The Contenance Angloise - BREMF Consort of Voices sings 15th century polyphony

BREMF Consort of Voices, directed by Deborah Roberts, will be performing a programme of 15th century music at St Paul's Church, West St, Brighton on Saturday 4th May at 3pm.

There will be music by John Dunstable, Walter Frye and Guillaume Dufay. There will be more Frye and Dufay in the Brighton Early Music Festival this year, in October, so this one hour concert will be the perfect taster!

Tickets are £15 (£7.50 concessions), but £5 Prom/restricted view tickets will be available on the day. Details here.

You can also listen to recordings of most of the music in a specially created Spotify playlist here. 

Classical Music at the Brighton Festival 2024

Antonio Pappano

Brighton Festival is soon upon us, and as ever, there is a great line-up of classical music on offer. Opening the Festival, new Chief Conductor, Sir Antonio Pappano brings the London Symphony Orchestra to the Dome Concert Hall to play Rachmaninov’s Symphony No. 2. They open with Barber’s Adagio for Strings, and are joined by pianist Bertrand Chamayou for Ravel’s Piano Concerto in G major (Saturday 4 May, 7pm).

 

Harpsichordist Mahan Esfahani is joined by Britten Sinfonia soloists for a concert of Bach at Glyndebourne, performing two Keyboard Concertos, and the Brandenburg Concertos Nos 2 & 5 (Sunday 3 May, 3pm). Slipping through the net of the printed brochure, a late addition to the Festival is the wonderful Baroque ensemble, Solomon’s Knot, performing Scarlatti, Bach and Handel’s Dixit Dominus (Thursday 9 May, 8pm, Corn Exchange).

 

12 Ensemble

12 Ensemble will perform Strauss’ Metamorphosen alongside an immersive holographic visual experience created by Ben Ditto. A new work by Edmund Finnis drawing on Byrd, and an instrumental aria by Oliver Leith from his opera about Kurt Cobain’s suicide will sit alongside Claude Vivier’s Zipangu (Thursday 16 May, 8pm, Corn Exchange). Then The Heath Quartet will be in the glorious Music Room at the Royal Pavilion to play Haydn, Korngold, Lyadov and Henriëtte Bosmans (Wednesday 22 May, 8pm).

 

Ed Hughes' new opera, States of Innocence, based on John Milton’s Paradise Lost, will be premiered at the Corn Exchange, with cast including Sir John Tomlinson. Texts are adapted from Milton by Peter Cant, and Ian Winters provides video projection design (Sunday 19 May, 6.30pm & 8.45pm). 

 

Danielle de Niese

Soprano Danielle de Niese, lead in this summer’s Glyndebourne production of The Merry Widow, comes to the Corn Exchange to share an evening of song by Debussy, Gershwin, Sondheim and James MacMillan (Monday 20 May, 7.30pm). And contralto Hilary Summers and pianist Andrew West take a humerous swipe at opera in What’s So Great About Opera? (Wednesday 8 May, 6pm, Studio Theatre). 

 

The Brighton Festival Youth Choir, conducted by Juliette Pochin, perform Cecilia McDowall’s cantata, The Girl from Aleppo (Saturday 11 May, 6pm, All Saints, Hove). For more on this piece, I reviewed the National Children’s Choir of Great Britain’s recording of it back in 2020 here. They are followed the same evening by the Brighton Festival Chorus, performing the UK premiere of Kim André Arnesen’s The Stranger, weaving together refugee poems and multi-faith texts emphasising our common humanity (Saturday 11 May, 8.30pm, All Saints). Meanwhile, Brighton and East Sussex Youth Orchestra bring us Rimsky-Korsakov’s Scheherazade, with storyteller Alia Alzougbi retelling some of the tales of the 1001 nights. Former BESYO trumpeter, Alan Thomas returns to join the orchestra to perform Artunian’s Trumpet Concerto (Monday 13 May, 7.30pm).

 

Apollo's Cabinet

Lunchtime concerts return to the Dome complex. In the newly refurbished Studio Theatre, Pianist Hao Zi Yoh plays Haydn, Ravel, Rachmaninov & Albéniz, as well as a piece by Malaysian pianist composer, Chong Lim Ng (Tuesday 7 May, 1pm), then counter-tenor Hugh Cutting and mezzo-soprano Rebecca Leggett, with George Ireland on piano, perform words and music by Butterworth, Belloc, Vaughan Williams and Virginia Woolf (Wednesday 8 May, 1pm). BREMF Live! artists, Apollo’s Cabinet explore the travels of Charles Burney, with music by Telemann & Schmelzer (Thursday 9 May, 1pm), then the Elmore Quartet play Webern and Brahms (Friday 10 May, 1pm). There are two more pianists – first Lithuanian Ignas Maknickas plays Schumann, Bortkiewicz, Chopin and Charles Vine (Wednesday 15 May, 1pm), then over to the Corn Exchange for Japanese pianist, Shunta Morimoto, playing Schubert, Bach, Chopin and Schumann (Friday 22 May, 1pm). In between, the Fibonacci Quartet play Mozart & Mendelssohn (Friday 17 May, 1pm) and the ever-popular Glyndebourne Jerwood Young Artists perform a range of favourites – this year, two sopranos and two tenors (Monday 20 May, 1pm). 

 

Details of all concerts, venues and tickets here.

A strong sea-inspired finish to Brighton Philharmonic Orchestra's 99th Season

Adam Hickox & the Brighton Philharmonic Orchestra
© Nick Boston

Adam Hickox (conductor)

Ragnhild Hemsing (Hardanger fiddle)

Joanna MacGregor (piano/conductor)

 

Brighton Philharmonic Orchestra

Nicky Sweeney (leader)

 

2.45pm, Sunday 7 April 2024

Brighton Dome

★★★★

 

Benjamin Britten (1913-1976): Four Sea Interludes from ‘Peter Grimes’

 

Geiir Tveitt (1908-1981): Violin Concerto No. 2, Op. 252 for Hardanger fiddle, ‘Three Fjords’

 

Ryuichi Sakamoto (1952-2023): Still Life

                                                    Bibo non Aozora

                                                    Happy End

 

Claude Debussy (1862-1918): La Mer

 

Ragnhild Hemsing, Adam Hickox & the BPO
© Nick Boston

I’ve been fortunate to catch many of the Brighton Philharmonic Orchestra’s concerts over recent seasons, and it has been a pleasure to see them go from strength to strength, with imaginative and innovative programming, and some great performances along the way. The final concert of their 99^th season was no exception, and certainly sets them up well for an exciting centenary season to come.

 

Conductor Adam Hickox was at the helm, and his assured confidence and clear direction was key to bringing out the best from the BPO players. Their opening of the Four Sea Interludes from Britten’s opera, Peter Grimes, was full of atmosphere and evocative colour. From its pianissimo opening, Dawn had darkly ominous brass layered with the strange angular violins, and aside from one imprecise pickup, entries were secure. The horns’ bells rang out clear for Sunday Morning, with spiky seagull cries from the woodwind, against a slightly seasick dance from the violas and cellos. As the movement built, there were a couple of moments where the flutes’ birds didn’t quite knit fully into the overall orchestral texture, but Britten’s cumulative queasy effect was nevertheless achieved. Moonlight brings more unsettled atmosphere, and here the BPO’s dynamic range could have been more expansive in places, and there wasn’t total unanimity in note lengths from the strings, revealed by Britten’s use of silence and stop/start phrases. However, Storm had immediate drive and pace, with Hickox eliciting greater range in the brass surges, as well as controlling a tight transition into the briefly calmer central section. 

 

Next came a Violin Concerto, but with a difference. Ragnhild Hemsing performed Norwegian composer Geirr Tveitt’s Violin Concerto No. 2 for Hardanger fiddle, Three Fjords. The Hardanger fiddle is a fascinating hybrid instrument, with four strings bowed as on a normal violin, but also with a second set of strings running under the fingerboard that resonate sympathetically, providing a drone-like quality to the sound produced. It goes back to the 17^th century, and is thought of as Norway’s national instrument. Tveitt, whose family came from Hardangerford, was a prolific composer, and today’s concerto was his second for the instrument. As well as the fiddle, folk melodies from the Hardanger region and the traditional Norwegian modal scales were central to much of his music. The three movements of the second Concerto all contain elements of dance rhythms as well as folk-like, pentatonic melodies and harmonies, somewhat dictated by the fixed tuning of those resonating understrings. Hemsing’s fiddle was miked – a necessity in a large venue when the quieter instrument is put against a full orchestra if the resonances were to be heard. The consequent sound in the concert hall was richly resonant, and there was often a sense of Hemsing leading the orchestral violins in particular into the dance, joined in Hardangerfjord by a bright snare drum. Sognefjord had darker moments, with the fiddle opening alone, followed by mournful brass and strings. Nordfjord provided a sparky finish, with jerkier rhythms and wild virtuosity from Hemsing, with swirling and sliding building to an exciting finish. We then got to briefly hear the fiddle on its own, with Hemsing treating us to an encore of two traditional tunes, a ‘listening tune’, with strongly resonating drones and swirling bird-like figures, followed by a ‘dancing tune’, with orchestra and audience alike stomping along to the lively rhythms. 

 

Joanna MacGregor & the BPO
© Nick Boston

Music Director Joanna MacGregor took to the stage to open the second half of the concert, performing three short pieces from Japanese composer and pianist, Ryuichi Sakamoto’s 2013 album, Playing the Orchestra. Sakamoto, who sadly died just a year ago, composed, performed, produced, and worked with many musicians and artists, including Laurie Anderson and Youssou N’Dor, as well as acting and writing film scores, such as The Last Emperor and The Sheltering Sky. MacGregor performed and conducted from the piano in these atmospheric miniatures. First, Still Life, with MacGregor conducting the muted divided violins, shifting independently within the texture, joined by soft woodwind chords. MacGregor then sat at the piano, her playing initially inaudible but then emerging from the texture into the limelight. Bibo no Aozora (Beauty of a Blue Sky) had greater rhythmic interest, with the piano opening alone, joined by pulsing violins. The jazzy harmonies build into lush, romantic expression, subsiding to leave the piano alone once more. Finally, Happy Endcontrasted repeated woodwind notes with a singing, falling cello line, then a walking bass line from the bassoons. MacGregor’s confident octaves on the piano built to a dramatic conclusion and sudden surprise end. An enjoyable start to the second half – although not quite fitting into the overall ‘Sea songs’ theme, perhaps.

 

Hickox returned to the podium to conduct Debussy’s magnificent impressionist masterpiece, La Mer. In his brief discussion with MacGregor whilst the stage was rearranged, he referred to it as the greatest piece for orchestra, and talked of how Debussy used the strings in particular for rhythmic interest or orchestral colour, rather than simply for melodic lines. And indeed the muted violins shimmered in the opening movement, De l’aube à midi sur la mer (From dawn to noon on the sea), and the multiply divided strings produced complex textures, against which the woodwind and brass provided the ebb and flow of the waves. In Jeux de vagues (Play of the waves), Hickox brought out the sensuous playfulness, and leader Nicky Sweeney delivered a suitably skittish solo. With ringing high harps and moments of swaying waltz (Hickox swinging to the rhythms), this had a real sense of the spray, before disappearing away to a wisp at the end. Dialogue du vent et de la mer (Dialogue of the wind and the sea) opened with ominous low strings, and the woodwind began a little tentatively here, but once the strident trumpet broke through, they rose to the challenge with the melodic line’s increasing rising intervals building relentlessly. And when the final tutti came, there was real power and a sense of stormy turmoil, with the insistent timpani driving to a spectacular conclusion. 

 

All in all, this was a suitably impressive finish to the BPO’s season, and I look forward to hearing where they go next for their 100^th season. 

Stylish performances of Clive Osgood’s Three Shakespeare Songs from the Sofia Vokalensemble and Bengt Ollén

In 2008 the Esterházy Chamber Choir in Lewes commissioned a set of Three Shakespeare Songs from composer Clive Osgood (b.1977). They’ve now been recorded by the Swedish choir, Sofia Vokalensemble, based in Stockholm, and conducted by Bengt Ollén. It’s a short set, coming it at around twelve and a half minutes for the three songs, but they are given a bright and secure reading here, with beautifully blended singing throughout. The texts all come from Shakespeare’s ‘As You Like It’, and have all been set by many composers, from contemporaries of Shakespeare right through to the modern day. ‘Blow, blow, thou winter wind’, with its penetrating clusters and semitone clashes, is a striking opener, and the bell-like sopranos atop a rich, resonant recording are very effective. However, Osgood doesn’t just rely on the cluster harmonies here, with contrasting rhythmic movement for the ‘Heigh ho! sing’ chorus. ‘Under the greenwood tree’ has more straightforwardly warm choral harmonies, and a bright soprano solo rises out of the second verse. Here, the thicker choral textures could be brought down in the balance a little to allow the solo to fully shine through, but there is warmth of tone from all here. The set concludes with ‘It was a lover and his lass’, in a swingy, playful setting from Osgood, with hints of barber-shop. Here, the light, clear sopranos would benefit from a little more confident weight in places, but Ollén shapes the varied textures well. Osgood has certainly employed contrasting styles in the three songs here, with ‘Blow, blow, thou winter wind’ being the most convincingly successful. The set certainly offers a choir the opportunity to demonstrate range, and the Sofia Vokalensemble definitely achieve this. I reviewed an enjoyable album of Clive Osgood’s Sacred Choral Music back in 2019 (here), but there is a greater variety of compositional style on display in this short set here. As it did for the Esterházy Chamber Choir, this set would sit well within any programme of Shakespeare settings, of which there are of course many to choose from.

Osgood, C. 2024. Three Shakespeare Songs. Sofia Vokalensemble, Bengt Ollén. Digital Download. Convivial Records CR092.

20th-century English quintets at Cadogan Hall: sensitivity and orchestral scale

Mark Bebbington & RPO Principals
© Jenny Robinson

Mark Bebbington (piano)
Principals of the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra
Tamás András (violin)
Andrew Storey (violin)
Abigail Fenna (viola)
Jonathan Ayling (cello)
Benjamin Cunningham (double bass)

3.30pm, Sunday 24 March 2024
Cadogan Hall, London

★★★★
 
John Ireland (1879-1962): Phantasie Trio in A minor
 
Ralph Vaughan Williams (1872-1958): Piano Quintet in C minor
 
Edward Elgar (1857-1934): Quintet in Q minor for Piano and String Quartet, Op. 84

Ireland: 

'Jonathan Ayling’s opening lyrical cello melody was supported by gentle rippling from Bebbington, and violinist Tamás András responded with quiet delicacy'.

Vaughan Williams:

'The strings delivered warmth, with Bebbington soft-toned and sensitive throughout'.

'The free variations of the expansive finale gave all opportunities for fuller expression, and the string response to an emphatic statement from Bebbington midway was orchestral in magnitude'.

Elgar:

'The players followed András’ lead, with great swagger and bounce'.

'... with full-blooded passion from today’s players throughout'.

Read my full review on Bachtrack here. 

The Atchison Quartet give affectionate performances of String Quartets by Cecil Armstrong Gibbs

Cecil Armstrong Gibbs (1889-1960) was a prolific composer, particularly of choral music and songs, and was important for the amateur choral and festival scene in Britain in the twentieth century. However, his output included a fair amount of chamber music, albeit a significant number of unpublished works. So of his twelve or so string quartets, a good half of them remained unpublished and mostly unperformed in his lifetime. He studied at the Royal College of Music with Vaughan Williams and Charles Wood, and Adrian Boult, who was responsible for encouraging him away from teaching and into music study. He later joined the staff at the RCM, as well as founding the Danbury Choral Society, which he conducted until just before his death. His compositional style, whilst not as overtly influenced by the English early twentieth century folksong revival that influenced many of his contemporaries, it nevertheless was distinctly melodic and definitely tonal, which, when combined with his own reticence to publish many of his works, meant that whilst popular in his lifetime, much of his music has been somewhat neglected since. 

 

The Atchison Quartet is a project based quartet led by Robert Atchison (also of the London Piano Trio), joined by Ian Belton (the Brodsky Quartet), Elisa Bergesen (viola, the Bergesen Quartet) and Sophie Harris (cello, the Smith Quartet), and they have recorded three of the String Quartets, along with Three Pieces for String Quartet and A Birthday Greeting for Ralph Vaughan Williams. 

 

They open with the latest of the three quartets recorded here, the String Quartet in C, op. 95, written in 1940. Gibbs and his wife had recently moved to Windemere from their home in Danbury, Essex, and the opening movement has a spacious, sunny feel, although unsettling moments do edge in, before it feels like a train rushed through the conclusion. The middle movement has a gentle lilt, with a faster, more urgent middle section, before gently dancing pizzicato opens the final movement. As the instruments take up their bows, the music rocks and the cello sings a pastoral, pentatonic melody, with a slightly more chromatic response from the other instruments. The pizzicato returns, and all almost dies away, before a briefly emphatic finish. 

 

They jump back to 1917 for the String Quartet in A minor, Op. 8, one of the few that was performed in Gibbs’ lifetime. It was composed before his studies at the RCM, but it resides in much the same soundworld as the Op. 95 from some 23 years later. The opening movement has a lilting dance feel, although energy builds to something more complex, and a harshly insistent climax, before winding down to a gentle finish from the viola. Lilt is the mood once again the middle movement, with another pentatonic melodic line circling up and down. The finale has a more mysterious opening, but then picks up on the previous movement’s four note idea, with more insistent repetition. Lines swirl around, with perhaps some loss of overall direction, followed by some slightly more angular fugal material which also meanders along towards an energetic coda and an emphatic upward scale from the first violin to conclude. 

 

Next come Three Pieces for String Quartet, three musical impressions of places in the Lake District. Here, his impressionistic and pastoral style comes into its own, with flashes of sunlit chords breaking through the lyricism in Above Blea Tarn, and a flowing folk song gambolling along in Winster Valley, with undulating remnants of rain being driven away by soothing duetting lines in Loweswater: Calm after Storm. 

 

The String Quartet in E minor from 1958 follows, written less than two years before his death. His wife died in January, and then his friend Vaughan Williams suddenly died in the August. So understandably there is more introspection here, and the opening movement, whilst full of rhythmic energy, is full of nagging repetition. The central movement has more poignant lyricism, building to brief anguish, before a clam finish. The finale is a Theme and Variations, with a theme definitely reminiscent of Vaughan Williams’ ‘old English’ tunes. There are hints of viol consort, as well as a homage to (and direct quote from) Warlock’s Capriol Suite, and the final variation is a kind of Bachian fugue. The theme returns at the end, but stalls at the last minute, ending the work with two doleful E minor chords. This is the most overtly emotional of the works here, with Gibbs’ feelings perhaps breaking through that comfortable pastoral style for a moment.

 

The disc ends appropriately with a short single movement, A Birthday Greeting for Ralph Vaughan Williams, written in 1942 for the composer’s 70^th birthday. With its Vaughan Williams-esque melody and walking accompanying parts, it shows the great respect Gibbs had for his teacher and friend. 

 

The Atchison Quartet give warmly respectful performances throughout here, responding to the lyricism in Gibbs’ melodic lines, whilst also taking advantage of the rarer moments of darker harmonies and greater rhythmic activity. It is the Quartet in E minor that sticks out for me in terms of musical interest and diversity of textures, but this collection nevertheless stands as a strong advocate for Gibbs’ neglected chamber works. The album is well supported by informative notes from Nicholas Riddle, and the recorded sound is warm and bright throughout. 

Gibbs, Cecil Armstrong. 2023. String Quartets. The Atchison Quartet. Compact Disc & Digital Download. Convivium Records CR083.

A triumphant Esther from Cummings at the London Handel Festival's Spring Awakenings

Esther at London Handel Festival
© Sisi Burn

Laurence Cummings (Director)

Nardus Williams (Esther)

Tim Mead (Ahasuerus)

Jess Dandy (Mordecai)

Florian Störtz (Hanan)

Rachel Redmond (Israelite Woman & Second Israelite)

Laurence Cummings (First Israelite)

John Bowen (Habdonah)

Edmund Hastings (An Officer)

London Handel Singers

London Handel Players

7pm, Thursday 14 March 2024

London Handel Festival

St George's, Hanover Square, London

★★★★

George Frideric Handel (1685-1759): Esther, HWV50 (1732 version)

The London Handel Festival
© Nick Boston

'Cummings set the tone, launching the overture at a sprightly pace, with a bright, joyful sound from the tight ensemble. As expected, there were some cracking speeds this evening, but there was also tenderness and grace, with deft string work, elegant woodwind and gleaming brass'. 

'Nardus Williams' Esther had powerful presence, delivering her opening virtuosic “Alleluia” from the pulpit with assertive brilliance'.

'Jess Dandy give us deeply fruity tones as Mordecai, as well as opening up expressively in her upper registers in “So much beauty, sweetly blooming”'.

'The London Handel Singers showed their skill throughout, expertly delivering the key dramatic mood shifts'. 

'Tim Mead’s Alleluias in the final chorus ... were breathtaking in their virtuosic display. Combined with glorious brass and triumphant choral singing, joined at the very end by all the soloists, they brought the evening to a stupendous finish'.

Read my full review on Bachtrack here.