I thought SJSS would be a magnificent setting to hear the piece live – after all that is where my lovely recording of the piece had been recorded. I was right.
In the first half, we heard the Schubert Mass in G, which I enjoyed more than Janie did, although she quite liked it. It was followed by a world premier of a JohnMcCabe piece named Psalm-Cantata, which frankly did little for either of us.
But we did both really enjoy the Magnificat.
Below is a video of Nikolaus Harnoncourt with an unidentified choir and orchestra playing the Magnificat magnificently:
This was the start of Joshua Redman’s tenure as curator of Wigmore Hall’s jazz.
I recall that we were very excited about seeing this one and yet a little disappointed with the concert in the end. We love the sound of sax, but there was something about four saxophones and nothing else that lacked colour for this jazz, to us anyway.
You don’t have to be a Telemaniac (nor a Beliber) to have enjoyed this concert …but it helps.
We absolutely loved it, but then we are lovers of Baroque music by the likes of Telemann and Biber.
Further, we were treated to some early Baroque by Schein and Simpson, to whet our appetites and to show us how table music emerged as a genre in the 17th century.
Below is a short vid that shows the AAM under Richard Egarr rehearsing a Telemann concerto – one of my favourites as it happens:
Below is a nice selection of Telemann Tafelmusik – but not by AAM:
Finally, for those unfamiliar with Thomas Simpson (as we were) who would like to hear a small sample – below a little woodwind sampler, provenance unknown beyond the YouTube details provided:
We treated the Mainelli family to this concert. Xenia was learning the harp at school at that time.
In any case, it looked like a lovely concert, which indeed it was.
Here is a link to the Wigmore Hall resource for this concert. For some reason the on-line resource says that the first piece was a Handel arrangement – I’m pretty sure it was the Concerto in D minor by Allesandro Marcello, as stated in the programme.
We met and ate in the Wigmore Hall restaurant before the performance – I think possibly taking desert/coffee/drinks at our table during the interval as well.
To get a feel for what this concert sounded like, here is a video of Xavier de Maistre performing Recuerdos de la Alhambra, by Francisco Tárrega, which I recall was a bit of a highlight at our concert.
I think everyone in our party had a jolly good time – the eating, drinking, chatting and of course the music.
This seemed like a wonderful idea – improvised music to please lovers of jazz and contemporary music, after the Evelyn Glennie concert, in the bar/restaurant.
It didn’t attract much of a crowd if I remember correctly.
We enjoyed our cold compilations and some wine…
…more than we enjoyed the music, which we found surprisingly bland – not jazzy in the way we thought it might be.
We’re all for the Wigmore Hall experimenting and the late night format is one of the more interesting experiments, although they are still struggling to find a formula that works.
But we have booked two more Wigmore Lates this year (as I write in 2018), both of which look right up our street, so we really hope the idea will find its feet eventually.
Anyway, below is the running order for the concert we heard on 22 June 2012:
In truth, not all of the music pleased us, but most of it did and it was fascinating to watch Evelyn Glennie play so many different percussive instruments at such close quarters.
Here is a little vid of her playing the Vivaldi Concerto she played us that night – albeit from a different occasion and with a bit more of an ensemble in the vid:
We also booked the late night concert the same night – I seem to recall we arranged for a rather tasty platter of cold compilations at The Wig between the gigs. Yum.
The late night concert, which was served up in the restaurant, was less to our taste – click here or below – but never mind:
…then following the test match for the rest of the weekend, then rounding off the weekend with some early music at SJSS?
That was a rhetorical question, people. There is NO better way.
We went to see Musica ad Rhenum under Jed Wentz. I always worry about people named Jed, because I am so regularly having my pseudonym, Ged, mis-spelt as Jed. My life would be easier if these J-people chose not to abbreviate their names to Jed. I don’t think I am asking too much there.
But I digress.
The music was mostly Couperin – see extract from the programme below.
It was part of the Lufthansa Festival of Baroque Music that year – we just chose the one concert. It was one delightful concert too.
Yes, Janie and I did have a giggle at one of the pieces being named “La toilette de Venus”. Yes we can both be very childish.
For some reason, Jed Wentz and Musica ad Rhenum have put an enormous amount of their Couperin instrumental music into the public domain, so you can listen here:
The closest I can get to a sample of the lovely soprano, Andréanne Paquin, is the following choir piece, which includes her, singing Charpentier/Lully – not a million miles from Couperin:
Anyway, the above is a really lovely short vid. If you don’t like it, you can metaphorically flush it down La Metaphorical Toilette de Venus by not playing it.
But actually I was brought up with some early Baroque madrigals ringing in my ears – a reel-to-reel recording, made by my father, from the radio, of Monteverdi’s Madrigals of Love and War.
The extraordinary BBC genome Project allows me to find the concert in question so easily it is almost embarrassingly easy – it was broadcast on 4 June 1974 at 21:50 – click here. I wouldn’t have heard the recording on that day – clearly, but dad probably played it to me pretty soon afterwards and I remember listening to it a lot that summer. The concert had originally taken place in October 1973 – a few weeks after I started secondary school.
But I digress…
…except to say that I had never heard any Madrigals of Love and War live and was keen to hear some – hence my particular desire to book this concert.
Thursday evening is not (and in those days certainly was not) Janie’s favourite night to go to a concert. Nor is Monteverdi one of her favourites.
This concert conformed Janie’s view that Monteverdi is not really for her. All too noisy and the male singing is a bit shouty, she claims. I sort-of know what she means, without agreeing with the conclusion.
Janie did enjoy some of the instrumental music, though…
…here is a vid of some other folk playing the opening number we heard that evening – Falconieri’s lovely Ciaconna in G major:
Angela & John “a few” years ago – Michael & Pam would approve the photo choice
This concert was the evening before Uncle Michael’s funeral, for which I was scheduled to be the soloist – i.e. eulogist.
Angela and John are patrons of the London Philharmonic Orchestra (LPO). They suggested that I might join them for this concert. An element of bonding exercise and an element (I suspect) of last minute stage management. John had stuck his neck out a little with his Rabbi by suggesting that a member of the family undertake the eulogy and they didn’t want any mistakes.
We discussed matters over drinks and nibbles with the patrons and benefactors before the show.
“Rabbi Rosenfeld is absolutely clear that you should keep the eulogy brief”, said John – who is a graduate of the Arsène Wenger school of management.
“I got the message – I’ve timed the speech; eighty-nine minutes…”
“…EIGHT OR NINE MINUTES…if it goes past ten minutes I’ll shut you up myself…”
…I think John knew I was joking.
Meanwhile, unlike our family funeral, the concert was not going to proceed as planned. The Canadian conductor Yannick Nézet-Séguin had gone down with “severe gastric flu” (as described in the apologetic programme note).
So we had a late substitute from one of the other dominions, Australia, in the form of Matthew Coorey.
The result was a game of two halves in some ways.
Supersub Coorey was spared the first half of of the concert, as Georgian violinist Lisa Batiashvili, wisely, chose to lead the orchestra herself in the Mozart Violin Concerto No 3.
I say the first half…of course the Mozart is quite a short work whereas the second half, Mahler Symphony No 9, is a 90 minute marathon. So it was more like an 80:20 thing than a game of two halves…
…I’m digressing. Point is, the first piece I suspect included all the nuance and personality that had been planned for this concert. I have an affection for that simple but charming piece and it was delivered very well that night.
By contrast, the Mahler seemed, while very professionally performed, a somewhat retreated, standard performance of the great work. Hats off to Coorey for taking on such a monumental work at such short notice. But “letting the orchestra just do its thing” is probably as good as it gets in those circumstances.
Here is a short video of Lisa Batiashvili playing at home, Tbilisi. I couldn’t find a legitimate vid of her playing Mozart so I thought this gorgeous piece of Bach would do nicely.
While here is a short vid of Matthew Coorey conducting. It isn’t Mahler…instead it is Kodaly, so there is still rather a lot of early 20th century noise and some unusual percussion – it was the closest I could find:
