Category: Classical music

The Handel and Haydn Society has announced the appointment of Jonathan Cohen as its 15^th Artistic Director, succeeding Harry Christophers, whose final performance in that role was last spring, after 13 seasons. Cohen, 44, is one of the youngest ever to hold the position of Artistic Director in H+H’s now 208-year history.

Cohen is currently the founder and Artistic Director of the UK-based early music ensemble Arcangelo, and since 2017, he has been Music Director of the Quebec-based ensemble Les Violons du Roy. He is also Artistic Director of the Tetbury Festival in the UK and Artistic Partner of the Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra.

Cohen conducted the H+H period-instrument orchestra for the first time in February 2020, only a couple of weeks before the initial disruptions of the COVID-19 pandemic, in a program that included Haydn’s Symphonies No. 6, “Le Matin,” and 92, “Oxford,” and Beethoven’s Symphony No. 1. At that time, he described his transition from instrumentalist to conductor:

“I had sort of curious journey into conducting because I guess it wasn’t something that I grew up wanting to do or thought that I would do. And then I started to become an assistant conductor to William Christie [founder of Les Arts Florissants] in France because I played the cello for him and we did a lot of operas, and I was always interested in what the singers singing. I was always asking questions: what’s happening there on the stage? And I always wanted to get into the score. And I also played the harpsichord and the piano so I could work with singers. And I was just keen to understand. And then I started taking on more and more responsibility there, and then, in the end, ended up being a conductor.” (Read and hear the entire interview.)

That grounding in the narrative and drama of opera has informed his subsequent H+H performances, including a program last April anchored by C.P.E. Bach’s Magnificat, and this season’s opening program, which featured four cantatas by J.S. Bach. In his review of the latter program, the Boston Globe’s David Weininger wrote that Cohen made a strong impression:

“Leading from the harpsichord and seeming to conduct with the entire upper half of his body, he largely eschewed time beating in favor of sharp gestures that elicited equally vivid results from the orchestra and chorus. … [Bach’s Cantata No. 191 offered] the opportunity to enjoy Cohen’s expert direction and the chorus’s execution: The pacing, playing, and singing of the outer movements were a marvel. H&H should consider having him back to conduct the entire Mass in B minor.”

In the announcement, Robert N. Shapiro, Chair of the Handel and Haydn Board of Governors, said, “Three years ago, H+H embarked on an extensive search focusing on the top talent in the Baroque and Classical world. We are incredibly impressed by Jonathan’s musicality, his knowledge and passion. He inspires the musicians and engages audiences. Jonathan is a joy to watch and to know. His warm inviting spirit is apparent to all who attend his concerts – he draws you in to the music making.”

For his part, Cohen said, “Working with H+H is a dream come true, allowing me to work collaboratively with some of the most skilled and passionate musicians on the planet to create beautiful performances that will leave a lasting impact on our audiences. I look forward to sharing my love and passion with future audiences and creating moving and memorable experiences in the concert hall.”

H+H President and CEO David Snead said, “From Jonathan’s first performances with Handel and Haydn it was clear that his approach to music-making aligns powerfully with what H+H is all about: a sense of immediacy, connection and engagement between musicians, audience, and composer. Jonathan understands that performing on period instruments is not an academic exercise; it’s about performing this music with the freshness and vibrancy of new music, regardless of when it was written. Jonathan does this extremely well.”

Cohen returns to Boston in December to lead “A Baroque Christmas,” featuring soprano Robin Johannsen and the H+H period-instrument orchestra in a program of works by Handel, Bach, and Zelenka. For more about that program and Jonathan Cohen, visit the Handel and Haydn Society.

Nearly 40 years have passed since Spanish sound artist Francisco López‘s earliest releases. Whatever else has changed throughout those four decades of creativity, one thing has remained consistent: his use of the word ‘Untitled’ for his output. Not always, of course, but aside from a few exceptions, López’s output has been a gradually increasing number of untitled works, the most recent of which, Untitled #400, has recently been released. ‘Untitled’ in art can often seem pretentious or unnecessarily obscurantist, but it’s always seemed entirely appropriate for the particular way López explores and interacts with sound, not so much looking for ‘meaning’ as treating sound as an end in itself, a substance that can either be actively moulded and sculpted or simply allowed to exist in more passive, unchanging forms. (The latter approach typified his earliest Untitled works from the mid-1980s.) Both are presented as self-contained sonic sculptures that invariably seem to derive their musical nature, qualities and properties entirely from the sounds themselves, rather than from imposed structural / narrative compositional whims and desires. Titles are hardly relevant in such a context as that.

In Untitled #400, the source of its sounds is a ‘stringless piano’, developed by López in collaboration with Dutch pianist Reinier van Houdt. The instrument – or, in López’s words, “acoustic non-instrument” – consists of the structural frame of a piano, including all its inner mechanics (keys, hammers, etc.), effectively rendering it an elaborate unpitched percussion instrument. The work comprises two movements, the first performed by van Houdt on the stringless piano, the second created by López as a “studio-evolved construction” using the sounds from the first movement. The fact that one is acoustic, the other electronic, is irrelevant from the perspective of unity, and indeed continuity: they sound utterly related to each other, the latter being an ambitious elaboration of the former.

In movement 1, effectively an 18-minute study of mechanical impacts, there’s an interplay between regularity and some combination of irregularity, superimposition and convolution. We’re initially presented with a clunky repeating pattern, but before long its clarity is being gently undermined. There’s a fascinating complete contrast to this around six minutes in, when everything familiar is instantly lost in a lengthy sequence that’s all about friction, tension and tautness, its abstract squeakiness giving the impression of considerable pent-up pressure, as if it could all explode at any moment. When the clunkiness returns it’s faint, but even when strengthened is still rhythmically perplexing, either the confused product of multiple overlapping patterns or an actual mess of unsynchronised clatter.

The way this plays out through the remainder of the movement is fascinating, sounding as if van Houdt were caught in a struggle with the stringless piano, attempting to get the impacts organised again – or even, more intriguingly, as if it were all the product of a machine trying to restore metric sense to its chaotically glitching output. The conclusion of movement 1 begs the question of when and if a collection of individual sounds becomes a texture, when, having reduced to just a single repeating clonk, parallel bands of percussive activity spring up alongside it, in the process making it hard to decide whether they’re coalescing or remaining distinct from each other.

The much longer (37-minute) second movement develops the sounds and ideas from the first. Most obviously, the sonic palette is greatly expanded, the sounds of the piano processed so as to create new elements that evoke sustained pitch (essentially absent from movement 1), leading to new forms of juxtaposition. This leads to an even greater ambiguity of texture, partly because the identity of certain elements isn’t always clear or apparent due to being heard in parallel with others while also undergoing evolution. A striking example of this appears a little after seven minutes, in a discreet layer of noise that suggests an underwater environment (in fact, arguably another layer suggests this too, featuring motes of high-pitched patter also typical of hydrophonic recordings); over the next few minutes that suggestion only becomes more emphatic, though unexpectedly also gives the impression of breathing.

This section is one of relative clarity but the most impressive aspect of movement 2 are the huge stratiform climaxes that López accumulates. First, there’s that textural ambiguity again, where the question of to what extent elements are distinct from each other, playing out in parallel, or are sound objects interpenetrating and merging with each other before splitting apart becomes difficult to fathom. In tandem with this, though, is the way López balances enormity with clarity, arriving at colossal agglomerations that in lesser hands would simply become walls of noise and overload, but which in Untitled #400 always remain intricately, clearly detailed, the filigree and inner workings of each element audibly changing, though, due to the multiplicity of activity, somewhat elusive to pinpoint exactly what’s going on. Furthermore, the implied power of these vast episodes is proved illusory, López not merely wielding control over them but evaporating them in an instant, reducing the combined weight of wind, pitch, squeak, scratch, pressure and a myriad impacts to either a solitary slow clunk or, towards the end, a beautiful soft ringing. Even as movement 2 ebbs away, shrunk to inscrutable sounds emanating from somewhere distant, it remains compelling due to the implication that, although quiet, it nonetheless continues to possess considerable power, heard in deep bass flexing.

Though capricious and unpredictable, there’s both logic and sense to the twin narratives heard in Untitled #400. As always with López, they’re narratives that are bound up entirely with the nature of the sounds themselves – what they want to do, where they want to go – but which are always coherent, and at their height, stunningly exciting.

Released last month by Italian label i dischi di angelica, Untitled #400 is available on CD and download.

Budding stars of a musical theatre charity are staging two classic shows in East Kilbride this month.

Encore Star Academy is bringing Disney favourite The Little Mermaid Jr and edgy musical Cry-Baby to the Village Theatre.

The registered charity offers acting, singing and musical theatre lessons as well as lots of other opportunities to youngsters in and around East Kilbride.

‘Edgier than Grease and funnier than West Side Story’, Cry-Baby is an all out rockabilly musical set in 1950’s Baltimore, where the delinquent ‘drapes’ face off against the squeaky clean ‘squares’.

A classic Disney tale, The Little Mermaid Jr takes an enchanting look under the sea where a mermaid named Ariel dreams of the world above the sea and gives up her voice to find true love.

© East Kilbride News
The curtain goes up on Cry-Baby the musical next week

Both productions are directed by Allen Hannah with Cry-Baby choreographed by Holly Paterson and Carley Duncan, and The Little Mermaid Jr by Gavin Williams.

The curtain goes up on The Little Mermaid Jr tonight (Friday, November 11) at 7pm, with performances at 2pm and 7pm on Saturday, November 12 and Monday, November 14 at 7pm.

© East Kilbride News
Encore Star Academy offers acting, singing and musical theatre lessons to youngsters in and around East Kilbride

Cry-Baby runs on Friday, November 18 at 7pm and Saturday, November 19 at 2pm and 7pm.

Tickets are priced £12 and can be purchased here.

Or message via Facebook for discounts on group bookings.

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The musical tastes of King Charles III are more sophisticated than those of our late Queen. That’s not being rude: it’s just a fact. Her favourite musician appears to have been George Formby, whose chirpy songs she knew by heart. No doubt she relished their double entendres – but the hint of smut meant that, to her regret, she had to decline the presidency of the George Formby Society.

Our new monarch, by contrast, adores the Piano Concerto in E flat major by Julius Benedict (1804-85). He recommended it in an interview a couple of years ago. I’d never heard of the piece, which existed only in manuscript until Howard Shelley and the Tasmanian Symphony Orchestra recorded it for Hyperion in 2008. So I have our new king to thank for alerting me to this gorgeous confection – not quite a masterpiece, but full of pretty tunes connected by glittering filigree passagework that wears the poor pianist’s fingers to the bone.

I also didn’t know of the existence of Scylla et Glaucus, the only opera by Jean-Marie Leclair, an 18th-century French composer of violin sonatas. The then Prince of Wales chose a scene from it when he appeared on Michael Berkeley’s Private Passions on Radio 3 in 2010, describing it as ‘incredibly rhythmic and exciting’ and ‘one of those bits of music that put a spring in your step when you’re feeling a little bit down’.

Sometimes the guests on these programmes are bluffing about their love of highbrow music chosen for them by someone else. (I once had to come up with ‘personal favourites’ for a tin-eared guest.) But the King’s problem will have been the opposite: whittling down his most beloved pieces to a shortlist.

He’s the first British monarch for more than 100 years for whom classical music is a passion, and not just a private one. He’s patron of the Royal College of Music, the Philharmonia Orchestra, the English Chamber Orchestra and many other bodies. None is closer to his heart than the Monteverdi Choir, founded by his friend Sir John Eliot Gardiner, a gentleman farmer with, conveniently, similar views to Charles. In 2000 Deutsche Grammophon pulled the plug on Gardiner’s cycle of Bach cantatas; he finished it by setting up his own label, SDG. The lavishness of its products is a marvel; I suspect we’ll never find out how much assistance he received from Charles.

Like any music buff, the King has obsessions. He is determined to rehabilitate Sir Hubert Parry, best known as the composer of the only sacred anthem performed by drunks at stag nights and rugby club dinners. Charles has even presented a BBC documentary pointing out that Parry, in addition to writing ‘Jerusalem’, ‘I was glad, blest pair of sirens’ and staple evensong fare, wrote marvellously for the orchestra. His later symphonies and Symphonic Variations would be better known if it were not for Elgar, a younger man born with the skills that Parry worked hard to master. But perhaps there was envy in both directions. The Old Etonian Sir Hubert, whose family seat in Gloucestershire, Highnam Court, boasts some of England’s loveliest gardens, was what Elgar desperately wanted to be: a proper country gent. Parry held surprisingly radical views, however, and beneath the conventional surfaces of his best music lies subterranean fire. Charles is his natural champion.

The King has listened to symphonies and operas since he was a child, when he also learned piano, trumpet and cello. I wonder if that contributed to the bullying at Gordonstoun: in many schools, boys who like classical music walk around with targets on their backs. And I doubt that it endeared him to his family. For the House of Windsor, serious music should be kept in its place: in church, and they don’t want to hear anything they don’t already like.

But if Charles’s enthusiasms are unusual in his immediate family, things look different in historical perspective. The Windsors are the anomaly. From the accession of Henry VII until the death of Edward VII, almost every English monarch was a music lover. Henry VIII was a composer; he didn’t write ‘Greensleeves’ but 33 court manuscripts are ascribed to him, brimming with talent. Ironically he was responsible for the brutality of a Reformation that devastated musical life – but it revived under Elizabeth, who practised the virginal religiously and commissioned music from William Byrd despite knowing he was a Catholic. 

All the Stuart monarchs were musical. James I and Charles I presided over masques that rivalled those of the most lavish European courts. Under the later Stuarts, the Chapel Royal became a musical battleground. Protestants disliked Charles II’s fondness for instrumental music in church; James II, whose Chapel Royal was elaborately Catholic, was accused of trying to force popish music on Anglicans. The Calvinist William III intended to ban instrumental accompaniment for anthems, but the temptation to commission Henry Purcell to write for trumpets and drums proved too great. Under Queen Anne, every victory or feast day was marked by a blazing anthem. And who better to write them than George Frederick Handel, now living in England after a row with his employer in Hanover?

In 1714 that employer became King George I; fences were mended and the first four Georges promoted the cult of Handel. George III organised private concerts of his music for which he wrote the programmes in his own hand. Not until Haydn visited England did a composer enjoy such celebrity. One of Haydn’s patrons was the future George IV, who employed his own orchestra and according to Haydn had ‘an extraordinary love of music’.

Victorian musical life seems drab by comparison. But never has there been a more musically obsessed royal couple than Victoria and Albert. They played Beethoven symphonies in piano duet; they accompanied each other in songs by their favourite living composer, Mendelssohn, and were thrilled to be visited by the ‘short, dark, Jewish-looking composer, delicate, with a fine intellectual forehead’, as the Queen described him. The Prince Consort and the composer shared a Lutheran faith and a love of Bach: it was thanks to Albert that the St Matthew Passion was first performed in Britain. Albert prepared the ground for the opening of the Royal College of Music by his son, the future Edward VII. ‘Bertie’ preferred the theatre, especially actresses, but he did leave an indelible mark on British musical history. He liked to hum the trio section of Elgar’s first ‘Pomp and Circumstance March’ and suggested it be set to words for his coronation. Hence ‘Land of Hope and Glory’.

Curiously, for much of this time the post of Master of the King or Queen’s Music was relatively insignificant; the holder of the office when Victoria was crowned, a nonentity called Franz Cramer, couldn’t even produce a coronation anthem – a failure described by The Spectator in 1838 as ‘a defilement of the national honour’. But for the most part it didn’t matter, because the real master of the royal music was the monarch.

The composer Sir James MacMillan, who wrote an anthem for the Queen’s funeral, says our new King has ‘an intense and knowledgable love of music, and his influence has already been felt in some of the liturgies we’ve seen in recent years’. That’s worth noting, given that even under the most difficult circumstances, such as the Duke of Edinburgh’s funeral during the pandemic, the music has been breathtaking. King Charles has promised not to interfere in politics, but music is another matter. So in that respect this reign will be interesting. Or, as MacMillan puts it, ‘very fruitful for music’.

This holiday season, take a break from the mundane.  Now through January 6th hundreds of unique holiday selections from WSKG Classical can be heard on ALEXA and GOOGLE smart speakers.

You can just say “Alexa, play Holidays A2Z” or “Hey Google, ask WSKG Radio to play Holiday A2z.”

The WSKG Classical Holiday music stream, which is “Commercial Free. Subscription Free. Fee Free”, offers nearly 1000 musical tracks.

“So, the quality is high and repetition will be minimal,” said radio director Charles Compton. “We took fifty years to build WSKG’s holiday music library into a high end resource for outstanding classical performances,” he said.

You can also load our music streams into your car’s media center for hands free listening. Maybe your new car is on this list of ALEXA friendly dashboards?  Maybe you prefer GOOGLE?

WSKG Classical’s music streams are also available on our WSKG app, the NPR1 app, TuneIn, iHeart, Fire TV and at YourPublicRadio.org.

John O’Connor — Nocturnes No. 1
Colin Brumley
As we gear up for the exciting and busy holiday season, it’s important as ever to make sure you take a step back and relax every so often. My oasis album is John O’Conor’s performances of fellow Irishman John Field’s piano Nocturnes, the first of which is the most honest and delicate melody I’ve ever found.

Carly Rae Jepsen — The Loneliest Time
Kendall Todd
As CRB’s resident CRJ devotee, it would be remiss of me not to choose a song from her excellent new album, The Loneliest Time, for this month’s Instant Replay. The title track, a joyful collaboration with fellow Canadian singer, songwriter, and composer Rufus Wainwright, has been stuck in my head for weeks, and the music video is just about the most charming thing I’ve ever watched.

The Oh Hellos — Eat You Alive
Edyn-Mae Stevenson
One thing I will be annoying about until the day I die is that the Oh Hellos was my favorite band before the kids (fairly recently) decided it was cool. But how can I blame them? When Through the Deep, Dark Valley first came out, it blew my little teen mind. Now I’m enjoying the tenth anniversary edition and feeling a little old, I must admit!

Bamberg Symphony, Jakub Hrůša — Hans Rott: Symphony No. 1 in E Major: I. Alla Breve
Brian McCreath
Hans Rott’s Symphony in E is kind of a ghostly presence for anyone who loves Gustav Mahler’s music. The two composers were friends while studying at the Vienna Conservatory, and Rott’s name comes up in biographies of Mahler. But the one full-scale symphony he composed before he sadly died at 25 is almost never played (it was only performed for the first time in 1989). It’s like the mysterious, distant relative who only gets a glancing mention at family gatherings… But now a new recording of this work by the Bamberg Symphony and Jakub Hrůša, one of the most exciting conductors to have visited the Boston Symphony recently, reveals not just Rott’s richly creative, maybe even pioneering voice, but also how clearly Mahler drew from his friend’s language to inform his own symphonies.

Max Roach, Hasaan Ibn Ali — Three-Four vs. Six-Eight Four-Four Ways
Greg Ferrisi
Back in my college days, I found a used CD of a Max Roach album buried deep in the belly of In Your Ear, the now-closed used-music store on Comm Ave by BU.
That album, and Roach’s inventive, rhythmic drumming, sure didn’t help me hit the books, but, boy, did I love the distraction. My fave — here from a new(ish) release of a 60s recording with pianist Hasaan Ibn Ali — is “Three-Four vs. Six-Eight Four-Four Ways.” It’s a rollicking conversation between drums and piano, regardless of time signature.

twen — One Stop Shop (For A Fading Revolution)
Nicholas Benevenia
The infectious title track from twen’s sophomore album speaks to the precarious feeling of being overwhelmed and doing everything yourself—an apt concept for the Nashville duo, who wrote, produced, and mixed the entire album themselves. The music encourages us to take on that uncertainty with confidence, catapulting us forward with twangy acoustic guitars and a driving beat. It’s the perfect song for kicking crunchy leaves on your daily walk.

Austin Baker — Baby, Let’s Play House
Katie Ladrigan
I happened to see Baz Luhrmann’s latest spectacle “ELVIS” over three different flights recently – and even though the screen was tiny, actor Austin Baker really made Mr. Presley larger than life. The whole soundtrack is chock full of some fantastic mashups and remixes, but “Baby, Let’s Play House” is the first instance we see Elvis’ star-potential, and this arrangement really captures that dynamically, with some more modern electric guitar riffs thrown into the instrumental section, about half-way through. Baker actually sings in the film, and really does a great job of recreating Presley’s younger voice.

Charles Henson — Tavern at the End of the World
Russ Gershon
Charles Hansen is hard working guitarist on the local rock scene, also teaching at Berklee. Well, it turns out he’s quite the songwriting visionary, as his recent double CD Pop’n’Rock Music ’22 (Red On Red Records) amply demonstrates, effortlessly evoking 70’s power pop and glam rock. With 22 tracks, the album is an embarassment of riches; here’s a fave that also has a video, which can be seen here.

David Shifrin, Emerson String Quartet — Mozart: Clarinet Quintet in A Major, K. 581: II. Larghetto
Anthony Princiotti
Lately, it’s been the Larghetto from Mozart’s Clarinet Quintet. It exemplifies something I continue to find miraculous about his music: a quality of musical rhetoric that’s often subtle, yet extremely powerful. I can’t think of another composer who has such an unerring sense of how a slightly-unexpected harmony or the introduction of a contrasting texture – placed within utterly conventional structures – can touch our deepest emotions. This is music that’s somehow noble and sensuous at once. Total wizardry.

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Listen to the November playlist:

Find the complete playlist here.