A full day in North Norfolk

 

Absolutely no church interiors this time, though we did stop off at All Saints Burnham Thorpe to pay our respects at the graves of friend Jill's parents and brother. As the chosen church to receive money from our annual Norfolk Churches Walk, it got £2725.50 from the four of us and a grand total of £3846. I also won a £50 prize in the annual photographic competition, but as often I thought the choice was an odd one, though not ungrateful, of course.

The destination was Burnham Overy Staithe where our dynamic friend the composer and mezzo Susie Self was giving a special preview of her one-woman opera Analysis (we think it has to be called Self Analysis). The long drive with multiple stop-offs entailed revisiting a few old haunts from the time when Jill's mother lived in Burnham Thorpe. But if anything I love the area around Southrepps, where Jill is now settled  - to be strict, in Lower Southrepps - even more.

Her garden is now evolving into a little miracle, and with so much insect-friendly planting, it was buzzing and humming with life on a hot June weekend. Quite a few species of bee were to be found on the rockery, especially around the nepeta. My first conscious sighting of orange-bottomed bumble bees (Bombus lapidarius), and plenty of them.

As for the dragonflies, oh my, What colours, what a size! I'm grateful to Ellie Colver of the British Dragonfly Association for identification, having failed in my online search. Alas, these are no rare species, but nature's design is the thing. This one, with its plump blue and yellow thorax, should have been easy to classify, though I didn't find what I wanted: it's a male Broad-bodied Chaser (Libellula depressa).

More confusing were the candidates for this beauty out of three or four that had refused to settle, whizzing around the lawn for ages - a Four-spotted Chaser (Libellula quadrimaculata).

Jill outlaws some colours from her garden scheme, and wouldn't let these giant oriental poppies in, but how splendid they look against a wall on the lane.

There's a boardwalk around a preserved wild common/marsh five minutes from Jill's house, formerly managed by local residents and now in the care of the Norfolk Wildlife Trust, which will assure the right money spent on preserving it. Always bliss to visit if one has a spare half of an hour, especially in the evening.

Crossing a shady stream, I came across what I was hoping to see - quite a smattering of wild orchids

including this one, the Common Spotted Orchid (Dactylorhiza fuchsii).

White poplar fluff was drifting everywhere - a sight I remember multiplied a thousandfold from arriving (like Lenin) at St Petersburg's Finland Station one July (it was Stalin's favourite tree, apparently).

Our leisurely drive west to Susie's show needed to take in one big walk. It had to be a mostly shady one on a hot day, so we elected to do the big loop round Sheringham Park, Repton's role in which I hymned in an earlier blog post.

This was full rhododendron time, with occasional glimpses down to the sea.

We caught more of it fringing the estate before turning inwards at the point where the steam trains arrive at what is the terminus for the standard route.

Foxglove flourishing in the woods on the way back.

Then it was back in the car to head for lunch at an old favourite, Cookie's Crab Shop at Salthouse, which has become a hotspot since we used to visit in its humble days. The crab and lobster special did not disappoint. Then a short amble to see the salt marshes here.

and on to a garden centre in North Creake beloved of Jill, and I can see why: it just seems to have the ones you want. This magnificent cistus was not for sale.

though I duly noted this Halimiocistus 'Merristwood Cream'.

Tea at North Creake Abbey next, also quite developed since we last visited. The fields and stream over the way saw sheep and geese in happy co-existence.

Finally, the bathe at Holkham Beach, though another half-hour walk necessary from Burnham Overy Staithe to get there.

The water wasn't particularly cold, though there are no shots of me in the water, and the one of the other two in the dunes isn't permissible. So here's sea kale in the dip of the dunes on the way back

and a fading sun over the marshes.

Folk were assembling at the splendid old boathouse venue when we got back to the Staithe

and the singer-composer was in fine form both receiving on her set with its installation - true Renaissance woman, is our Susie -

and for the opera itself, a highly varied free-flow musical-theatre piece about the more analysis-worthy phases of her life. She is a fearless entertainer, engaging each member of the audience directly at one point or another, and she uses her voice superbly through many octaves. Michael, the 'sexy Canadian' who took her on a spin around his native land when they were both music students (a lively road-number), was there to support on cello; that's quite a partnership. Here they are after the performance.

For the after-show, they'd generously prepared a picnic of smoked salmon sandwiches, brownie and apple, following the prosecco at the start.

So we sat very contentedly watching a fine sunset.

Perfect end to a perfect day, if you'll forgive the cliche; I can't think of a better way to put it. And do make your way to the superlative 10th anniversary Southrepps Music Festival run by top tenor Ben Johnson and pianist Tom Primrose, held mostly in one of Norfolk's tallest-towered churches (simple inside, but excellent acoustics). Events from 7-11 August include recitals by phenomenal guitarist Sean Shibe, Ben in duo with former BBC Young Musician of the Year Martin James Bartlett (now well on the way with his superb EMI debut disc,which I need to write about) and my pals Benjamin Baker and Jonathan Bloxham in Mendelssohn's Second Piano Trio with Daniel Lebhardt (who also gives a duo recital with Ben B). The culminating event is a performance of Britten's The Burning Fiery Furnace. So cue a 'playout' with the burning fiery firnament at Burnham Overy Staithe.

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.

Two Thursdays in Birmingham

Three cheers for Chiltern Railways, is the first thing to note. Leaving from one small and charming station, London's Marylebone, travelling in comfort through pleasant countryside and arriving in another gem, Birmingham's Moor Street, is a much needed easing into the concrete jungle that is the centre of the city. The original building could so easily have been lost, but it's had a nostalgic face-lift, which includes the signage, and it has a very good coffee shop. Turn left and you hit the insoluble mess of the Bull Ring, but if you cross the road and head up the hill, you can be in the square around the Cathedral in minutes.

On my first visit, I was looking for a bite to eat before heading to see the final rehearsal of friend Susie Self's new opera, Quilt Song, at the Old Rep Theatre where her grandfather John Drinkwater's play Abraham Lincoln had been premiered 100 years ago to the day of her own first performance. The extra prompt to go and lend support came from Nina Stemme, to one of whose children Susie is a godmother, who when I met her in Stockholm and mentioned Susie, immediately asked 'when are you going to Quilt Song - 19th or 20th?' (she went on the Saturday, between performances in the Royal Opera Ring. Quite a friend).

More on that in a moment, but I should add that next to the rather stylish old pub opposite the Cathedral I'd visited before there had opened a Syrian eatery, Damascena, rather like our own beloved Jaffa Bake House on the North End Road in that it evokes similar such establishments in Syria and Lebanon. I returned the following Thursday for an early lunch, and it was just as good and even livelier.

Quilt Song is an ambitious project. Quite apart from the fact that Susie is composer, singer, co-director, conductor (of all those scenes in which she doesn't appear) and video artist, the work itself runs the gamut of styles in its inclusivity.

There are pop songs for the 'Universal Choir' and students from Birmingham's Ormiston Academy, incorporating some rather portentous words from Drinkwater's play,

some intricate instrumental music for the core ensemble of 12 players and the loveliest writing, I think, for the Alma Guitar Trio, working for their degree at the Birmingham Conservatoire by performing together.

Maureen Brathwaite sings Rosa Parks, chief subject of the opera's motto 'we have more in common than that which divides us' - epitomised also by another great woman who gave expression to it, Jo Cox, "drawn" as the Muse of the Poet (John Drinkwater, no less, embodied by Susie). She's sung by soprano Elizabeth Cragg, already pursuing a successful career. Brathwaite and Cragg pictured with members of the chorus on the 'bus' below.

The other solo voice belongs to James Blake, the bus driver who ordered Rosa Parks to move from her seat to make way for white people, sung by tenor Tristan Stocks, who also doubles as the Jo Cox figure's murderer.

He's allowed his transformation in a very Tippettesque second part where as Charon he rows souls across the river Styx to a street party.

Bear in mind that I only saw the final rehearsal. It did, though, allow me to send Susie a string of notes which I hoped would be helpful. Clearly as it stood - and I had to leave shortly before the end to catch my train back to London - the show was about 15 minutes too long, and Susie did in fact make a cut before the first of the two official performances where I thought it should be, in the 'Street Party' sequence. I hope she also got the other singers to clarify the text more; she herself, a superb mezzo, is always exemplary in that respect. She puts much of this down to her teacher, Josephine Veasey. As she wrote, 'I literally speak on the pitches rather than employ a singing mode. This is totally radical and for some singers too controversial an approach. They like singing too much!'

Otherwise, bravi tutti for giving so professional account of a big and at times complicated work. I thought Susie's videos especially striking and though I wasn't too sure about co-director and dancer Marina White Raven's later interjections - as the bird of death? - I found her physical expression in the opening sequence striking.

A week later, I returned to Birmingham - this time arriving before noon - to give a pre-performance talk at Symphony Hall on Sibelius and his First Symphony, taking a journey around it and the works that led up to it. I was amazed by the crowd assembled on the second foyer level (rehearsal was ongoing in the auditorium so the usual venue wasn't available, and I much preferred the alternative). Sitting on chairs and on the floor, standing, looking up from below (the microphone made it all audible from other foyer spaces), they were amazingly attentive and asked interesting questions. I told one or two that we don't get this level of attendance in London, probably because we have five orchestras and thus a less loyal following; the response was that the audience feels part of the CBSO family. Splendid.

As was the first half of the concert: to hear the orchestra in that best of venues is always like encountering music with the lid off, and Wagner's Flying Dutchman Overture as conducted by Vasily Sinaisky made a superb start. Then Benjamin Grosvenor (pictured below by Patrick Allen/Opera Omnia) in Mozart's C major Piano Concerto, K467.  He has it all - the most elegant trilling after Paul Lewis, a crisp, beautiful treble and a rich bass in perfect counterbalance, originality but never eccentricity of phrasing, an ear for what the orchestra's doing.

Alas, I couldn't stay for the Sibelius; I had to get back and prepare for the next day's start of talks around Shostakovich's fifteen quartets. Which took me back to Birmingham, this time Grand Central, and on to Bromsgrove. But that's another story, due a post soon.

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.