Tag: Henry Purcell

Belibers & Telemaniacs & All Sorts, Concentus Musicus Wien, Wigmore Hall, 6 February 2020

I’d long wanted to see Concentus Musicus Wien. I also see so little Telemann listed these days and am a sucker for his stuff. So this concert caught my eye.

Here is the Wigmore Hall material on the concert.

Janie really didn’t fancy this one on a Thursday evening, so I booked just the one ticket for myself.

Earlier in the evening, I went to LSE to help the LSE100 team celebrate their 10th birthday. I made a small contribution to the course in 2018, which, it seems, qualified me to join the party. I stuck to water at the LSE and indeed stayed dry at The Wigmore Hall too.

Word reached me that Dominic (my real tennis doubles partner) and his wife Pamela would be there that evening. Double-coincidence, because I learnt that i would be partnering Domnic again in a one-off game the next day.

Anyway, the music.

First up was some Biber. Are Heinrich Biber fans known as Belibers? They should be.

I can’t find a decent Concentus Biber on line, but the following performance of Battalia will give you a decent idea:

Next up was the Telemann, which I thought super special, not least the oboe and trumpet parts. Telemann fans are known as Telemaniacs in some circles, that i know for sure.

Again, you’ll need to make do with a different orchestra but this recording will give you a reasonable feel for it:

Then the interval, during which time Dominic, Pamela, a few of their other friends and I had a natter.

Then on to Vivaldi. Autumn. Nicely done.

Below is Julia Fischer playing it. Different style to Erich Höbarth, who led on the evening, but just differently lovely.

Finally, a bit more of a rarity, Purcell’s complete King Arthur Suite. Very good, it was. I only recognised odd snippets of it; for sure I hadn’t heard it in its entirety before.

To complete an evening of coincidences, I ran into my friend John from the health club as I was leaving the concert hall, so we travelled home together.

John is not so familiar with early music and original instruments – he said he found it hard at first to adjust his ear to the period instruments. It made me realise how much i have become accustomed to them – I don’t even think about the sound being “different” any more; it’s pretty much the way I expect to hear music of that period.

A shame the Wiggy wasn’t full – perhaps only 2/3rds or 3/4s full.

Super concert for those of us who attended.

The Italian Connection: Sounds Baroque, St John’s Smith Square, 19 January 2018

I sort of have to drag Janie to SJSS these days, especially in the winter. There is a rather cold, austere feel to the place; increasingly so. The main hall looks tired and well overdue for a refurb or even the major overhaul that has been oft muted for years.

But I still love the place. This programme looked very interesting as it comprised performers we’d not seen before and several composers & works that would similarly be new to us. So Janie relented for once, recalling that she loves the crypt bar and heck, it was Friday evening after all.

Here is a link to the full programme of works for the evening.

The concert had not sold well, sadly, which does add to the coldness of the SJSS atmosphere. We sat at the front to get a good look.

I was especially keen to see the advertised “archlute, theorbo and guitar”, having always thought that the theorbo and the archlute were the same thing.

Archlute, Theorbo and Guitar?

I went home none the wiser, as I am pretty sure we only saw two such instruments and it is quite hard to switch theorbo-type instruments unnoticed, I imagine. Perhaps the rubric was supposed to read “archlute (theorbo) and guitar”.

I’m obsessing.

The soprano, Anna Dennis, is clearly a superb singer and performed wonderfully well, although we sensed that she was not feeling 100% well. What a trooper.

Henrik Persson blessed us with fine playing on a seven string bass viol, which always feels like a bit of a “buy six get one free” bonus when we see one of those. Perhaps that makes up for the lack of the third plucky-strummy instrument.

Julian Perkins was consistently excellent on the harpsichord.

We both felt that James Akers was more natural on the theorbo than on the baroque guitar. Perhaps we are becoming more fussy as I learn the basics of that instrument, but it just looked and sounded like more of an effort for Akers when he played the guitar. Challenging pieces, I suspect.

Anna Dennis and Purcell were the stars of the show; the rest all felt somewhat secondary. But we enjoyed the whole evening and lamented the fact that so few people had seen such truly top notch Baroque singing in that fitting, albeit now genteely distressed, setting.

Richard Egarr, Wigmore Hall Lunchtime Concert, 9 January 2017

From the ridiculous to the sublime. A delightful concert of early music. Richard Egarr on the harpsichord with English music spanning the late 16th to late 17th century; Byrd, Purcell and Blow.

After our ill-fated Friday evening of avant-garde jazz, from a doyen of the free (or in this case BOGOF – buy one get one free) jazz movement – click here – the Richard Egarr was to be just the ticket.

There was one small problem though; a tube strike. In the interests of practicality and sanity, I put my principled doubts about Uber to one side, down-loaded the app and organised transport through Uber.  The transport only cost a little more than the concert tickets that way.

But we got there and I’m so glad we went.

Once we were at the Wigmore Hall, the music transported us to a happy place without any difficulty.

This was the first Radio 3 Lunchtime concert of the year at the Wigmore Hall. Sara Mohr-Pietsch came on the stage to explain how it works to the live audience and started her little spiel by saying, “hello and good afternoon to both of you”, seeming to address the remark to me and Daisy in the front row.

Perhaps she realised what an effort we in particular had made to get from W3 to W1 on a strike day. Seriously, the hall was pretty much full, so I suppose Sara meant to say “all of you”. Her spiel got better after that.

The audience doesn’t get to hear her radio introductions, so I struggled to work out exactly which piece was which and exactly when Richard Egarr’s short breaks were taking place, until I listened again again on iPlayer.

Which reminds me to tell you, if you get to this Ogblog article quickly enough, you don’t have to take our word for it how lovely this concert sounded.

It is to be rebroadcast on BBC Radio 3 on 15 January 2017 at 13:00, or you can catch it on the iPlayer radio thingie – for another three or four weeks – click here or below. At the very least you should be able to get more information about the concert on these links even if you miss the 30 day licence window to listen in.

 

 

 

A Gresham Society Visit To See The Gresham Music Collection And Other Treasures, The Guildhall Library, 29 November 2016

Henry Purcell: The Gresham Autograph. Source: http://www.omifacsimiles.com/brochures/images/purcell_1.jpg 

Awesome.

I don’t use that word in the youthful, throw-away sense that I have been known to lampoon elsewhere – click here for an example.

I mean that some of the items I saw this evening really did inspire awe. That rare, tingling feeling at the back of my neck when seeing an especially stunning drama unfolding in an unexpected way, or hearing a wonderful piece of music, or seeing a rare, thought-provoking and/or beautiful artefact.

This was a very interesting Gresham Society outing, albeit so close to Gresham home turf that the word “outing” seems barely appropriate. The Guildhall is just off Gresham Street and around the corner from the old Gresham College; perhaps an “innings” rather than an outing for the Gresham Society.

Anyway, Dr Peter Ross provided a fascinating introduction, explaining the story of the Guildhall Library and its historical collections, of which the Gresham Music Collection is but one. Here is a link to Dr Ross’s Gresham lecture on the subject; more generally detailed but less oriented towards the Gresham Collection than the talk he gave us. Irene, one of our Gresham Society members, was a librarian at the Guildhall Library as a youngster, so she could fill in some details too.

I hadn’t realised the diversity of subject matter contained in the collection. I knew to expect music books and I knew that the Guildhall Collection generally had a massive collection of books about London; my cousin Sidney would have been in his element for those. But also many books on food in the Gresham Collection and fascinating books about travel, inventions and mechanical devices.

After the illustrated talk, Peter then showed us around the many artefacts he had lovingly laid out around the library for us to glance at and (in the case of more robust/less rare items) examine.

Among the most interesting to me, a rare manuscript of Spem In Alium by Thomas Tallis, a favourite piece of mine. The rarity of this manuscript is two-fold. Firstly, it is documented as a “grandchild” of an original autograph – those are extremely rare for words of such antiquity and especially so for this work. Secondly, it contains a forty-first part for this forty-part piece.

Several of us wondered how the extra Spem part might have come about. I imagined a much simplified part, to allow a keen but profoundly untalented enthusiast like me to join in the singing. But that is mere conjecture for our “post-factual” era. Perhaps a truthful answer lies in the learned notes (mentioning the Gresham) contained in the version of the score shown in this link – click here.

One very beautiful travel book, Victorian era I should imagine, included a description and illustration of musicians in Aleppo. My slightly cack-handed smart phone image below does not do justice to the picture.

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Coincidentally, Janie and I are going to see Basel Rajoub (a musician from Aleppo) together with his Soriana Project and Wu Man, this Friday at the Wigmore Hall – (Ogblog item on that concert to follow shortly), so this exhibit seemed especially poignant to me that day.

(Janie and I think about Aleppo a lot at the moment. Not many people we know had, like us, the good fortune to visit that beautiful city some years ago – we look at our photos from Aleppo often these days – click here.)

But the highlight of the artefacts was the Purcell Autograph from the Gresham Music Collection. That was the item that really made the hairs on the back of my neck stand up.

Source: http://www.omifacsimiles.com/brochures/images/purcell_1.jpg
Source: http://www.omifacsimiles.com/brochures/images/purcell_1.jpg

In order to ensure we were in the right mood for the Purcell Autograph, Peter Ross put on some suitable Purcell Music. I didn’t realise until later that he really was playing the music from the autograph we were observing; the contents of the autograph were recorded some years ago and the recording is still available as a CD or download. I have downloaded the album and am listening to it with great pleasure as I write. It can be obtained through Amazon – click here...and other places too no doubt.

Libations and nibbles were available in the lecture room, at a safe distance from the precious books. The Gresham Society people are always delightful company. I believe that the merriment continued afterwards in a nearby watering hole; I needed to retreat quite early having irritatingly accepted an early morning speaking engagement in Southampton the next day. Still, this evening at the Guildhall Library will live long and happily in my memory.

Evening and Morning, Vox Luminis, Wigmore Hall, 25 October 2015

This Sunday evening concert was part of the Henry Purcell season at the Wigmore Hall. Vox Luminis, under the direction of Lionel Meunier, treated us to 17th century English choral works.

Here is the Wigmore Hall stub for the concert, which tells you everything you might possibly want to know about the artists and the works performed.

We had arranged to take the next day off and this concert was just what the doctor ordered for us at the end of a busy weekend.

Don’t take our word for it; David Truslove of bachtrack.com gave the concert a rave review – here.

I was fascinated by these instruments, so Janie took a picture of them during the interval:

Below is an example of Vox Luminis performing one of the John Blow pieces we heard:

Below is a full concert video of a similar Vox Luminis concert at an early music festival from a few week’s earlier – no Blow, but Purcell and Morley:

Lovely stuff.

Music for a While, L’ Arpeggiata, Wigmore Hall, 10 July 2014

I could quickly and easily run out of adjectives to describe this concert…it was that good.

Our reluctance to go to Thursday evening concerts at that time (we were both still working full pelt) was mitigated by the promise of baroque music with a jazzy feel.

Also, we were both keen to see Philippe Jaroussky; he had impressed us so much on previous sightings/hearings.

Here is a link to the concert programme for the night.

It was mostly Purcell music from L’Arpeggiata’s then latest album Music For A While.

We ran into Eric Rhode that night, who (like some of the critics,, it turned out) wasn’t so keen on Music For A While. But Eric told us that L’Arpeggiata’s album Los Pajaros Perdidos was exceptional, so I procured both albums…

…and was so pleased with them that I ended up pretty much buying L’Arpeggiata’s back catalogue, all of which sounds delightful and we still listen to those albums a lot – especially Los Pajaros Perdidos, which, unlike the album Music For A While, is all about Philippe Jaroussky, who was on top form for that album.

Here is a short teaser vid which gives you a reasonable idea of the Music For A While album:

As for that concert in July 2014, it truly was a special evening at the Wigmore Hall for me and Janie.

The Beggar’s Opera: Reborn, Reverb: Roundhouse, 25 January 2010

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

Fretwork & Clare Wilkinson, Wigmore Hall, 1 February 2009

Just a couple of weekends after our previous visit, another early music outing to the Wigmore Hall.

Rather a different feel, this one, as the conceit of the concert was to mix early music with some contemporary compositions influenced by those earlier periods.

Central to the concert was Purcell, whose 350th birthday was that year and who therefore featured a lot in 2009 concert programmes.

Here is the full listing for this 1 February gig:

In truth, Janie and I got a lot more out of the early music than the contemporary stuff, although I always enjoy Arvo Pärt more than I expect and the Shostakovich was interesting too.

But Purcell was the star of the show, as was Clare Wilkinson, who specialises in singing this Renaissance and Baroque stuff; often with Fretwork.

Lovely stuff, it was, on a Sunday night.