As
the heat wave reminds us daily, summer is upon us. And that means only
one thing if you're a classical music lover based in London: the start
of the BBC Proms. The festival always offers the most diverse range of
art music available anywhere in the world, and this year's event is no
exception: we have a complete Mendelssohn cycle, a celebration of the
MGM musicals, a concert commemorating the birthday of Cambridge
University, Bernard Haitink's 80th birthday concert and Gilbert &
Sullivan are just a selection of the programmes on offer. And as ever,
the BBC is breaking down the social barriers by making the promenade
area - from where the best view can be had - the cheapest place from
which to witness the performances. There's something for everyone, so
take a look at the BBC's Proms home page.
But let's not forget the rest of the country. Although the Edinburgh Festival doesn't start until next month, this is a good time to snap up the few remaining tickets for a vast range of events, including the Hamburg and Stuttgart Opera companies. Other artists appearing include Bryn Terfel, Charles Mackerras and Joyce DiDonato, and further information can be had here.
11,000 people turned up in Trafalgar Square the other day for the Royal Opera's big-screen broadcast of La traviata, and the final screening of the season is not to be missed, either: Juan Diego Florez, Joyce DiDonato, Alessandro Corbelli and Ferruccio Furlanetto are amongst the line-up for a thrilling revival, conducted by Antonio Pappano. The performance on 15 July will be broadcast to screens around the UK; complete details are here. The other noteworthy event taking place at the Royal Opera House in the next month is the annual Young Artists concert on 19 July. This year's programme contains excerpts from Don Giovanni, Werther and Manon.
If it's lighter fare for the summer you're looking for, then perhaps Rodgers and Hammerstein's Oklahoma!, currently playing at the Chichester Festival in a stark and arresting new production by John Doyle, is for you; there's also the Guildhall School's production of Damn Yankees and a rare production of Irving Berlin's Call Me Madam at the Gatehouse. And though the ROH and ENO seasons are coming to a close, Opera Holland Park continues well into August with Un ballo in maschera, Katya Kabanova and La boheme.
By Dominic McHugh, Editor
Stephen Graham, Concerts
Editor
The two major events for me this month have to
be the UK premiere of Kaija Saariaho's incredible and
magical opera L'amour de loin at ENO, and the start of the
BBC Proms. L'amour, now in its seventh production only nine
years after its premiere, is truly an astonishing piece of theatre
about an elusive, turned-inward love that has echoes of Tristan,
Pelleas, Saint François d'Assise, and Liza
Lim's The Navigator, and a sensuousness all of its own. In a
stunning new production directed by Cirque du Soleil's Danielle
Finzi Pasca, with Edward Gardner on
conducting duties and with all seats on offer for only £20 each
for each of the four performances, you'd be mad to miss it!
Obviously there's something for everyone at the Proms, but amongst my highlights this month would have to be Bernard Haitink and the LSO doing Mahler 9 on July 20, and then Purcell's The Fairy Queen from the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment, William Christie, and a stunning cast of soloists the next day. Orchestre National de Lyon's visit on 24 July should be interesting too.
There's plenty going on elsewhere too. Gavin Bryars
and his ensemble come to the Purcell Room on 4 July for what looks like
it will be a fascinating evening of music inspired by Shakespeare. Harrison
Birtwistle's two new music theatre pieces are on over two
nights at the Queen Elizabeth Hall on 6 and 7 July. Boban
Markovic and Goran Bregovic visit the
Barbican (on 11 and 30 July respectively), whilst Clint Mansell
at Union Chapel on 20 July and Marshall Allen at Cafe
Oto on 6 July should also be great gigs.
Photo: Kaija Saariaho. Credits: Maarit Kytöharju.
Marina Romani, News Editor
Music is one of the central issues of a
significant gathering in July. Celebrating its 800 years, the
University of Cambridge is the venue for a major international
conference that aims to stimulate responses to a recurrent and always
insidious topic: the future of the humanities. More specifically, this
gathering will address new paradigms and implications of humanistic
disciplines in a comparative context. The conference, suggestively
titled 'Changing the
Humanities/the Humanities Changing', will take place at the
Cambridge Centre for Research in the Arts, Social Sciences and
Humanities (CRASSH) from 16 to 18 July, and it will bring together
experts from social sciences, politics, and from more strictly artistic
disciplines. Keynote speakers include Homi K. Baba
(Harvard), President of the British Academy Onora O'Neill
and Sir Martin Rees, President of the Royal Society.
This conference has been announced with a trailer on the CRASSH website and it features music as one of the many central themes around which the symposium will revolve. Among the music specialists leading discussions and presenting papers, there will be Roger Parker (King's College London), Ben Walton (Cambridge) and Georgina Born (Cambridge). Deadline for registration is Wednesday 8 July.
Considering the current economic climate and the modernisation that artistic disciplines are constantly undertaking, this gathering of critical thinkers from different fields is an opportunity to reflect on the significance of the humanities from a historically and disciplinary comparative perspective.
Despite the 2008-09 season approaching its end, the Royal Opera
still seems to promise exciting performances in July. After the success
of his recital
with Hampson, DiDonato, Calleja, Vassilev, and a terrific Traviata,
Music Director Antonio Pappano will conduct Il barbiere di
Siviglia, sharing the baton with Paul Wynne
Griffiths. The
production, directed by Patrice Caurier and Moshe Leiser, is a revival
from the original 2005 staging. Joyce DiDonato
will be Rosina, a role which she
created in the original production. An exceptional cast will join her,
featuring Juan Diego Flórez and Colin
Lee (singing the role of Count Almaviva respectively
on 4, 7, 10, 15 July and on 13 and 18 July), Joyce DiDonato (Rosina), Alessandro
Corbelli (Doctor Bartolo), Ferruccio
Furlanetto (Don Basilio). After the withdrawal
of Simon Keenlyside from this Barbiere, the title role will
be interpreted by Italian baritone Pietro Spagnoli. The first night is
on 4 July and there will be six performances until the 18th.
Photo: Joyce DiDonato. Credits: Terrence McCarthy.
Agnes Kory, Co-founder
I was looking forward to a concert, scheduled to be given
by the splendid Keller Quartet on 1 July at the
Wigmore Hall. Sadly, the event has been cancelled and no replacement
concert is planned. Nevertheless, hopefully the Kellers will return to
London before long.
I had a wonderful time on my last visit to Opera Holland Park and I cannot think of a nicer venue during hot summer months. So I am looking forward to Orpheus in the Underworld. Offenbach's entertaining satire, this time performed in English, could be a wonderful antidote to the gloom and doom of the recession.
My main focus will be on the splendid CC21 (also known as Choir of the 21st Century) that, under the direction of their excellent conductor Howard Williams, will perform an almost entirely English programme which will include songs and instrumental pieces about the summer. Indeed, the title of their concert is 'Music for a Summer's Evening' and it will take place at 8pm on Saturday 11 July in the Groversnor Chapel (South Audley Street, London). The programme will include a world premier by Edward Cowie (b.1943) and works by Robert Walker (b.1946), Herbert Howells (1892-1983), Benjamin Britten (1913-1976), Frederick Delius (1862-1934), Edgar Bainton (1880-1956), Gustav Holst (1874-1934) and Carlos Salzedo (1885-1961). Anybody wanting to hear English music performed with love, care and scholarly expertise should rush to this concert. I will be there.
Ed Breen
July is always a rich time for early music
thanks to the York Early Music Festival which this
year starts on the 10th.
A few events in York have caught my attention already. Regular readers will not be surprised to hear that I am looking forward to the Tallis Scholars opening concert on 10 July in York Minster. Their programme features works by Cornysh and White. The next day John Butt (author of Playing with History and director of the Dunedin Consort) directs a workshop on Bach Cantatas and Handel Chandos Anthems. And on Sunday 12, for those who cannot travel to York, Catherine Bott will broadcast Radio 3's Early Music Show live from the National Centre for Early Music with guests including The Clerks and Fabio Bonizzoni.
Other concerts include The Clerks with a late-night concert called 'In Memoria'; Stile Antico (Monday 13) with a programme of swansongs by Renaissance masters; and Evelyn Tubb with the Rose Consort of Viols (Wednesday 15). On Saturday 18 there is a closing consort by the Academy of Ancient Music (Dir. Pavlo Beznosiuk) of works by Haydn.
But before this festival starts, there is the National
Early Music Association Conference: Singing Music from
1500 to 1900 (from 7 to 10 July at the University of York).
Their website promises that 'The conference will appeal to professional
and amateur singers (whether soloists or ensemble/choral), academics,
conductors, and all who are interested in how music might have sounded
before 1900'.
Photo: Tallis Scholars. Credits: Richard Haughton.
Liam Cagney
Birmingham's Supersonic Festival
brings an array of underground acts together from 24 to 26 July. Billed
as a festival 'for adventurous audiences' (a challenge as much as a
promise), it features performances from experimental electronic, metal
and noise acts, as well as from artists less easily assigned a genre.
Some of those acts performing this year are Thor's Hammer,
Venetian Snares, Zu, and the Corrupted
– a legendary Japanese avant-metal band (their songs sometimes last an
hour) who are rare to these shores. It promises to be loud, intense and
strange, so if your taste is located left of centre you could do worse
than to head along.
Photo: Venetian Snares.
Mike Reynolds
It's all opera for me in July, with The
Fairy Queen and Falstaff at Glyndebourne, Cunning
Little Vixen and Eliogabalo
(again!) at Grange Park and Eugene Onegin at Iford. I cannot
wait to see Glyndebourne's full staging of The Fairy Queen,
having adored the music since I first heard it semi-staged some years
ago at Snape Maltings.
Exposure to Purcell's other great semi-opera at Snape, King
Arthur, only whetted my appetite to see the full thing. So with William
Christie at the helm, here goes! And everything I have
heard so far of Christopher Purves performance as Falstaff
fills me with great anticipation. Reports on all in due course.
Photo: William Christie.
John Woods
Having written a review of Rusalka
at the Met starring Renée Fleming in March of this
year in which I was rather evangelical about the piece, it would be
wrong of me not to draw your attention to the new production of this
opera which opens at Glyndebourne on 5 July. The celebrated 'Song to
the moon' is by no means an isolated incident of inspiration within
this wonderful work, and one can only hope that, thanks to the efforts
of enterprising houses like Glyndebourne, the opera may yet gain a
place in the standard repertoire of the UK's other opera companies.
Glyndebourne has secured the services of Jiri Belohlavek
in the pit, who led the Met performances with an ideal combination of
romantic sweep and perfectionist attention to detail, allowing the
score's many diverse qualities to shine whilst always providing
sympathetic support to his singers. Ana María
Martínez, whose reputation as one of her generation's
leading lyric sopranos becomes stronger with each new assignment she
tackles, sings the title role. As the witch, leading international
dramatic mezzo-soprano Larissa Diadkova is sure to
give a high quality, imposing role assumption, and the usual strength
in depth can be relied upon in Glyndebourne's casting of the remaining
roles.
Photo: Ana María Martínez. Credits: Tom Spechtt.
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