What a lovely, relaxing concert this was. Not so relaxing getting to The Wig on a Friday evening in the run up to Christmas. Nor all that relaxing navigating the inners of a packed Wigmore Hall. But once we were in our seats…bliss.
Janie must have asked me three times if it was ACTUALLY Ton Koopman‘s birthday that day. I said “probably not” and was right, but he had just turned 80 a few week’s before the concert, so this must be his 80th birthday tour.
A man who has dedicated his career to the Baroque canon, we sensed that Koopman surrounds himself with the finest exponents of baroque music, making a happy atmosphere and sound with those people.
All of the pieces were by Telemann. Before the interval, we heard:
Trio Sonata in D minor for recorder, violin and continuo TWV42:d7
Trio Sonata in G minor for oboe, violin and continuo TWV42:g5
Sonata in F minor for bassoon and continuo TWV41:f1
Trio Sonata in F for violin, viola da gamba and continuo TWV42:F10
Quartet in D minor for recorder, traverso, bassoon and continuo from Tafelmusik II TWV43:d1
After the interval we heard:
Trio Sonata in C for recorder, traverso and continuo TWV42:C1
Quartet in G for traverso, oboe, violin and continuo TWV43:G2
Trio Sonata in F for recorder, viola da gamba and continuo TWV42:F3
Quartet in G for recorder, oboe, violin and continuo TWV43:G6
You might get a feel for the sound from the following YouTube, which includes Robert Smith (whom we saw) on the bass viol and focuses on recorder sonatas, of which we heard a few:
Or this one, which is a live performance of a Telemann trio sonata with recorder and viol:
Or this one, a movement from the Oboe Sonata g5 recorded by Ton Koopman and his then mates 30 years ago:
John & Mandy suggested that we visit Saffron Walden for the dual purpose of seeing The Sixteen perform at Saffron Hall and to allow John to cook for us in his newly-extended kitchen…
…a kitchen so comprehensively extended that their home now appears to be a kitchen with some other rooms extended onto the kitchen, rather than a house with a kitchen extension:
Mandy & Me, with John (cooking) just visible in the distance
But I’m getting ahead of myself.
15th Going On 16th Century Cottage
Janie and I decided to make this a “proper short break”, arranging three nights in a properly old cottage, Drake’s Cottage, in the medieval part of town. The headline photo shows a picture of the outside of the cottage, inside the cottage. It dates back to 1461, making it even older than the 1480’s place we stayed in at Stratford a few weeks ago…
…although in truth most of what remains appears to be a major rebuild from the 1530’s, around the time the bigger houses in the Myddlyton part of town were built. In any case, it is seriously wonky compared with proper mock Tudor such as our 1930’s Noddyland abode:
Proper mock Tudor with proper straight lines
We arrived later than intended on the Thursday afternoon. I was keen to get to the cottage before dark, as I am now really averse to driving on country roads when it is dark or even dusky. We didn’t quite make it, although you could argue that it was still dusky…just “well dusky” when we arrived rather than “proper dark”.
As we were self-catering, I was keen to do a bit of rudimentary cooking for a change, so knocked up a prawn and pea pappardelle dish with a large salad.
We took our time before venturing out on the Friday, but did some strolling at our own pace and went to find the market square with a view to returning there the next day to see the market.
Ah, there it isSelfie showing our smug “we can find a market square” faces
I offered to host John & Mandy for drinks and grub at our humble cottage before and after the concert at Saffron Hall, an offer which was gratefully accepted. A mixture of wild and posh farmed smoked salmon on mini bagels with a Pouilly-Vinzelles pre show.
Sixteen Going On 17th Century: Monteverdi, Vespers of 1610, The Sixteen, Saffron Hall, 8 November 2024
Part of this gargantuan piece, the Ave Maris Stella and the Magnificat, was probably the first Monteverdi music I ever heard, as it came as part of a collection of music records/subscription booklets that Uncle Michael gave me when I was a small child:
I still have that record and booklet. You can hear that version of the Magnificat digitised here:
Magnificat
I have a feeling that my dad wasn’t overjoyed by my affinity with early 17th century sacred music, hence him seeking out and getting me into Monteverdi madrigals instead:
Mandy must have been very keen to hear The Sixteen that evening, because she looked super-excited when the lights went down, I shut up and Harry Christophers strode onto the stage.
Back at our cottage, I had prepared a supper of charcuterie and cheeses, with a rather jolly bottle of Chocolate Block.
Our luxury medieval cottage
A super evening.
Saffron Walden Market, Bridge End Gardens & Dinner At John & Mandy’s Place, 9 November
Mandy & John supplemented advice we had already received about what to do on a Saturday in Saffron Walden, before heading to their place for John’s cheffy dinner.
I’ll tell the story mostly in pictures, as I have written more than enough words already:
The condiment lady sold us two types of balsamic vinegarSt Mary the Virgin, the tallest spire and largest organ in all Essex apparentlyParish buildingsStrolling the old town
Then into the Bridge End Gardens…
We were getting quite cold, so we didn’t attempt the maze in Bridge End Gardens.
Probably just as well – as a few hours later – we even managed to get lost in the relatively simple maze of streets between our cottage and the John & Mandy residence. Eventually John came out to rescue us in the street.
Look closely and you can see all four of us in this pictureJohn hard at work preparing our amuse-boucheFood Porn Photo One: theamuse-boucheFood Porn Photo Two: sea bass starterFood Porn Photo Three: beef fillet with celeriac & beansFood Porn Photo Four: tiramisu that tasted far better than it looksIAN: Cheese? Are you kidding? JOHN: You’ve no stamina these days, Ian
It was a really enjoyable evening. Indeed it was a really enjoyable and much needed short break for me and Janie.
If you want to see all 70+ photos from this trip, click the Flickr link below and scroll away:
Just occasionally we see jazz at the Wigmore Hall that really excites me and Janie. This was such an occasion; we loved this concert.
Here is an embedded video of a similar gig very recently, which gives a good idea of what this music looks and sounds like live:
Luques Curtis (the bassist in the video) was unable to take part in our concert, but we were very impressed with French bassist Thibaud Soulas who took his place.
The Lopez-Nussa brothers and Thibauld Soulas were very jolly souls, whereas the superb harmonica player, Grégoire Maret, didn’t get the “everyone smile” memo.
This type of music works best live and works brilliantly well at the Wigmore Hall. I am now exploring Harold López-Nussa canon of recorded music too. The album Timba a la Americana is for sure very good. I have so far only dipped into the earlier ones. Something to look forward to.
And I also look forward to seeing this combo again live, if we get the chance. Truly excellent.
For those who cannot be fussed to click, this is what we heard:
Ahmad Al Khatib – Extract from Suznak Rhapsody
Rihab Azar – Enchanted Weavers
Adnan Abul-Shamat – Hatiha Ya Sah
Rihab Azar – Biography of a Bubble
Rihab Azar – Samaie
Rihab Azar – Questions
Rihab Azar – The Pull of Time
Anouar Brahem – Parfum de Gitane
Rihab Azar -Indulgence
Rihab Azar -Sand, Roots & Blossoms.
Here is a charming video of Rihab Azar playing one of the lovely pieces we heard, Indulgence, on the very same seven-course oud that we heard:
The concert was held in the Learning Room (formerly known as the Bechstein Room), which the Wigmore Hall team had set up beautifully in a “jazz club with tables” style and some suitably Middle-eastern-looking drapes. Very atmpospheric.
Soon after the concert began, an old twerp with a massive Canon camera and several large lenses came forward from the rear of the room and sat next to us at our table, fiddling away with his camera and snapping with seeming abandon. Janie thought he must have been an official publicist or something, until a member of staff stepped forward at the end of the piece and politely but firmly told the geezer that it was not permitted to take pictures during the performance – a fairly obvious point that, in the main hall, would have been made as part of the pre-announcements these days, now that everyone has cameras (smart phones) on them all the time.
The old geezer feigned surprise and confusion. Then he proceeded to fiddle with his equipment ceaselessly during the performance and snap with reckless abandon between each piece.
The staff clearly made a decision, rightly or wrongly, that further intervention would be more disruptive than letting the old git have his way.
Rihab Azar took all this with great grace. She even took with great grace the same geezer stopping the concert just before she played her last piece, with a request for “something old school”, because he hadn’t been expecting her use of the loop pedal and wanted to hear the oud without it.
Rihab sweetly said that she had to play her planned last piece, but that she would additionally play a short traditional piece without loop pedal (I cannot remember what it was, but it was delightful) before the last scheduled piece (which was also but differently delightful).
If you, like the old git, want to hear “old school” oud, here is the Parfume de Gitane piece played by the composer, Anouar Brahem, and his mates back in 1997:
No wonder Rihab Azar was insistent on playing her closing number – it was especially charming and is her latest piece, Sand, Roots & Blossoms. designed to accompany an art exhibition, “The Universe Within”. here is a link to the performance she posted, from that exhibition, a few days after our gig:
At the end of our concert, several members of the audience let the witless git know how they felt about him. One said that he had ruined their enjoyment of the concert, which seemed a bit extreme. We were the closest to his fiddling and we just thought he was a twerp.
Mr Twerp engaged us in conversation once he had beaten back his detractors. He clearly wanted us to know that he was a guitar player (he must have said “Fender” three times) and spoke in critical terms about the loop pedal back-tracking (which we rather liked) and the fact that Rihab Azar “looked at the neck of her instrument too much”.
“Have you ever played a fretless instrument?”, I asked. He hadn’t, but pointed out to me, entirely counterfactually, that the oud has frets…or at least Rihab Azar’s did! (Oh no it doesn’t…oh no it didn’t).
Janie then wondered, given his desire for “old school oud playing”, whether Mr Git had ever been to Syria. Of course he hadn’t. “Oh you should, you’d find it fascinating”, said Janie.
Janie correctly remembered seeing oud playing at Abu Al-Azz in Damascus in 1997
I quietly wondered whether the old geezer would survive 20 minutes in Syria these days. Even in 1997, some diplomacy was needed to navigate the political regime and local sensitivities wherever we went. Perhaps that was in Janie’s mind when she recommended the place to Mr Twerpy Git, the amateur photographer-guitarist.
After we parted company with the fellow, Janie told me that she had wanted to take a picture of him for the blog, but thought him so mercurial that the request might lead to an argument and that permission to publish would probably not be granted. I agreed that her decision was a wise one.
I decided instead to help you visualise this geezer by prompting the DeepAI image generator with the phrase:
Silly Old bald Man taking a photo with a telephoto lens camera
The following image, very much of the right kind, emerged:
We had a lovely time at this concert and for sure will return to “Learning Room Sessions” if the subject matter pleases us.
Let’s leave the last word to Rihab Azar’s beautiful oud-playing:
OK, I have a confession to make. The Wigmore Hall did not title this concert “John Dowland And His Cheery Pals”; it merely promised us the superb countertenor Tim Mead and the also excellent lutenist/theorboist Sergio Bucheli.
On arrival, I made a bee-line to the desk where a young woman was handing out programmes. I told Janie that the programme was bound to include a lyric sheet so we all could sing along.
Don’t be ridiculous…
…said Janie.
Have fun…
…said the far more open-minded young lady.
We found ourselves sitting next to a Scottish woman named Fiona, who had sung in her youth and was clearly a huge fan of Tim Mead. She said she might inadvertently sing along, which Janie tells me Fiona sort-of did – under her breath. I chose not to sing along, partly because Tim Mead sings in the wrong pitch for me. I might have tried singing a whole octave down, but wouldn’t have wanted to upstage Tim that way.
Tim Mead does a lot of his work with La Nuova Musica – in fact Janie and I didn’t realise that we had seen Tim sing before at one of their concerts – at St John’s Smith Square in 2015:
We enjoyed every bit of the Dowland and Pals concert, despite the downcast subject matter. With Dowland you can be pretty sure about what you are going to get. Otherwise it would be a bit like going to a Leonard Cohen concert and complaining that the songs are miserable.
Tim Mead and Sergio Bucheli seemed very much at home in this late Renaissance space, although my guess is that home base for them is Baroque music from 70 to 100 years later than the works we heard. I cannot find a sample of these two performing late Renaissance works, but this sampler from their recent album about Purcell And His Perky Pals (OK, it’s actually named Beauteous Softness)…
… has inspired me to stream that album as soon as I have some proper listening time…which might be as soon as 24 hours after the Dowland & Pals concert.
We don’t really patronise The Wigmore Hall for the wow factor. We quite like the fact that we are quite often amongst the youngest people in the audience. We like early music and we get a good dose of that from The Wig.
But we do sometimes book a concert at The Wigmore Hall that we think might have a wow factor and sometimes, like on this occasion, we call it right. It does tend to mean that we are bringing the average age up rather than down, though.
They like a bit of fusion, do the O/Modernt gang. On this occasion, it was an East/West fusion that they explored, as well as a temporal “Bach to Beatles” shtick.
Here’s what we heard:
Johann Sebastian Bach – Contrapunctus 1 from Art of Fugue BWV1080
Pēteris Vasks – Concerto No. 2 ‘In Evening Light’ UK première I. Andante con passione • II. Andante cantabile • III. Andante con amore
Max Richter – On the Nature of Daylight
Soumik Datta – Migrant Birds from Awaaz (arranged by Jordan Hunt)
John Lennon & Paul McCartney – Blackbird (arranged by Johannes Marmén)
Soumik Datta – 1947 from Awaaz (arranged by Jordan Hunt)
Jordan Hunt – Misremembrance
Wojciech Kilar – Orawa
Soumik Datta – Awaaz from Awaaz (arranged by Jordan Hunt)
John Lennon & Paul McCartney – Across The Universe (arranged by Johannes Marmén, plus sarod & tabla riff) – encore
To give you a feel for what we heard, here is a clip from O/Moderndt playing Distant Light by Pēteris Vasks. The piece we heard was the follow-up concerto by Vasks. It was a nice touch to have Vasks at The Wig for his premier – I even managed to congratulate him in person as we were leaving the hall.
The sarod, tabla and a heap of special furniture/equipment arrived during the interval for the second half of the show.
Soumik Datta getting readyTechnician “turning it up to eleven” for Soumik Datta and Gurdain Rayatt
There’s no video to be found of O/Modernt and the sarod & tabla fellas all playing together, but here is a 15-year-old clip of Soumik Datta and Gurdain Rayatt playing as a pair, which will give you a feel.
Here is a more recent recording of that pair playing together:
The most “wow” piece of the evening was Orawa by Wojciech Kilar. Here is that piece played by a more formal orchestra than O/Modernt.
The encore had to calm us down again, which it did. Here’s what Across The Universe sounds like in O/Modernt’s hands.
The sarod & tabla coda to the Across The Universe encore helped us all to float away from The Wig.
We heard several younger members of the audience saying that they had been blown away by the evening. This is surely the sort of thing The Wigmore Hall should be doing more often.
All the more reason to find out what Viktoria and Misha are up to, musically. Further, we liked the sound of the Brazilian theme for the concert, which we sensed, correctly, would please us.
We enjoyed a light supper of charcuterie and stuff at The Wig before the concert. They do that sort of thing very well these days. While we were eating, the performers were setting up and photographing one another.
The conceit of this concert, if indeed conceit describes this simple rationale, is that Viktoria and Misha perform a selection of the stuff that they like to play together. Their joy in playing this music really came across in performance.
We heard:
Blue Deer by Misha Mullov-Abbado
Brazil by Misha Mullov-Abbado
Shir Lelo Shem by Shalom Hanoch
Adagio & Allegro From Violin Sonata No. 1 in B minor BWV1014 by Johann Sebastian Bach
Moderato from Sonata in D for solo violin Op. 115 by Sergey Prokofiev
Sabiá by Antônio Carlos Jobim
Little Astronaut by Misha Mullov-Abbado
Shanti Bell by Misha Mullov-Abbado
O Silêncio das Estrelas by Lenine & Dudu Falcão
O Cabo Pitanga by Laércio de Freitas
Träumerei from Kinderszenen by Robert Schumann
Tico Tico by Zequinha de Abreu
Here is a lovely example, recorded a few years ago, of them performing one of the above pieces:
Their closing number, Tico Tico, is more than a bit of an earworm for me. Not least, because the Harris family gramophone records included a version of that song by Mickey Katz and His Kosher Jammers. Viktoria and Misha’s version sounded more like the above example and did not sound at all like the following recording:
I sense that Misha and family thought the event went well. Misha and Viktoria certainly look pleased in this green room photo.
Thanks again for allowing me to use your photographs, folks.
This Wigmore Hall lunchtime concert was a bit unusual.
Camerata RCO is the scaled-down chamber orchestra bit of the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra. They are making a bit of a reputation for themselves playing scaled-down versions of enormous symphonies, such as this sixth one by Anton Bruckner.
But now, having heard them and seen them some more, I realise that The Gesualdo Six are now beyond boy band. They are to 15th/16th century Chansons de Regretz what Taylor Swift is to the 21st century heartbreak song.
Further, the Ges-Ges Boys, much like Tay-Tay, are mastering the art of social media management. When Owain Park announced from the stage that “you can find us on TikTok”, I wondered:
whether he was joking,
how many members of the Wigmore hall audience understood what he meant by TikTok,
was I the only person in the Hall (other than the Ges-Ges Crew) who had a TikTok account.
I can’t be sure about the answer to the second and third question, but I can confirm that Owain Park wasn’t joking.
They are also very good at merchandising. On my 2018 visit Owain tempted me to buy a pre-release version of their first album – English Motets (which includes the track embedded above from TikTok, as it happens). This time he persuaded me to be among the first to buy Queen Of Hearts, the latest album.
To be honest, I don’t really need much persuading and I can confirm that the Gesualdo Six recordings are excellent.
The Gesualdo team themselves staffed the merchandise and payment gadgets during the interval, chatting kindly (and at some cases at length) with the patrons who queued up to buy the recordings. I believe they did that all again at the end of the gig.
I wondered to myself whether Taylor Swift was doing this at her Wembley Stadium concerts – I have heard that she engages with her audience like no other. Possibly Tay-Tay is still there at Wembley, selling, signing and chatting.
Almost all the stuff we heard was from this new Queen of Hearts album. Did I mention that it is available from The Gesualdo Six website – click here. We are loving listening to the albums. I also bought Josquin’s Legacy to add to my collection.
Before the interval we heard:
Antoine Brumel (c.1450-1512) Sub tuum praesidium (pub. 1520)
Josquin des Prez (c.1450-1521) O virgo prudentissima
Loyset Compère (c.1445-1518) Plaine d’ennuy/Anima mea
Antoine Brumel Sicut Lilium
Jean Mouton (c.1459-1522) Ave Maria … virgo serena (pub. c.1520)
Johannes Prioris (fl. c.1485-1512) Dulcis amica Dei (pub. 1508)
Owain Park (b.1993) Prière pour Marie (2023)
Jean Lhéritier (c.1480-1551) Sub tuum presidium a6
After the interval:
Josquin des Prez Petite camusette (pub. 1545)
Antoine de Févin (c.1470-1511) Fors seulement (pub. c.1515)
Jean Mouton De tous regretz
Anon Se je souspire/Ecce iterum attributed to Margaret of
Austria
Costanzo Festa (c.1485-1545) Quis dabit oculis (1514)
Ninfea Cruttwell-Reade (b.1989) Plaisir n’ai plus Commissioned by The Gesualdo Six (2023)
Johannes Prioris Consommo la vita mia
Nicolas Gombert (c.1495-1560) Tous les regretz (pub. 1544)
Below is a video of them singing Josquin’s O Virgo Prudentissima – one of the pieces we heard.
This group is the real deal. Janie and I floated home after the concert.
“Don’t mess with my partitas, mate!”, Heinrich Biber
Hmmm, we were neither of us sure about this one. We really enjoyed bits of it, while spending some of our listening time hoping for certain pieces to end.
Queenslander Brett Dean comes across as a genuinely nice bloke who surrounds himself with musicians who like to play with him. His compositions, though, borrow from well-known composers and tunes, deconstructing and reconstructing them in ways that could only please ears wired differently from ours.
Brett claimed that the music in his concert spanned the 16th to the 21st century, only omitting the 19th century. I would dispute that claim. His “some birthday” piece of 1992 is a sort-of variations on the tune we know as “Happy Birthday To You”, which was first published in 1893 as “Good Morning To All” in “Song Stories for the Kindergarten” by Patty and Mildred J. Hill. While the Hill’s copyright is famously disputed, that tune is surely 19th century.
Here’s the oldest known version – let’s not even think about what Brett’s version looks like on the page
Anyway…
…here’s a nice recording of the first movement of Biber’s 7th parthia, which was the first piece we heard:
Janie and I both found George Benjamin‘s piece too weird for us. George kindly turned up to take the applause afterwards – turns out he’s a Londoner. Here’s a recording of it enabling you to judge for yourselves:
Byrd’s Fantasia pieces are lovely little vignettes. That segment was too short (or there were too few of them) for my taste. Here’s a nice example of one played by a consort of viols (almost certainly what Byrd had in mind) rather than violas and cello – which we heard and still sounded lovely:
The highlight of the evening, for us, was to see the young gifted harpsichordist/pianist Xiaowen Shang play with such joy and expression. For us she played Byrd’s Earl of Salisbury pavan and galliard, plus The Bells – both favourites of mine – on the harpsichord. Below, a video of her playing a lovely piece of Bach on the piano:
The Earl of Salisbury pavan is such a favourite of mine. Xiaowen played it beautifully, if a little twiddley for my taste. Below is Janie’s hand-held recording of Reuben Ard playing it on the electric virginals at Hampton Court Palace last year, for my Gresham Society event there:
Let’s not talk too much about the things Brett Dean did to Byrd’s beautiful pavan and his take on Bach’s Brandenburg Concerto No 6. Imagine PDQ Bach in a really bad mood, unable to make jokes.
“There’s nothing funny about feet either” (Janie, attrib. PDQ Bach)
It seemed to take an age to segue from Brett’s “treatment” to the concerto itself, which was a rather glorious and suitable choice of closing number for a concert that focussed to a large extent on the idea of two violas. By the time the concerto finally arrived, we thought we’d more than earned some ear candy.
Here’s a lovely rendering of the Bach by some sensible Dutch people who don’t mess with it:
“Is that it?”, asked Janie as the applause rang out for the Brandenburg.
