I recently had the pleasure to experience a première of
an amazing work by Cheryl Frances-Hoad
performed by The Cardinall’s Musick in the BBC Proms (review here). On the back of this, I’ve
been listening to a CD of her vocal and choral works, called You Promised me Everything. The title comes from her work for soprano,
piano 4 hands and cello, You Promised me
Everything Last Night, which explores, in repeating this phrase over and
over, its many inflections and interpretations, charting perhaps rather
depressingly a trajectory from joyous ecstasy to ultimate bitter desperation
and sadness. The inflections are expertly characterised with a stunning
performance from soprano Natalie Raybould, over a largely simple and somewhat bleak accompaniment. The disc opens with Frances-Hoad’s response
to Schumann’s song cycle, ‘Frauenliebe
und Leben’ (Women’s Lives and Loves), which is, although a Romantic
masterpiece, perhaps stuck in a male 19th century perspective on
female emotions. So Frances-Hoad brings this up to date (while still drawing on
elements of harmony or figuration from Schumann’s songs) in a cycle of eight
songs, ‘One Life Stand’, setting
poems by the poet and crime-writer Sophie Hannah. As with Schumann’s cycle,
the songs cover a range of emotions, but additionally here there is humour, in
the dilemma of ‘should I, shouldn’t I phone him’ in ‘The Pros and Cons’, and especially in the mocking of male
attitudes to pregnancy and childbirth in ‘Ante-Natal’.
Yet Frances-Hoad also captures the depths of emotion, in the beautiful yet
anguished lyricism of ‘Tide to Land’,
with disturbing undertones in the harmony belying the vocal emphatic climax,
and in the moments of cold shock and loss captured by ‘In the Chill’. Throughout, Frances-Hoad uses the texts
imaginatively, whether vocally (for example the somewhat comedic yet barely
suppressed anger and bitterness expressed in ‘Rubbish at Adultery’), or in the piano writing (such as the
departing train in ‘Brief Encounter’).
A brave thing to try and ‘update’ Schumann – but this is a highly successful
cycle, and mezzo soprano Jennifer Johnston, who inspired the cycle, inhabits the spectrum of emotions here
with great expertise. The piano accompaniment is at times highly challenging,
yet Joseph Middleton performs this
with apparent ease. Johnston also
performs the other major work that ends this disc, this time accompanied by Alisdair Hogarth in a setting of the
Anglo-Saxon poem, ‘Beowulf’. Highly ambitious, this is almost a mini-opera
in itself, with barely a break for the singer in roughly half an hour of
dramatic narrative. Yet Frances-Hoad achieves surprising variety, with passages
of largely recitative over chordal underpinning from the piano contrasted with
racing rhythms to portray moments of action, and great word-painting for the
serpent and the dragon at the climax. The closing moments of wailing grief for
Beowulf’s funeral pyre are heartbreakingly bleak. A live performance would offer
greater communication between singer and listener, harder to achieve on CD, but
nonetheless this is an impressively individual piece of dramatic vocal writing.
‘Don’t’
was dedicated to soprano Jane Manning for her 70th
birthday, and wittily sets marriage advice from the 1913 book ‘Don’t’s for
Wives’, comically accompanied by the extremes of piccolo and bass clarinet.
Jane Manning performs here with great gusto and aplomb. There are three choral
pieces on the disc, all performed confidently by the Gonville & Caius College Choir, directed by Geoffrey Webber. They include a
seemingly straightforward yet moving setting of ‘There is No Rose’, which avoids the saccharine of so many other
modern Xmas settings – all the more impressive given that she composed it aged
14! Her Psalm 1 setting contrasts stability, underpinned by the organ, with
some wild, violent setting, with leaping intervals, and then ends with a
striking effect of the organ literally dying away, with the instruction to switch
of the blower, creating a bizarre effect of deflation. Her 21-part setting of
the Nunc Dimittis is highly
challenging, with a particularly high-wire part for 1st soprano,
including numerous top Ds, ably sung here by Rose Wilson-Haffenden.
Overall, this disc demonstrates an incredibly wide variety of styles and
moods, from humour to real depths of human emotion, and shows that Frances-Hoad
is a composer of broad-ranging talent.
Violinist Tasmin Little has teamed up with pianist Piers Lane to record all of Schubert’s
works for the instruments, and they are also joined by cellist Tim Hugh for the bonus addition of the Sonata for Piano and Arpeggione (or
cello), and finally an Adagio for
all three instruments. The three
early violin Sonatas, composed when
Schubert was just 19 (although we have to remember he therefore had just 12
more years of composing, before his premature death at age 31) are light works,
subtitled as ‘Sonatinas’ by Diabelli when they were published, perhaps in
indication of their relatively small scale.
These are not juvenile works, however, and although the first movement
of the first sonata is clearly based around Mozart’s E minor Sonata, many
aspects of Schubert’s mature style are also here. These are real chamber works, in that the
violin and piano are very much in equal partnership, and Little and Lane are
sensitive to this. As ever, Little
produces a warm tone throughout, and Lane has a lightness of touch when needed,
as well as energy and intensity in some of Schubert’s darker writing. The
fourth Sonata, from just under two
years after the first group, already shows Schubert’s rapid development, and
increases the level of virtuosity required from the violinist in particular. The
Rondeau brillant which opens the
second disc, composed just two years before his death, is much more virtuosic
again, and gives Little a chance to flex her muscles. The Fantasie was the last work Schubert wrote for the combination,
composed the year before his early death, and from the very opening feels
emotionally from a totally different place. The ‘fantasy’ form allows him more
flexibility, although there is still a clear structure, and both instruments
are given the chance to shine individually and together. The tender pianissimo
playing from both in the Andante opening (which returns towards the end of the
work) is very touching, and the central variations on one of his own song
themes, first presented on the piano is Schubert at his most sublime. The arpeggione
was a short-lived instrument, a kind of hybrid cello-guitar, with six strings
tuned like a guitar but played with a bow, and Schubert’s Sonata is really the only notable work for the instrument to
survive, most often now played in a transcription for the cello. Tim Hugh’s
warm, relaxed tone brings some welcome respite after the intensity of the
Fantasie, and then the three join to close the disc in the very slow, exquisite
single movement Adagio. Another very late work, this was possibly intended
as a slow movement for a full piano trio, but as with so many other of Schubert’s
incomplete works, it is almost even more sublime for its fragility, without
outer movements to diminish its intensity.
Overall, the violin sonatas are perhaps
not amongst Schubert’s greatest works, but the playing here has such energy and
life that these minor works are lifted beyond their lightness, and the later
works, particularly the Fantasie, are works of exquisite beauty, and the
trajectory of the programming, right through to the late Adagio, at all times
performed with such sensitivity and expertise, makes this an outstanding
collection.
The
Cuarteto SolTango are a German
group, comprising Rocco Heins
(bandoneón), Karel Bredenhorst
(cello), Sophie Heinrich (violin)
and Martin Klett (piano), and they
specialise in authentic tango music. The
new wave of tango music has perhaps been most famously brought to new audiences
through the compositions of Astor
Piazzolla (1921-1992), and they include a number of his compositions on
their new disc, Cristal. However, there are tangos here by a whole
range of presumably Argentinian composers from the twentieth century, and a
couple still alive today. Sadly the CD
notes give very little information on the composers or the individual works
here (although there are some interesting notes on the history of tango music
and its origins), so it’s best to just go with the flow here, and enjoy. Right
from the opening flourish of the title track, ‘Cristal’, through the jagged rhythms of ‘La cicatriz’ (‘the scar’), the wonderfully spiky ‘Olivero’, the joyful, waltzy ‘Paisaje’, and the wistfully lyrical ‘Poema’, to the dramatic ‘Alma de bohemio’ (‘Bohemian soul’),
the Cuarteto SolTango take us on a wonderful journey through the rich world of
tango. The five Piazzolla works are striking in their relative complexity by
comparison, however, with the sophisticated ‘Verano porteño’ (‘Summer in Buenos Aires’) and the mysterious ‘Homenaje a Córdoba’ (‘Tribute to
Cordoba’) standing out. Beautifully sultry, this is a must for a late summer
evening’s listening.
(Edited versions of these reviews first appeared in GScene, September 2015)
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