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.
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.
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:
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:
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.