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REVIEW:  Steve Crowther’s verdict on The Academy of St Olave’s Winter Concert

Alan George: Conducted Academy of St Olave’s Winter Concert

The Academy of St Olave’s Winter Concert, York St John University Creative Centre Theatre, York, 21/1/2023

THIS concert in support of the Jessie’s Fund charity celebrated the music of Schubert, Beethoven and Schumann.

The opening of Schubert’s Incidental music for Rosamunde did seem a tad tentative, hardly surprising given the occasion and new venue with its somewhat dry acoustic. But the Academy quickly hit their stride with a confident Overture brimming with energy and lovely woodwind contributions, dancing gracefully in their many pastoral guises.

This is the first time I have heard this pick’n’mix of musical treats, and the performance was a delight:  warm and dignified (Ballet music in B minor), humming nobility (Entr’acte in D major), decisive tempo shifts and a lovely delivery of that melody (Entr’acte in Bb) and so forth.

Then we were suddenly transported to the musical grown-ups’ table with a thrilling performance of Beethoven’s “heroic” Overture Leonore No. 3. This is a truly remarkable work, symphonic in scope and depth.

The musical journey from dark to light, despair to hope was compellingly conveyed in this focused, driven performance. The ‘distant’ trumpet call (signalling the liberation of Florestan and Leonore) was very telling.

Following the interval was a chocolatey-rich delivery of Schumann’s wonderful Symphony No. 3 (Rhenish). I love this work, indeed I love the musical generosity of thiswork. And so did the orchestra. Under the assured musical direction of conductor Alan George, the performance oozed clarity and confidence.

The Rhenish has no introductory welcome, the starting trigger is fired with the players delivering a high-energy, joyful first movement. There was much to admire here, but balance is the key for the necessary clarity, and this performance had it. I particularly enjoyed the quite extraordinary sound world of the fourth “Cathedral Scene” movement, with gorgeous, ecclesiastical (perhaps?) trombone playing.

But I will leave the final word to the orchestral leader Claire Jowett. Ms Jowett has performed this vital, always understated, almost unnoticed role for more years than I care to remember (sorry Claire). And yet the importance of leading the strings with such certainty of purpose is integral to the success and confidence of all concerned.

Review by Steve Crowther

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Academy of St Olave’s to play German works in debut performance at York St John University’s Creative Centre Theatre

Alan George: Academy Of St Olave’s musical director

THE Academy of St Olave’s presents a trio of early Romantic masterpieces by Beethoven, Schubert and Schumann its Winter Concert on January 21.

The 8pm programme will be performed in a new location for the York chamber orchestra: York St John University’s Creative Centre Theatre.

This will be one of the first classical music concerts to be held in the 170-seat theatre, which opened last year.

Schubert’s incidental music to the play Rosamunde, including the famous third Entr’acte, will be followed by Beethoven’s Leonore No. 3 Overture, arguably the finest of the four overtures he composed for his only opera, Fidelio.

Both Fidelio, under its original title of Leonore, and Rosamunde were first performed at Vienna’s Theater an der Wien, in 1805 and 1823 respectively,  meaning the Academy’s presentation of Rosamunde will mark 200 years since the play’s premiere.

The concert concludes with Schumann’s melodious Symphony No. 3, inspired by the composer’s move to Düsseldorf in the Rhineland and thus nicknamed “The Rhenish”.

The Academy’s musical director, Alan George, says: “We’re looking forward to performing a trio of thrilling works by three of the great Germanic composers of the early 19th century: Beethoven, Schubert and Schumann; a combination sure to delight our audience.

“We’re also pleased to be one of the first orchestras to perform at York St John University’s Creative Centre Theatre, helping to introduce a new – and warm! – venue to the city’s music scene. Finally, I’m delighted that the Academy has chosen once again to support Jessie’s Fund at this concert.”

The Jessie’s Fund children’s charity was set up by Alan and his wife, Lesley Schatzberger, after their nine-year-old daughter Jessie’s brain tumour diagnosis in 1994. Sadly, Jessie died shortly afterwards, but Lesley and Alan decided that Jessie’s Fund should become a charity dedicated to helping seriously ill and disabled children through the therapeutic use of music.

Based in York, Jessie’s Fund now helps children all over the United Kingdom. The Academy’s support through this month’s concert comes at a pivotal time for the charity, as Lesley steps back from leading it. More information on the charity’s work can be found at:  https://jessiesfund.org.uk/.

Tickets cost £15 (£5 for students and accompanied under-18s) at www.academyofstolaves.org.uk. Please note, ticket numbers are limited, so booking in advance is recommended to avoid disappointment.

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REVIEW: Martin Dreyer’s verdict on Martin Roscoe, Sir Jack Lyons Concert Hall, University of York, March 18

Martin Roscoe: “Let’s his fingers do the talking. They are certainly eloquent“

PIANISTS do not come much more deceptive than Martin Roscoe, who closed the British Music Society of York’s season with this recital of Schubert, Brahms and Liszt.

He goes against convention by using a score – no harm in that, especially if you consult it as little as he did. Having walked unassumingly to the keyboard, he plays without fuss or histrionics. In other words, he lets his fingers do the talking. They are certainly eloquent.

Although Schubert’s second set of impromptus, D.935, was not published until 11 years after his death, he had presented them as a foursome to his publisher (who, incredibly, rejected them). There is no suggestion that they are the movements of a sonata, but there is undeniably a feeling that they are related – for one thing, the first and fourth are in the same key, F minor. Certainly, I have never felt them to be so closely linked as they sounded here.

There was an understated elegance in Roscoe’s approach. He unfolded the opening Allegro moderato gently, melting smoothly from the minor to the major key and back again. There was a touch more emphasis in the second, marked Allegretto.

The ‘Rosamunde’ variations were beautifully contrasted: the three different voices in the second variation, for example, emerged with lovely clarity. The sense of impromptu, essentially improvisation, was kindled most keenly in the final dance, especially in the link to the return of the main theme.

The three Brahms intermezzi, Op 117, which are late, autumnal pieces, emerged as if they were the composer’s innermost thoughts, at once intimate and revealing. A lovely cantabile flow permeated the first, while it was the inner voices of the more sombre second that gleamed to the surface in turn. The syncopations of the third, which might have felt more restless, were not allowed to disrupt its serenity.

Petrarch’s Sonnet 104 finds the poet in a confused state over a burning love affair. Liszt’s reaction to it was first to set it as a song and then, more famously, to transcribe that into a piano piece, which appears in the Italian volume of his Years of Pilgrimage. Roscoe treated its harmonies tenderly, as if aware that the topic was sensitive, and it unfolded logically to its bitter-sweet close.

In both the remaining Liszt pieces, there must have been plenty of temptation to treat the piano as an orchestra; Liszt piles on the pressure relentlessly. Roscoe resisted. Isolde’s Love-Death, his transcription of the closing scene from Wagner’s Tristan Und Isolde, reached a passionate but controlled climax, with the lovers finally achieving satisfaction together after death.

Even more orchestral was St Francis’s triumphant walk on the waves, its rushing, stormy figurations not disrupting the relentless flow. Here we had the only out-and-out fortissimo of the evening. After that, a quiet Beethoven Bagatelle seemed the perfect antidote as encore. An evening of impeccable taste and considerable virtuosity.

Review by Martin Dreyer

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REVIEW: Martin Dreyer’s verdict on Winter’s Journey, Roderick Williams & Joseph Middleton, Howard Assembly Rooms, Leeds, 11/3/2022

Roderick Williams: “Hurled verbal darts at the traveller’s ex-lover”

IF you are a lover of Schubert lieder, you may bridle at hearing them sung in English. If you are an even more dyed-in-the-wool purist, you will want to hear his great song-cycle Winterreise sung in the original keys, in other words by a tenor.

So, if you experienced the cycle in English, sung by a baritone – two removes from the original – you might think it beyond the pale. In which case, you probably hadn’t heard these two musicians perform it.

The Jeremy Sams translation, written at the invitation of accompanist Christopher Glynn (of Ryedale Festival), has no airs and graces. It reflects the relatively simple language of Wilhelm Müller’s original, which is not by any yardstick a masterpiece of German literature.

Instead it sticks to a basic story-line about a jilted lover and paints in simple terms the emotions he feels as he travels through a wintry landscape that reflects his inner world. This man is a loner, an outsider – and angry at the way the world has mistreated him.

Such a reading of Sams/Müller inspired Williams’s response here, and Middleton was hand in glove with his vision. After rueful reflection in the final, major-key stanza of Gute Nacht (Goodnight), we were straight into bitter resentment with Die Wetterfahne (The Weather-vane), Middleton pecking at the keys as Williams hurled verbal darts at the traveller’s ex-lover. In Gefrorne Tränen (Frozen Tears) I part company with Sams, who translates ‘Eis’ into snow, where ‘ice’ is much more biting. Doubtless rhyme demanded it, but still.

We felt the comfort from the linden tree’s rustling leaves and the traveller’s tears “guzzled by the thirsty snow” – a telling metaphor – before Williams suggested that the journey was taking a toll on the lover’s sanity in Rückblick (Turning Back); here his anger had been presaged by the piano’s violent prelude.

Then came a masterpiece of characterisation in Frühlingstraum (Dreaming Of Spring), where the duo conjured three distinct moods, its light-hearted start jolted into reality at cock-crow and thence into bitterness that happiness can never be recaptured.

There were sadly unfulfilled hopes that the post would bring a comforting message, although, again, the English ‘heart’ did not carry quite the bite that the German ‘Herz’ delivers with its final consonant. Flowing triplets well captured the friendly crow’s flight, but the temporary ease was soon dissipated in the baritone’s hint of mental disintegration in Letzte Hoffnung (Last Hope).

Sams imagines a ‘proper witches’ brew’ from Der Stürmische Morgen (Stormy Morning) – not really in the original text – but Williams obliged with some really vicious tone, complementing it immediately in the major/minor anguish of Täuschung (Delusion) and a beautifully pianissimo ending.

The tempo sagged a little in Das Wirtshaus (The Inn – actually a graveyard), although it was given a really bold postlude. That prepared the way nicely for some real swagger in Mut! (Courage!). Self-doubt re-emerged in a cleverly mood-wavering account of Die Nebensonnen (Phantom Suns). For the final song, Der Leiermann, Williams walked to the end of the piano and faced sideways, treating the pianist as the organ-grinder of the title. It was a telling move.

So much of the cycle had these moments that revealed a real depth of engagement on the part of this admirable duo. If Williams was more relaxed and thus more immediate in his colours, Middleton was a touch more deliberate, occasionally trying to inject more into Schubert than the composer really intended to convey. Nevertheless, it was a moving – and memorable – evening.

Review by Martin Dreyer

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REVIEW: Martin Dreyer’s verdict on Carolyn Sampson & Joseph Middleton, Ryedale Festival, 17/7/2021

Carolyn Sampson: Ryedale Festival concert was “Elysium indeed, however you define it”. Picture: Marco Borggeve

Ryedale Festival: Carolyn Sampson & Joseph Middleton, St Peter and St Paul Church, Pickering, July 17

THE name Elysium covers a multitude of … well, pleasures. To the ancient Greeks, it was where the blessed, especially heroes, decamped after death. For the rest of us, it means paradise, with a small or large ‘p’.

Either way, it was the umbrella for soprano Carolyn Sampson’s late-night Schubert recital; she had also given it in the afternoon. Joseph Middleton was her piano partner, a top-notch combination. How typical of artistic director Christopher Glynn to bring in big names right at the start of the festival.

Schubert had a Damoclean sword of disease hanging over the last third of his life, so thoughts of the afterlife cannot have been far from his mind. Perhaps, like the young nun, he looked forward to peace after life’s storms, exquisitely encapsulated in Sampson’s pianissimo Alleluias at the end of Die Junge Nonne, without vibrato.

There again, Elysium is doubtless a place of endless melody, prefigured by Goethe’s Ganymede, where little tunes keep bursting out as he soars upward and we felt his excitement at what lay ahead.

Romantic poets often use moon and stars as stand-ins for heavenly realms. The opening of Beethoven’s Moonlight sonata colours the setting of Holty’s first An Den Mond (To The Moon). There is melancholy, too, in Goethe’s poem of the same name. Both here conveyed the idea of the voice as the reflection of the soul.

The brisker dactyls of Die Sterne (The Stars) showed a happier side to starlight, contrasting with the wonderful stillness this duo delivered in Nacht Und Träume’ (Night And Dreams) where moonlight gleams gently. There was a wonderful delicacy in Sampson’s tone for Der Liebliche Stern (The Lovely Star), tinged with sadness as the star contemplated its own reflection.

There was sunlight in the programme too. In Auf Dem Wasser Zu Singen (To Be Sung On The Water), it glinted on the waters of Middleton’s piano, eventually evoking escape from the passage of time.

A thrillingly rapid account of Der Musensohn (The Son Of The Muses) really danced with glee. In total contrast, Du Bist Die Ruh (You Are Peace) was consummately sustained by Sampson. Similarly, Middleton had tinted in little details of the nightingale’s twitterings with delicacy.

So to Schubert’s setting of Schiller’s Elysium, virtually a cantata, where rapid changes of mood require a chameleon-like approach. This duo was more than equal to its demands: light and shade, sun and storm and eventually an endless wedding feast, a heaven to die for, certainly.

Even more of a rarity was Schubert’s only song as a melodrama, Abschied Von Der Erde (Farewell To The World), given as an encore – pure delight, and filled with the reconciliation the composer undoubtedly achieved near his end. Elysium indeed, however you define it.

Review by Martin Dreyer