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A lovely Sunday evening concert at The Wigmore Hall.
Handel was the focus but it included works by some lesser-known characters from that late Baroque period: Agostino Steffani, Francesco Venturini and Nicola Haym.
No, me neither, hence links provided.
The concert was part of that year’s London Handel Festival. I have saved the brochure from the web – here.
Anyway, the music was lovely and as always we found an evening of music at The Wig a most relaxing way to round off a weekend.
This was the second Reverb: Roundhouse concert we went to over a long weekend in January – we took that Monday off work.
This one didn’t wow us quite as much as the Joanna MacGregor one on the Saturday, but still we really enjoyed it.
In many ways this one was more star-studded, with Charles Hazlewood, Adrian Utley from Portishead, Charlie Jones from Goldfrapp and both of the Unthank sisters to thank.
It was an interesting idea to set The Beggar’s Opera with folk tunes and baroque music from Purcell and Handel. It succeeded in its own way, but perhaps, to my mind, Brecht/Weill have taken that work as far as it can go down the fusion line.
We were thirsty for more of this sort of thing at the Roundhouse, but have not since (writing in 2017) seen quite such inspired-looking programmes at that venue. Which is a shame, as we really like the place.
Still, this evening rounded off a long weekend well, at the Roundhouse
Say what you like about Daisy, but she does like a nice bit of castrati.
So we made a second visit to the Wigmore Hall that month (a busy start there in 2009 generally in fact) to see this lovely concert, with Daniel Taylor providing the counter-tenor equivalent of castrati singing and Rachel Brown providing beautiful flute and recorder performances.
Here’s what we saw:
We’d made a bit of a tradition of going to the new years eve concert at the Wigmore Hall and see in the new year quietly at the flat if we liked the look of the concert. We certainly liked the look of this one when we booked it, many months before.
Between us booking it and the concert date, Robert King of the eponymous King’s Consort was jailed for indecent assault. Unaccustomed as we were to such occurrences in our favourite baroque ensembles, we wondered what might happen to our concert. It turned out that Matthew Halls, the harpsichordist, took over as the director temporarily and would lead our concert.
It all felt a bit odd and of course the programme was silent on the matter of Robert King’s absence, but still it was a good concert if I recall correctly. I can’t find any reviews and the Wigmore Hall archive stubs don’t go back that far. But they are a very accomplished group of musicians and they attract some top notch soloists, so the quality of the performances wasn’t really a surprise.
Just two days after our last visit to the Lufthansa Festival of Baroque Music, we’re back to see another. Janie is a sucker for a countertenor and we are both suckers for visiting European baroque troupes we haven’t heard before.
Typically of SJSS and its artistes, the fabulously-named Fabio Bonizzoni can only sell us recordings of the Scarlatti stuff we heard performed by other people a couple of days ago.
Still, I buy that CD and some other La Risonanza stuff. We were neither disappointed by the concert nor by the CDs.
Fabio and La Risonanza rock. Guest singers Roberta Invernizzi, Emanuela Galli, Xavier Sabata also rock.
Well, they don’t rock, let’s be honest, they are baroque musicians, none of them rock. But this was a really enjoyable concert.
Here’s the stuff they played us that night:
The weekend after Easter, we visited the London Handel Festival for this tasty Baroque concert by the (then) fairly new Southbank Sinfonia.
We heard:
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:
If you click through this link instead, you can then also hear the other parts in YouTube.
I have the whole festival programme, but here is the one-pager with most of the relevant information about that particular, excellent gig.
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:
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 a link to the whole album on YouTube Music.
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…
…or, as we put it in my log:
Super.
Pauline, The Duchess of Castlebar, was partial to a youth orchestra concert at the Proms. We always used to book at least one of those for her per season.
This one also had a fair smattering of her favourite type of English composers (Elgar, Walton) plus some family favourites. The royal theme to the first half of the concert was because that very day was The Queen Mother’s 100th birthday.
Roger Norrington conducting the youngsters – what’s not to like? Here’s a link to the BBC stub for this one.
Tim Ashley in the Guardian was very much taken with this concert:
Article from 8 Aug 2000 The Guardian (London, Greater London, England)
Matthew Rye in The Telegraph was less sure about the large-scale baroque, but was otherwise seemingly very pleased with the concert:
Article from 7 Aug 2000 The Daily Telegraph (London, Greater London, England)
After the concert, we went to a new restaurant in Ealing named Parade, which Janie and I had wanted to try. I don’t think Pauline was as keen on this idea – I have a scribbled note in my diary “Pauline will try”. I think she preferred familiar food and guaranteed fawning waiters by that stage of her life.
I’ve even managed to find a contemporary (2000) review of Parade in the Standard – click here.
This amazing concert was the culmination of a most enjoyable day off in South Kensington, which started with baroque music at the V&A at lunchtime…
…and got better from there.
The “big Prom” in the evening was really quite special. Here is a link to the BBC stub.
We heard:
I’m not usually too keen on baroque in the Albert Hall, but this worked.
Matthew Rye gave it a good write up in The Telegraph:
Prom 39 1998 Rye Telegraph 18 Aug 1998, Tue The Daily Telegraph (London, Greater London, England) Newspapers.com
We agree.
This was one of several Music At Oxford events that my old firm, BDO Consulting (aka Binder Hamlyn Management Consultants) sponsored between 1989 and 1992.
The first of them included an action-packed, cartoon-like journey to Oxford – click here or below.
The 1991 edition was a far more sedate affair – at least it was for me – as the fireworks were part of the show on this occasion.
Annalisa de Mercur accompanied me on this occasion. I think we all stayed at The Moat House, as we had done in 1990 when Caroline Freeman accompanied me.
We heard:
Ah, in fact I have the running order from the programme:
It was quite a late evening affair, this one, with the second half not even starting until 9:45, so the fireworks must have been at what would now be deemed to be an antisocial hour.
I’m pretty sure we young consultants were discouraged from continuing our antisocial activities on our return to the hotel, so the boisterous singing |I remember from the first event I’m pretty sure simply didn’t happen this time around.
Drinking and chatting in the hotel bar almost certainly did happen, though.
I remember this one as a very pleasant and largely relaxing outing. I’m not sure I had any clients of my own there that night – perhaps one – and the relative popularity of the programme meant that my musical knowledge (such as it is) was little called-upon.
Is this the one with chandeliers in the marquee and a view across the lake? If so, I remember it. Clearly, the chandeliers made more of an impression than either the music or the fireworks! Chandeliers in marquees have become pretty commonplace now, but at the time I had never seen anything like it!
Top recall, Annalisa, top recall.
