I’ve had Gerhardt’s Hyperion recording of the six Bach Cello suites on constant rotation during the last few months. Calming and stimulating – whatever the need – this is just a taster. Gerhardt’s brilliant musicianship knows no bounds, as he proved back in 2009 at the premiere of the concerto Unsuk Chin wrote especially for him: he played it from memory. Seeking the concerto out again, the playing was indeed as intensely expressive as I remembered, with all Gerhardt’s characteristic mix of freedom and fastidiousness.
In 2009 I also heard the South African soprano Pretty Yende in the role of Clara in Cape Town Opera’s production of Porgy and Bess. She’s gone on to an international career and so I was keen to watch her as Violetta in the Opera de Paris production of La Traviata. Director Simon Stone opts for a contemporary setting – glitter-branding and wheelie-bins – and Yende does the glamorous superstar with ease.
On an altogether different scale, the second series of #OperaHarmony’s micro-operas opens with Rose Miranda Hall’s 15-minute Wisdom of Stone, setting words by Candace Evans. Shot at the ancient Château de la Rochelambert in the Auvergne, it deals with the isolation of Elise who, in her state of anguish, seems to hear – emanating from the castle walls – the voice of a woman who over the centuries had faced the Black Death and other outbreaks of the plague. Elise, sung by Anne Sophie Duprels, gradually accepts that she must listen to the wisdom of the ages, learn from what lies deep in the stone. While the libretto is sometimes overwrought, there is something evocative embodied here.
By contrast, Essential Business uses the single unchanging camera angle of a laptop as an American pastor attempts a heart-to-heart with God via Zoom. Covid-19 has denied him the healing touch core to his ministry; it has also killed his daughter. Composer Judith Lynn Stillman and writer Anna Pool trace the rapid unravelling of a man of hitherto unshakeable faith, and the fine baritone Will Liverman credibly captures Pastor Harris’s vulnerability. #OperaHarmony pieces that rely on visual trickery say much less, but it’s clear that in the present circumstances composers are more than willing to challenge existing conceptions of the operatic form.
On learning of the death last week of Julian Bream, watching the film My Life in Music by Paul Balmer felt like a small gesture of homage. At two hours, it’s very long, yet Bream talks with such witty and disarming candour the time flies by. There is, moreover, remarkable archive footage of Stravinsky, Walton and Britten, among others, as well as performances from Bream himself on lute and guitar.
I’ve enjoyed returning to Sara Mohr-Pietsch’s Radio 3 series of Composers’ Rooms. They’re vividly conjured and often very revealing of the composers’ character and methodology as well as their self-doubt and little foibles. Betsy Jolas’s charm is a foil for her constitutionally iron discipline; Howard Skempton, whose every note is perfectly placed, knows exactly where everything is in his work room.
My picks for the week ahead
The very first in the Composers’ Rooms series was Oliver Knussen, a big – and big-hearted – man with a liking for small things. Find that conversation and then go on to listen to Monday’s Proms performance by the BBC Philharmonic Orchestra of his Second Symphony, recorded in 2012. Written when Knussen was 18, it sets poems by Georg Trakl and Sylvia Plath. Tuesday night’s Proms Classic is the European Union Youth Orchestra with Carlo Maria Giulini conducting Brahms’ second and fourth symphonies (1994). Not to be missed.
