Musical gatherings and glories

This is really just checklisting; otherwise I fear the events which didn't need a review may pass unillustrated, and their originators officially unthanked. Gatherings and receptions are fine in very small doses as far as I'm concerned, but it did feel special to be back in the social swing of matters musical. 

Much fanfare, first, for the Proms launch at the massive Printworks, Canada Water, on 26 April (all event photos courtesy of BBC Proms publicity). Weirdly, everyone knew the programme in advance, and the annual prospectus wasn't ready for handing out at the end (my copy arrived only last week). But I've rarely enjoyed a melee as much as this, partly because 30 'young creatives' from the new BBC Open Music Scheme added vivacity and glamour. They'll be spotlit in the Open Music Prom on 1 September. 

I so admired the confidence and minimum gush from the two young presenters Mahaliah Edwards and Elizabeth Ajao (pictured above)  - you sensed they were genuinely excited about the world of music that had opened up, not just about their own fledgling stardom. I offered Elizabeth Ajao the chance to write for The Arts Desk, gave her my email and am...waiting to hear from her. Ahem. But one or two of the trainees will put something together nearer to Proms time.

In terms of musical entertainment, there was a tad too much brass from the Tredegar Band (all of it well played), and sheer delight from the glorious Nardus Williams and David Bates in Purcell's 'O! Fair Cedaria'. 

Also got to talk to Nardus afterwards, as a very genuine admirer of her Anne Trulove in the Glyndebourne Tour revival of what we should call the Stravinsky/Hockney Rake's Progress. She radiated natural charisma and charm. Nardus will be singing Mozart's Countess in selected performances at Glyndebourne and on the whole of the tour.

The rest was chit-chat, but not to be sniffed at with the likes of friendly faces Dobrinka Tabakova, Mary Bevan and Nicky Spence. Likewise - with Nicky very much centre stage alongside husband Dylan Perez, singing for his supper as 'Personality of the Year' (I'd say personality enough for 10) - two nights later at the BBC Music Magazine Awards. That's him, bekilted and very much standing on the two legs he broke falling down an airport staircase at the beginning of the year, with Tom Service and BBCMM's new editor Charlotte Smith (who both kept things admirably short and snappy).

I'll mostly pass on the awards themselves - all worthy winners, though I fancy it's how many followers you have on social media which gets you the prize out of three finalists in each category - other than to say that I'm very happy with the top award, to the great Igor Levit. Haven't heard his Stevenson yet but the Shostakovich Preludes and Fugues live at the Barbican were just sensational (and the cover design of the two-CD set fitted well with Kings Place's very different verticals).

 Otherwise,, the performances here were especially remarkable. Nicky and Dylan gave us Strauss's 'Zueignung' followed by Jeremy Nicholas's 'I love ME' (would that perhaps be 'Valentine Card' in the published volume of his numbers written for 'Stop the Week'?), which could have gone OTT without perfect comic timing and discipline. 

Another super couple, Elena Urioste and Tom Poster, played the pianist's transcription of Sondheim's 'Send in the Clowns'. As I said to them afterwards, who'd have thought this could work so well without the words? It brought tears to my eyes. I was hoping the performance had been filmed; it wasn't, but here's a different capturing of the same piece.

I'd planned to keep all events here within a three-week bracket, but realised I hadn't mentioned the very happy occasion at the glorious Fidelio Orchestra Cafe, bringing together a favourite venue and two favourite people, viola-player Kathy Kang and her husband Andrew Litton (their adorable young 'un was being looked after by Korean Granny - I had expected Anastasia to be turning pages already). 

I already mentioned in an Arts Desk review, actually about another superb Fidelio Cafe event, how the minute Kang put bow to string, the warmth and resonance of the sound in that well-wooded venue carried us - even through less than great music (Kornauth's Viola Sonata). The selection from Robert Fuchs' Phantasiestücke struck a note of richer originality, and fascinatingly I got to hear the Brahms E flat Sonata, Op. 120 No. 2, for the second time chez Fidelio in the viola-piano version: so very different from Power and Kolesnikov, equally valid. As an invitee, I felt in distinguished company, as you can see here: next to Kathy and Andrew are Dennis Chang, Stephen Hough, Alastair Macaulay and Jennifer Eldredge.

Famous faces were abundant at an occasion which might have been sad but was anything else: as the 'order of service' had it at the Wigmore Hall, this was a celebration of the full life of the greatest among conductors, Bernard Haitink. 

I was very touched to be asked by his widow Patricia to the event (she remembered a happy meeting we had at his last masterclasses for young conductors in Lucerne, where I briefly talked Mahler 3 with him; he just lit up about it).  She spoke so beautifully in the welcome address, as did Thomas Allen before the final work, segueing masterfully into Prospero's farewell. Clearly a review wasn't in order, but I have to say that both the works and the performances were as perfect as so many of the master conductor's interpretations. Here's the full programme - click to enlarge. Due to Covid, there were a couple of player swaps; I did wonder about Enno Senft, who'd been playing in the Europe Day Concert and had been mingling in the crypt bash afterwards on the Monday...

Photography likewise seemed inappropriate, but I'm grateful to Neil Gillespie, photographer and tenor with the London Symphony Chorus (well represented) for sharing his official shots. Emanuel Ax and Paul Lewis sounded absolutely as one in the Schubert Fantaisie, so fascinatingly different from the Kolesnikov/Tsoy combination I've been hearing a few times of late.

For me, the revelation was Beethoven's 'Spring' Sonata, probably because I know it less well than all the other works on the programme - the flow, the idiosyncrasy, the humour were so ineffably there with Ax partnering Frank Peter Zimmerman,

A friend tells me he was sitting behind the Haitinks at a Gerhaher Wigmore recital two weeks before the great man's death. I've never heard a bigger range in Lieder from Gerhaher before. Here he is with his regular duo partner, Gerold Huber.

 Finally, Prospero and the Siegfried Idyllists, an army of generals.

More recently, my good friend Sophia Rahman and her partner Andres Kaljuste had assembled another superb ensemble by scratch for a Ukrainian charity concer in St Peter's Belsize Park, quickly named the Whittington Festival Players after the splendid sequence of events she's just masterminded in that Shropshire village. Sophia also plays for Steven Isserlis at Prussia Cove. He'd been booked for a recital in Odesa on that evening, of course happened to be free, and so...

This is a photo Sophia took at a rehearsal when SI turned in to play to his fellow strings. His performance of the Haydn C major Cello Concerto was so resonant but also so moving - I've not shed tears at the pure classicism of the slow movement before, but this introspection completely got to me, He lives every bar. But so did Andres and the strings; their Mozart 29 was alive and deliciously nuanced, and the concert started with the subtlest and most charming playing by Irène Duval, another Prussia Cove visitor, in Mozart's A major Violin Concerto K219. Here are the two soloists together after the concert.

A final quick sketch of two indelible impressions left by performances which I didn't get to review, but caught later in both runs. So glad I didn't miss the revival of Lohengrin at the Royal Opera, and not just for Jakub Hrůša's art-concealing-art conducting, fairly perfect, Jennifer Davis was already a star when she stepped in at the first run, but now everything's at the highest level, and I'd completely forgotten the announcement that she was having neck and back trouble. It didn't show. Besides, her swan knight, Brandon Jovanovich, was another revelation: so tender, so believably good; more tears for his performance. Just one shot, them, of Jovanovich and Davis, by Clive Barda for the Royal Opera.

One of my students, Andrea Gawn, advised us all not to miss the performance of Jetter Parker Young Artist Alexandra Lowe in Schoenberg's Pierrot Lunaire at the Linbury Theatre. She was right: Lowe, until this just another very promising lyric soprano, absolutely astonished in acting, singing and speaking. I was just as impressed with the production by Anthony Almeida, which pushed at several boundaries. Bold attempts to link with Stravinsky's Mavra, by no means forced, but I still don't quite see the point of that Pushkin bagatelle. Anyway, here's Lowe on Rosanna Vize's striking set as photographed by Helen Murray.

Jabberwocky/Jaseroque/Jammerwoch/Barmaglot

As noted after I'd reeled out from the concert premiere of Gerald Barry's Alice's Adventures Under Ground in 2016, the composer sets the greatest absurdist poem I know in French, German and Russian. Having been struck again - twice - by Barry's genius in Antony McDonald's perfect Royal Opera production, I thought I'd do a trawl for readings of translations on YouTube. The only good one I found is the Russian version.

There's also, however, a consummate delivery of the original, savouring every word, from the great Christopher Lee.

Since I could spout the first two stanzas at will, I made an effort to learn it all by heart, and it's surprising how it trips off the tongue. Martin Gardner in The Annotated Alice compares the best nonsense poetry like this to abstract art, and in both, he suggests, the artist should not struggle too hard to try and find connections which should flow unconsciously; as he points out re the likes of Getrude Stein and the Italian futurists, 'when the technique is taken too seriously, the results become tiresome'.

I seem to have spent a lot of time hanging around the Royal Opera House even when I wasn't going to see the show in the main house (which I did first on the press night - and wrote about it for The Arts Desk - and then to see the second of the two casts on Sunday at noon. Production photos here by Clive Barda). Saturday was a case of no good deed going unpunished; on Friday, I'd arranged with my beloved but scatty friend Edsy to meet her, husband Kit and goddaughter Mirabel plus various friends between shows (they had tickets for both). In the morning I fixed up a time for a backstage tour of props by my pal the wonderful Nicky Spence, since he does such a superb job here.

He was happy to oblige; his sister and her children would love it too. Yet despite four emails and five phone messages, Edsy was not to be contacted in time - I didn't see them come out of the earlier showing and the opportunity passed. Found them later; she'd lost her mobile IN DECEMBER. But this is boring for the reader; the fact that Mirabel and Kit weren't going to the second showing meant I could take them to Blade Rubber Stamps next to the London Review of Books shop and treat her to a Tenniel of her choice. I gave J this one and it's quite fun to sign off with when it comes to sending cards from the two of us.

In the end she preferred a row of (non-Tenniel) lizards to be reproduced in rainbow print. I left father and daughter at the British Museum, where Friends of the Earth were protesting BP sponsorship of the Troy exhibition (I'd been, didn't learn much I didn't already know, but it's a good education for lots of folk) with a wooden horse.

What followed turned out to be a long walk on the beautiful sunny afternoon before Storm Ciara struck - J was getting it in Galway at the same time - from the BM to the length and breadth of Bermondsey High Street before I took a bus from outside the Tower of London and then a tube to King's Cross for the 7pm Aurora Orchestra concert. For a start, it was good to see the first crocuses in Bloomsbury Square.

Had planned to go home for a couple of hours, but Temple tube and the District Line were closed, so I admired the first blossom by the Thames

 

and the dropped into Two Temple Place for a so-so exhibition of women collectors of fabrics (any excuse to see the rooms, but not quite sure where Yinka Shonibare's ship fits into it all),

crossed Blackfriars Bridge

to join the hordes from the Southbank Walk to London Bridge, then via some of the back streets to trendy Bermondsey - can anyone identify this astonishing yellow-flowering tree? -

followed by a pop in to the Eames Gallery - excellent linocut prints by  Gail Brodholt, excellent urban scenes though I especially liked the motorway perspectives, and covet this one -

and the White Cube where the latest Anselm Kiefer exhibition had so stunned us the previous week (need to post on that anon). The spaces are filled, spectacularly enough from one perspective though not from many as the Kiefers achieved it, with mew works by Cerith Wyn Evans, including fig. 0 in white neon.

Coffee at the south end of the street, which I hadn't reached before (we always stop at Pizarro for lunch),

 and then I noticed full moon rising.

I reckoned it would look even better on the river, and though it had risen further by the time I got to Tower Bridge it was still complementary to the rest of the twinkling lights.

Flash, when on, is erratic in doing its stuff; when it does, the image is sharper and of course the background darker.

Sunday was very different. I gave myself bags of time to struggle through the storm and catch a tube back to Covent Garden, though it came immediately, and missed the downpours both ways (they came later). So glad I caught the 'other' (not second or B) cast, because the two with the most to sing were piu brilliante: Nicky, going for broke in his last performance(s) as the Mad Hatter and others, and Jennifer France, who beamed out what I'm told are 98 top Cs with fearless brilliance. Here our two national treasures are with Robert Murray as the March Hare and Carole Wilson as the Dormouse.

A few more favourite tableaux: Carole's Cook and 'wah wah wah' chorus,

the Looking-Glass Train scene,

and very near the end.

Claudia Boyle and Sam Furness in the previous cast were excellent, but these two were off-the-planet fabulous. So were the brass, perfecting their tuckets and galops under Finnegan Downie Dear - cool as a cucumber, Nicky later told me. I wasn't intending to intrude after, but he appeared from the stage door just as I was heading down Floral Street (I'd been chatting with the wonderful Elizabeth Wilson, so good to see here there. She's taken part in recordings of some of Barry's chamber works). Then Joshua Bloom, such an excellent Humpty, appeared on his way to his last performance, and La France with a friend. Here's a happy group pic in the storm.

May they all be reunited in the inevitable revival as soon as possible.

Monday afternoon Rakefest

It was the best possible conclusion to an Opera in Depth term where I'd taken students through five Monday afternoons on Stravinsky's The Rake's Progress - around an excellent concert staging conducted by Vladimir Jurowski - and four on Tchaikovsky's The Queen of Spades (Herheim's wacky Royal Opera take in the offing). Two of my guests, Dame Felicity Lott and Nicky Spence, had already been generous visitors to the class, and the trajectory of what became a modest fundraiser all flowed serendipitously from FLott's urging me to see the latest Rake from British Youth Opera, of which she is President. It was a beautifully prepared and staged experience, and our former Anne Trulove certainly wasn't wrong about the latest, young Australian Samantha Clarke, ready to sing this and other roles in any opera house around the world.

Sam crowned our afternoon with a superlative performance of the big aria and cabaletta 'No word from Tom', including a spine-tingling messa di voce on 'it cannot be thou art'. Perfect meaning in every phrase, perfect technique. The singers and conductors I've spoken to who know her all speak so well of her. Tall and beautiful, she really could be the next FLott. Her next role is one of that lady's specialities, Helena in Britten's A Midsummer Night's Dream, at the Guildhall, where she's still studying.

Nicky Spence kicked off our afternoon with Tom's two surprisingly emotional arias, 'Love, too frequently betrayed' (I.ii) and 'Vary the song' (II.i - click on the programme above to see the details better), followed by the plangent II.ii trio (effectively a Donizettian duet punctuated by Baba's indignant commentary from within her sedan chair). Having flown in from Brussels, where he'd been reprising his role in the extraordinary production of Janacek's From the House of the Dead we'd seen at the Royal Opera, Nicky had to be off after an hour, which is why he's not in the top pic (left to right, his partner, superb pianist Dylan Perez, Susie Self, Sam, FLott and Debbie York. Thanks to David Thompson for that photo, David Zell for the other church shots).

Tom is a tough role, not for the average 'pipsqueak English cathedral tenor' - a phrase I once used for which one of its targets, rightly, will never forgive me - so Nicky's casting in the BYO production of 10 years ago was astute (his first major Wagner role, Parsifal, is scheduled for York Minister this coming Easter, with Mark Elder conducting). The company, as Execuitve Director David Balcombe told us in his speech at the end, had more than 400 auditionees for the principle roles this year, and they never plan an opera they know they can't adequately cast. Glad to have raise a goodish sum to hand over to them from this event.

I wish I'd recorded the chats, because I can't remember all the details. But Susie was certainly amusing about how she dealt with David Freeman's penchant for asking his singers to take off their clothes in auditions. She was a wonderful, hairy-chested Baba in his Opera Factory's 1994 production of Rake, and delivered her patter-and-vengeance aria with aplomb.

Debbie York was plunged in to John Eliot Gardiner's 1997 LSO concert Rake with very little preparation, and the recording followed frighteningly close on its heels. I only revisited the performance recently, and the freshness of her Anne is so touching (wonderful account of the big aria, too). As she, too, had arrived from elsewhere - her home city of Berlin - and at the crack of dawn, she preferred to have the Lullaby played, which gave the infinite benefit of the flutes which accompany it and those heart-rending choral interjections.

We also watched the whole of the Anne-Tom scene with FLott and Leo Goeke in the 1979 Glyndebourne film (praise be to Thames TV for filming so much in those early days of televised opera). FLott had worn a dress appropriate to Hockney's cross-hatching and brought along a photo taken just after the filming featuring her, director John Cox and Hockney. Talking with her was a delight, as it always is - such a generous and supportive person.

And, of course, there was something very touching about the legacy of two Annes and the handing-on to the next, an almost Rosenkavalierish acceptance, as one of the students later wrote. We had a jolly final panel, and after a lot of friendly after-chat, went our separate ways. The chances of getting that group together again are thin indeed, but we did it. Warmest thanks to all for giving so generously of their time, and to the very helpful folk at St James's Sussex Gardens, Father Owen Dobson and Sue Silkstone.

Another ultimately happy chance that led us to St James's was the  Frontline Club powers' decision that they needed the room we use in 'the run-up to Christmas', which suddenly included the whole of November. So I booked St James's for the concert and Pushkin House in Bloomsbury for the other two classes concerned. Now the corporate-hungry new 'look' at the Frontline has determined that, in spite of the fact that I pay them very good money for my weekly two hours, they might be able to make more, so one-third of the way through the 'academic year', I was told to find somewhere else.

Fortunately the staff at Pushkin House were so obliging, the equipment so good, that I've relocated there. I shall miss the bar folk at the Frontline and the pleasure of the venue, but things went downhill administratively after the departure of Ian Tesh, for whom nothing was too much trouble. So, onwards to ten Monday afternoons on Die Walküre in the second year of our Ring journey. If you feel like joining us, click on the above for details.

Rake afternoon reminder

Click on the above for better detail and come along if you can. What would normally be the last class of my Opera in Depth term has turned into a little gala with excerpts from Stravinsky's The Rake's Progress to raise funds for British Youth Opera. I'm confident that Spence, Nicky will match Spence, Toby, who gave a total performance on Saturday night as Vladimir Jurowski's Tom Rakewell. Our Rake people span productions from 1977 (Dame Felicity Lott, who will speak but not sing, at least live) to this year (Samantha Clarke, a stupendous Anne Trulove in British Youth Opera's fine production). It's been a joy dealing with the folk at St James's Sussex Gardens - total pros.

Meanwhile the last two of four classes on Tchaikovsky's The Queen of Spades will be, very appropriately, at Pushkin House, since the Frontline, 'gone corporate' as founder member Ed Vulliamy puts it, decided that they needed to have the room available to make more dosh - and I pay them quite a sum already - in 'the run-up to Christmas', which they regard as the whole of November. Well, the bonus is that the students also get to see a fine exhibition of Laura Footes's imaginative artwork inspired by Bulgakov's The Master and Margarita. I was at Pushkin House last Tuesday for a talk by my New Best Friend from a Bromsgrove Shostakovich Quartets weekend, Elizabeth Wilson, on the extraordinary pianist Maria Yudina. Which has led to a whole investigation of great playing. But more on that anon.

Rake and Spades at the Frontline: do join us

Yes, that's the great Dame Felicity Lott as our Opera in Depth end-of-term lunch guest last term, before she went on to talk with her usual natural charm, wit and insight on Britten (we were covering A Midsummer Night's Dream over five Monday afternoons, using the Peter Hall Glyndebourne DVD in which she plays an appropriately tall Helena. Yesterday she was a very impressed onlooker at the celebrations of the great director's life). There are, incidentally, many more of us than you see in the Frontline club room shot above.

For the coming term, which starts next Monday, I'll be covering Stravinsky's The Rake's Progress and Tchaikovsky's The Queen of Spades, two operas which climax in a crucial game of cards. Pikovaya Dama, to give it the proper Russian name (Pique Dame, incidentally, is nonsensical) will be staged at the Royal Opera in Stefan Herheim's Tchaikovskycentric production; having reviewed the DVD of its Dutch incarnation for the BBC Music Magazine, I can say you're in for a treat, a concept that's actually followed through, so let's forget that dramatically abysmal Pelléas et Mélisande at Glyndebourne.

Vladimir Jurowski will conduct The Rake's Progress at the Royal Festival Hall (no idea yet how semi-staged it's going to be). He made such poignant and light-of-touch work of it at ENO years back, in a quirky production by Annabel Arden with a profoundly moving Bedlam scene. Back to the Garden of Eden below in the recent British Youth Orchestra production I found so effective: Pedro Ometto as Trulove, Samantha Clarke as Anne and Frederick Jones as Tom Rakewell (image by Bill Knight).

Meanwhile, a Rake extravaganza linked to the above has already taken some shape for our last class on 17 November. As the Frontline Club flummoxed me a couple of months ago by telling me that they regard the 'run-up to Christmas' as including the whole of November, when they hope to make more than the substantial amount I pay them for my weekly two hours, I've had to find other homes for the last three Mondays. Which, it now seems, will be St James's Church Sussex Gardens, with its avowedly fine audio-visual set-up - I'm going to check it out on Monday - and its new Steinway Boston Concert Grand.

The idea for the proposed event took shape quickly after I'd been to see the BYO Rake. FLott, as Madame la Patronne of BYO (as she is of the Poulenc Society), had recommended I go, and I'm glad I did. So she has agreed to preside, a lovely connection back to the famous Hockney-designed Glyndebourne Rake in which she sang the role of Anne Trulove, happily preserved on DVD (the Bedlam scene above with Leo Goerke). Samantha Clarke, already a world-class Anne, will, we hope, reprise the aria.

Nicky Spence - who sang Tom Rakewell for BYO a decade ago, pictured above - will join with his pianist partner Dylan Perez, and Susie Self, a hairy-chested Baba the Turk for Opera Factory back in the 1990s, has agreed to come along too.

Students for the term will have this as part of their package, but we hope others will come along too, to help us raise money for BYO. A unique event - put it in your diaries, and leave a message here with your contact details (I won't publish it) if you want to join us either for that or for the entire term.