Les Kapsber’girls, St John’s Smith Square, Then On To The New Extension Of The Royal Academy, 18 May 2018

The idea of seeing this concert was partly hatched from John Random’s desire to see some lunchtime early music with me. A couple of suitable Thursday dates were either no good for him or no good for me. But this Friday one, during the London Baroque Festival, looked bang on.

The timing was good too, as Janie had arranged to tour the new extension of the Royal Academy at 15:00 that afternoon. Janie very much liked the look of Les Kapsber’girls lunchtime programme.

As John’s availability is subject to the whims of showbiz administrators, the unreserved seating at SJSS makes it a suitable concert venue for an aproximeeting. I bought tickets for me and Janie, knowing that John would be able to get one on the day if he proved to be available.

The e-mails buzzed over the coming days. There was to be a costume fitting for John, so our gathering was off. The costume fitting had been cancelled – John was on again. The fitting was reinstated – off again.

At that juncture I tried to guilt-trip John…with my tongue rather firmly in my cheek, I might add:

John, John, John…

…I can’t handle all four of those Kapsber’girls on my own.  And I’m not so keen on your two.  No, no, no, two ladies is plenty:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oPOiaAU_vJg

Moreover, Janie has explicitly stated that she only wants to watch and listen.

Still, we’ll be there come what may and still hope you can join us…

In the end, John was allowed to choose his costume fitting time, so eagerly informed us that he would definitely join us for the concert.

I mansplained the instruments to John with a pathetically low hit rate

John had only seen many of these instruments before in artworks – click here or below for our recent National Gallery experience…

An Afternoon At The National Gallery And Stuff With John Random, 4 May 2018

…so I identified the instruments to John while we were waiting for the concert to start…

…but I got more instruments wrong than right. The big thing I thought was a theorbo turned out to be an archlute; the smaller thing I thought was the archlute was actually a tiorbino (a miniature theorbo), the existence of which only became known to me on the day; the small viol I took to be a treble viol was the even smaller pardessus de viole – a soprano viol which, again, was a new instrument to me on the day. Top mansplaining on my part – waxing lyrical while getting most of the facts wrong – I must have sounded like Alan Partridge to an expert observer.

Then the concert, which was truly lovely.

Here is a link to the SJSS resource on the concert.

The concert was absolutely charming – as were all four of the Kapsber’girls. They are very young and relatively new to performance at this level; not all of them displayed professionally-grooved stage presence throughout the hour, especially when sitting out the odd piece. But they all four play or sing beautifully and are surely all on the road to success.

The music was early 18th century French popular songs, known as “airs de cour” or “brunettes”. Two voices and two instruments. These songs were published in the early years of the 18th century by Christophe Ballard and were phenomenally popular in France during that latter part of Louis XIV’s reign.

Here is a little vid of “our girls” performing one or two of the songs we heard:

They are known as the Kapsber’girls because they admire the music of Johannes Hieronymus Kapsberger (aka Giovanni Girolamo Kapsperger) who was a pioneer of this kind of baroque chitarrone music. Confused yet about the difference between the theorbo, the archlute and the chitarrone? Me too. Click here for a good essay from the 1970s which might explain why even enthusiasts like me can easily get confused…

…and if all that leaves you in the mood to hear some actual Kapsberger (and believe me it’s worth it) here are Les ‘Girls playing and singing some actual Kapsberger:

Of course we didn’t hear any actual Kapsberger in our concert; the focus was entirely on the French airs de cour.

Janie snapped this during the final, lengthy applause

John, true to his word, made an approach to one of the girls after the concert – probably to try to understand the difference between the theorbo, the archlute, the chitarrone…that might have been a long, complicated conversation. Anyway, Albane Imps kindly chatted with and then posed with John:

Is that a tiorbino in your pocket, John, or are you just pleased to see me?

As it happens, Les Kapsber’girls had explained themselves earlier in the day on Woman’s Hour – click here and hopefully listen – as long as you get here quickly enough – BBC programmes of this kind tend to be withdrawn after a week or a month or something.

We took a snack lunch in the crypt after the concert (Janie’s favourite place at SJSS) where we met a couple of Kapsber’girls again – Axelle Verner chatted with us charmingly for a while – before the girls headed off, returning to France that very day.

The girls were very self-conscious about the quality of their spoken English, although John’s assessment (and he does teach English as a foreign language) is that their spoken English is actually very good. John remarked that the French accent is a very forgiving accent for spoken English – especially when the words are delivered by charming young people! So snap out of it girls – your English is just fine.

John seemed a little star-struck, so we conducted a filmic thought-experiment in which John might make a brief-encounter-like dash to St Pancras for a touching farewell scene with Les ‘Girls, but sadly John decided against.

Meanwhile I secretly flirted with the impressario-like idea of bringing together Les Kapsber’girls – who might reasonably be described as the most exciting early music girl group to emerge in recent years, with The Gesualdo Six – which I recently described as “the hottest boy band of the early music vocal consort world”:

Fading: The Hour Is At Hand, The Gesualdo Six, St John’s Smith Square, 28 March 2018

Not all that many people composed baroque music for eight voices and two instruments, but let’s try naming my thought experiment combination of The Gesualdo Six and The Kapsber’girls “The Zieleński Ten“.

Always good to have a name that is hard to spell and pronounce, I feel.

John was clearly inspired by the “baroque girl power” he had seen, so he parted company with us in search of Millicent Fawcett’s statue, at Parliament Square, while Janie and I went on to our appointment with the new extension of the Royal Academy.

In fact it isn’t really a new extension – it is the old Burlington Gardens building behind the main building, which has been conjoined with the main building to bring the whole of the Royal Academy together. This project has been donkey’s yonks in the making and Janie was very excited, as a member, to be allowed a sneak-preview before the doors opened to the public that weekend. Here is a link to a page and vid that explains it all.

Before wandering around and poking our noses into all the new bits of the Academy, we took a quick look at the first exhibition in the new space – Tacita Dean, Landscape – click here for the RA resource on that exhibition. Not especially to our taste, in truth – we were there for the opening more than for this exhibition – but I did like several of the works that fused photographs with spray-on chalk and gouache. One or two of the larger ones were truly stunning and also, strangely, the technique worked well in miniature on postcards.

Then we wandered around the Burlington Gardens extension.

Tim Marlow himself was there, available to chat with the members. We didn’t chat directly with him, but we did chat with several members of staff who were visibly excited about the whole thing. Extra exhibition space, workshop space, studio space and a soon-to-be completed lecture hall with all the modern gadgetry:

Ged is desperate to deliver the first lecture in this place…
…”this beautiful Burlington Gardens building dates from 1831…”

We also had a quick look at the PACE section of Burlington Gardens, where they are exhibiting some large works by Julian Schnabel. We took some celebratory refreshments in the old Senate Room, which is now a swanky new bar which is bound to be a favourite spot for visitors given its beauty as a room and its appointment to take advantage of the natural light during the day. Janie is kicking herself that we didn’t photograph it but in truth you would have needed a special lens to capture the stunning look of the room – click here to see a stunning professional photograph of it.

We then retired back to the City quarters for siesta before grabbing some Persian food and retreating to Noddyland for the weekend. We’d had a super cultural day.

Two Fine Baroque Concerts – Versailles: The Improbable Dream & Paris-Madras, With Some Fine Grub In Between, St John Smith Square, 12 May 2018

There were two London Festival of Baroque Music concerts at St John’s Smith Square that evening and we really liked the look of both of them.

So that’s what we did – we went and looked at them both.

Versailles: The Improbable Dream

The first was Fuoco E Cenere – all music pertaining to Louis XIV and Versailles.

Here is the SJSS card for this concert.

Now that’s what I call a theorbo
Quintessentially French Baroque

This ensemble was recently involved in a French TV series about Versailles – said to be the most expensive ever made in France – here is a short musical extract from the TV programme:

Mercifully for the down to earth SJSS audience, Fuoco E Cenere did not ponce about in 17th Century wigs and outfits for our concert.

Here is a more down to earth vid and interview about Les Folies d’Espagne by Marais, which they did play on the night:

The highlight of this concert, for us, was the singing of the young guest soprano, Theodora Raftis. She has an outstanding voice and tremendous stage presence. She seemed a little overwhelmed by the occasion at first, but it was great to see her warm to her work and become the highlight of the show by the end of the concert. She was clearly well appreciated by the audience and her fellow performers. Remember the name: Theodora Raftis. Not much of her to be found on-line, but here is some Donizetti – trust us, she’s upped her game big time since this vid was recorded:

The Platters

No , we didn’t see a 1950s vocal group, but we did eat charcuterie and cheese platters with salad and a glass of wine between the concerts. I won’t dwell on the shenanigans involved in booking a table and arranging the platters – let’s just celebrate the fact that waiters David and Ramon did us proud and that we thoroughly enjoyed our twixt concert supper.

Paris-Madras

It was this second concert that really inspired me to book the evening – the notion of a fusion of French Baroque and Indian raga music. How on earth might that work? Well, it pretty much did.

Here is a link to the SJSS resource for this concert.

Artefacts from the Baroque element…

Le Concert De L’Hostel-Dieu provided the baroque element. In truth, we got more out of the ragas than we got out of the Leçons de Ténèbres. The wonderful weather of the previous week had turned to miserable cold weather that day, so neither of us was much in the mood for the lamentations of Jeremiah. More seriously, we’d seen the Leçons de Ténèbres quite recently and didn’t realise that the concert would pretty much give us the whole lot un-fused with the ragas…plus ragas unfused with the lamentations.

…artefacts from the raga element

On the ragas, in particular, we liked the bansuri flute and the sarod. Soumik Datta, the sarod virtuoso involved, is far more rock’n’roll than the rest of the performers on show that night. Here is his showreel:

Below is the explanatory vid in French about the Paris-Madras project, in which you can hear Ravi Prasad sing and Patrick Rudant play his flute, as well as the baroque players of course:

The absolute highlight of this concert for us was the few passages when the musicians segued between the two styles and the ending when they all played together. Perhaps they judged the fusion to be risky, so they minimised its use, but to our mind it was a risk that came off big time and the fusion was the reason we went to see the concert.

Anyway, we came out the other side of the evening feeling very pleased with the whole occasion.

Les Arts Florissants, Airs Sérieux et a Boire – Volume 2, Wigmore Hall, 4 April 2016

A concert of early French Baroque songs. They don’t come around in London all that often. I really wanted to hear and see this stuff.

Janie was not sure she wanted me to book this one, but when I said that I would go to see this one on my own rather than miss it, up went her hand asking me to procure a second ticket for her.

In truth, this stuff isn’t quite Janie’s thing; in some ways not mine either. Les Arts Florissants perform these Baroque songs semi-staged, putting various materials together into a thematic programme that feels a bit like an oratorio.

The centre piece of this programme is Marc-Antoine Charpentier’s Amor Vince Ogni Cosa, but the evening is interspersed with songs by other composers; Etienne Moulinié, Michel Lambert & Sébastien Le Camus. Heck, click the link to see how Les Arts Florissants describe the programme on their own web site. 

Here is the Wigmore Hall Archive concert details.

The semi-staging is a bit twee and melodramatic. Janie quite enjoyed observing the audience in the interval, noting that most of the audience was similarly twee.

But the music is simply superb. Every one of the performers is a virtuoso. William Christie, the Godfather of Les Arts Florissants, singled out soprano Emmanuelle de Negi for special praise at the end of the concert.

I thought the young theorbo player was utterly exceptional, so was surprised not to find his name credited in the programme. A little bit of detective work, not least the Les Arts Florissants link above, reveals him to be Thomas Dunford, age 28. Here is a very interesting article about him and I agree totally that he is one to watch.

The other problem, from Janie’s point of view, was the very helpful surtitles, translating the song lyrics from French/Italian into English. This is a problem for Janie, because the subject matter of the songs is all nymphs, shepherds, unrequited love and such. She hates English Renaissance songs on such subjects but usually doesn’t realise that French and Italian songs of that period are similar naff topics.

I’m not sure why, but early Baroque songs sung in Italian always sound just a bit shouty, whereas the ones sung in French don’t, even if both are composed the same French composer; Marc-Antoine Charpentier for example. Perhaps he writes the ones to be sung in Italian in the Italian Baroque style. Not as shouty as Monteverdi, but still quite shouty.

Yet, in the hands of these wonderful musicians, even the elements that would normally irritate us are trifling details; it was a really lovely concert. The performers came back to perform two encores; both extracts from the eponymous Charpentier work, Les Arts Florissants. We’d have gladly stayed around for a third or fourth encore. A special evening.

The concert was broadcast live on Radio 3, btw. Janie couldn’t work out how the surtitles and semi-staging work for radio. I explained that they don’t but those are the elements she didn’t much like, so what’s not to like about the broadcast?  If you are reading this within a month of the concert, you can listen on BBC iPlayer by clicking this link here. There might still be some useful information on this link after a month, for all I know.