Russ London — (Russ London) [CC BY-SA 2.5 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.5)], from Wikimedia Commons
This was the only one of the Wigmore Hall Lates concerts I booked this year and I don’t think Janie is now overly enthusiastic about me booking even one a year unless it is a “must see”.
It’s the Friday evening tiredness that gets Janie – especially after eating.
Perhaps I should have been wary of the lower case/UPPER CASE signal in the title of the concert.
Sean Shibe tries to show us the contrast and yet similarities between some beautiful, gentle 17th Century music from the Straloch and Rowallan Manuscripts and some modern electric guitar music of the most frenzied kind.
Here he is playing some of his gentle stuff – I believe the sample below is Dowland:
Although I much preferred Shibe’s acoustic guitar to his electric guitar work, I did really like one electric guitar piece: the Steve Reich Electric Counterpoint. Here is Steve Reich and Pat Metheney’s version of it:
I cannot find any YouTubes of Sean Shibe’s more ear-drum-splitting electric guitar music, with which he concluded the concert. You have been spared, dear reader. It ensured that Janie and I were wide awake for the journey home. Perhaps not in the very best of moods; but awake.
Perhaps we’re getting too old for this sort of caper.
We love the Akademie für Alte Musik Berlin. We first saw them at The Wig many years ago and have seen them a good few times since, both in London and in Berlin.
We hadn’t seen this orchestra for a while, though, so we thought we’d see if we could get hot seats for this concert. We could.
In truth I was not familiar with the Handel Op. 3 Concerti Grossi; I don’t think they get all that much of an airing, being seen as somewhat composite or compilation works.
But in the hands of fine performers, such music is sheer delight, as demonstrated by this concert.
This was our third visit to The Wig in just over a fortnight. In truth, I didn’t think we’d get our preferred seats for all of them but we did. NOT a complaint.
I was reminded of both of our other recent visits for a couple of silly reasons.
The in joke from that concert was that almost everyone involved with composing that 14th and 15th century English stuff was named John.
It occurred to me that a similar naming commonality could be applied to this baroque period, with the composers, the Hanoverian English kings and this evening’s conductor all named Georg/George.
…at which we were joined by Robin Simpson, experiencing The Wig and such music for the first time. At 91 going on 92, Robin demonstrated his remarkable observational skills when he remarked, the next time I saw him, that two recorder players were listed for The Sixteen at that Pepy’s concert, but there was no sign of either of them on the night.
I couldn’t explain their absence – perhaps some passing reader can. I guessed that there was a late decision to omit the recorders, perhaps due to the indisposition of one of the performers or perhaps, on Harry Christopher’s reflection, for artistic reasons.
Anyway, returning to the Akademie für Alte Musik Berlin concert, once again there were two recorder players listed, but, come the interval, there had been no sign of recorders.
What on earth is going on in the world of baroque recorder players, I wondered. Is there some sort of censorship going on, whereby recorder players are being prevented from expressing themselves? Are the recorder players being kidnapped, imprisoned or worse?
The answer, at least in the matter of the Akademie für Alte Musik Berlin concert, came towards the end of the evening, when Anna Fusek put down her violin and picked up a recorder, which she played (beautifully, as did every player with every instrument that night) in the Soave from Telemann’s Canonic Sonata VI. Below is someone else’s recording of that sonata.
Below is a recording of Academy of St Martin In the Fields playing Handel’s Op 3 No 1 Concerto Grosso, by which time Michael Bosch had metaphorically bonked his oboe on the head and picked up a second recorder to join Anna. Recorder mystery fully solved.
If you haven’t seen the Akademie für Alte Musik Berlin before…or even if you have…the following video should be a treat for you. They are playing Handel’s Water Music, under Georg Kallweit, who also led the orchestra at the 4 May 2019 concert.
They really are a top notch orchestra. Janie and I feel lucky and privileged to have seen them several times. This Handel/Telemann concert, while not the most exciting programme we have heard them play, was just the ticket for us at the end of a day of (similarly baroque) sporting activity.
You don’t get to hear a lot of 14th and 15th century English music, not even in the early music series at the Wigmore Hall. So this concert by The Orlando Consort looked well worth booking and indeed it was a superb concert.
The members of the consort each introduced chunks of the concert – all clearly knowledgeable fellows but wearing their learning lightly on the night.
Mark Dobell, for example, theorised that most of the English composers of the period were either named John or “anon”, when he announced a block of pieces in the second half of the concert. Even the composer known simply as Forest was probably John Forest, we were assured.
Some of the names in the composer column might be a bit confusing. Roy Henry, for example, might be King Henry V, King Henry VI or just possibly King Henry IV. Trent Codices is not the name of a modern US composer, nor a fellow who opens the bowling for New Zealand, but a collection of musical manuscripts from the Italian city, Trent. Who knew?
If you want to hear and see some 15th century music performed by The Orlando Consort, the following video from a Library of Congress concert in 2017 might be for you. But it is mostly composers from mainland Europe, not English composers of the period, so no Johns. The music starts some 4’50” in:
Whereas, if you would like to hear some extracts from of The Orlando Consort singing the sort of English polyphony that we heard at the Wigmore Hall, then this short extract vid from a CD promo might be for you. You even get some John and anon: including some John Dunstaple:
The singing was beautiful throughout the concert and we sensed that this quartet of singers take great pleasure in singing this music and with each other.
The hall wasn’t full but it was quite busy. The “nice front row couple” that I quite often see at The Wig and SJSS were there in the front row, just fancy!, a few seats along from us. We chatted only briefly this time.
Janie and I hadn’t seen The Orlando Consort before, although we had probably seen most if not all four of the individuals in other choirs and consorts. Anyway, we most certainly will enjoy seeing them perform again if/when we get the chance.
Russ London — (Russ London) [CC BY-SA 2.5 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.5)], from Wikimedia Commons
The combination of subject matter, music and the choice of performers for this concert made this a bit of a “must see” for me at the Wigmore Hall. Janie rarely graces that Hall on a Wednesday, as it is not so convenient for her after a surgery day, but on this occasion she felt motivated to join me.
I have long been fascinated by Samuel Pepys as a character and as a diarist. Indeed, I nearly named this website “Poopys Diary” rather than Ogblog, as a nod to two of my favourite diaries, those of Messrs Pepys and Pooter.
I had followed with great interest Christopher Page’s Gresham lecture series on 16th and 17th century guitar, not least the lecture on Samuel Pepys and the Guitar:
This concert seemed set to supplement that interest in the form of live performance.
Also motivated to come along was Robin Simpson, one of my nonagenarian friends from Lord’s who still plays real tennis – sometimes rather too well. When Robin mentioned, a few weeks earlier, that he is a member of the Samuel Pepys Club, I mentioned that we were going to this concert and Robin said he was unaware of it. I gave Robin the details. A day or two later I took an excited telephone call from Robin to tell me that he had got himself a ticket in the third row.
So when Janie and I got to “The Wig” just after 19:00 I was unsurprised to see Robin in the bar. We joined him and arranged some interval drinks. As Robin turned out to be a “Wigmore Hall virgin”, we acted as his guide, not least taking him into the hall through the quieter back stairs route that makes so much sense if you are sitting at the front of the hall.
I was especially keen to hear some of Pelham Humfrey’s music, as I had read about him but, to my knowledge, not previously seen any of his music performed.
It was also wonderful to see Elizabeth Kenny playing a couple of solo pieces on the five course guitar as well as her more familiar appearance with the theorbo. Elizabeth Kenny doesn’t play solos much, but I am able to find her charming 10 minute video-essay on the theorbo…
Another highlight was to hear Beauty Retire, a piece attributed to Samuel Pepys, not least because he mentions it several times in his diary, describing it as his own. In truth, Cesare Morelli seems to have had quite a lot to do with Beauty Retire and indeed all the pieces attributed to Pepys. Here and below is a recording of the song:
In truth, the whole concert felt like a highlight. The performances were uniformly excellent, as one might expect from Harry Christophers superb ensemble, The Sixteen, together with that fine actor, Michael Pennington, reading passages from Pepys.
But returning to the April 2019 concert, it was a superb evening of 17th century music and words. The audience was hugely appreciative at the end. There was a delightful encore too, but I didn’t recognise it and Harry Christophers didn’t announce it. If someone reading this can chime in with the name of the piece, I’d be grateful. I’d guess from the texture of the sound it was by Pelham Humfrey. Was it O The Sad Day? Have a listen; it’s lovely:
In any case, Janie, Robin and I all had a most enjoyable evening.
Postscript:
No, the encore was Hear My Prayer, O Lord Z15 by Henry Purcell:
But in some ways a more interesting postscript is the conversation I had with Robin Simpson at Lord’s the next time I saw him. The fellow was in his nineties, remember, and had no prior interest in early music, The Sixteen or anything other than the Pepys angle on this concert.
Robin said that he had really enjoyed himself, but then asked:
What’s a sackbut?
I described it as an early form of trombone, which he accepted as an answer, but then asked,
…did you see anyone playing the sackbut at that concert? Because the programme indicated that there would be a sacbut, but I don’t remember seeing anyone play it.
I confessed to not having taken stock of the entire orchestra that night…
…and another thing…
…Robin persevered…
…the band is called The Sixteen, but I counted and there were only fifteen of them on the stage. I reckon the sackbut didn’t show up.
I told Robin that this was quite possible and that he might well be eligible for a small refund from The Wigmore Hall if he challenged them on this point, which he thought was a very amusing idea.
An unforgettable exchange. He might have been in his nineties by then, but Robin was still exceptionally sharp and incisive.
Romantic music from the late 19th early 20th century. Not the sort of music that Daisy normally goes for, but there were several songs by Alma Mahler in this concert; as Daisy knows Marina Mahler, the granddaughter, Janie was interested enough to give it a try.
Actually, the simplicity of the solo voice and piano pleased Daisy; the whole concert was very relaxing. Even the Alban Berg, which I thought might be a bit impenetrable, wasn’t.
I really liked the Sibelius song they performed on encore – Var det en dröm? – which I don’t think I had ever heard before.
On Janie’s suggestion, we had taken a sneak peak at Massimo Dutti before we got to The Wig. I had some colourful shirts put aside for me to try on after the concert.
But once the performance had ended, we both had a bit of a hunger on, so went to the Wigmore Hall restaurant, just for some soup, to tide us over until evening. Butternut squash soup it was, very tasty.
If you look at the table behind us, I inadvertently caught the performers at lunch – Julius Drake glancing in our direction while talking to the woman to his left; Katarina Karnéus sitting to Julius Drake’s right
After soup, we legged it to Massimo Dutti where the young lady who had been serving us earlier was just about to give up on us and put the shirts away again. I bought four, which I shall always associate with this very enjoyable afternoon and concert.
I was keen to see this concert of young award-winning artistes, including two young guitarists, Jesse Flowers and Andrey Lebedev, who would be performing Elizabethan music. Actually, the Elizabethan theme included both Elizabethan periods – i.e. Tudor music and also music from the last 60 or so years.
Ian Pittaway gets really irritated when I mention Janie’s aversion to the lyrics of a certain type of Tudor secular song, which she describes as “Hey Nonie No” music.
Ian P points out, perhaps with some veracity, that there is only one Elizabethan song that actually contains the offending words, “Hey Nonie No”. Well, Ian ran out of road today, as the concert contained, amongst many other things, Thomas Morley’s It Was A Lover And His Lass, which certainly contains that line. I felt some of Janie’s finger nails digging into the back of my hand when we got to that bit.
But the Dowland songs were his usual darker stuff: In Darkness Let Me Dwell, Now O Now I Needs Must Part and Come Heavy Sleep, which Janie and I both tend to prefer both musically and lyrically.
Janie wondered why the words to these more substantial songs are not credited to their authors. I didn’t know the answer to that question but my guess is/was that they are words that had been handed down through oral tradition and that the first time they were published along with (e.g. Dowland’s) music, the authorship was lost in the mists of time. But at the time of writing I seek an authoritative view on this point.
Anyway, below is a more comprehensive list of the music played, taken from the programme.
Both of the guitarists played using modern, vertical fingers on the right hand rather than the horizontal finger technique Ian P is encouraging in me. I must say I thought the Tudor music sounded lovely on the modern guitar in the hands of both of these guitarists.
Janie and I also both enjoyed the modern-Elizabethan solo guitar pieces; Britten’s Nocturnal after John Dowland and Philip Houghton’s Ophelia…a Haunted Sonata. Let’s just say that we found the modern songs too difficult for us.
I had spotted sitting near to us one of my occasional real tennis pals from Lord’s, Michael, who I knew was an accomplished guitarist, as he had studied Benjy (my baritone ukulele/Tudor guitar) with great interest one time at Lord’s.
We chatted with Michael for a while during the interval, choosing not to bother with refreshments at that hour, before hunkering down for the short but more difficult second half of the concert.
Janie and I had never been to a Saturday lunchtime concert before and I’m not sure we’ll be returning on a Saturday lunchtime again in a hurry. It just doesn’t time well with our other regular activities, so it all felt like a bit of a rush, early in the weekend, getting to the Wig on time. Mind you, it is surprisingly easy enough to park around there on a Saturday lunchtime, we learnt…
…and we did very much enjoy the concert. Janie has decided to hedge her bets in the matter of the term “Hey Nonie No” music, by rebranding it as “Ring Around The Rosebuds” music. Very cunning.
Meanwhile I cannot find any examples of these youngsters playing Tudor music on-line, but here is a very young Jesse Flowers playing some Bach lute music transcribed for guitar, beautifully:
Highly recommended – we always enjoy Cardinall’s Musick concerts. We love their sound and we like the way that Andrew Carwood talks to the audience with a likeable mix of deep scholarship and folksy delivery.
Lots of unfamiliar pieces and even unfamiliar composers in there.
Here is a little vid of this group rehearsing and talking Byrd a few years ago:
I’m starting to get a bit fussy in my old age – perhaps because I am learning more about early music.
For example, it seemed to me that the Gregorian Chants interspersed in the Guerrero in the first half, were delivered (at least by the bass and tenor voices) in a staccato style when changing note within a word, quite contrary to the “smoothing” technique Ian Pittaway suggested to me. Patrick Craig, the countertenor, sang with that smoothing technique and it sounded cleaner to my ears. Janie thought the staccato was deliberate and fine.
I also found myself comedically irritated by a spelling mistake in the words for the Agnus Dei in the programme lyrics for that Guerrero mass…spelling that phrase Angus Dei at one point. It made me wonder whether there is a beef of God as well as a lamb of God.
But these are tiny points. The concert was a feast for the ears and just the calming experience I needed after a long day.
I particularly enjoyed the second half of the concert, with shorter pieces by Peter Philips, Philippe Verdelot, Adrian Willaert, Francisco Guerrero, Luca Marenzio, Daniel Torquet (“who he?” I hear you cry – Andrew Carwood is struggling to trace him too) and William Byrd taking the first 40-45 minutes of that second half.
There was a Christmassy encore by Hieronymus Praetorius – we were horrified to learn that, liturgically/technically speaking, we only reach the end of Christmas this weekend.
Still, we loved the concert and thoroughly recommend the broadcast to lovers of this type of music.
Clearly not. In my own defence, I thought that activity would have died down by the Saturday before Christmas. For us, work-wise, it had – but not for the shops and shoppers in neighbouring Oxford Street. Who knew?
In any case, I was very keen to see and hear this concert. Janie and I had very much enjoyed the Avital Meets Avital concert some eighteen months earlier:
So I was fascinated to see how Avi Avital got on with Baroque music and sort of glossed over the proximity to Christmas when I booked this Venice Baroque Orchestra concert.
Suffice it to say that the journey was suitably awful for Janie and me to agree, “never again at this time of year”…again. Yet, also again, the pain soon turned to pleasure when we listened to the music and watched the musicians.
Mostly Vivaldi, but we got to hear some Geminiani (of the Corelli variety) and one piece by a later Neapolitan composer, Giovanni Paisiello. Avi told a fruity anecdote about the difference between Venetians and the hyper-romantic Neapolitans.
Avi Avital also told an amusing anecdote from his early childhood about falling in love with the Winter concerto from Vivaldi’s Four Seasons, only to find out some years later that the piece he had actually fallen in love with was the Summer Concerto. Avi claims, it wasn’t until he went to Venice to work with the Venice Baroque Orchestra, that he actually experienced a violent summer thunder storm and realised why that stormy-sounding music represented summer rather than winter.
But the most interesting anecdote, which Avi told right at the end of the concert, was the fact that the concert very nearly didn’t happen at all. Most of the musicians were stranded as a result of the Gatwick Airport Drone Incident, which had required Avi’s team and the Wigmore Hall to work tirelessly rerouting musicians to enable the concert to go ahead. And we thought we’d had a stressful journey to that concert!
The orchestra are clearly seasoned exponents of this flavour of baroque music, although we felt that one or two members of the orchestra were not at their best that evening; perhaps travel or even life weary.
Avi Avital is an extraordinary, charismatic virtuoso of his instrument – his quality shines through all he plays. Yet, Janie and I both felt, some of the pieces that have been transposed from violin virtuoso pieces lose some of their musical quality through the transposition. Not for want of fine playing, but simply because the mandolin is a more limited, metal-stringed instrument. I enjoyed the change in some of the transposed pieces, but really missed the violin’s colour on others.
Below is a YouTube of a lovely, similar performance from a concert in Seoul a few week’s earlier:
But back to the here and now – this 2018 lunchtime concert. This is one of those BBC lunchtime jobbies, so we were in the extremely capable hands of Sara Mohr-Pietsch. Sara stewards these lunchtime concerts with such gentle, kind authority and efficiency, it makes one wonder whether she should be running the country. I suppose the country is a slightly tougher gig, but it could sure use some of the positive characteristics I have just described.
I have previously introduced Trio Mediæval as the Bananarama of mediaeval girl groups. Much like that 1980s pop trio, Trio Mediæval (a product of the 1990s as it happens) seems to have two stable members plus one newbie each time we see them.
The consistent pair are Anna Maria Friman (from Sweden) and Linn Andrea Fuglseth (from Norway), whereas the newbie this time was Jorunn Lovise Husan.
If Anna Maria and Linn Andrea were to pair up with a couple of Swedish blokes, I could start describing them as the Abba of mediaeval vocal music, which might be an even more marketing-friendly epithet. A thought for the girls to ponder, no doubt.
And thoughtful they are. They sing with smiles on their faces. They sing like people who absolutely know and love what they are doing. You sense that there is deep scholarship about mediaeval music in their work, yet also the willingness to adapt, experiment and make the music accessible to modern audiences.
This concert was a mixture of early English chants and motets, plus traditional folk songs from Norway and Sweden. It reads like an odd mix but actually worked very well. It has, each previous time, been a joy to attend their concerts and this one was certainly no exception.
Lulled into a blissful sense of security, Janie lulled me into a gentleman’s outfitters afterwards, helping me to spend far too much money upgrading my rather tired wardrobe. Anyone fancy some second hand jackets and trousers from the Bananarama and/or Abba era?
I can’t really explain why this concert didn’t really float our boat – it just didn’t. Janie and I were both feeling unusually tired that early evening – both short of energy for venturing out. We had been enjoying following the cricket and tennis over the weekend, the latter until reasonably late I suppose, but that wouldn’t normally put us off.
La Serenissima is an unusually large troupe for the Wigmore Hall – there as a lot of juggling and jiggling to fit everyone on the stage, so it all felt a bit busy.
The chorus missed their cue to enter right at the start of the performance, which led to more jiggling for stage space after the orchestra had prepared themselves spatially and tuned their instruments.
The concert was all music from the Imperial Court of Charles VI
I wanted to hear Caldara live as I had never heard any before. I rather liked his arias, actually. Quite beautiful.
But I knew the Conti comic opera material would not please Janie – nor did it much please me. In truth, the whole concert was a bit busy and noisy for us that night.
Come the interval, when we realised that the only substantially different piece on the schedule was a Vivaldi concerto, lovely though the RV171 undoubtedly is, we decided to make an early exit. Here is Europa Gallant’s delightful recording, with Fabio Biondi on the fiddle:
The following is La Serenissima playing Caldara, but a sinfonia, not an aria – beautiful it is, though:
…and finally here is a Caldara aria, performed by Concerto Köln under Emmanuelle Haïm with the superb Philippe Jaroussky singing the aria.
