Showing posts with label Roderick Williams. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Roderick Williams. Show all posts

Friday 21 June 2019

#AldeburghFestival2019 : The #UCFF portal-page (in progress)

#AldeburghFestival2019 [This posting is a place-holder]

More views of - or before - Cambridge Film Festival 2019 (17 to 24 October)
(Click here to go directly to the Festival web-site)

20 June

#AldeburghFestival2019 [This posting is a place-holder]




Sunday 16 June ~ Britten and Bridge
The Britten Studio at 4.00






Sunday 16 June ~ Vox Luminis II
The Snape Maltings Concert Hall at 7.30

A report by Tweet on Vox Luminis II at #AldeburghFestival2019




Monday 17 June ~ Schubert 1828
The Snape Maltings Concert Hall at 7.30





[...]





Tuesday 18 June ~ Il Quatuor Diotima
Aldeburgh Parish Church at 11.00




Tuesday 18 June ~ Britten and Blake
The Britten Studio at 4.00




Britten and Blake were both publicists, but Britten was the better at it, which is why he would not have looked for knottier or more distant texts of Blake's to set than these

 Patience Agbabi's reading of her 'homework' was not only a tour de force that outclassed her 'teacher', but also, one likes to think, one whose extent and content were surprising to all hearing them





Tuesday 18 June ~ Vox Luminis III
Pre-concert Talk in The Britten-Pears Recital Room at 6.30 / Snape Maltings Concert Hall at 7.30





Wednesday 19 June ~ Alisa Weilerstein
Blythburgh Church at 7.30








Addenda :







 Unless stated otherwise, all films reviewed were screened at Festival Central (Arts Picturehouse, Cambridge)
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Saturday 23 July 2016

A quick overview, by Tweet, of I Fagiolini’s programme Amuse-bouche at Cambridge Summer Music Festival

An overview of I Fagiolini with Amuse-bouche at Cambridge Summer Music Festival

More views of - or before - Cambridge Film Festival 2016 (20 to 27 October)
(Click here to go directly to the Festival web-site)

23 July

A quick overview, by Tweet (and free text), of I Fagiolini’s performance of their programme Amuse-bouche, under the directorship of Robert Hollingworth, for Cambridge Summer Music Festival at Emmanuel United Reformed Church, Cambridge, on Saturday 23 July at 7.30 p.m.


A still from I Fagiolini - Ode à la gastronomie

Directed by John La Bouchardière and made by Polyphonic Films




In both halves, we also heard from Anna Markland (as well as her voice in the ensemble) on piano, with two of Erik Satie’s Gnossiennes (Nos 4* and 6, respectively), and, to close the first half, with Roderick Williams’ arrangement for piano and choir of the central movement (marked Adagio assai) of Ravel’s Piano Concerto in G Major









All in all, whether one wants to relate to the majority of the texts that we heard before the Françaix as surréaliste, or in some other stylistic or genre terms, these composers brought out qualities in them, and likewise the members of I Fagiolini under Robert Hollingworth’s direction, that made them compelling, and highly inviting of our interest :

In his Lieder, Franz Schubert sometimes transformed poems to which one might otherwise not have devoted much attention : here, it was not that the poems of Éluard or Apollinaire were unattractive, but that interpreters such as Poulenc could, in and through their sound-world, cause their visions to open up – in a way that, beforehand, their words on the page, even in the French, did not easily allow one to experience…





To conclude by way of an encore, after the well-received strangeness of Jean Françaix’s text and its treatment, something more familiar still than the Satie pieces : ‘Baïlèro’ from Canteloube’s Chants d’Auvergne.



Very much a Post-script - Schumann, Surrealism, and Satie [in Satie’s Parade] :









One can read more about András Schiff here [from Kirshbaum Associates Inc., his representatives in North America], and Wikipedia® on Parade, Satie's Opus ??, here...



 End-notes

 * Regarding which the audience, wrongly, seemed almost more enthusiastic than the preceding Sept chansons (by Francis Poulenc)… ?


Unless stated otherwise, all films reviewed were screened at Festival Central (Arts Picturehouse, Cambridge)
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Monday 21 March 2016

Some Tweeting from Easter at King's 2016

More views of - or before - Cambridge Film Festival 2016 (20 to 27 October)
(Click here to go directly to the Festival web-site)

21 March

Mini-reports from Easter at King's : the annual festival, in concert and in choral services, of Passiontide music and texts for Holy Week



Bach's St John Passion ~ The Academy of Ancient Music, conducted by Stephen Cleobury ~ Monday 21 and Tuesday 22 March at 7.30 p.m.


 A battle of wills - and world-views - between a baritone (Roderick Williams) and a bass-baritone (Neal Davies)




Some instrumental assets among The Academy's regulars




 The vocal cast for the Choir's recording of the performances



 Catching up properly with Bojan Čičić (after seeking a solution to temperature-sensitive period instruments and the huge South doors of King's College Chapel on Monday)




Services of Sung Compline (one of the daily Offices, before it was merged with that of Evensong) ~ The National Youth Choir of Great Britain, directed by Ben Parry ~ Tuesday 22 March (and also Wednesday 23 and Thursday 24 March) at 10.00 p.m.







Britten Sinfonia (@BrittenSinfonia) and Britten Sinfonia Voices, conducted by Eamonn Dougan (@ejdougan), in a programme of Byrd, Bach, Shostakovich (arr. Barshai) and James MacMillan (@jamesmacm), plus a short tribute to Sir Peter Maxwell Davies, on Wednesday 23 March at 7.30 p.m.





Instead of Tweets, some comments on the Sinfonia with Dmitri Shostakovich's String Quartet No. 8 in C Minor, Op. 110, arranged as a Chamber Symphony, Op. 110a

 * A sympathetic transcription by Rudolf Barshai, which makes the most of the orchestra’s deep, full sound

 * As a Chamber Symphony (with the leader sometimes in an obbligato role ?), the work has a different character

 * Fire in its belly (Allegro molto) - fast and insistent

 * On an emotional level, made unacceptable, by being acceptable with full strings ?

* Amidst passion, hollowness afterwards (Allegretto), with aetherial solo violin and muted violas

 * We may never know how much of this quartet was an elegy for DSCH, Dresden, or both, but the repeated three-note pattern (in the first of two movements marked Largo (Largo (I)) here feels militaristic (with inescapable threat when we can hear the sound of the drone ?)

 * The solo role for the leader re-emerges at the end (Largo (II))






In tribute to the memory of ‘Max’ (who died on 14 March 2016), James MacMillan’s Seven Last Words was seamlessly preceded by his ‘Lullabye for Lucy’ (1981)






Some other responses to the MacMillan






The BBC Concert Orchestra (@BBCCO) and BBC Singers (@BBCSingers), conducted in Palestrina, Schubert and Haydn by Stephen Cleobury (@SJCleobury) ~ 24 March (Good Friday) at 7.30 p.m.




Next, Schubert, the Symphony No. 4 in C Minor, D. 417 (where the composer’s age should be immaterial)











Stephen Cleobury, conducting The Choir of King’s College Chapel and The Hanover Band, in Handel’s Brockes Passion (1715-1716) ~ 26 March (Holy Saturday) at 7.30 p.m.







Similarities (which may modify what we think of as typically of Bach) :

 * Effects and certain moods

 * Figurations brought out, e.g. by the oboe, within themes

 * The onward impulse of a harpsichord cadence into recitative, or a brief instrumental phrase that leads to an aria

 * Eilt, ihr angefochtnen Seelen – the words and the interjections are there from Handel
Dissimilarities (amongst many such places) :

 * Short choral interjections (the first being two lines, beginning Wir alle wollen eh’ erblassen)

 * Number and use of soloists (trios and quartets), even if Bach may have wished to do so (and Handel was led by his text)

 * In Bach’s work, the calls for crucifixion are more ferocious (use of the turba Chorus in the St John)

 * Differently paced, especially in the concluding numbers




 Unless stated otherwise, all films reviewed were screened at Festival Central (Arts Picturehouse, Cambridge)
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Friday 14 February 2014

Britten Sinfonia Voices : life, song and wine

More views of - or before - Cambridge Film Festival 2013
(Click here to go directly to the Festival web-site)

14 February

A concert given by Britten Sinfonia (@BrittenSinfonia) at West Road Concert Hall, Cambridge, on Tuesday 11 February


This concert comprised three compositions by baritone Roderick Williams (two of which had received their World premiere at the Sinfonia’s concert in Norwich the previous week), four-part songs by Schubert and Schumann, and a Lied by the latter.

It started with Williams’ Red Herring Blues for clarinet and piano (from 1994), which opened with a jaunty solo from the former, played by Joy Farrall. Tom Poster then joined in, but with similar material that yet sounded different on a different instrument. As it developed, there were some violent gestures from the piano, reminiscent of moments in Olivier Messiaen’s Vingt regards sur l'enfant-Jésus when some powerful chords are struck, and even of that composer’s birdsong. A short, meditative piece, it ended with what seemed like a quotation from the first bars of Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue.

Next, the four members of Britten Sinfonia Voices (Susan Gilmour Bailey, Alexandra Gibson, Nicholas Mulroy, and Eamonn Dougan) gave two multipart Lieder of Schubert, Der Tanz (D. 826) from 1825, and then the earlier (1816) An die Sonne (D. 439), the second much longer than the first, which gave a taste of the operatic quality of these voices, which happily reached right to the back of the auditorium, and with very clear German diction. An die Sonne allowed us to hear what good voices they are individually, before blending them again so well.

Whereas the other Lied contrasted the despondency and infirmity of age with the energy and dancing of youth, this writer, Johann Peter, turns to weightier things : the poet’s persona enjoying creation in the immediate moment, even praising it, but suddenly realizes the truth of his mortality along with it. The line-ending of the final stanza, Staub (dust, in the phrase ‘Return to dust !’) is followed by a somewhat creepy tone from Mulroy’s tenor, but, as the stanza is reprised, resolving into a happier conception (via the word Laub, meaning ‘foliage’).

The first of Williams’ two commissions by the Sinfonia and Wigmore Hall was The last house on the river, for all forces, and had an eerie quality to its opening, and hints of Boulez’ writing for piano, before we heard from the clarinet in its chalumeau register. The work went round in cycles of Williams responded to by the singers in close-harmony style, and with regular instrumental intermissons.

Karen Hayes’ highly poetic text (she is the librettist for both works) is deftly set by Williams, and the very English sound of the group of four anchored this very specific evocation of time and place, with the intensity of the what is perceived picked out by the almost improvisatory feel of the clarinet writing. An enthusiastic round of applause met this new work, and the sensation in West Road Concert Hall was that there was appreciation for a well-conceived and performed programme of music by and sung by Williams and his colleagues.

A solo Schumann Lied followed, Auf einer Burg (from Liederkreis, Op. 39, setting Joseph von Eichendorff), where Williams’ mastery of his vocal resources, and of telling a story with his intonation and phrasing, were to the fore. As with the earlier Lieder, where there was a movement from a joyous state to – or to contemplating – a state of decline, this Lied leads us up, through all the surrounding circumstance, to a wedding, but the final image is that the beautiful bride (die schöne Braut) is crying.

Staying with Schumann, Britten Sinfonia Voices brought us Mondnacht, from 1840, which had a feeling of floating, of calm, with a change of mood as it ended just with piano. Then Schubert again, Schicksalsenker (D. 763) from eighteen years earlier, which began with tenor voice, and gave the feeling of being taken back in time, partly in the restraint with which the quartet sang, and partly in the repetition of the word from the title (Fate’s Anchor). The link is that there is a feeling of transcendence, of the soul stretching wide its wings (Und meine Seele spannte / Weit ihre Flügel aus), and of a world where every pain has escaped far away (Fern entfoh’n ist jeder Schmerz).

The feeling of Gemütlichkeit in the Trinklied (D. 183) from 1815 set the mood for this final group of works, with even a table and drinks of some sort as the Stammtisch of the Voices, as they gave us this drinking song, praising friendship and wine, and with variants of the sentiment of Ohne Freunde, ohne Wein, / ich nicht im Leben sein (‘Without friends, without wine, I should not like to be alive’) as the closing couplet to each verse.

Next, the second Williams’ commission In His Cups (again setting Karen Hayes), so one could see why it was keeping company with this Schubert genre. For this piece, Joy Farrall played off stage in a piece that evoked a Britten-like sort of Englishness, of a village pub, and of secular and church life in small communities in an earlier decade, and with outbursts from the piano. The diction and syntax of Hayes’ poetry takes one beyond John Clare and ‘The Deserted Village’ even to Shakespeare : But in his cups he’d thought her beautiful could evoke the topers in Twelfth Night, and Williams had carefully matched his setting to a pastoral of yesteryear, such as might parallel an inland Peter Grimes.

The final two short songs, both by Schubert (Lebenslust(D. 609) from 1818, and another Trinklied (D. 75) from 1813), ended the recital, and both stir up the notions of friendship. In the first, we have allein sein ist öde, wer kann sich da freu’n (‘To be alone is bleak, who could enjoy being there ?’), and the delivery was both crisp and emotional. The second had a clarinet line added to the scoring for tenor, chorus and piano, so it was a rousing close to the proceedings, with even a Schiller-like invocation of the spirit of brotherhood in Laßt uns all Brüder sein ! (‘Let us all be brothers !’) – perhaps the correct context of the ‘Ode to Joy’ is the pub ?!

A recital that delivered many flavours and juxtapositions, all of which seemed to enrich each other.




Unless stated otherwise, all films reviewed were screened at Festival Central (Arts Picturehouse, Cambridge)
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