Roderick Williams talks about opera, prior to his forthcoming title role in Britten's Billy Budd with Opera North, in an interview for Opera Now. Roddy is a regular concert recitalist not least in the Chamber Music Plus area - hear him in Warwick for Leamington Music on 13 November (Schubert Winterreise), and at Malvern Concert Club on 26 February (Schubert Die Schöne Müllerin). On both occasions Roddy is accompanied by Iain Burnside. Also a composer, the Choir of Clare College, Cambridge will be performing one of his pieces for Leamington Music on 17 December.
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We're pleased to include some Oxford concerts in this year's Chamber Music Plus - they include the wonderful Oxford Lieder festival, which runs from 14 to 29 October. Artistic director Sholto Kynoch is interviewed in The Guardian about his musical loves.
What’s been your most memorable live music experience as an audience member?When I was at school, my mum worked in Cheltenham and during the holidays I would go the music festival. I cut my musical teeth there and have countless amazing memories, hearing Alfred Brendel, Grirgory Sokolov, the Florestan Trio, the premiere of Thomas Adès Powder Her Face and much more besides. Playing there for the first time recently was the fulfilment of a long-held ambition. If you had to pick one work to introduce someone to the wonders of classical music, what would it be? Bach's B minor Mass (which you can hear performed at Birmingham Town Hall on Sunday 6 November by Ex Cathedra) I had the pleasure of hearing the first Stratford concert this season by the Orchestra of the Swan, conducted by David Curtis - the repeat performance at Birmingham Town Hall the following day was reviewed by David Hart for the Birmingham Post: "it’s this chamber music experience that has made OOTS so distinctive. Over the years Curtis has moulded his players into a unified ensemble of individual musicians untrammelled by the histrionics of an egocentric conductor...One of Curtis’s greatest strengths has always been his empathy with soloists. On this occasion the lucky recipient was Laura van der Heijden who, in Haydn’s D major Cello Concerto, displayed a maturity and technical assurance far beyond her nineteen years.
In this remarkable performance (beautifully supported by Curtis and OOTS) the work’s technical difficulties were subsumed by the warmth, elegance and sheer poetry of van der Heijden’s playing. Even the obvious virtuosity of her own first-movement cadenza took the underlying poignancy of Haydn’s original material to new levels of expressive power, while the Rondo’s lilting charm and grace were delivered with the lightest of touches. Absolutely delightful." The next concerts by OOTS are on 11 October (Artshouse Stratford) and 12 October (Town Hall Birmingham)
Anyone who remains unconvinced by the power of a good photograph should take a look at Kristine Balanas's website. Don't they just make you want to hear her? She's playing with the Cheltenham Chamber Orchestra on Saturday 17 September for their Holst Birthday Concert by the way! Igor Levit - another Chamber Music Plus artist - has also won a Gramophone Award, this time in the Instrumental category, for his recording of Bach's Goldberg Variations, Beethoven's Diabelli Variations, and Frederic Rzewski's The People United will Never be Defeated which he played in the Birmingham Town Hall series in May. This season he's back in the Town Hall on 5 July 2017 with the 24 Shostakovich Preludes and Fugues
The Heath Quartet have won a Gramophone Award in the Chamber category for their recording of Tippett String Quartets - you can hear them playing Haydn, Beethoven and Tippett's first quartet on Friday 23 September at Abbotsholme Arts Society; on Wednesday 22 February they'll be at the Barber Institute in Birmingham for an evening concert of quartets by Haydn, Mendelssohn and Bartok.
Jennie McGregor-Smith of Celebrating English Song writes: "This is a very brief reminder that on 26th June we shall be lucky enough to hear Benjamin Appl at Tardebigge with Simon Lepper. Should you go to his own website www.benjaminappl.com and click on video you can hear him talking about his life as he became a singer. I'm particularly looking forward to hearing Ben's plan to juxtapose Ian Venables' songs with Gurney poetry and song. Christopher Morley of The Birmingham Post reviewed Ben Appl's recent Birmingham Town Hall concert, giving it a seldom awarded five star appreciation. He particularly mentioned the song cycle by Nico Muhly which we are hearing at Tardebigge: ".... four of its five songs setting letters between soldiers and their loved ones during the First World War ..... Both probing and absorbing, this is a song-cycle worthy of repeated hearing .... Appl is already climbing the ladder to international stardom .... " Ian Venables will be with us for the series, giving the pre-concert talk with his views about Finzi, but before that we shall be visited by members of Finzi Friends who will come for Stephen Banfield's talk Finzi and Modern Britain at 11.30, followed by lunch. All are welcome to the free talk, and to the lunch which needs to be booked beforehand." Here's an interesting article from Gramophone magazine about a different kind of crossover - between period and modern instruments. - written by Jane Gordon, violinist in the Rautio Piano Trio, who plays with several period instrument orchestras including the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment, English Baroque Soloists and Arcangelo.
She says "Period instrument orchestras, which at first specialised in performing only Baroque and Classical music, are now broadening their repertoire, exploring performance practices of pieces written in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. For example, this season the OAE performed Mahler's Second Symphony and, last season, soloists such as Viktoria Mullova and Isabelle Faust played Brahms and Mendelssohn concertos respectively on gut strings. Two worlds once so distinctly separate, have begun to merge." I recently heard Isabelle Faust play an all-Bach programme at the Chipping Campden Festival with Kristian Bezuidenhout at the harpsichord (he's perhaps better known as a fortepianist). Apart from being a wonderful concert, with such enormous musicianship being shown by both performers, it was interesting that my companion asked "is she playing a modern violin or a period instrument?". The current (Jan - Mar) issue of Musical Opinion includes a feature on our local composer Ian Venables, celebrating his 60th birthday - his photograph appears on the front cover. You can read part of the article here but you will need to subscribe to read the full piece.
Also mentioned are two forthcoming local performances of Ian's music: "Further to Michael Bywater’s article on Ian Venables in this issue, two important premieres of the composer’s music take place within the coming months. On April 16th, at Worcester Cathedral, the first performance of the cantata Remember This, a work written to commemorate the fallen of World War I, will be given by Clare Prewer, sopano, and Richard Coxon, tenor, with the BPSO under Richard Jenkinson. On June 30th in the concert hall of the Royal Grammar School, Worcester, the world premiere of Venables’ ‘Through these pale cold days’ Opus 46, for tenor, viola and piano, will take place, to be performed by Nick Pritchard, tenor, Louise Williams, viola and Benjamin Frith, piano." Thanks to Christine Talbot-Cooper of Gloucester Music Society for drawing my attention to this. Search the Chamber Music Plus website for more performances of music by Ian Venables. |
AuthorBlog written by Jill Davies, who with Chris O'Grady runs Archives
April 2024
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