Tag: Nicholas Watts

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REVIEW: York Musical Society, Bach’s Mass in B minor, York Minster, March 15

Baritone soloist David John Pike

FOLLOWING a call to prayer, the concert opened with a gravitas-laden Kyrie. It took a moment or two to get into the groove, but despite the ever-generous Minster acoustic, I could hear the choral fugue weaving its way through to a pleasing cadence.

The Christe soprano duet— Zoë Brookshaw and Philippa Boyle — with obbligato violins was in the altogether sunnier key of D major. The singers’ clear, confident deliveries and crisp string articulation brought a welcome relief and respite.

But then back to a second Kyrie fugue. This worked much better; maybe the choir were more at ease with the vocal demands, but I think the greater clarity and confidence benefited from Bach’s doubling of instruments and voices.

Assured string and clear trumpet playing added much to the celebratory opening of the – D major again – Gloria. I did lose a bit of choral detail, but this is a given in this acoustic. Nicola Rainger was on fine form with a disciplined, technically challenging violin obbligato accompaniment to Philippa Boyle’s captivating Laudamus Te.

Despite the impressive, soaring trumpet contribution, the Gratias Agimus Tibi seemed to have that ‘morning after’ quality. The balance between soprano (Zoë Brookshaw), tenor (Nicholas Watts) and flute obbligato (Della Blood) with muted strings was nigh-on perfect.

Indeed, David Pipe’s judgement was an impressive feature throughout the concert. The Qui Sedes Ad Dexteram Patris was sung by countertenor Tom Lilburn, and very well indeed. The clarity, almost purity of tone, worked really well with Jane Wright’s oboe d’amore obbligato accompaniment.

Baritone David John Pike fared less well in the following Quoniam Tu Solus Sanctus. I lost detail in the lower register, but as the aria is scored for the bass voice, this really wasn’t surprising. Janus Wadsworth was excellent on horn, but again I found it tricky to hear the bassoon playing with any real clarity.

The closing Cum Sancto Spiritu proved to be an enjoyable fugal first-half signing-off. The tempo was suitably energetic, and the strings in good nick with fine, crisp articulation.

This brought us to a welcome 15-minute break where the audience seemed to bypass chat about the performance in favour of how cold it was.

The Credo is in itself an altogether satisfying movement, probably on account of its clearly defined symmetrical structure. There was an impressive account of Et In Unum Dominum Jesus Christum from Zoë Brookshaw (soprano) and Tom Lilburn (countertenor) with sympathetic string commentary.

The aria Et In Spiritum Sanctum was more suited to the baritone range and gave David John Pike the chance to showcase what a very fine singer he really is. The oboe d’amore obbligati support was really well judged too. However, I could have sworn they were placed stage left. But not so. Of the three central choral sections, the opening five-part chorus Et Incarnatus Est De Spiritu Sancto fared best. In a quiet setting, the performance shone brightly.

By the time we reached the end of the Sanctus, it was clear that, to use a footballing metaphor, there were a lot of tired legs out there. The demands on the chorus are massive and unrelenting.

Yet, following a poignant Agnus Dei performed by Tom Lilburn with yearning string commentary, they rallied to deliver a splendid Dona Nobis Pacem to bring this enormous spiritual journey to a satisfying conclusion.

Finally, we should mention the consistent quality support from organist Shaun Turnbull and the authoritative direction of conductor David Pipe. But I am going to leave the last word with tenor Nicholas Watts. His performance of the Benedictus aria— with lovely flute accompaniment (Louise Evans, I think) — was, for me, the highlight of the concert.

Review by Steve Crowther

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REVIEW: Martin Dreyer’s verdict on Opera North and South Asian Arts in Orpheus, Leeds Grand Theatre

Nicholas Watts’s Orpheus and Ashnaa Sasikaran’s Eurydice. Picture: Tom Arber

OPERA North originally billed this collaboration as ‘Monteverdi reimagined’. In the absence of much explanation, our own imaginations were allowed to run wild with fears of an East-West confrontation, with Monteverdi’s magic – as near as we regularly get to the fountainhead of opera, after all – irreparably diluted and the Orpheus myth literally shot to hell.

That was the gamble these companies undertook. A brief press release sent to all punters more recently looked like special pleading. One feared the worst. The reality is much different.

For seekers after truth – as we all must be when we undertake to see a new production – there turn out to be many pleasing parallels between music of the Baroque and that of the sub-continent.

It is often forgotten that Venice sits handily at the crossroads of ancient trade routes between East and West. Modal systems of music, typified by Gregorian chant, were another obvious link between the two, surviving as they do in Indian raga procedures, even if some have been gradually ironed away in western tonal patterns.

As Neil Sorrell points out in an exceptionally penetrating programme note, the voice was central to Monteverdi’s musical imagination and remains so in Indian music. Indian players routinely expect to be able to reproduce vocally what they express through their instruments.

To that extent, western musical education has been straitjacketed, not least in the dichotomy between ‘classical’ and ‘pop’, the partial result of the separation of vocal and instrumental musics. For a full rapprochement, perhaps we in the West need to broaden our approach.

Composer, sitar player and OPera North artist-in-residence Jasdeep Singh Degun. Picture: Justin Slee

This production, which has been several years in the making and delayed by Covid, forcefully reminds us of these parallels. Its moving spirit as composer – apart from Monteverdi – is Jasdeep Singh Degun, who worked in close co-operation with Baroque ace Laurence Cummings.

Singh Degun’s work adds almost an hour to Monteverdi, although the result morphs seamlessly between the two. He allows the various Indian singers to use their own languages so that we have eight, Hindu and Urdu foremost among them, jostling alongside Striggio’s Italian. All are helpfully side-titled.

The staging is in the hands of Anna Himali Howard, whose task is undoubtedly lightened by having Leslie Travers as her set and costume designer. Together they work out a way of connecting the real world with the underworld, the living with the dead.

The professed aim of their co-production is to move from a celebration of love through the darkness of grief-laden despair to the eventual rekindling of hope.

Nothing particularly unusual there, you may suppose, except that their true goal is to communicate the universality of the Orpheus myth via musical means far more wide-ranging than Monteverdi ever could have envisaged.

Travers’s set is the back garden of a semi-detached suburban house, with all the instruments arranged down the sides of a ‘V’ which opens embracingly towards the audience. So Cummings’ harpsichord rubs shoulders with Singh Degun’s sitar, Kirpal Singh Panesar’s bowed esraj with Emilia Benjamin’s lirone, while Céline Saout doubleson harp and the zither-like swarmandal and Vijay Venkat covers no less than five instruments from both camps.

Kaviraj Singh: Plays in the orchestra and takes the role of the resolute Caronte in Orpheus. Picture: Tom Arber

There are 19 players in all. From a western standpoint, the juxtaposition of instruments is undeniably exotic, adding a magical, other-worldly aroma, while the extraordinary Indian percussion supplies positively addictive momentum.

In the first half (Acts 1 & 2), the garden is the venue for the wedding of Nicholas Watts’s Orpheus and Ashnaa Sasikaran’s Eurydice, with friends and relatives happily congregating with candles and balloons. Their joy is cut tragically short with the arrival of Kezia Bienek’s Silvia, carrying Eurydice’s red and gold sari, signifying her demise.

After the interval, the sky is black, the buildings expunged and the profuse flowers (‘head gardener’ Ali Allen) disappears, resurfacing only when Orpheus returns home as the Apollo of Singh Panesar offers spiritual relief from his pain.

The earlier guests have become spirits in the underworld, which adds a touch of the uncanny. Choral traditions are slight in India, but all the voices meld well, and the differing solo vocal ornamentations sound complementary rather than antagonistic, implying compromise on both sides.

Watts began nervously but gradually blossomed on opening night until reaching a peak of emotional resonance in ‘Possente spirto’; Sasikaran makes a charming, gentle Eurydice. Bienek is a forthright Silvia and Chandra Chakraborty a lively Proserpina. Kaviraj Singh offers a resolute Caronte and Singh Panesar an equally persuasive Apollo; significantly, both also play in the orchestra. Dean Robinson’s Pluto strikes the right conciliatory note.

Just about the only mild disappointment is the dancing, which is largely circular and rudimentary. But overall, this is a happy conjunction of two powerful traditions, a cross-fertilisation that promises further musical riches.

Review by Martin Dreyer

Further performances on tour in Newcastle, Nottingham and Salford until November 19.

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REVIEW: Northern Opera Group, Merrion Street Rest Garden, Leeds, August 29

Beth Moxon. “Breathed more life into Sally than the text really implied”. Picture: Nick Rutter

REVIEW: Thomas And Sally, Northern Opera Group, Merrion Street Rest Garden, Leeds, August 29

DAVID Ward will not take No for an answer. All through lockdown, as artistic director of Northern Opera Group, he kept up a flurry of releases about his plans for the company’s annual festival at the end of August, this year based around the history of opera in Leeds.

There was never doubt in his mind that the festival would not materialise. Luck was on his side, of course, and outdoor gatherings began to be allowed from the start of August.

So it was that a band of diehards gathered on the grass, suitably distanced and just round the corner from the Grand Theatre, on a cool, blustery day, to watch Thomas Arne’s two-act Thomas And Sally, or The Sailor’s Return.

Premiered at Covent Garden in late 1760, it was seen in Leeds not long afterwards, following publication of the full score the following year.

It has been Arne’s misfortune to be remembered almost exclusively for Rule, Britannia, the patriotic chorus from his masque Alfred (1740); Beethoven’s use of the tune for a set of piano variations undoubtedly enhanced its international appeal.

Arne, however, was a prolific composer of stage works in many guises. Several of these were afterpieces, short, often comic entertainments that lightened the atmosphere after a longer opera: Thomas And Sally, running to barely an hour, was one such. Its librettist was the Irish-born Isaac Bickerstaff, who also provided the text for Arne’s oratorio, Judith.

The story is a riff on a typical pastoral scenario. Innocent milkmaid Sally laments the absence of her fiancé Thomas, who has joined the navy. The local Squire sees an opportunity to capitalise, egged on by the worldly-wise matron Dorcas. When Thomas returns from the sea to claim his bride, he chases off the Squire, who is left to fume at Dorcas.

The piece is claimed as the first all-sung comic opera in English and certainly marks the first use of the clarinet by an English composer. Even as here with keyboard accompaniment, it was possible to appreciate how far Arne’s harmonic palette had broadened in the two decades since Alfred.

Naomi Rogers: “The real scene stealer”

His vocal decorations also sounded much less perfunctory. That was partly a result of the excellent treatment the work received at the hands of four singers, none of whom had been before a live audience for at least five months.

Beth Moxon’s soprano breathed more life into Sally than the text really implied, and Michael Vincent Jones’s tenor Squire moved convincingly from quizzical to lusty under the tutelage of Dorcas.

Although also billed as a tenor role, Thomas really sits lower, closer to Purcell’s Aeneas, and Egan Llyr Thomas’s strong baritonal timbre was just what was needed.

But the real scene-stealer was Naomi Rogers, whose versatile mezzo inhabited the role of Dorcas to her fingertips, finding humour in the unlikeliest places. Jenny Martins wrought miracles at the keyboard in the chilly wind.

So engaging was David Ward’s production that the traffic beyond the railings – behind a shed – passed by unnoticed.

Most of the rest of the festival took place online, a notable exception being an excellent lunchtime recital by soprano Louise Wayman, to Ward’s accompaniment, in a chilly room with windows wide open. Her wide-ranging arias reflected 300 years of operatic history in Leeds, many of them mentioned in an online exhibition, Leeds Opera Story.

Elsewhere, bass-baritone Neil Balfour and violinist Chloe Hayward commendably tackled extracts from ballad operas in five outdoor venues around Leeds.

Over the same weekend, the Orchestra of Opera North – or 13 members of it – led by the redoubtable David Greed, reopened Leeds Town Hall with Mendelssohn’s Octet and Mozart’s Symphony No 29.

Both were played with tight ensemble and considerable élan despite distancing, separated by tenor Nicholas Watts bravely duelling David Cowan’s over-keen piano in the first six numbers of Die Schöne Müllerin.

In every instance, Yorkshire grit won the day, but Ward’s dauntless optimism had led the way.

Review by Martin Dreyer            

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