Sevdah at the Barbican

Next week (1 June) the Bosnian sevdah singer Amira is playing the Barbican, part of a celebration of Gypsy (and Gypsy-influenced) music and film. She's also at the Royal Northern College of Music in Manchester the next day. Good piece about her in today's Guardian:

All who survive a war remain scarred, each in their own way. For Amira, who was studying economics when Yugoslavia brutally disintegrated, war pushed her into song. And not just any song, but sevdah, the ancient lyric ballad of Bosnia. Sevdah - the word is Turkish and suggests desire, yearning, thwarted love - has existed for hundreds of years in this region, often composed of just a voice and a saz (a Turkish lute). Yet it took Bosnia's suffering to focus the world's attention on this small nation's music. Sevdah bears comparison to Portuguese fado and Spanish flamenco; all three are vocal arts rooted in Arabic courtly love songs from a millennium ago. Amira, who comes to the UK for the first time this week and whose debut album, Rosa, is a recording of startling beauty, looks set to do for sevdah what rising Portuguese star Mariza has done for fado.

I am going to Bosnia on 7 June and will hopefully be learning much more about sevdah, the war and musical healing.

Cheers!

Big cheers for shoutout to Stephen Pollard who, along with the tremendous Clive Davis, has now had his blog taken under the fold of The Spectator. His opinion is that here we do what we say on the tin. And he's got an eye for La bloggerissima Opera Chic too.

The Red Shoes - a.k.a. Cosi fan tutte

Phew - I have something in common with Dorabella, even if I can't sing. Opening night of Cosi fan tutte chez Glyndebourne yesterday; there's Fiordiligi in blue and Dorabella in red and cream with marvellous red suede shoes, and as coincidence would have it I'd donned my favourite scarlet tango heels for the occasion. I hope this serendipitous little incident helped to dispel the dazzlement of the delectable Rinat Shaham upon my starry-eyed resident fiddler, who had a rare night in the auditorium (some of the violins are doing job-shares in Cosi, as it requires too few of them) and was keen to see the reincarnation of his favourite Carmen.

Besides the shoes, Cosi is a treat: a period production by Nicholas Hytner with a light touch and some superb moments - notably that the men in their disguises get nowhere wooing their own fiancees, but when they swap, the sparks begin to fly, rather to their dismay. And soon after giving the girls the advice to 'have your cake and eat it', Despina brings in tea with a real cake - chocolate. Dorabella tucks in. Fiordiligi stares at it in horror, as if one mouthful might kill her...

The cast was largely unfamiliar to me (apart from Rini); particularly striking was the powerful tenor of Pavol Breslik as Ferrando and the characterful Despina of Ainhoa Garmendia. Rachel Harnisch as Fiordiligi hadn't been feeling well for the dress rehearsal and had marked the role, with her understudy singing; it could be that yesterday she wasn't quite at full strength. I hope to hear her again later in the season.

Best of all, though, was the orchestra. Our own LPO - conducted by the newest and youngest of all the baby Rattles on the circuit. Robin Ticciati has recently been appointed music director of Glyndebourne On Tour; he has a post in Gavle, Sweden, as well; and he looks all of 12 years old, though is around 25, with copious Simonesque curls. A few seconds into the overture, I found myself sitting forward thinking 'heck...?!' This was truly musical conducting; airy, smooth, stylish. Joined-up thinking and moving was taking place on that podium. Ticciati looks like a dancer, phrases like a singer and balances his ingredients like a masterchef. In terms of preparation and polish with cast and chorus, he maybe has some way to go - but I reckon his destination includes some interesting, exceedingly high-up places.

A video of the production is available, filmed last year with Ivan Fischer conducting the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment.

At some point, I'll find a knife to stick in the notion that the plummiest of vibrating singers (and this lot are plummy) must be accompanied in Mozart by that lean-mean-string-thing, that silly period-practice-equals-no-vibrato tokenism... But for now, Dorabella must have left the knife in her cake; and the sun shone. It was a great evening.

Vengerov and the healing power of music

Speaking of organisations that enable music to change lives, Maxim Vengerov has just given a recital in a neurological hospital in Putney, celebrating the 30th anniversary of Live Music Now. Richard Morrison went along to report for The Times. Vengerov tells him, among other things, the following:

“This kind of work is my first passion. This is where I think music belongs. And it has a wonderful effect on me, too, not just on these people here. You see, when you talk to severely brain-damaged people, they may not understand what you are saying. But once you start playing music, you are speaking to their subconscious. And what happens is that the effect of that bounces back. So I, as a musician, get in touch with my own subconscious. It goes in both directions, this therapy.”

Read the whole thing here.

And while we're reading Richard, here's his review of the Glyndebourne Macbeth, which will tell you a little more about those cardboard boxes. Also see Ed Seckerson in the Indy.

Thursday

Apololgies for thin-on-the-screen blogging. Heavy week ahoy. But if you're in Manchester on Thursday (24 May) and fancy hearing a wonderful concert of Brahms and Schumann, come to the Bridgewater Hall and pop along to the pre-concert talk at 6.30 when Lynne Walker and I will be be discussing 'Mystery, Mastery and Madness' - the cross-currents between the lives and works of the two composers. In the concert, Gianandrea Noseda will conduct the BBC Philharmonic in the Brahms Double Concerto with Olivier Charlier and Alban Gerhardt as soloists, plus, appropriately, Schumann's 'Spring' Symphony.