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Richard Bratby

~ Classical music writer, critic and consultant

Richard Bratby

Tag Archives: Lichfield Cathedral

Review: Lichfield Festival – The Magic Flute

09 Thursday Jul 2015

Posted by richardbratby in Uncategorized

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Birmingham Post, Lichfield Cathedral, Lichfield Festival, Reviews, The Arts Desk, The Magic Flute

009

The Lichfield Festival is in full swing – and living just five minutes from the Cathedral, it’s hard not to feel you’re in the middle of something special even when you’re merely walking to the shops! I’ll be producing a full round-up for The Arts Desk tomorrow, but meanwhile, since The Birmingham Post is experiencing difficulties posting my reviews of individual concerts to its website, I’ll be posting them here while the Festival is still under way. Even critics like to feel as if they’re part of something, after all…

(NB: No star ratings here –  editors and PRs love ’em but critics hate them, and I’m no exception. If you really do need to attach a score to an artistic performance like it’s a spelling test or something, they can be seen in the print edition of The Birmingham Post, available now).


There’ve been times since 2010 when we’ve despaired of the Lichfield Festival. Now there’s a new artistic director, Sonia Stevenson and, on the basis of this opening concert performance of The Magic Flute, every reason to hope that things are back on course.

The sheer ambition was inspiring, even if the end result had a distinctly improvised, “let’s do the show right here” sort of feeling. There was no orchestra (Anthony Kraus and Ian Ryan played a re-working of Zemlinsky’s piano reduction), no chorus, and the sole gesture towards costume was Papageno’s pair of denim shorts.

But the singing was truly impressive – Kate Valentine as the First Lady was real luxury casting. Anna Dennis stole the show: her nuanced voice and understated intensity made Pamina a tragic figure, never more poignant than in her quartet with the Three Boys, sung with wonderful freshness and ensemble by ex-Cathedral choristers Jemima Richardson-Jones, Amber Jordan and Alice Windsor.

Alexander Sprague (Tamino) made up in tone for what he might have lacked in ardour. Richard Wiegold (Sarastro) had a voice of black velvet and Samantha Hay was a Queen of the Night of laser-like ferocity and focus. Adrian Thompson played Monostatos as a sleazy bank-manager, while as a long-suffering Papageno, you sensed that Jonathan Gunthorpe was fighting the urge to give a bigger, funnier performance than this staging allowed.

That was the single biggest problem: the spoken dialogue had been entirely cut and replaced with a hit-and-miss narration by Janice Galloway, spoken by Guy Henry. The Flute is not a long opera, and without the dialogue that Mozart expected, his characters are only half-complete. So it’s a tribute to the musical quality of this performance that we left with smiles on our faces – and a sense that the Festival’s heart is finally back in the right place.


Countertenors and tubas at Lichfield Cathedral

16 Tuesday Dec 2014

Posted by richardbratby in Uncategorized

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Birmingham Post, Handel, Lichfield, Lichfield Cathedral, Lichfield Cathedral Chorus, Messiah, Staffordshire Band

Selwyn tomb

This picture comes from the tomb of the 19th century Bishop Selwyn of Lichfield. It’s in the Lady Chapel at Lichfield Cathedral, and this tiled rendering of a pit on the nearby Staffordshire coalfield is the backdrop to a fabulous Victorian confection of stone Gothic tracery, brass lettering and a gleaming, life-sized marble effigy of the great Bishop himself. No-one saw anything odd about putting this image in a mock-Medieval tomb in a real Medieval cathedral. The scene – so recognisable to members of the Bishop’s flock – was part of the flesh and blood of his life and ministry; being truthful, it couldn’t be incongruous. (At the other end of the tomb, similar painted tiles show a Maori war-canoe and tree-ferns – Selwyn spent much of his career in New Zealand).

It came to mind because on Saturday night, Birmingham Post business (and to be honest, a fair bit of personal pleasure) took me to a performance of Part One of Handel’s Messiah by the Lichfield Cathedral Chorus, accompanied by the Staffordshire Brass Band. My review of the performance is here; but even before the night, I was surprised by the way musical friends reacted to the very notion of a brass band accompanying Handel. “Christ, no!” exclaimed one. “This is all wrong” declared another. At which I could only think: how could something wrong, sound so right?

Wasn’t Handel’s music once the staple of amateur ensembles across the UK, performed with enthusiasm by groups of all sizes and skills? Isn’t that still the case – and isn’t that a good thing? Aren’t we glad that performers and listeners feel able to co-opt a great work of art into their own musical lives and traditions? And talking of traditions, haven’t we all now accepted that the brass band movement in this country is our very own, original, “Sistema” – a grass-roots, community-based musical movement capable of producing virtuoso players of international calibre, and an inspiration to composers from Holst to Robert Simpson?

The performance was sincere, the playing bright, precise and wonderfully fresh; I’m ashamed to say that I heard harmonies in the overture that I’d never noticed before. But then, I’ve been a gigging cellist. I know how under-rehearsed scratch string ensembles feel about the annual Messiah with their local choral soc. This was very different.

I’m not saying that I’d always trade a smart, sensitive period-instrument orchestra for a brass band or even a Beecham-esque full symphony orchestra; just that no one performance style or tradition can ever have the final word on a work as limitless as Messiah. Also that it’s not every day you get to hear a really cracking countertenor singing against tenor horns and cornet. Plus, those tubas sounded like they were having the time of their lives. It felt right; it felt real; and I think that’s a feeling that Bishop Selwyn – not to say Handel himself – would have understood.

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