The Lufthansa Festival of Baroque Music was a regular “must visit” for us for several years. Sadly, the sponsorship ended (I think 2014 was the last year) so the festival is now a shadow of its former self.
On this evening, Janie and I attended both concerts; Carole Cerasi on the Harpsichord early evening and then London Baroque later. Domingo Scarlatti was the theme (how did you guess?).
Both excellent gigs, well worth the long evening at SJSS. The relevant extracts from the programme so you can see exactly what we heard are shown below.
The weekend after Easter, we visited the London Handel Festival for this tasty Baroque concert by the (then) fairly new Southbank Sinfonia.
We heard:
Handel’s Overture to Giustino HWV37
Rameau’s Grand Motet: In Convertendo Dominus
Vivaldi’s Concerto Con Molti Istromenti RV 576
Lully’s Suite from “Isis”
Handel’s Te Deum for the Peace of Utrecht
Janie couldn’t complain that it was cold this time – we were having a bit of an April heatwave in London. But still she felt that St George’s was austere as a venue…
…”it’s bum-aching, like sitting in Church”…
…”it IS a Church”…
…so she reiterated her strong preference for the Wigmore Hall.
We both agreed that the music was lovely, though.
Below is a delightful later performance by the very same orchestra (under Julian Perkins) of the Giustino:
Below is a beautiful video of the Rameau In Convertendo with William Christie conducting but no identification of the orchestra ( Les Arts Florissants presumably) nor the wonderful soloists – perhaps some of the Early Music Group aficionados can help with the identification of those:
At the end of a stressy week, what could be better than an evening of jazz at Thw Wigmore Hall?
And what a stressy week it had been – with the deal to sell most of the business to Aon/McLagan Partners due to complete that week but actually not completed until the following week.
In truth, I don’t remember all that much about this concert other than the joy of sitting and letting a very accomplished jazz trio weave their magic for me.
I couldn’t find a vid of exactly the three who played our night, but two out of three ain’t bad:
While below is a subsequent extract from Portrait Of A Woman including vocals:
I had recently acquired my first iPod – a gift from Kim and Micky, so this was my first party playlist and by gosh I did it the hard way.
Had to do it the hard way, really, as my music collection was all CDs and vinyl, so I ripped (in the case of CDs) or specifically digitised through a sound box/Audacity (in the case of vinyl) every single track I wanted for this party.
Not quite as onerous as the old cassette and reel-to-reel compilation tapes, but hardly the “quick search and click” ability I now have, as my whole collection is digitised and in the cloud on iTunes (other cloud music services are available.
Here’s the CD Box Style thing that iTunes does for you, but it only shows the first 22 tracks…
I made the first hour or more solidly Arabian style to go with the theme of the party – click here for a link to the story of the party and more besides. Then a more conventional party playlist, with the mandatory Barry White for Phillie and plenty of dance music for Janie.
There’s some seriously good stuff on there, though I say so myself. Janie and I still listen to that list reasonably often, even though I have better digital recordings of many of those tracks now.
Unusually, this was an afternoon, not an evening concert. It had a very geeky name for a very beautiful concert.
Technically speaking – geeky people took great pains to point out when we all celebrated the new millennium on 31 December 1999 – as there had not been a year zero – the real millennium must be 31 December 2000. The fact that calendars had changed, days added and all sorts was put to one side for those who wanted to celebrate the new millennium on 31 December 2000.
Janie and I just wanted to see this lovely concert and we were not disappointed. We were very keen on Florilegium and Emma Kirkby and the programme was enticing:
Antonio Lucio Vivaldi – Flute Concerto “La Notte” in G minor Op 10 No 2
Johann Sebastian Bach – Susser Trost, mein Jesus kommt from Cantata BWV 151
Arcangelo Corelli – Trio Sonata in D major Op 1 No 12
Giovanni Battista Pergolesi – Salve Regina in C minor
George Frideric Handel – Sweet Bird from L’Allegro, il Penseroso ed il Moderato
Henry Purcell – The Fatal Hour Comes On Apace
Henry Purcell – Music for a While
Henry Purcell – Suite from The Fairy Queen
Here is a nice vid of James Galway with the Ventian Soloisti under Claudio Scimoni playing La Notte:
Here’s Maria Keohane singing Susser Trost – very Christmassy it sounds to me:
Here is the start of the Pergolesi Salve Regina performed by Florilegium, with Robin Blaze, not with Emma Kirkby. I love this album, which I think I bought at that time – possibly that very night.
Here’s Emma Kirkby singing Sweet Bird, with the Academy for Ancient Music under Christopher Hogwood – then Music For A While.
Oh boy, can she sing.
I don’t think Florilegium and Emma Kirkby have ever recorded together, so you’ll just need to take our word for it that the combination for the real millennium was the real deal…
A lovely concert of fairly standard baroque fare, beautifully performed by Fabio Biondi and Europa Galante.
We heard:
Antonio Lucio Vivaldi – Concerto in G Minor for Strings RV 157
Wilhelm Friedemann Bach – Sinfonia in F major F67 Die Disonanzen
Johann Sebastian Bach – Violin Concerto in G minor (after BWV 1056)
Antonio Lucio Vivaldi – Violin Concerto in B flat major op 8 No 10 La Caccia
Antonio Lucio Vivaldi – Concerto in D minor Op 3 No 11 for two violins, cello & strings
Antonio Lucio Vivaldi – Concerto in G minor for 2 violins and cello Op 3 No 2
There’s not much video of Europa Galante from that early period of their existence – but this one of them performing the delicious Vivaldi RV558 gives a good idea of what they looked and sounded like back then.
I had been a bit of a Kinky Friedman fan for a while before I met David Seidel. Michael Mainelli had recommended/lent two or three of Kinky’s novels to me, which I had very much enjoyed. Elvis, Jesus & Coca-Cola is a title I especially remember.
Also, fascinated by the idea that a group could even be moderately successful with the name Kinky Friedman & the Texas Jewboys, I had bought a couple of his albums on CD and found myself listening to them surprisingly often. Sold American in particular pleased me – here’s a link to the album on YouTube Music. I also have a copy of Lasso From El Passo – here’s the YouTube Music link to that one.
Anyway…
…Kinky came up in conversation with David Seidel one day, as well it might have done, given our shared interest in humorous music. David said that Kinky was due to play Brighton in November and that he and Rachel planned to go, as they lived out that way – Hove, actually.
Would Janie and I like to…
…naturally, that Sunday meet up was set.
I remember that afternoon/evening fondly. We started off at David & Rachel’s house – I think it might have been the first time that Janie and I met Rachel, then went under their local guidance to the show.
I’m pretty sure we all thought the show was good fun.
I remember talking about Janie’s and my visit to the Royal Court the previous evening and agreeing that we would arrange a reciprocal visit to London for the Royal Court in the new year, which we did.
But the centrepiece of the evening was Kinky Friedman, accompanied by but one of the former Texas Jewboys, Little Jewford, who was the last of that sub-tribe.
The following previous piece by Clark Collis in The Telegraph (of all sources) provides more background than most readers will want about Kinky and that tour…with plenty even for the most diligent readers.
Article from 18 Nov 2000 The Guardian (London, Greater London, England)
Kinky’s performances at that time looked a bit like this. Trigger warning – Kinky Friedman parodied bigots and misogynists by using their style of language, some of which is very offensive:
And if you would like to learn more about Kinky through a documentary, here’s a 50+ minute documentary made about a year after that concert.
No idea what Part One was about – presumably Part Two looked the more interesting concert to us or Part One was on a date we couldn’t do.
We heard:
Josquin Desprez – Missa Sine nomine
Josquin Desprez – Memor esto
Josquin Desprez – Victimae paschali
Josquin Desprez – Tu solus qui facis mirabilia
Heinrich Isaac – Tota pulchra es
Nicholas Gombert – Magnificat IV
The Tallis Scholars under the leadership of Peter Phillips are always terrific at this sort of stuff. Among the finest exponents of Josquin, The Tallis Scholars have recorded the lot.
Here’s a recording of them singing Heinrich Issac’s Tota Pulchra Es:
While here is a short excerpt from the Gombert Magnificat.
I’m pretty sure that I bought my copy of that CD, with all the Gombert Magnificats, at that concert. That’s a recording I return to quite often, as it is so good. Here’s a link to the whole thing on YouTube Music.
Actually Julian Bream had to drop out of this concert at the last minute, so we got everyone else, but not him. We also got all the other pieces, but not the Bach Cello suite on the guitar.
I made no note about a replacement piece, so I suspect we had a shortened concert. This is what we heard:
Thomas Tallis – Loquebantur
John Taverner – Quemadmodum
William Byrd – Tribue, Domine
Fryderyk Chopin – Ballade No 1 in G minor, op 23
Johannes Brahms – Intermezzo in A major, op 118 no 2 –
Franz Liszt, Richard Wagner – Isoldens Liebestod
Leos Janacek – String Quartet no 2
My only other log note is that we bumped into James Davidson, who was (or probably by then, had been) the Director of Finance at Cancer Research Campaign, one of my earliest Z/Yen clients in the mid 1990s. He lived nearby in Notting Hill Gate and used to address me (in the street or at CRC) as “Lord Harris”, because he said my fee rates were so high. When we asked him for a testimonial to put on our spanking new Z/Yen website, he said:
expensive, but worth it…
…which we thought at the time was as good as it gets.
I suspect that this Tuesday night charity concert was expensive but worth it too.
Sadly, Julian Bream never recorded his live party piece of playing the BWV1012 Cello Suite on the guitar, but here’s a recording of a fine guitarist, Paulo Martelli, who has recorded his playing of part of it live:
So there’s the stuff we didn’t see or hear.
Here’s a recording of the Tallis Scholars singing Loquebantur, which is wonderful:
Here’s the Gesualdo Six singing Taverner’s Quemadmodum
Back to The Tallis Scholars, as there is a vid of them singing The Byrd:
PHILLIPS: Hey, are you looking at my Byrd?
There’s not a lot of Martin Roscoe to be found on-line – but here is Krystian Zimerman playing the Chopin:
I don’t suppose the Janáček string quartet much pleased us. Here’s the Amphion String Quartet doing their level best with it:
Gluttons for punishment that year – Janie and I took The Duchess to the Proms yet again.
This concert would have very much been my choice – perhaps endorsed by her ladyship. I am especially partial to Bach two violin concertos and a bit of Mozart 29. The English Chamber Orchestra were one of my favoured bands too. Maxim Vengerov too – what was not to like?
