Tag: Wigmore Hall

L’écrit du Cri, Ensemble Clément Janequin, Wigmore Hall, 24 July 2010

I’m pretty sure we’d seen Ensemble Clément Janequin before and liked them so much we fancied another go for this concert of secular Renaissance music and modern music in that “Renaissance Cri” style.  They were promoting their album L’écrit du Cri at that time; the concert was basically a performance of the album.

Here is a link for the album L’écrit du Cri: it includes several cris by modern composers as well as Renaissance pieces.

Here is a vid recording of the Ensemble singing Janequin’s hit cri, Les Cris de Paris:

This is not easy listening Renaissance (nor easy listening modern) music. I recall Janie being a little disappointed, awarding a low relaxation score despite the high fascination score and very high “talent” score for this ensemble, always excellent.

But I’m sticking to booking mostly sacred music from this Renaissance period (early 16th century) for Janie from now on. Ensemble Clément Janequin do plenty of that too.

Il Siglo D’Oro, The Cardinall’s Musick, Wigmore Hall, 12 July 2010

Wigmore Hall on-line rubric doesn’t go back quite this far, but I have lifted the following text, which is also in the programme, from www.concert-diary.com – click here:

Il siglo d’oro – the Golden Age – was the name that Spaniards gave to their great flowering of music in the 16th century. Spain brought forth some of the finest writers of the age and the Virgin Mary was a popular subject with all of them. Francisco Guerrero was known as el cantor de Maria. Much of his highly characterful music was dedicated to the Virgin, from well-crafted four-part pieces to the more splendid double-choir numbers.

This fascinating exploration of music from 16th-century Spain sets Guerrero alongside his contemporaries and colleagues Morales, Esquivel, Vivanco, Alonso Lobo and the brightest star of all, Tomas Luis da Victoria.

The idea of this concert sounded great to me but not so great to Janie (or at least not for a Monday night in those days), so I made a rare trip to the Wig on my own that Monday night.

I was glad I did. This was a lovely concert.

Here is the programme:

The Cardinall’s Musick have preserved a review of the concert – click here.

 

Pergolesi And Vivaldi, Florilegium, Wigmore Hall, 23 May 2010

A simply delightful concert at the Wigmore Hall. Mostly Pergolesi with a bit of Vivaldi thrown in for good measure.

Janie is especially partial to the Pergolesi Stabat Mater. His less well-known Salve Regina and the instrumental pieces were beautiful. In fact the whole concert was utter tonic for our ears.

Florilegium always look as though they enjoy playing together…for all we know they might be masters of deception on stage and like a nest of vipers in the green room…but we suspect that they are as they seem – a serene, coherent unit.

They were promoting their Pergolesi CD at that time and nearly coaxed me into buying yet another disc, but I do already have a couple of complete Pergolesi Stabat Mater recordings.

Here is a very interesting promotional sample from YouTube, with some of the performers explaining the music:

Oh what the heck, that Pergolesi album of theirs is only £8 as an MP3 download and those other Pergolesi pieces were stunningly beautiful. As I write in November 2017, down it all comes like magic through the ether to my computer!

Handel’s 1710: Venice – Hanover – London, London Handel Orchestra, Wigmore Hall, 28 March 2010

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.

L’Invitation Au Voyage – Exploring The Music Of France And Spain, Nash Ensemble & Juan Martín, Wigmore Hall, 6 March 2010

I think this might have been the first time we saw Juan Martín team up with The Nash Ensemble at the Wigmore Hall; something they do irregularly but resolutely.

Not all the sort of music we normally seek out – Janie prefers earlier stuff, but she is partial to a bit of flamenco guitar and Juan Martín sure provides that.

I am especially partial to a bit of De Falla and there was plenty of that on show.

This is a few months ahead of the Wigmore Hall’s on-line archive resource starting, but I have found an on-line review – Jim Pritchard for musicweb-international.com – click here- that sums up the concert very well.

Goodness knows what we ate afterwards. My guess – shawarmas.

Julia Fischer Playing Bach’s Sonatas and Partitas, Wigmore Hall, 13 & 14 February 2010

Janie and I spent two consecutive evenings at The Wig, where we enjoyed the enchanting sound of Julia Fischer playing:

  • Bach’s three violin sonatas on the Saturday;
  • Bach’s three violin partitas on the Sunday.

The music is, of course, simply divine. I’m no expert, but Julia’s interpretation is full of texture and flavour to my ears.

No mucking about, I bought the CD set there and then – I still listen to them quite often.

The concerts had this superb review in the Guardian – deservedly so.

Truly memorable evenings and a very special way to spend Valentine’s Night too.

Fragments – A Worcester Ladymass, Trio Mediæval, Wigmore Hall, 13 December 2009

Trio Mediæval by Tore Sætre, CC BY-SA 4.0

Trio Mediæval, the Bananarama of high quality mediaeval singing, bowled us over with this concert in late 2009. Three Scandanavian sopranos who sing beautifully and look like they are having fun doing so.

This is what we saw:

I have managed to find, on YouTube, a fragment of Trio Mediæval singing some of these fragments, albeit singing them somewhere other than the Wigmore Hall.

It should give you an idea of what we heard:

After the concert I bought their album, Words Of The Angels – we listen to it quite often it is so lovely.

Janie and I were not yet daunted by the dread of going up west that close to Christmas (to be fair, Sunday evening is probably as tolerable as it gets), so we booked this concert for mid December and I’m so glad we did.

A very memorable and enjoyable evening; we also enjoyed a Monday off  work the next day.

Brad Mehldau Trio, Wigmore Hall, 16 October 2009

We had actively encouraged “The Wig” to do more jazz, so booked up a couple of Brad Mehldau’s concerts when he was first appointed jazz curator.

We went to the first of these, Brad playing solo, back in April – click here.

We rather liked it and eagerly awaited the second concert, which was to be a trio with bass and drums, which we thought would be more to our taste.

It was.

Why we subsequently booked to see Brad solo again for stressy pre Christmas 2015, during which we vaguely remembered feeling that we anyway preferred seeing him with a group rather than solo, is a bit of a mystery to me – must have been the Bach link. My bad, as the young folk say.

Anyway, the Trio concert from 16 October 2009 is all explained in the sheet below.

This was one of two gigs that week at The Wig. The other gig was with the saxophonist Joshua Redman, whom we have subsequently seen at the Wigmore Hall. John Fordham in the Guardian gave both very good reviews – here.

 

Jerusalem Quartet & Lawrence Power, Wigmore Hall, 3 October 2009

This concert did more for me than it did for Daisy.

I thought she might like classical music, of the Mozart and Mendelssohn kind, in the form of string quartets rather than the symphonies and orchestral pieces she claims not to like.

Wrong.

She still found them twiddly and not to her taste really.

Not that she minded; an evening at the Wigmore Hall would struggle to be unpleasant.

This is exactly what we saw:

Take my word for it; they were very good.

Baroque In High Definition, Academy of Ancient Music, Wigmore Hall 25 September 2009

The conceit of this tasty concert was to play baroque music that has been used in movies in the last 25 years.

It would have made little difference to us had we remained ignorant of the movie link, but possibly the conceit helped to pull in an audience, not that the Academy of Ancient Music needs much help at the Wigmore Hall on a Friday evening. Perhaps it helped the night before in Cambridge.

Richard Egarr has a very pleasant manner, as do the named soloists for this gig.

This is what we heard:

Just what the doctor ordered after a hard week’s work. Or under any circumstances really.