• Blog
  • Clients
  • About Me

Richard Bratby

~ Classical music writer, critic and consultant

Richard Bratby

Tag Archives: Academy of Ancient Music

Review: BCMG Songbook

22 Friday May 2015

Posted by richardbratby in Uncategorized

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

Academy of Ancient Music, BCMG, Reviews

The Birmingham Post isn’t always able to post online everything that I’ve written for its print edition, so – after a suitable time lag (you should really go out and buy the paper!) – I’ll be posting my recent reviews here. As per the print edition, they’re all fairly concise – just 250 words. This is of a performance at CBSO Centre, Birmingham on 27th February 2015.


There were champagne glasses out at CBSO Centre on Friday night: and rightly. This was the first Birmingham outing for Gerald Barry’s new setting of Tennyson’s Crossing the Bar – the 75th commission, since 1991, in BCMG’s Sound Investment scheme.

Other than that, this was a very BCMG kind of celebration: no frills, just a thought-provoking and beautifully-curated programme played straight and to the highest imaginable standard. The programme was built around the songs that John Woolrich has commissioned from over 200 composers since the late 80s. Each was scored for soprano (Gillian Keith and Rebecca von Lipinski took turns), plus solo strings and two clarinets. Conductor Jonathan Berman provided such guidance as was necessary.

The format made for illuminating contrasts. Certain mannerisms recurred – icy harmonics, juddering sul ponticello tremolandi – but more striking was the way the small form intensified each composer’s individuality. The wiry tangle of Milton Babbitt’s Quatrains sat between the Barry – a typically deadpan bit of Barry provocation, the text chanted in an aggressive monotone by Lipinski, and then sung over clangourous piano chords – and a delicious nonsense scherzo by the late Jonathan Harvey, playfully and affectionately thrown off by Keith.

Thomas Adès’ fidgety, overwritten early Life Story hasn’t worn well; Osvaldo Golijov’s Sarajevo, on the other hand, sounded just as rich and strange as it must have done in 1993. Lipinkski’s warmly responsive singing conjured up the ghost of Mahler in (of all writers) a Flann O’Brien setting by Kurt Schwertsik; Berg haunted Keith’s performance of Detlev Glanert’s Contemplated by a Portrait of a Divine.

But the fragility and poise of Gillian Keith’s voice in three Celan songs by Harrison Birtwistle gave the evening its centre of gravity. Birtwistle’s measured phrases and resonant silences connected with the poetry on what felt like a subconscious level. Again: no frills, just loving, perfectly-judged performances of music that has eloquence to spare.

Christopher Hogwood and Handel’s “Flavio”

26 Wednesday Nov 2014

Posted by richardbratby in Uncategorized

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

Academy of Ancient Music, Birmingham Town Hall, Christopher Hogwood, Handel, Metro

It’s still hard to credit that Christopher Hogwood is no longer with us – for anyone of my generation, he’d been at the front of the Historically Informed Performance movement for as long as we’d even known about it. I still recall, as a teenager, borrowing his L’Oiseau-Lyre box-set of Mozart symphonies with the Academy of Ancient Music from West Kirby library and being outraged at what I heard (there’s nothing more conservative than a 17-year old).

Years later, he directed concert performances of three major Handel operas with the AAM over three years in Birmingham – an experience that, with encouragement from Annette, would launch me on an ongoing exploration of a genre I still (if I’m honest) find problematic. Shortly after Flavio we booked our first trip to Drottningholm. Meanwhile, in April 2008, I’d interviewed Christopher Hogwood for Metro, and found a warmth, a charm and an enthusiasm strong enough to persuade any sceptic. Here’s the article:


Birmingham Town Hall has heard a lot of Handel. The Victorians couldn’t get enough of his oratorios, and Ex Cathedra’s recent performance of Messiah is just the latest in a line that stretches back to the Hall’s opening in 1834 – and beyond. Indeed, if the city fathers who designed the Hall had any particular vision in mind, it was surely a temple to the cult of old Georg Frideric. But still, it’s unlikely to have heard anything quite like this – as the Academy of Ancient Music, seven singers and the conductor, harpsichordist and Handel biographer Christopher Hogwood take the stage for a full concert performance of Handel’s sumptuous 1723 opera seria Flavio, Re De’ Longobardi.

“Handel was a great opera writer – the theatre was his first and greatest love” explains Hogwood. “The Academy of Ancient Music was looking for a project to span the three years prior to Handel’s anniversary in 2009, and I wanted to do something coherent – all my career, I’ve been working to try and bring some coherence to our picture of Handel. So we’re performing three Handel operas over the three years. Last year we did a very early Handel opera, Amadigi; next year we’re doing one of his very last, Arianna, and this year we’re doing one from his middle-period”.

But there’s rather more to the choice than that. To the majority of music lovers, who know Handel for Messiah, the Water Music and the ITV Champions League theme tune, it can come as a surprise to realise that he wrote over 40 operas. With a field this wide, Hogwood made his choice with a view to its impact.

“Flavio has a large cast, and quite an amusing subplot – there’s a surprising amount of light comedy, as well as all the usual high dynastic politics that you get in opera seria. It’s dramatic – one of the characters actually dies on stage, which is exceedingly rare in baroque opera. And there’s a running storyline about the difficulty of governing Britain. Handel’s London audiences would have enjoyed that, and I think ours will too”.

That’s important when you’re trying to revive a work that’s barely been staged in 285 years. The very fact of Flavio’s neglect is a reminder of an inconvenient truth about baroque opera seria. Its reputation for stilted classical plots, high-flown emotion and flashy but superficial singing has proved a hard one to shake – and for Hogwood, the popularity of Handel’s oratorios is partly to blame.

“This idea that the operas are statuesque and undramatic is a misconception created by opera companies who’ve tried to stage the oratorios as if they were operas. They don’t work – you just end up with a chorus of 50 on stage and nowhere to go. Handel’s oratorios are a completely different conception from his operas. He understood the theatre; his operatic music reflects that. And a lot of modern directors who do stage the operas don’t really trust Handel’s music, it seems to me. So they fill the stage with guns, helicopters and nudity. But it’s not TV opera – it has to have a certain studied formality. And it needs great singers”.

No problem on that front, with a cast that includes Iestyn Davies and Robin Blaze. “We haven’t got costumes and sets” says Hogwood “but we’ll certainly have action; people walking on and off, enough to show that these are characters in a drama. That spares us the hypodermic syringes and helicopters – which to me is an improvement. It’s less expensive too!”

And his advice to beat those other misconceptions? “Read the words! You have to know what they’re singing about – there are moment-by-moment changes of mood and emotion. And be ready to rise to some really big themes: themes of honesty, loyalty, power and love.” Big themes, powerful drama and great music…maybe it’s time,once again, to rediscover a Handel we’ve all forgotten.

Contact Details

38 Beacon Street
Lichfield
United Kingdom
Staffordshire
WS13 7AJ

07754 068427

Follow me on Twitter

My Tweets

Archives

  • June 2020 (1)
  • October 2019 (2)
  • January 2018 (1)
  • December 2017 (2)
  • November 2017 (2)
  • October 2017 (1)
  • August 2017 (2)
  • July 2017 (1)
  • June 2017 (3)
  • April 2017 (2)
  • March 2017 (2)
  • February 2017 (2)
  • December 2016 (1)
  • September 2016 (3)
  • August 2016 (1)
  • July 2016 (1)
  • June 2016 (2)
  • May 2016 (1)
  • April 2016 (3)
  • March 2016 (6)
  • February 2016 (1)
  • January 2016 (3)
  • December 2015 (6)
  • November 2015 (4)
  • October 2015 (6)
  • September 2015 (5)
  • August 2015 (5)
  • July 2015 (8)
  • June 2015 (12)
  • May 2015 (12)
  • April 2015 (1)
  • February 2015 (1)
  • January 2015 (2)
  • December 2014 (4)
  • November 2014 (3)

Archives

Create a free website or blog at WordPress.com.

Privacy & Cookies: This site uses cookies. By continuing to use this website, you agree to their use.
To find out more, including how to control cookies, see here: Cookie Policy
  • Follow Following
    • Richard Bratby
    • Join 26 other followers
    • Already have a WordPress.com account? Log in now.
    • Richard Bratby
    • Customize
    • Follow Following
    • Sign up
    • Log in
    • Report this content
    • View site in Reader
    • Manage subscriptions
    • Collapse this bar