Sally Matthews, Blanche de la Force; Katarina Dalayman, Madame de Croissy, (Old Prioress); Golda Schultz, Madame Lidoine (New Prioress); Karen Cargill, Mother Marie of the Incarnation; Florie Valiquette, Sister Constance of St Denis; Fiona Kimm, Mother Jeanne of the Child Jesus; Paul Gay, Marquis de la Force; Valentin Thill, Chevalier de la Force; Vincent Ordonneau, Father Confessor. Glyndebourne Festival Opera Chorus; London Philharmonic Orchestra, Robin Ticciati, conductor

My previous experience with this work has been mixed. I very much enjoyed a Met live screening a few years ago, the first time I had ever come across the work;  I also went just before lockdown to a live performance at RNCM. I’m afraid I was rather bored at the latter and left at the interval. I rather wondered which way this performance would go for me……

I was initially disconcerted, on entering the RAH, to discover that the seat I had been allocated was at the very extreme end of the Side Stalls, and that, with the extended stage in place, I was behind where the singers would be acting (thereby losing some of the impact of their voices, and also very near the orchestra, plus had to twist my head to the right and up to see the surtitles up above the organ. This did not bode well, I thought…..I anxiously scanned the hall to see if there were empty seats nearby. For once I was disappointed to note that to all intent and purposes the hall was full – no easy way out……I settled down wearily to what I expected to be an unsatisfying and physically awkward evening.

However, such was the quality and sheer dramatic power of this performance that I didn’t mind a bit. I was totally gripped from start to finish. I ended up convinced this work was a masterpiece, which to be frank I hadn’t considered it to be earlier. The elements leading to this change of view were:

1. Although you obviously can’t recreate, in the concert hall, the specifics of a stage production, this one went much further than most in trying where possible to bridge the gap. The singers looked as though they were all in costume, there were a range of props (chairs, candles, prayer desk, Bible etc) and above all the forward-extended stage made it possible, as far as I could see (without knowing the details of the stage production), for singers to act, and react to each other, as they would have done on the Glyndebourne stage, allowing the nuns to huddle, line up or, at the spectacular conclusion of the first part, fall on their fronts, lined up prostrate on the stage, and also giving the revolutionaries full room for their menacing presence. Moreover the director’s working with the singers on stage had clearly been very effective –  every single person was utterly convincing in their role and in the quality and intensity of their interactions with each other – the way the nuns were inter-reacting was very well done.
2. There were some stellar performances, totally gripping in their intensity. Sally Matthews as Blanche was in a role that seemed absolutely hers – it suited her voice, not plush but piercing, voice, her style of acting, and her build. She conveyed much more of the nervous intensity of the role than I remember her Met counterpart doing on the live screening a few years ago, and was very convincing in the rather strange mix this role demands of the assertive and the timid. Karen Cargill was magnificent as Mother Marie – again cast in a role that suited her down to the ground in terms of voice timbre, presence and movement. Golda Schultz too had considerable presence and made a convincing contrasting presence to Cargill’s Mother Marie (though in the story the new Prioress seems an odd figure, rushing off to Paris and then returning, with no time in the text for her to explain or meditate on her decisions). As luxury casting there was Katarina Dalyman as the Old Prioress, totally living her role, and still, as an ex-Brunnhilde and Kundry, with a very powerful voice and a great stage presence..
3.   The other hero in all this was the orchestra and indeed the music it was playing. The music for this opera grows on you almost imperceptibly – at first it seems an understated melange of melodic fragments that sounds almost like film music. But gradually, as the drama intensifies, the music becomes more powerful, with the wisps and fragments cohering into fuller melodies. Some of the later interludes are very moving. The orchestra, with the difficult job of representing Poulenc’s music to the best of its ability while at the same time not drowning the singers when out of the pit, achieved this brilliantly, even from where I was sitting – and all credit to Robin Ticciati for helping them to achieve that.

After the nuns’ hymn rang out at the end,  and one by one they left the stage, their exits punctuated by very scary and effective-sounding guillotine swishes, and as the metaphorical curtains closed, I found myself thinking this is really one of the great operas of the 20^th century

L. Boulanger, D’un matin de printemps; Rachmaninov Piano Concerto No. 2 in C minor; Walton, Symphony No. 1 in B flat minor. Alim Beisembayev, piano; Sinfonia of London, John Wilson conductor

I don’t think – I need to check – that I’ve ever heard the Sinfonia of London live before. I was very struck by the quality of their playing. Possibly it is partly me getting used to the very peculiar RAH acoustics, but I found the difference between the BBCSO on Friday and the SoL last night very striking. Theirs is not a plush European sound, like one of the German orchestras, but what I can perhaps describe as ‘muscular’ – very forthright; clear energetic playing, tight, the confident full sound of an orchestra that knows exactly what it’s doing. That’s not very clear, but the best I can do. There was some beautiful horn/oboe/trombone playing, the strings bloomed when they needed to (as in the Rachmaninov), there was a very energetic and effective timpani player (Walton) – all contributing to a full-bodied exciting sound. 

So I want to make that clear, and also point to the effectiveness of John Wilson’s conducting, before writing that this concert was not as satisfying as I hoped it would be – which may be a question again of the RAH acoustics as much as anything else (but not entirely). The programme was a slightly odd one – none of the pieces really had much to do with each other, and seemed to have been positioned arbitrarily together (‘we’d better do Rachmaninov because it’s his anniversary, Lili Boulanger is a forgotten composer worth reviving , and the SoL/Wilson combination would be great for Walton 1’.)

The first piece was, frankly, a bit inconsequential – sort of sub-Debussy, sub-Ravel – though clearly written by someone very gifted. It would have been better to do a curtain-opener by Ireland, Britten, Vaughan Williams or similar.  The Rachmaninov was, as you would expect, not less than very good. But somehow my heart in this very familiar music only seemed to lift when the orchestra was playing (the sound of them in the final reprise of the finale’s big tune was quite something, when they were let off the leash). The pianist (possibly again acoustics) seemed to have quite a small voice, and Wilson as far as I could see was quite focused on holding the orchestra back to enable him to be heard. Of course it was technically very well played (to the extent that I can tell) and there were some nice touches of phrasing, but (standing in the same spot as for the Yuja Wang concert, handily near to a railing to hold on to should my legs get tired) there didn’t seem to be enough projection, enough of a narrative arc, a sense of where the piece was going. I recalled that I’d heard Yuja Wang play this piece in May 2021 as lockdown lifted, and I remember that as a much more characterful reading). Alim Beisembayev of course is a young man in his early 20’s, with lots of time before him, but even so, given his background, you would have thought he would have had this piece as a central part of his repertoire and would have more ideas about it. Maybe he was just nervous, as a last minute replacement. Interestingly his encore was a transcription of the Infernal Dance from the Firebird, which sounded spectacular. It was an oddly contrasting performance – so much more confident.

The Walton was superbly played by the orchestra. Wilson was particularly good at carefully grading the dynamics which adds, for instance, to the impact of the grinding unresolved chords in the first movements so that its end was overwhelming. The crispness of the scherzo was superlative. My problems with this symphony come really with the last movement. Until that point, you can feel a fairly clear emotional trajectory in this work – an angry first movement, a vicious dissatisfied scherzo that continues that anger, and a heart-searching slow movement that seems to hint at an unresolved inner coldness, almost a sort of existential despair. It’s a cliché of programme notes, but nonetheless true, to say that the finale doesn’t really provide any sort of resolution to these issues, that Walton struggled with it, and finished it quite a bit after the composition of the other three movements. It’s exciting, certainly – those huge gong crashes, the second timpanist coming in before the end – and maybe in those old 1970’s performances Previn and the LSO made it work, but in this performance (and no fault of Wilson/SoL – who obviously realised the problem, and set off at quite a gallop so as not to linger), too much sounded like note-spinning, a triumphant blast that resolves nothing. That may, of course, be the point, but it doesn’t make for a very satisfying concert experience. Oh well……I shall look forward to SoL playing other works I enjoy more in the future (I remember being hugely impressed by their performance of the Korngold Symphony listening to a Prom at home a year or so ago).

Jimmy López Bellido –  Perú negro; Rachmaninov – Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini; Walton, Belshazzar’s Feast. Yuja Wang, piano; Thomas Hampson,  baritone; BBC Symphony Chorus, BBC Symphony Orchestra, Klaus Mäkelä conductor

This was one of the first Proms to sell out  – the attraction being mainly Yuja Wang, and also some interest around Klaus Makela as an emerging conducting star – and they are of course now a couple, which might influence a few more people to come along.

This was quite a concert by the ‘power couple’. Such was the enthusiasm to see Yuja Wang that a few people slept outside the RAH overnight to get a good position in the Arena standing queue. When I arrived shortly before 5pm after a board meeting of something I am involved with, there were about 150 people in the queue. By the time 7.30pm came the Arena was full, at about 1000, and the rest of the hall’s seat were taken. When the Proms is as packed as this it is a really special atmosphere, particularly standing in the arena…….

There were clearly some interesting thematic connections between the three pieces in the programme – two of them from the Jazz age and using jazzy rhythms and sounds; all of them with propulsive thematic material, very exciting to listen to, with large percussion sections inventively used, and generally big orcheatras

The Bellido piece was not quite what I was expecting – darker, more inventive and quite varied, with different motor rhythms pushing things forward. I though it slightly outstayed its welcome – it might have been cut by 5 minutes and been a tighter piece. However, it never lost my attention and was thoroughly worthwhile to listen to.

As I have said before on this site, I can’t always tell when a pianist is technically excellent or beyond excellent in the way they manage their fingers…… What I can tell is when a pianist is making every note count, is able to offer a very broad dynamic range, is able to phrase sensitively and make every line of the music ‘sing’. Beyond the hype and the flashy short dresses, whenever I hear Yuja Wang, she makes me listen to a work as though for the first time. This performance was quite wonderful – every bar line offering something new; the way she phrased the ‘big tune’ of variation ?18 was memorable, and the sparkle and delicacy of some of the slighter variations equally so. Klaus Makela and the BBCSO offered sharply defined accompaniment, rhythmically taut and revealing some orchestral lines I can’t remember so clearly before. Yuja Wang gave two encores – a piece by Rachmaninov (a kind of jokey polka), and Art Tatum’s version of ‘Tea for Two’ – the latter very drolly played. The audience went mad……but for once rightly so.

The Walton was also very well done indeed – it must be the best I’ve heard apart from the memorable performance by Andre Previn and the LSO in the 70’s. It was certainly better than the rather soggily sung, over-fast Halle version in Sheffield 14 months or so ago. The BBC Symphony Chorus sounded impressively strident (in a good sense) and very together. Klaus Makela led a performance that probably was only slightly slower than the dismal Sheffield experience but which was much better played by the orchestra, better articulated, better balanced, and more moving in the opening 10 minutes or so. It was interesting to see his conducting style in the Walton – he pays a lot of attention to what is happening in the orchestra and controls it closely – it was noticeable how often he signalled to the orchestra to emphasise a syncopation. The Albert Hall acoustics, as has often been said, are ideal for this sort of work and the Arena the best place to hear it from – the brass bands blazed, the percussion hammered but all was able to be encompassed and balanced. The dynamics were very well managed too – so the chorus really made an overwhelming impression in its final few minutes, with the driving rhythms underneath them. Perhaps Thomas Hampson is getting a bit old to perform such a work in this big a space – his voice had really quite a wobble at first. But he was excellent in his declamatory passages, with a highly effective projection of the words.

All in all, this must be a good candidate for one of my top ten concert candidates of the year. And on to more Rachmaninov and Walton on Sunday

City of Sheffield Youth Orchestra: Mahler Symphony no 5 in C minor

Partly because of my volunteer role as a Welcomer at Sheffield Cathedral, partly because I am a trustee of an organisation connected to CSYO, and partly because it’s not a work I would associate necessarily with the skills and experience of a youth orchestra, I wanted to hear this. I therefore arrived for my duty not really knowing what to expect. I met several people beforehand who told me how fine the orchestra’s performance had been last Saturday at the Stoller Hall in Manchester.

The orchestra was maybe 65 or so strong – less than the 100 there would be in a professional orchestra playing this work but still a very impressive number of talented young people. Though there were some tutors dotted around, and some college-level performers who were back in Sheffield for the summer holidays, at least 75%, I was told, of the performers were school-age students. There was a fair degree of diversity in the group too, in terms of heritage, and probably the orchestra has the same sort of profile as the organisation I am a trustee for, extending over many more Sheffield and South Yokshire postcodes than just those associated with the posher areas of West Sheffield

I thought the band gave a really very, very fine performance of Mahler 5. The acoustics of the cathedral – like most of its ilk – are very echoey, but perhaps luckily in my role as a volunteer event steward I  was asked to be stationed to the side of the orchestra,, so in many ways had quite a clear sense of the orchestral sound. Thinking of previous experiences of school based orchestras I wondered how this band would cope – in terms of staying together, the actual execution of the notes, and the balance. Obviously from the side I couldn’t really tell what was happening with balance – there were for instance 6 horns (less than the usual professional orchestra 8/9) and at least 3, maybe 4, trumpets and trombones, capable of overpowering a relatively small string ensemble. But the execution of the notes was phenomenal….! The solo trumpet beginning of the work strikes fear, I’m told, in the hearts of all professional orchestral trumpet players – it’s solo, exposed, high notes and at the beginning  of the work. I’ve heard it fluffed on a number of high profile occasions. The young woman playing it here did so fearlessly and totally accurately and powerfully. The Mahler is an extraordinarily densely scored work but everyone seemed absolutely on the ball, even in the inner parts, giving it their all. …..and they were doing so together! Not once did I hear any major mishaps with sections getting out of synch with one another. I was particularly impressed by the stylishness of the string playing and the general fearlessness of the brass!

This was both a heartening and also really enjoyable evening

Herrmann, Vertigo – Suite; Korngold, Violin Concerto; Prokofiev, Symphony No. 3 in C minor. Vadim Gluzman violin; BBC Symphony Orchestra, Gustavo Gimeno conductor

The insertion of the Korngold concerto was a fairly late one – it was originally meant to be Mason Bates’ piano concerto, with Danil Trifonov playing the solo part – he however couldn’t apparently get a visa in time…..I was in fact quite happy with the change as it fitted in well with the Hermann score, and the Korngold is a work I’ve never heard live, and wanted to. I had heard the Prokofiev once before, in Munich, with the Opera orchestra conducted by Vladimir Jurowski, in 2015, in an exciting performance, and I wanted to hear the work again. Gustavo Gimeno is a new name on me, though I see he’s currently chief conductor of the Toronto Symphony Orchestra. Interestingly – given its close connection with the thematic material of the Prokofiev piece – he conducted Madrid’s production of The Fiery Angel last year……. I see he is also about to take up the chief conductor role at the Madrid Opera – so clearly a rising star…..

It was lovely to be back at a Prom albeit one with less than full attendance, which you’d expect given that this was a far from mainstream programme – still the Stalls, Arena and Choir were pretty full.

This programme in its final form was very interesting- all three pieces had their origins in stories which the music was originally intended to accompany – the Vertigo Hitchcock film is the obvious basis of the Hermann piece and its swirling obsessive motif at the beginning very much mirrors the plot of the film. The Korngold work takes themes from 4-5 different films he wrote music for, including the ‘Prince and the Pauper’ in the finale of the concerto. The Prokofiev work uses music from the ‘Fiery Angel’ opera (I would love to see that). The question then for me is – how successful are these three pieces of music  as stand-alone pieces – can they survive and on what basis?

I suggest there are three elements to a successful transition: 1. Strong melodic content; 2. Colourful interesting orchestration; 3. Some sense of structure and progression in the work as ‘absolute music’. For me only the Prokofiev ticked all 3 boxes. The Korngold piece (‘more corn than gold’ as a New York critic had it unfairly after its New York premiere), dedicated to Alma Mahler, is a last bastion of lush late Romanticism and has glittering orchestration ( I was sitting in the choir behind the percussion section so was fully immersed in some of the glorious sounds). Likewise, no-one who composed ‘Marietta’s Lied’ is going to fail on no 1, and there are some gorgeous tunes. But it’s very difficult to understand where the work is going – the tunes are announced, fiddled with (literally) and reprised: that’s it. It’s very different from Korngold’s tight, severe post-war symphony. The Hermann piece only passes on criterion 2 – it doesn’t really work without reference to the original movie plot. The Prokofiev is a very different beast (it’s interesting to note that Prokofiev was actually 6 years older than Korngold – in idiom the 4th symphony sounds like the work of a younger man – and there is a very clear distinction between different themes in the opening movement, and the alternation of machine-like frenzy, nostalgia and fear is carried through, with different emphases, in the next three movements, concluding on the opening frenzy. I found it utterly compelling to listen to as a journey, both the driving motor rhythms, the passion of some of the string-based music and the darkness of some of the instrumental solos. I must listen to the R3 recording.

The BBCSO sounded impressive throughout – of course not always easy to tell from row 1 of the Choir seats but certainly the Prokofiev was tightly played, there were some excellent wind solos – particularly by horn and oboe – and the percussion were having a whale of a time throughout! Mr Gimeno was very stylish in his beating of time and gestures and one sensed the orchestra were enjoying working with him. Vadim Guzman (Israeli but Ukrainian in origin) sounded good, though again it’s difficult to tell when he’s playing with his back to you, and played a melancholy encore by the Ukrainian Valentin Silvestrov.

Liberata Collective; Ensemble Hesperi. Cast:  Christian Joel, Orlando; Joanna Harries, Medoro; Olivia Doutney, Angelica; Susanna MacRae, Dorinda; Jolyon Loy, Zoroastro; Musical Director, Adrian Butterfield

The Liberata Collective apparently wants to recreate the experience of Baroque opera for modern audiences: using period instruments, providing printed libretti, and most crucially, performing according to the art of Baroque Gesture (rarely seen on stages since that period). The complex plot of Orlando is interpreted in this performance through a series of expressive movements, in a style that Handel’s own singers would have performed in. I came along to this not really knowing what to expect, and was surprised at how easy and flexible it all seemed. Baroque movement like classical ballet is based on a series of movement signs that have meaning – some obvious, some less so. Some of the gestures between individuals clearly persisted after the era to become the norms of melodramatic acting – for instance the actor who puts two hands palms outwards, one near the body, one stretched out is clearly giving a sign of aversion to another actor on stage, still in use in silent movies. How singers stand is also important- they should be standing with their “weight on one leg , with the other relaxed, giving a natural tilt across the torso and shoulders. Arms should be at different heights to create a pleasing symmetry in the silhouette….It would not be typical for singers to stand with their weight equally balanced and entirely head on.“ (quote from programme booklet). The use of the hands is important – right hand for good things, left hand for bad. Position on stage is determined by social status, based on court etiquette. And so forth…. fascinating, and very convincing. The evening was worth it alone for insights of this kind.

One of the three Handel operas based on Ariosto’s epic poem Orlando Furioso, Orlando opened at the King’s Theatre in London on 27 January 1722 and ran for only 10 performances. The first production since Handel’s lifetime was given at Halle, Handel’s birthplace, in 1922. For the Buxton production, the young singers of Liberata Collective were working with the musicians of Ensemble Hesperi, playing on period instruments, with Adrian Butterfield directing from the violin. I think most of the recitatives had been removed and some da capo arias shortened so that the evening came in at just over 2 hours. The plot concerns Orlando (Roland), a chief soldier in Charlemagne’s army, who falls desperately in love with the pagan princess Angelica, who is in turn in love with another man, Medoro. Orlando cannot accept this and he is driven to madness, prevented from causing absolute carnage only by the magician Zoroastro (who eventually restores his sanity). While there are no stand-out hit numbers, and the plot more than usually preposterous, this was a very enjoyable evening, with some good singing, and several very good arias – eg the aria:Verdi piante. As so often with Handel even if there are no truly memorable ear-wormy songs there is a lot of good music that makes you want to keep listening and not drop off to sleep (which can happen in some of the slower da capo numbers if they don’t strike any interest). I remained entirely alert all evening!

The set was basic – dark curtains and flooring and two colourful ?cherry trees in full blossom. To me the stand out singer was Olivia Doutney,, who had a beautiful voice that could easily fill a larger theatre and was able to produce exquisitely soft singing and carefully attentive phrasing; she was also a very good actor.  I was also impressed by Joanna Harries’ contralto voice, and she was particularly good at the Baroque movement – exactly the image if a courtier. Susanna MacRae as Dorinda has a lot to sing in a sort of soubrette role and she sung it very well (plus she did the Baroque gestures very well and has a very expressive face)– whether her voice would carry in a larger theatre I am not sure. Christian Joel had a hard acting job in having to both keep to Baroque movement styles and act mad, and I thought he did that very well. Again he had a rather soft voice but as I was sitting in the second row that wasn’t a problem – he also had some of the toughest singing to do, in the role originally sung by the superstar castrato Senesino.  Jolyon Loy did all that was required of him as Zoroastro. The 7 or so musicians stuffed in at the side of the stage were great!!

Paul Lewis (piano): Schubert – Piano Sonata No. 7 in E flat major, D568; Piano Sonata No. 14 in A minor, D784; Piano Sonata No. 17 in D major, D850; Piano Sonata No. 15 in C major, D840; Piano Sonata No. 13 in A major, D664; Piano Sonata No. 16 in A minor, D845

These were two recitals I had very much been looking forward to. I still remember the day, on a cold winter’s morning in January 1975, at a convent in Hertfordshire (we won’t go there……) when some puzzled nuns handed me a large parcel which turned out to be a complete DG LP boxed set of Schubert piano sonatas by Wilhelm Kempff. I still have it, alongside Mitsuko Uchida’s collection of sonatas in MP4 format. I have listened to them all but the ones that have always stayed in the memory have been D664, D784, D894, and then D958. 959, and D960, all with a gentle melancholy.  I know very little about piano playing but there are a few pianists who can make music like this sing and create poetry from it. Among the pianists I have heard who to me have this gift are Radu Lupu, Alfred Brendel, Mitsuko Uchida and Paul Lewis.

Paul Lewis is apparently playing the Schubert sonatas not covered in these two concerts next year and, on the evidence of the 2023 offerings, they will be unmissable! Hearing Mitsuko Uchida’s recordings, she casts a dreamy melancholy veil over this music. Paul Lewis is in a way more Beethovenian, with a lot of dynamic contrasts, strong muscular playing and a clarity at the same time very much like his mentor Alfred Brendel. Perhaps the acoustics of St John’s Church sometimes meant the percussive element to some of Lewis’ plating was a bit over-emphasised, but I think what he wanted to show in these two concerts is that, while there is certainly the melancholy, Winterreise-type element to some of these sonatas, there is also tension and anger and energy of indeed a Beethovenian kind. Beyond the familiar D664 and 784 I was most struck by D845, a towering 40-minute piece that I really wasn’t familiar with and which I very much enjoyed. Again, listening to the Uchida version afterwards, Lewis’ performance was a good deal more clangourous in the first and third movements, but his is certainly a valid approach that worked for me. The only sonata I didn’t really warm to was D568, which seemed a bit conventional and ordinary.

Paul Lewis is someone who when performing seems very much in his own world, and often seems removed from the audience he is playing for – it was nice therefore that he gave an encore at the end of the second concert – revealingly of a Beethoven Bagatelle. Beethovens presence seemed very real at these two concerts

Coleridge-Taylor Piano Trio in E minor; R Clarke Lullaby and Grotesque for viola and cello; Elgar Piano Quintet in A minor, Op. 84

Kaleidoscope, I assume, is something a bit like Ensemble 360 in Sheffield, a group of musicians that can offer concerts with differing numbers and groups of instruments – here ranging from 2 – 5. The venue, St John’s Church, was not packed but comfortably full.

It was great to hear some of Coleridge-Taylor’s music. He had a terribly difficult early life and his tenaciousness to succeed must have been extraordinary. There have undoubtedly been some individual artists given less than their due and ignored because of their background, ethnicity, gender, status and so forth. and these need to be heard and re-assessed. I’m not sure Coleridge-Taylor in the end was one of them – if you look up the Proms Archive and check on performances of Scenes from ‘The Song of Hiawatha’, Op 30 you will find it regularly performed at the Proms from 1899 to 1959. Indeed I remember being rehearsed by our primary school music teacher in Hackney for months as a class to sing ‘By the shores of Gitchee Gumee’ in the late 50’s / early 60’s. I think it might have been a school musical…….Elgar thought highly of Coleridge Taylor and recommended him to The Three Choirs Festival when he was unable to undertake an offered commission. The real problem is that 1. Coleridge-Tay;or died young, and so there is a lot of unwritten music that might have raised his reputation significantly, and 2. that, as the Piano Trio in this programme shows, his music is not always very distinguished – in this case sub-Brahmsian in a pleasant sort of way, clever, well-constructed but pretty unmemorable. But it should certainly be heard and seen as being at least on a par with the Stanfords and Parrys of this world, particularly the big orchestral works like the Symphony and the violin concerto (I listened to the latter from the recent Proms telecast and much enjoyed it – and as a ‘late work’ it is much less obviously Brahms-influenced and you hear something of what Coleridge-Taylor’s own voice was like – how might things have been had he lived till his 70’s – into the 1950’s? What might have happened if he’d met Florence Price? if he’d met Gershwin?). Why his works eventually, from the early 60’s, fell out of favour as other contemporaries have done (cf Edward German) isn’t clear, but I am not sure that racial discrimination was any part of it – he was an Edwardian, I guess, and seen as a long way away from the music of the 60’s.   (I am happy to be corrected if anyone thinks differently). Anyway, the Trio was well-played by the musicians

I’ve come across Rebecca Clarke (1886-1979) recently and this was a slightly spiky interesting set of pieces – slight but enjoyable (but again not something that is anything other than an occasional period piece)

The contrast between these two pieces and the Elgar is remarkable. Although I know the Elgar work from recordings (and I think I might have been organising performances of it in Egypt in 1984 with The Music Group of London, led by Hugh Bean) I haven’t heard it live for 40 years, and haven’t listened to it in a focused way for a very long time. By comparison with the other two works it is a towering masterpiece. Every bar counts and it has none of the ‘Palm Court’ overtones that to my mind the Violin Sonata sometimes has. It is tragic, joyful, unbearably moving in the slow movement and finally full of a kind of optimism which is resigned to disillusion. It is of course as every commentator mentions close in time to the composition of the Cello Concerto and to my mind equally as great a piece. The Kaleidoscope musicians played it wonderfully. There’s unease and disjuncture at the start of the first movement, followed by autumnal weariness – then a Brahmsian striding theme which is melodically strong enough not to sound too derivative, and which is then followed by a properly Elgarian melody, encompassing both yearning and jauntiness, swirling forward like some pre-War ballroom dance. The development section is passionate and troubled at the same time, and the melancholy gradually dissipates the energy – there’s an extraordinary collapse into a nothingness at the end of the first movement. The second movement has one of Elgar’s most profound melodies – absolutely gorgeous – which at first expresses a kind of resigned melancholy, very similar to the ‘cello concerto, and then moves to a series of passionate climaxes, with moments of Mahlerian negation in between. The Kaleidoscope people played it with more power and energy than the  MP3 recording I’ve got by the Maggini Quartet and Peter Donohue. The third movement begins with quite an upbeat striding melody – again, very Elgarian – that gets transformed energetically at first and then subsides into the lassitude and despair of the first movement’s opening and closing. The passionate pre-war dance becomes ghostly and disembodied. Eventually the striding melody returns but somehow subdued at first – it later gathers strength, and there is a tumultuous ending. I listened to it again at home and was just as impressed. How have I missed this work’s qualities?

Beethoven String Quartet No. 16 in F, Op. 135; Britten String Quartet No. 3, Op. 94; Schubert String Quartet No. 14 in D minor, D810, ‘Death and the Maiden’

This was an interesting programme of ‘late’ (not so much the case with Schubert) string quartets. Though I have heard the Beethoven on a number of occasions over the last few years, I have never heard the Britten or Schubert live before (though I do seem to remember a Robert North ballet using the music which I saw maybe ?10 years ago somewhere

The Sacconi Quartet seemed to me to get off to a rather tentative start in the Beethoven – the first movement of Op135 sounded as though they hadn’t quite got the dynamics right and they sounded sometimes too quiet and slightly fuzzy. Things had improved by the slow movement, which was very moving, and they were more assertive than other quartets I’ve heard performing this live in the ‘question and answer’ section at the beginning of the last movement. They conveyed well the sense of humanity that comes over particularly in the last movement.

Their performance of the Britten quartet (not helped by lots of coughing and spluttering from the audience at the beginning) was riveting and I was vey glad to hear this work live for the first time. (I do think there is a direct correlation between audience boredom and coughing – the last movement was received in total silence – appropriately, as it is very moving

The Schubert performance I enjoyed, particularly the slow movement, but I did wonder whether the last movement was just a bit too long………

Lucy Crowe (soprano), Joseph Middleton (piano). Songs by: G Gershwin Summertime; A Copland Nature, the gentlest mother (from 12 Poems of Emily Dickinson); S Barber Sure on this shining night, Op. 13/3; W Walton Through gilded trellises; J Ireland The trellis; I Gurney The fields are full; B Britten Seascape (from On This Island); G Fauré Nell, Op. 18/1; La fée aux chansons, Op. 27/2; H Berlioz Villanelle (from Nuits d’Éte); H Duparc Chanson triste; C Debussy La romance d’Ariel; J Brahms Sommerabend; Mondenschein, Op. 85/2; Feldeinsamkeit, Op. 86/2; R Strauss Die Drossel; September (from Four Last Songs)

This was the first of 6 Buxton Festival events I am going to,  a lovely recital by one of my favourite UK singers. It was one of 4 seasonally focused song recitals, this one dealing with summer and ending with September. Throughout, Ms Crowe’s singing was a huge delight – she has the capacity to soar without sounding under pressure, can float quiet soft notes beautifully, and altogether I like her ‘white’ almost vibrato less voice. She is also a very good communicator in a recital context. I loved her languishing Gershwin Summertime, with barely audible sighs, remarkably sensitive and idiomatic. Other songs I particularly enjoyed were 

• Ireland’s The Trellis, the singing of which was dedicated to her singing teacher at RAM who was in the audience
•  Berlioz’s Villanelle (from Nuits d’Éte) ;
• Duparc’s Chanson
• Brahms’ Sommerabend;

The final scheduled song was R Strauss’ September (from Four Last Songs), which was very moving though without the subtlety of a Schwarzkopf or Janowitz (or indeed Lise Davidsen’s recording with the Philharmonia of 2019). A beautiful rendition of Britten’s setting of ‘The last rose of summer’ completed the programme as an encore. The hour went by in a flash!