Friday, July 19, 2013

The sound of a glass ceiling breaking

"The sound of a glass ceiling breaking."  This is how the BBC Proms website describes the innovation of a woman conductor being appointed to take charge of the iconic The Last Night.  Marin Alsop, Chief Conductor of São Paulo Symphony Orchestra and Music Director of the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra, first made her name in the UK as Principal Conductor of the Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra.  I remember attending a performance by Alsop and the BSO of Mahler's 2nd Symphony when she drew an exhilarating performance from the players.

For The Last Night of the Proms she will steer the BBC Symphony Orchestra through a diet of Wagner, Bernstein, Vaughan Williams, Britten, more Bernstein, Massenet, Handel, Rossini - you get the picture! - plus the traditional items to get the last night prommers going.  No doubt they will have a lot of fun with her debut, too.

The Last Night opens with a world premiere commission from young English (woman) composer Anna Clyne.  To reciprocate the international exchange, Clyne is currently the Chicago Symphony's Mead Composer-in-Residence through the 2013-14 season.  She describes herself as, "a composer of acoustic and electro-acoustic music, combining resonant soundscapes with propelling textures that weave, morph, and collide in dramatic explosions."

Follow this link for a flavour.  Anna Clyne's Night Ferry.

Few other women composers get a look-in at the 2013 Proms - just 6 from a list of 129 - how can that be?!  They are Diana Burrell, Tansy Davies, Sofia Gubaidulina, Imogen Holst (daughter of Gustav), Elizabeth Maconchy and Priaulx Rainier.  Well, at least we can claim that 50% of them are living which is more than can be said for the men!

Women composers are well-represented on tutti and the Lontano label on tutti in particular offers some very engaging recordings - Maconchy is the first name you will see.

The usual gender issues aside, this year's Proms Festival is truly eclectic and has something for everyone. It really is worth browsing the website - bbc.co.uk/proms - and if you can't be there in person, the evening concert is broadcast on BBC Radio 3 every day and there will be lots of other radio and television broadcasts of many of the events.

I'm really pleased Marin Alsop has been given The Last Night of the Proms and on Saturday 7th September, I will be cheering her on from the safety of my sofa!

More tutti talk soon, so,
That's it for now . . .

Operatic Opportunities

Summer is here and open-air opera is upon us - Glyndebourne, Garsington and W11 to name but a few, but let me cast back a little - nominations in the 'Best new opera production' category for the UK's Olivier Awards were announced just before Easter this year and it's interesting to observe that three of the four nominated works were ENO productions. One of the three, Caligula, was by a living composer - Boosey & Hawkes published, German composer, Detlev Glanert.  The fourth nomination, also by a living composer, was staged at The Barbican - Philip Glass's, Einstein on the Beach.

It's a little surprising that nothing was nominated from that other great London operatic institution, Covent Garden, particularly George Benjamin's highly acclaimed new work, Written on Skin.  The Royal Opera House is devoting ever more resources to contemporary work and that may be down to the outlook of the current Director of Opera, Kasper Holten, who is reported as saying, "New work is not and should not be at the periphery of our programme, but right at the core of what and who we are."  Bravo!

Casting back even earlier, at the beginning of this year ROH announced an impressive set of plans for 2013 to 2020 amounting to 15 new works in both the main house and the more experimental Linbury Studio.  Forth-coming productions will include in the near future, work by Australian, Ben Frost, and by British composers Julian Philips, Luke Bedford and Matthew Herbert.  Looking further ahead, there are new commissions for Mark-Anthony Turnage and Judith Weir (follow the link on Judith's name for a tantalising taster of the ENO production of Judith's Blond Eckbert). There is lots more on offer for composers from Denmark, Finland, Italy and Germany, too.

Not to be out-done, ENO also raised the curtain on its latest commission which was styled as an "enthralling multimedia 'occult mystery', combining live performance, music, 2D and 3D film."  A collaboration with the Barbican, all performances of Sunken Garden by composer, director and film-maker Michel van der Aa take place there and it opened on the 12th April. 

Opera has always been wonderfully eclectic, gloriously international and fiercely innovative.  Here's hoping that we can add 'boundlessly contemporary' to the accolades.  A living composer did win that Olivier Award so that is a step in the right direction.

If you type 'opera' into the tutti searchbox, I hope you will be intrigued at what turns up - never the predictable!

Aah, I've just caught the final moments of a fiery Norfolk sunset from my studio window - you can see more of the moments I've managed to capture posted on the Music at tutti timeline on facebook.

More tutti talk soon, so,
That's it for now . . .

Baroque Spring

In one of my early tutti talks, I mentioned the BBC Radio 3 blockbuster series Baroque Spring, which was presented throughout the month of March.  This was such a dynamic and comprehensive overview of a period of music which has underpinned and nurtured so much which followed that I felt it was deserving of an entire tutti talk to itself.

When I say Baroque music has fed into the repertoire that followed it, there are great examples in 20th and 21st century music of how inspiring the baroque composers have been. 

To take just a few random examples -
in jazz, the Jacques Loussier Trio and the Swingle Singers; in popular music, Procul Harum's Whiter Shade of Pale and more recently, a marvellous arrangement of Let it Be, written for Lesley Garrett and recorded on her CD The Singer.

Then there are some of the direct tributes such as Percy Grainger's Handel in the Strand or Benjamin Britten's Young Person's Guide to the Orchestra (on a theme by Purcell), here played by the YouTube Symphony Orchestra, conductor Michael Tilson Thomas.

For the more quirky - have a look at this mobile/cellphone video - a very enterprising way to spend their advertising budget!

If you type the word baroque into the tutti searchbox, I guarantee you will be surprised at what pops up!

It's a lovely summer's day here in Norfolk and I'm looking out into clear skies - England are dominating the battle for the Ashes and the weekend beckons - close to perfect!!

More tutti talk soon, so,
That's it for now . . .

RIP - RRB

tutti talk is our latest email strand and this is the first edition.

We know music is your passion - it's our passion, too which is why we want to share with you the thoughts, ideas, events and opportunities that we hope will interest you.

The first thing to let you know is that tutti has just launched a facebook page.  It's really easy to find but here's a link for your first visit - www.facebook.com/tutti.co.uk.

Just in this first week, we have gained nearly 500 followers and are connected through our friends to nearly 15,000 people.  We'd love you to visit the tutti facebook page and like us.

Looking back to 2012, we saw the loss of three immensely fine composer - Elliott Carter at 103, Jonathan Harvey, 73 and Richard Rodney Bennett at 76.  They all made unique contributions to 20th and 21st century music and I'm pleased to say we have examples of their work at tutti.

RRB was of course well known for his film music, including Far from the Madding Crowd, Nicholas and Alexandra and Murder on the Orient Express - three very different cinematic genres.  At tutti we have an interesting recording which couples Bennett's work with that of Ben Britten, Roberto Gerhard and Elisabeth Lutyens (a much under-rated English composer who deserves a tutti talk all her own!).  You can find the NMC CD here .

Jonathan Harvey's piano piece, typically tersely titled - ff - was commissioned as part of the first Spectrum collection for the Associated Board of the Royal Schools of Music.  This is another enterprising NMC recording.

More tutti talk soon, so,
That's it for now . . .

Sarah Rodgers