WEBLOG- Robert Hugill
Wednesday 5th
October
I’ve made a good start
on the Robert King set of Vivaldi’s
sacred music, but I am alternating between
amazement at Vivaldi’s fertility and
a sneaking suspicion that he just wrote
repeats of the famous Gloria with variations.
As an interlude we watched the DVD of
Handel’s Rodelinda in the production
from Glyndebourne. I’d seen the touring
production (with Emma Bell and Robin
Blaze) so this televisation of the original
production and cast (Anna Caterina Antonacci
and Andreas Scholl) came as no surprise.
What amazed me was how less bad-tempered
I was about the production viewing the
DVD than when I’d seen it live. review
Another interlude has
been the Georgian Journey, a
fascinating 2 disc set of music from
Georgia covering both traditional sacred
music and secular, folk music. I received
the disc by accident, I misread Georgian
Journey for Gregorian Journey and was
expecting a disc of Gregorian chant.
But we put it on in the car and both
of us fell in love with it. Georgian
music is polyphonic, possibly the oldest
polyphonic folk tradition in the world
and the sound world is that early chant
combined with the vigour and directness
of folk-delivery. review
Wednesday 19th
October
Vivaldi has not been
going quite as fast as I would like,
I’m on disc 10 of 11 so reaching the
end. I’m now at the point where I begin
to run out of adjectives, especially
on a set like Robert King’s where there
is not much really to complain about.
No doubt when David eventually gets
to proof read the article he’ll be complaining
about the frequent repetitions of my
small stock of superlatives.
I’ve been typing up
the contents as I go along as this is
something I truly hate. My proof reading
skills are minimal, so there is plenty
of scope for error as you type in all
the Latin titles and try to coordinate
a cast of some two dozen soloists. Still,
the review’s not worth much if the reader
does not have full information about
the discs.
Monday 24th
October
Vivaldi is done and
dusted, my only worry is that it comes
over as a long list rather than a coherent
piece of writing, but with so many items
its tricky to do otherwise.review
I can now get down to writing the Emma
Bell review, we’ve been listening to
her Handel disc at home whilst cooking
so I think I’ve got to grips with it.
My main complaint is that the recording
does not seem to do her voice justice.
Perhaps she’s not a recording voice,
some people do seem to be better heard
live than on disc. Still, it is lovely
to hear richer, more vibrant voices
singing Handel nowadays; after all he
wrote for the greatest voices of his
age and though style has changed, the
basic vocal equipment hasn’t. review
Monday 31st
October
A little revelation
over the last few days, Thomas Hampson’s
new disc of orphan arias by Mozart,
Beethoven and Haydn. At this stage in
his career, with some pretty big roles
behind him, it is fabulous that he is
in such good vocal health in this repertoire.
You can’t get away with things in classical
era music, especially when you are accompanied
by Concentus Musikus Wien rather than
a well upholstered symphony orchestra;
it’s a credit to Hampson that he does
seem to need to try and get away with
anything. review
Wednesday 2nd
November
And now for something
completely different, the last of my
batch of Milken Archive recordings of
Jewish music.
The cantor on this
one, Simon Spiro, sang the lead in Phantom
of the Opera in the Far East and represented
England in a song for Europe besides
being Cantor at the St. John’s Wood
Synagogue and singing with Cliff Richard,
Johnny Mathis and Kenny Rogers. Quite
a remarkably varied background. review
Friday 4th
November
A reissue of Emma Kirkby’s
disc of Handel’s Italian cantatas; amazingly
this disc was issued over 20 years ago.
It is quite remarkable how some artists
manage to combine longevity and consistency;
perhaps it has something to with having
a clear idea of what does and does not
suit your voice. Kirkby has generally
stayed firmly within her fach,
something that can require strong mindedness
and discipline; the result is evident
in her voice today. Not that Kirkby’s
fach is as limited; besides encompassing
centuries of Western music (from Renaissance
to Classical) she has occasionally done
more contemporary pieces. review
Wednesday 9th
November
Just putting the finishing
touches to a review of Bluebeard’s Castle
from the BBC Proms; whatever you think
about the detail of the performance
I cannot help but be impressed at the
way more of these performances are being
made available on discs. A curious detail
of this performance came to light when
I was digging out the original reviews
of the performance (it helps to work
for a newspaper company with a large
electronic library of newspaper articles).
Soprano Jeanne Michelle Charbonnet was
a last minute replacement as Judith,
which perhaps helps to explain why we
have a dramatic soprano rather than
the usual mezzo-soprano. But the liner
notes say nothing of this; does it matter
I wonder? review
Friday 11th
November
Starting on the Fonit-Cetra
recording of La Traviata with Callas;
what do you find to say that hasn’t
been said before, Callas being one of
those singers who tend to polarise people,
most either love her or hate her. I
can remember in the old days of Record
Review on Radio 3, there were certain
critics who could always be guaranteed
to bring a record of Callas’s out on
top, no matter what the opposition.
review
Tuesday 22nd
November
A bit of a personal
hiatus but I’m just finishing Glass
Sky an interesting collection of
new music for flute, strings and harp
(including 1 piece for Japanese koto).
It’s interesting to see how each of
the composers deals with the problem
that this combination (flute and strings)
can sound very French. Some embrace
it, some reject it by emphasising other
cultures (Japanese, South African birdsong,
American folk) and others embrace it
but transform. review.
Once I’ve got this done it is on to
a disc of American light music
Friday 24th
November
The American Light
Music review is done and emailed off
to Rob; I must confess that what struck
me most was the remarkable consistency
of style between the various different
ensembles. review.
Monday 28th
November
And now for Menuhin’s
2nd recording of the Mendelssohn
violin concerto. All musicians who come
to success young have the problem that
as they mature, they often want to re-record
their repertoire in the light of their
development as an artist. As a child
prodigy who re-made his technique when
he matured, Menuhin had the added problem
that when recording as an adult he had
his earliest recordings to fight against
as well. That said, he had the luck
to develop at a time when recording
technology was developing fast, so that
his first post-war recording of the
Mendelssohn was streets ahead of his
1930s recording and when he came to
record it a 3rd time he was
able to do it in stereo for LP. Of course,
as with any great artists there is no
need to think of each recording being
a replacement for the previous, simply
a different view of the musical material.
Thursday 1st
December
I’m in the embarrassing
position of knowing Bo Holten’s work
as a conductor far better than his oeuvre
as a composer. The fact that he has
composed a substantial body of music,
particularly choral music seems to have
passed me by. This is particularly embarrassing
in that Holten’s style is fundamentally
tonal and owes quite a lot to the sort
of Renaissance polyphony that he works
with as a conductor, which means that
his general sound-world chimes in with
my own preoccupations as a composer.
Tuesday 6th
December 2005
Rather curiously The
Tend’rest Breast, a recital of English
20th century songs on texts
by Women poets has a couple of interesting
personal resonances. Roger Quilter’s
A song at parting sets a Christina
Rossetti poem that I used in my song
cycle Quickening. It’s always
difficult to be objective about other
people’s settings of texts that you
have used yourself, but I did not feel
that Quilter’s charming song explore
all the depth present in Rossetti’s
poem. Also on the disc, Alastair King
sets a poem by Katharine Raine, The
Moment; Raine’s poem has
remarkable echoes of a poem by Sorley
Maclean which Ronald Stevenson set in
his song Shores. (Ronald set
Maclean’s own English version of the
poem but I understand he subsequently
re-worked the song to set Maclean’s
original Gaelic.) I do wonder what the
link is between the poets?
Robert Hugill
