Saturday, November 11, 2017

Great Britten

Delighted to hand the floor today to our young correspondent Jack Pepper today for a look at why we need a new Britten in Britain for the 21st century, and what conditions might be necessary for one to emerge. And no, it's not just the mainstream media. Jack, 18, is a writer and composer. JD


Great Britten
Jack Pepper

A centenary stamp for Benjamin Britten, 2013

We need another Britten. Facing social and political divides, and frequent misperceptions of classical music, we need a musical polymath to become an ‘establishment’ figure who can excite the public and prove that all aspects of music can unite us. What happened to the classical musician as the public voice of justice and humanity?

In public and in private, Benjamin Britten was exactly what the 21st-century needs. The problems we face today were all in some ways addressed by the composer. Born in Lowestoft, Britten was never a representative of the highest born elite, and so was a perfect representative of the ideal of music for all. Today classical music faces criticism that it is the preserve of a wealthy minority. Composing for schoolchildren and amateur groups in works like Noye’s Fludde, Britten opened the genre to younger audiences, a passionate advocate of music education. 

Today we are surrounded by debates about how best to engage younger audiences with classical music. Determined to ensure the success and accessibility of Aldeburgh and later Snape Maltings, in 1953 Britten told Imogen Holst that “We’ll have a school here”. Today music festivals are fighting over Arts Council funding whilst trying hard to launch new schemes for young composers and performers. As a homosexual who neither flaunted nor suppressed his sexuality in public, Britten frequently used his music to express his personal viewpoints and comment on contemporary issues, be it conflict in the War Requiem or homosexuality in Death in Venice. In 2017, we commemorate 50 years since the decriminalisation of homosexuality in Britain, whilst also facing growing conflict in Syria, Ukraine and Yemen. Britten was a vital figure in a divisive century; he came to epitomise freedom, the rights of the individual, and the openness of music to all. He came to symbolise Britain.

But where is our Britten today? We have musicians who champion classical music amongst young people and amateur ensembles, likewise we enjoy high-profile conductors like Sir Simon Rattle championing the arts in the face of cuts and cultural cynicism. But do we have a figure entirely comparable to Benjamin Britten, both in the breadth of musical disciplines they represent and the public platform they occupy? In being equally capable and known as a composer, teacher, conductor, pianist, accompanist, writer, musical spokesperson and civil rights symbol, Britten was able to demonstrate the gamut of music’s potential to benefit society as a whole. Barenboim is probably the most notable and publicised musical polymath of today, known equally as a conductor, pianist, writer and political activist, but who in Britain can claim to combine such disciplines in an equal manner, and with similar publicity in the mainstream media?

A musician of Britten’s versatility is more likely to encourage the public to adopt them as a figurehead, since they represent so much more than an interest in a certain repertoire or an area of music. To generalise, a top-class, frequently-televised conductor will likely appeal to an audience at least partially distinct from that which is attracted to a musical academic; it is reasonable to assume that a conductor of, for example, Leonard Bernstein’s stature, was attracting certain fans who may not have occupied the circles surrounding, say, Charles Rosen. Similarly, a song accompanist will likely have a very different main circle of admirers than a musician who is a political heavyweight. Britten, and Bernstein in America, stand out because they combined these diverse skills, and in doing so they came to represent all that was great about music, making them more likely to be adopted by the broader public as a representative of the arts. In uniting different musical disciplines, and combining this with a distinct personality and determined set of personal beliefs, Britten was able to symbolise all that was exciting, fair and engaging about classical music. A representative in its fullest sense.

But Britten was not only a great figurehead because of his own attributes. Society was receptive to his influence. Britten was commissioned to compose an opera – Gloriana - to celebrate the coronation of Queen Elizabeth II, whilst he also welcomed the Queen to the new Snape Maltings hall, just outside Aldeburgh, in 1967. He was given a platform that made him very much an establishment figure – one who the public recognised and thus one who was listened to – whilst also maintaining the freedom to express his own, often then-controversial, views. He was associated with his country and treasured by its public whilst also able to maintain his own viewpoints. Nowadays, composers continue to be commissioned to compose for royal events, with Paul Mealor writing for the wedding of the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge; classical music continues to be at the heart of national occasions. Music itself has not lost its ability to unite people or to commemorate moments of national significance; likewise, music has not lost its share of high-profile figures who champion the arts. The problem is that the public platform for such views has diminished. The majority of these figures are still confined to musical circles. The debate about the importance of music in a volatile world is restricted to the musical world alone. What Britain lacks today is a figure that represents the arts to the wider public.

Other nations have this. Gustavo Dudamel opened up music for younger generations when he was appointed music director of the Orquesta Sinfónica Simón Bolívar – Venezuela’s national youth orchestra - in 1999. Daniel Barenboim has shown music’s capacity to unite opposing factions by conducting both Israeli and Palestinian musicians at a concert in 2014 to promote peace in Gaza. However, it’s not that Britain doesn’t have its own classical figureheads. Nicola Benedetti established the ‘Benedetti Sessions’ workshop programme that offers rehearsals, masterclasses and performances for young people. Classical music still enjoys a broad range of global and national ambassadors who, like Britten, champion the genre as a way of breaking down age, class and political barriers. But are they recognised in truly public spheres for doing so?

We no longer see vast crowds of excited children attending the opening of a classical concert hall, as we did with Britten in 1967. Nor is the general public likely to identify a classical musician as a national and global figurehead for education, rights and freedom. Whilst Britten came to epitomise musical inclusiveness and the apogee of British musical achievement, today we lack a figure who an everyday Briton would immediately recognise as ‘ours’. Top musicians like Rattle, Benedetti and others are widely recognised for their championship of the arts, but this is still largely confined to musical circles. Think how many movie stars appear on The Graham Norton Show, The One Show or Top Gear, and then consider how many classical musicians we see in similar prime-time slots. Ask someone in the high street which musician best unites and epitomises this country, and they’d probably say Adele. But Adele does not combine the variety of disciplines that Britten did, a diversity that would provide the strongest possible evidence of the power and importance of music to all. Britten was a fantastic symbol of music’s potential to better humanity because he represented so many different aspects of this musical world. 

Yet without a platform, even a figure who did match Britten’s diversity would struggle to become a national icon. Whilst classical musicians are still trying their utmost to promote the accessibility, equality and openness of music in the manner of Britten, they seem to lack the public voice that gave such a platform to Benjamin Britten, and to Handel and Elgar before him.

What makes a Britten so necessary today is that he represented a time in which classical music occupied a central role in society. Whilst music, both then and now, tries to unite people in times of division – look at the ‘One Love’ concert in Manchester – classical musicians no longer seem to occupy a pivotal position in this. It is significant that, on that Manchester stage, not one classical musician appeared. This is at least in part a result of newspaper headlines that today favour a Britain’s Got Talent controversy rather than a Leonard Bernstein, and newspaper arts sections that diminish in size by the day. Whilst classical music used to feature heavily in newspaper columns and radio discussions, we must now travel ever more frequently to specialist music websites and journals to hear the same level of discussion about classical music. There are numerous individuals working tirelessly to promote classical music and to bridge divides, but they are not receiving the publicity they deserve. Their voices are confined to the musical circles that already support their beliefs.

However, it would be wrong to suggest classical music has diminished as an agent of change on the world stage solely because of a lack of mainstream media coverage. Alongside greater media support, classical composers must not be afraid to speak the language they find most truthful to them; with the growing recognition of film and game scores as legitimate forms of classical music, and the movement away from the hegemony of atonality and the accompanying belief that one must only write twelve-tone music to be taken seriously, I believe our musical integrity is improving. We must continue to pursue music as an honest reflection of what is within us, and not write what we feel we ought to. 

Once again, Britten perfectly captured this musical truthfulness; he wrote mostly tonal music at a time when the Darmstadt school was bringing dodecaphony and electronic music into the mainstream, a time when tonality was increasingly dismissed as backward. As Oliver Knussen argued, Britten, “rather than trying to do something new and different for its own sake, says something important with means that can communicate very directly. He deals with imponderables in a very commonsensical way.” 

And so, to be both artistically true to oneself as well as socially useful – is that not the purpose of music, after all? – composers must be strong enough to pursue their own individual goals, without fearing stigmatisation, whilst also trying to have some form of useful voice. Britten was strong enough to admit he was many things at a time when it was unconventional to be so: a pacifist in a time of war, a homosexual in a time of conservatism, a tonal composer in a time dominated by atonality. He was strong enough – and respected enough – to be himself.

As such, we need another Benjamin Britten - someone all people can identify with, and identify with classical music – as well as a mainstream media that gives greater attention to such figures. We need someone who can encapsulate both the freedom of music to say what one desires, as well the necessity of allowing such music to communicate something valuable to the broader public. British classical music needs a polymath public figurehead again.

Jack Pepper is an 18-year-old composer and writer from Surrey. Having written a fanfare for the Royal Opera House in 2016, he has since composed for Classic FM’S 25th birthday, in association with the Royal Philharmonic Society. The Royal Liverpool Philharmonic performed this commission in October 2017. His writing has appeared on the Gramophone and RPS blogs, and in Opera Today.


Thursday, November 09, 2017

Birthday concert for a very special composer tonight

Nicola LeFanu.
Photo: Michael Lynch

Please come along to The Warehouse, Theed Street SE1, tonight to hear Lontano and Odaline de la Martinez give a special concert devoted to the music of Nicola LeFanu, celebrating her 70th birthday. In a 'Meet the Composer' session I'll be the lucky person interviewing her before the performance (6.30pm). It's a major retrospective with a selection of six works from 1974 to 2017. Congratulations, too, to Lontano for planning this more than timely celebration of such a special and marvellous composer. (As it happens, talking to composers is one of my favourite things in the whole world, so this is going to be a treat and a half.)

Book at Eventbrite, here.

Nicola LeFanu was born in England in 1947, the daughter of Irish parents: her father William LeFanu was from an Irish literary family, and her mother was the composer Elizabeth Maconchy. LeFanu studied at Oxford, RCM and, as a Harkness Fellow, at Harvard. She has Honorary Doctorates from the Universities of Durham, Aberdeen, and Open University, is an Honorary Fellow of St Hilda’s College Oxford, and is FRCM and FTCL.

She has composed around one hundred works which have been played and broadcast all over the world; her music is published by Novello and by Peters Edition Ltd. She has been commissioned by the BBC, by festivals in UK and beyond, and by leading orchestras, ensembles and soloists. Many works are available on CD, including music for strings (Naxos), Horn Concerto (NMC) and Saxophone Concerto (NEOS).

She has a particular affinity for vocal music and has composed eight operas: Dawnpath (New Opera Company, London, 1977), The Story of Mary O’Neill, a radio opera, libretto Sally McInerney, (BBC, 1987), The Green Children, a children’s opera, libretto Kevin Crossley-Holland, (Kings Lynn Festival, 1990), Blood Wedding, libretto Deborah Levy (WPT, London 1992), The Wildman, libretto Crossley-Holland, (Aldeburgh Festival, 1995), Light Passing, libretto John Edmonds, (BBC/NCEM, York, 2004), Dream Hunter, libretto John Fuller (Lontano, Wales 2011, London 2012) and Tokaido Road, a Journey after Hiroshige, libretto Nancy Gaffield, (Okeanos, Cheltenham Festival, July 2014.)

She is active in many aspects of the musical profession, as composer, teacher, director and as a member of various public boards and new music organisations. From 1994–2008 she was Professor of Music at the University of York, where many gifted composers came to study with her. Previously she taught composition at Kings' College London; in the 1970s, she directed Morley College Music Theatre.

In 2015 she was awarded the Elgar bursary, which carries a commission from the Royal Philharmonic Society. In 2017 she was BBC Radio 3 ‘Composer of the Week’.

Recent premieres include works for chamber ensemble, with or without voice, for solo instrumentalists, and for orchestra. Threnody was premiered in Dublin in 2015 (RTE NSO) and The Crimson Bird, the RPS commission, at the Barbican, London, in 2017. BBCSO/Ilan Volkov with Rachel Nicholls, soprano soloist.


Wednesday, November 08, 2017

SILVER BIRCH BBC documentaries just went public

Pop over to the BBC Arts website and experience the story behind Silver Birch, the opera by Roxanna Panufnik and muggins for Garsington Opera!

In the chief film, some very, very clever technology has enabled you to experience in 360 degrees what it was like to be in the performance. There were 180 performers and you, the viewer, become Person 181. The BBC site tells you how to make the most of the tecchy element, but here's the general version...



On the same page you'll find three more short films: The Story of Silver Birch - how the opera came to be; The Veterans - four army veterans performing in an opera for the first time ever tell their stories; and Jay's Story - our military adviser and inspiration, on whom the character of Jack is based.

ENJOY!

Tuesday, November 07, 2017

Kurt Weill's bite is back as a lost song resurfaces

The lost manuscript, recovered...
Credit: Freie Universität Berlin, Institute for Theatre Studies,
Theatre History Collections, Gerda Schaefer papers

1931, Berlin. It's the depression, the Nazis are in the ascendency and the composer Kurt Weill is at the height of his powers. For a political revue to benefit unemployed actors of the Berlin Volksbühne, he creates a song entitled 'Lied vom weißen Käse'. In it, a blind girl tells of a phoney evangelical preacher's attempts to heal her using white cheese - represented by a Lutheran chorale - and concludes that it might be better if everyone were blind so that they couldn't see what was happening in the world.

The lyrics, by Günther Weisenborn, satirise the methods of a notorious Berlin faith-healer, Joseph Weißenberg. Lotte Lenya, for whom the song was written, remembered its existence, and began looking for it in the 1960s, without luck. "Nowhere to be found. Probably buried in some basement," she concluded.

Until now. It has just turned up unexpectedly in the archive of the Volksbühne actress Gerda Schaefer and will soon be published at last.

And it's a whopper. The New York Times has a performance of it to hear, from the Kurt Weill Foundation - please pop over and listen to this. Its bite is powerful with its Bach [sorry].

"Although the discovery is small in terms of the song’s length, it is truly sensational," commented musicologist Elmar Juchem, Managing Editor of the Kurt Weill Edition, who was able to identify Weill's manuscript while conducting archival work in Berlin. "Nobody believed that something completely unknown by Weill could still surface, let alone from his Berlin heyday." Juchem came across the song in the archives of the department of theater studies at the Freie Universität Berlin. While examining documents related to Weill's music for the play Happy End (1929), he inquired whether the university held any other Weill-related materials. Archivist Peter Jammerthal pulled a number of programs, photos, and press clippings, and then retrieved the hitherto unidentified music manuscript. The neatly written holograph score resides among the papers of a relatively obscure actress named Gerda Schaefer, whose documents came to the Freie Universität several years ago. Schaefer was an ensemble member of the Volksbühne in the early 1930s.

More about it from the Kurt Weill Foundation, here.

Sunday, November 05, 2017

Finding a Bach singer for tomorrow

Bach Winner: Jessica Dandy
Bach is in the air. Even as I write, my husband is busy practising a violin partita downstairs - he starts every day by playing Bach - and having spent time in the composer's world of Leipzig has given us both a new perspective on the man and his music which is about to be very useful indeed...watch this space...

Just before we went, though, I was honoured to be part of a beautiful Bach event a little closer to home. For many years the London Bach Society, founded in 1946, has run an annual LBS Bach Singers Prize, designed to encourage young singers to come to Bach's music with enthusiasm, stylistic awareness and appropriateness of approach. This year they invited me to join the jury, where I found myself working with two eminent Bach singers, Ian Partridge and Stephen Roberts, and the oboist and conductor Anthony Robson.

It was a full-on  experience, to put it mildly. We started off with a first round in which we listened to around 40 singers in one day, performing arias and recitatives, from which we chiselled out ten semi-finalists who returned a few days later to present extracts from the St Matthew and St John Passions. Ten had to become four...and the competition closed with a final in the ancient church of St Bartholemew-the-Great (for those who haven't been there, it's the setting for the climactic scene of Four Weddings and a Funeral, where Anna Chancellor whacks Hugh Grant with the bouquet...).

Our final was perhaps surprising as we had four very different voices to enjoy: a soprano, a counter-tenor, a tenor and a contralto. The repertoire, with a Martin Luther leaning for the Reformation anniversary, was mostly drawn from the cantatas, and was in many cases quite unusual. The London Bach Players, who accompanied that night, had just a couple of days to learn some very tricky stuff indeed (our continuo player, who switched apparently effortlessly between organ and harpsichord, later showed me a photo of himself holding the heap of scores just after the repertoire was announced...).

It wasn't easy for us either. Our young professionals were at a tremendous level and of course there's that platitude about apples and oranges. The soprano Rebecca Lea prepared an intriguing programme on the theme of masters and servants; in the semi-final she'd moved us all to tears with her account of 'Aus Liebe will mein Heiland sterben' from the St Matthew Passion. The fine tenor Hiroshi Amako went all-out for drama, choosing music that explored the storms inherent in "being a Christian". Counter-tenor Alex Simpson projected a vividly characterised programme about faith. They were all splendid and I look forward to hearing them many more times in future.

But our prize in the end went to the contralto Jessica Dandy, whose spirituality and sheer love for the music she sings was complemented by a voice that yielded more and more of its intriguing reserves as the competition went along. She offered a richness of colour that varied yet impressed across the registers, and a natural, direct style that did credit to her artistry and Bach's too. I was very moved by her "Erbarme dich" in round 1 and was keen to hear her again: she didn't disappoint. And the aria "Vegnügte Ruh" from Cantata BWV 170 is my new favourite thing in the whole world, thanks to her.

Congratulations from one Jess to another - and may your singing bring everyone joy for many years to come!