Sarastro gets a sympathy laugh

Wow! Thomas Oliemans as Papageno.
(All photos courtesy of ENO, (c) Donald Cooper)

It's not every day that Sarastro announces "This is the most important assembly we've ever held - the decision we are about to make is of grave importance" - only to find half the audience giving him a belly-laugh. But then, it's not every day that The Magic Flute feels so relevant to our needs that the whole of the House of Commons should be frogmarched into the Coliseum and made to study every word of it. This Magic Flute has got...bells.

ENO's production by Simon McBurney is back for another revival, and gosh, it's just better and better: the storytelling could not be clearer, nor the inventiveness, nor the meaning. In Mozart and Schikaneder's Enlightenment fairytale, wisdom, truth and love battle against the forces of darkness – lies, ignorance, superstition, vengeance, violence. (Sounds familiar?) And the forces of good triumph. (Yes!) Along the way, in their quest, the young couple Tamino and Pamina are tested to their limits, and protected by their steadfast devotion to each other and the power of their music. (Double yes!)

The Magic Flute in person, with attendant bird action

The ingenious designs by Michael Levine turn the spines of books into pillars of the temple of wisdom, and Papageno's birds are their fluttering, faithful leaves. Wisdom, enlightenment itself, comes through studiousness, learning, books, self-discipline, the embrace of art and culture. The transformative effect of music saves Tamino and Pamina's lives and Papageno's too. There is something uniquely moving about a work by one of the greatest musical geniuses who ever lived that pays such a direct tribute to the art to which he devoted his short life.

The Magic Flute is open to infinite numbers of interpretation and reinterpretation, but McBurney's is the only production I've seen in which the emotional climax - the tests of Fire and Water - actually are frightening: an extended, roaring engulfment of flames followed by a magical flood in which Tamino and Pamina must swim for the spiralling surface. There's magic and whimsy aplenty - the sets are live-drawn, the sound-effects produced by a Foley artist in real time (she even has to dodge the attentions of Papageno), and the prince and Papageno are respectively attended by the orchestra's flautist and keyboard player, trotting up from the pit when needed - until Papageno learns to play his own bells.

Rupert Charlesworth (Tamino) and Lucy Crowe (Pamina) swim for their lives

For this revival the musical performance is a little uneven, but chiefly splendid: Lucy Crowe's Pamina brought a blazing emotional gravitas, Thomas Olieman's Papageno a grumpy yet irresistible charm. Brindley Sherratt's Sarastro simply couldn't be bettered (and, um, I think he was speaking those crucial lines perhaps not 100% "in character" which, under the circumstances, is fine with me). Julia Bauer's Queen of the Night delivered her arias with a concentrated punch of energy, making up in scariness for anything lacking in projection. Rupert Charlesworth as Tamino was slightly the opposite, with a powerful tone that nevertheless did not fully bloom into the sort of open generosity one might long for at the top. The Three Ladies had luxury casting in Susanna Hurrell, Samantha Price and Katie Stevenson, Daniel Norman was a splendid Monostatos and Rowan Pierce's Papagena so appealing that you'd wish her to have a great deal more to sing.

Ben Gernon's conducting felt a little hard-driven and businesslike, at least in the first half; there was sometimes too little space for the music to breathe and it seemed to lack the sense of lightness and air that can add the final touch of Mozartian warmth; but in the second half, Papageno's high comedy with the tuned wine bottles and Lucy Crowe's heartbreak aria oddly enough sorted things out as if simply through the power of Mozart himself. And the upside of the briskness is that the drama does bowl along, keeping you on the edge of your seat all the way through.

The performance was dedicated - as McBurney announced at the end - to the memory of its translator, Stephen Jeffreys, who died last autumn. His English version sparkles and twists and shines.

And did we come out of the Coliseum to find that wisdom had prevailed down the road in Westminster? Not quite - and yet, there's progress. Perhaps a parliament trip to this show might help them put the final pieces into place to save us all from the forces of darkness...

Go see. You'll laugh and cry. https://www.eno.org/whats-on/the-magic-flute/

Just a little encore by Hamelin...

We're possibly entering a new golden age of the composer-pianist, methinks.

Stupendous recital by one of the very finest, Marc-André Hamelin, at the Wigmore Hall the other night. It included (among much else) one of the most beautiful and emotionally devastating accounts of the Schumann Fantasie that I can remember, plus a goodly number of encores, one of which was Hamelin's own Toccata on L'Homme Armé. This wild and wonderful creation was commissioned by the Van Cliburn Competition for the 2017 competitors to play as a set piece.

Some of us trotted backstage to say hello afterwards and I couldn't help remarking that I would have liked to see the competitors' faces when they opened up that score for the first time. "Oh," said the ever-modest Marc, "it's not really that difficult..."

O...K....
Have a listen, above.

Crossing the line of dreams

Roxanna Panufnik and I have been working on our first collaboration since Silver Birch. It's being premiered this week in Baltimore under the joint batons of Marin Alsop and Valentina Peleggi. Yes, both of them. It's for double choir, double orchestra and two conductors. And it is about two powerful women (by which I don't mean either them or us, at least not first of all...).

Harriet Tubman
source: National Geographic

Rani Lakshmibai of Jhansi, India, and Harriet Tubman, who saved hundreds from slavery in America before, during and after the Civil War, obviously never met in real life. But they were near-contemporaries and both gave their lives to the cause of freedom for their people. Harriet Tubman lived to a ripe old age and was venerated as 'Moses'. Rani Lakshmibai was killed in battle at the age of 29. The Rani has recently been the subject of a major biopic, but we wrote this piece before we knew about that. Harriet Tubman's previous musical incarnations include a whole opera by the wonderful Thea Musgrave, which is long overdue for a revival or three.

Rani Lakshmibai
Source: Real Bharat

The piece is called Across the Line of Dreams and you can hear it in three concerts on 14, 15 and 16 March, the first in the Music Center at Strathmore, the other two at Meyerhoff Symphony Hall in Baltimore. The Baltimore Symphony Orchestra is joined by the University of Maryland Concert Choir. More info and booking here.

Here is an introduction to the piece, which Roxanna and I have written for the programme. We hope you'll enjoy this extraordinary dream meeting...

ACROSS THE LINE OF DREAMS – Celebrating Harriet Tubman & Rani Lakshmibai

Words: Jessica Duchen (JD)                      Music: Roxanna Panufnik (RP)

JD: In Across the Line of Dreams, two choirs with two conductors tell the stories of two extraordinary women who gave everything to save their people.

Harriet Tubman and Rani Lakshmibai came from opposite sides of the world and, of course, never met - but they had more in common than you might think. 

Both were born in the 1820s. Each decided to fight for her people’s freedom. Each underwent a change of name, symbolising a new, altered state of being. Each held fast to her faith. And each risked her life for a cause greater than herself. Both have passed into the realms of legend.

RP: Each heroine is represented by one conductor, one choir and half of the orchestra – Harriet has woodwinds, brass and percussion and Lakshmibai is accompanied by harp, piano and strings.

JD: Born Araminta (‘Minty’) Ross in Dorchester County, Maryland, around 1822, Harriet Tubman fled slavery in 1849 and became active in the ‘underground railroad’, a network that aided the escape of slaves from the deep south of the US, via which she helped to rescue dozens. Having taken her husband John Tubman’s surname, she adopted her mother’s first name to reinvent herself. She was nicknamed ‘Moses’ for leading her people to freedom. She died in 1913 aged about 90. 

RP: Harriet was fervently Christian, so some of her music has a hymn-like quality with a drone figuration often heard in spirituals. Not much is known about her ancestry, but it is believed that her maternal grandmother, Modesty, was brought to the US on a slave ship from West Africa and was thought to be of the Asante (a.k.a. Ashanti) tribe, who came from Ghana. Therefore I’ve used Ghanaian drum patterns to drive her music. While researching Asante music, I came across Joseph S. Kaminski’s excellent book Asante Ntahera Trumpets in Ghana– in it, he has transcribed a signature motif, from Asantehene’s mmentia musicians“Atoto wore sane” which means: “We are removing the knot”. This refers to a legendry knot that could only be untied by the true ruler, yet can also describe Harriet’s brave missions. 

Manikarnika in childhood
Source: Real Bharat

JD: Rani Lakshmibai was born Manikarnika Tambe in Varanasi, by the Ganges, in 1828. Married off to the Rani of the princely state of Jhansi, she took the crown after her husband’s death. Their only child died in infancy, after which she adopted a young boy, Damodar, intending him to inherit her throne. The controlling British East India Company refused to recognise him as heir and attempted to exile Lakshmibai. When a major rebellion took place against the British in 1857, and was horribly crushed, she led her forces into battle herself. She died of her wounds, aged only 29. A British officer paid tribute to Lakshmibai after her death, terming her “the bravest and the best”. 

RP: There is a famous lament “Babul Mora” about Lakshmibai, written by the Nawab of Lucknow, after the battle in which she lost her life. It mourns her leaving her family and all she knows behind, as she is taken away to be married to Gangadhar Rao, and it now exists in many versions. It was originally written in the Bhairavi mode, with which I have created my own lament. I have also composed my own “Powada” – a popular heroic or military ballad, which was used to eulogize heroic leaders. Again there are many examples of this form, but a common musical thread is a declamatory delivery of repeated singenotes, followed by a descending scale (for which I’ve used the Bhairav, Purvi and Ãsãvan modes). We finish, at the end of Lakshmibai’s life, with a return to the Bhairavi lament.

JD: Across the Line of Dreamsis in three parts. The first section is devoted to Harriet Tubman. There follows a contrasting episode telling the story of Rani Lakshmibai. Finally we imagine a dialogue showing the two women’s similarities, differences and inspirational natures. 

RP: This is where the two conductors come to the fore – Harriet’s music is in 4 and Lakshmibai’s simultaneously in 5. I was determined that while these two women retained their unique musical identities, they would merge to create a driving energy.

Acknowledgements

RP: I am deeply grateful to Joseph Kaminski for allowing me to use his transcription of “Atoto wore sane” and to the Asantehene who, through Kaminski, authorized the use of this chant for educational and artistic purposes. Also to Justin Scarimbolo for 19^thcentury Indian music, Richard Williams & Richard Widdess for their introduction to Powadas and James Gardner for trying, heroically, to teach me Ghanaian drumming. Thank you, most of all, to Marin Alsop and Valentina Peleggi for commissioning the work, along with Baltimore Symphony Orchestra. Jessica and I have loved every step of this process.

JD & RP, 11^thDecember 2018

In praise of IWD

It's International Women's Day, and you know it. You couldn't not know it, really. The astonishing thing is that ten years ago, you wouldn't have. The annual event on 8 March has rocketed in public consciousness, becoming a calendar landmark in a few short years, chiefly thanks to a certain number of people making a great deal of noise about it and programmers in crucial places looking on and thinking "Y'know something? They're right. Let's do this."

It's especially so in the music world, where the chance to make restitution for centuries of neglect and, frankly, the squishing of women artists has been embraced by concert halls, broadcasters, conservatoires and more.

You'll find fantastic things happening today everywhere - but IWD has become, hearteningly, about far more than just one day. BBC Radio 3 has a week of celebration and an all-female schedule of composers today. The conservatoire Trinity Laban is running its Venus Blazing programme all year, putting music by female composers in the spotlight, and a special lunchtime concert today features, amongst much else, Errollyn Wallen singing some of her own songs. At the Southbank there's the annual Women of the World festival, and at Kings Place Venus Unwrapped is a splendid series running the length of the season with a series of marvellously and meticulously programmed concerts highlighting music by women. The seriously buzzing trade fair Classical:NEXT is themed around women in music this year and its innovation award is devoted to this field - come to Rotterdam in May if you can. There are Clara Schumann festivals galore: Classical:NEXT has homed in on her bicentenary, and there's plenty to hear in London and a festival in Leipzig in September just for starters. Conductors are on the rise at last, perhaps fighting an even more difficult battle, but again with key decision-makers thinking: "Y'know something? They're right. Let's do this." One result is the marvellous work of the Royal Philharmonic Society's RPS Women Conductors training and similar programmes springing up around the world, from the Southbank (with Marin Alsop) to France to Texas.

I could go on, but you get the idea. This stuff is happening, so strongly, when ten years ago it wasn't. Things have changed. Things can change further. Things will change further. And in an era when so much around us is being changed for the worse, in political terms, it is more heartening than ever to see positive developments in the artistic world.

And it makes sense. In 2019 gender equality should be simply a no-brainer. We may deplore the fact that it's taken so long to happen, but now there's no excuse for it not to - and every chance to celebrate. In the end, with more music and more artistry to develop and enjoy, it enriches everybody, regardless of gender.

Brava bravissima to all!

Here are four of my top choices to listen to today. I've gone for historical figures this time, just to show that there's a massive hinterland of super music to explore...

GRAŻYNA BACEWICZ: Concerto for String Orchestra


AMY BEACH, C SCHUMANN, ETHEL SMYTH
Tasmin Little and John Lenehan's new recording of violin masterworks - just out on Chandos.


PAULINE VIARDOT: LE DERNIER SORCIER
World premiere recording of Viardot's operetta on a libretto by Ivan Turgenev - yes really, at long last, with an all-star cast - Eric Owens, Jamie Barton, Camille Zamora, Michael Slattery... I jumped for joy when I saw this one!


NIKOLAEVA PLAYS NIKOLAEVA
The legendary Russian pianist and friend of Shostakovich was a heck of a good composer in her own right, but who knew? Here she is playing three of her own Etudes.

FS Kelly: a lost genius?

When I was working on Ghost Variations, one of the most rewarding - and moving - discoveries was the music of Frederick Septimus Kelly (1881-1916): Australian composer, pupil of Donald Francis Tovey, Olympic rowing gold medallist of 1908. He was tragically killed in the Battle of the Somme, having survived the horrors of Gallipoli. Jelly d'Arányi, our violinist heroine, was in love with him and kept his picture on her piano for the rest of her life. There's not much evidence that he returned her feelings, beyond the enjoyment of making music together - but nevertheless, he wrote her a substantial violin sonata on his way back from Gallipoli, which was unearthed and recorded for the first time by Australian violinist Chris Latham less than a decade ago. (You can hear Kelly's most famous work, the beautiful Elegy in Memoriam Rupert Brooke, in The Ghosts of War, the d'Arányi-themed concert I'm presenting for the Oxford Philharmonic on 1 June in Oxford Town Hall, which also includes Bartók's Concerto for Orchestra and, of course, the Schumann Violin Concerto).

The other day I had an email from the pianist Alex Wilson, with the heartening news that he has unearthed more unknown Kelly music, this time for piano solo, and is making a recording. He's crowdfunding it. I've asked him to tell us more. And do please support his efforts in bringing this rewarding music to light - you can contribute here. The campaign is live only until Thursday 7 March.

JD: Alex, how did you first come across FS Kelly and his music? 

AW: I have always been fascinated by the music of composers who fall outside of the mainstream musical canon – a passion that led me to researching the music of the forgotten composers of World War One.  I discovered and performed music by Ernest Farrar, Cecil Coles and George Butterworth in a 5-year concert series – entitled ‘The Banks of Green Willow’ – and it was this exploration that led me to the piano music of the British/Australian composer Frederick Septimus Kelly (‘Sep’), one of the few wartime composers who wrote extensively for solo piano. I managed to unearth a few published pieces at the British Library that I performed in concerts back in 2014, and the success of these works led me to want to explore further.

How would you describe his music, for someone who’s never heard it before? What appeals to you most about it?

Sep’s music is so appealing to me because it is unlike the other music being written by his contemporaries in Britain.  He studied at the Hochkonservatorium in Frankfurtand as a result was influenced by both the late romanticism of mainland Europe and the pastoral, folk influenced style of his British colleagues, creating a unique sound world packed full of contrasting influences that it is really fascinating to try and make sense of – shifting from restrained hymn tunes to Chopin-esque romanticism and enigmatic harmonic languages reminiscent of Scriabin.

This music is full of youthful exuberance, unashamedly unrefined at times and covering a full range of emotions. His music is enigmatic, hard to categorise, but is still very accessible, and has proven to be popular every time I have performed it.

Why have you decided to record these piano works? Tell us something more about them. 

This recording will be the first time the ’24 Monographs’ and ’12 Studies’ have been recorded in their entirety, with many works in the collections unperformed in 100 years.  The process of learning music for which I have literally no other point of reference as to how to perform, read and interpret has been fascinating.  There is no standard interpretation to fall back on, I essentially have a blank canvas on which to make my mark.

The Monographs and Studies were written over a number of years, started before the war in 1913 and continued during the war years until his death at the Somme in 1916.  Sep was revising and editing the music during active service, preparing it for publishing after the war.  It is unclear how close he was to completing this task when he lost his life, though one can assume that the revisions were largely completed as he had already performed a number of the works in concerts during the war period.  Stylistically the music ranges from romantic simplicity to harmonic ambiguity, and the Monographs cover all the major and minor keys, which naturally leads to comparisons with the Chopin Preludes.  

Many of the pieces have only recently come to light. Please tell us how this happened, and why? Where have they been and how were they found?

Much of Sep’s original music is held in archives at the National Library of Australia. It remained in its manuscript form until 2005 when the Marshall-Hall Trust (an organisation devoted to publishing and distributing music by Australian composers) and editors Bruce Steele and Richard Divall created editions of the piano music.  On discovering the existence of further piano music by Sep I was able to obtain the sheet music from Kelly expert Chris Latham, the director of the Australian organisation ‘The Flowers of War’ – an organisation set up to promote the Australian contribution to the First World War.  

His most famous work until now has been the Elegy in Memoriam Rupert Brooke - incredibly beautiful piece and one that pays tribute to a close friend. Can you tell us anything more about Kelly and the social circles he moved in?

Sep was a polymath; a young man who turned his head to various disciplines with skill and ‘thereupon decided to be a great composer’ after reading ‘Psychology and Life’s Ideals’ by Professor Hamer.  He performed with the greatest musicians of the day, including as part of a well-renowned trio with cellist Pablo Casals and violinist Jelly D’Aranyi – a woman who loved him deeply, for whom he wrote the Gallipoli violin sonata and who kept his photo on her piano for the rest of her life. 

As a naval officer in World War One Sep joined the famous ‘Latin Club’ – a group of learned officers that included poet Rupert Brooke, composer William Denis Browne and Arthur (Ock) Asquith, the son of the Prime Minister. Sep was also a talented rower, winning gold medal at the 1908 London Olympics with the men’s 8s – before immediately giving it up and returning to performance and composition once again!

What do you think his significance is? (And what could it have been, had he lived longer?)

Kelly died at the age of 35, an age at which he was fully trained as a musician but had only just begun to refine his music, combining the many influences on his composition into a cohesive and individual musical voice.  Chris Latham suggests that ‘if Ralph Vaughan Williams had also died at the age of 35, their musical output would be an almost exact match in quality and quantity, but with Kelly writing more piano works, and Vaughan Williams writing more chamber works.’ Vaughan Williams grew into one of Britain’s most successful and loved composers, and one can only imagine that Kelly might have developed in a similar way.

Why are you crowdfunding the recording? What do you think the pros and cons of crowdfunding are? Is it something you’d recommend that other musicians try?

Funding from official sources is harder than ever to secure, with more musicians seeking funds from ever dwindling resources.  Crowdfunding has proven to be the perfect solution to this problem, and has been a wonderful way to bring my project to the attention of as many people as possible.  Directly as result of publicising this campaign I have connected with groups as diverse as Sep’s relatives, his old rowing club, wartime history enthusiasts and individual supporters from across the world.

Crowdfunding requires a LOT of hard work – I have spent months sending emails, writing articles, creating various recordings and radio appearances, all of which takes precious time away from the practice room in the months building up to a recording of some very difficult music!  However, I now feel like I know my subject much better than before, I have learnt immeasurably from my backers and the stories they have told me, and I am happy to have ‘sold’ a number of my CDs before the music has even been recorded!

For those considering crowdfunding, I’d say GO FOR IT, just don’t expect to have much time for anything else!