nuance, colour or the bizzarie (imagination) so essential if this music is truly to come to life. I find it odd and not a little depressing that talented young musicians such as these are not getting (or seeking?) more guidance on matters of musicology and style. The succeeding program by I Discordanti, a vocal quartet with continuo support of gamba, theorbo and harpsichord featured repertoire from much the same period. They perhaps concentrated a little too heavily on chromaticism (it really is time Luigi Rossi’s ubiquitous ‘Toccata settima’ was given a rest), but brought a welcome sense of the stylistic needs of the music. This was particularly true of two extended cantatas by Rossi, which were well projected. I Discordanti are not yet the finished article, but they deserve every encouragement.

The opening concert of the afternoon session introduced Prisma, yet another ensemble that specialises in early 17th-century instrumental music (Cima, Bertali, Salomone Rossi etc.), its membership being violin, recorder, gamba and archlute. Their approach was a striking advance on that of Nexus. Violinist Franciska Hajdu not only possesses an excellent technique but has also taken the trouble to employ a 17th-century ‘Biber’ bow (though not yet to have her violin set up with low tension strings) and throughout played with a real sense of style well matched by her partner, recorder player Elisabeth Champollion. The continuo playing was equally of a high standard and I would not quarrel with voting that saw Prisma end up with the audience prize. For me their main competitors were the succeeding Goldfinch Ensemble, an ensemble of former students of The Hague Royal Conservatoire comprising of violin, flute, gamba and harpsichord. They were particularly impressive in technically accomplished and expressively musical performances of two fine trio sonatas by Élisabeth Jacquet de La Guerre. This is another group that is certainly worth keeping an eye on.

On the following morning two remaining ensembles presented programmes, the first of which was mainly devoted to Haydn’s wonderful late String Quartet, op 77/1 in G. The performers were the very young-looking Consone Quartet, who had a very good shot at a work they will play better when their own maturity comes closer to matching that of the music. This was particularly true of the Adagio, one of Haydn’s most deeply profound quartet movements. Finally The Curious Bards, an ensemble based in nearby Lyon that specialises in the research and performance of traditional Irish and Scottish airs and dances. Their programme of 18th-century arrangements was put across with great accomplishment and verve, but I would question the validity of its inclusion in this context. And isn’t there something rather ridiculous about an audience sitting in serried rows in a 21st-century concert hall listening to music that was never intended for such a purpose? Still, to avoid ending what was overall another joyous experience on a sour note, it must be confessed that said audience loved The Curious Bards.

Brian Robins

Tags Baroque, Classical