Northampton Symphony Orchestra concert
26 March 2023
Saturday's Northampton Symphony Orchestra concert was the first in the 130 year history of the orchestra to consist entirely of works by female composers. The 'Women of Note' concert at Christchurch in Northampton was an exciting evening: it has been a really enjoyable process for the orchestra getting to know unfamiliar repertoire and exploring the stories behind the pieces and their composers. All the works we played deserve to be better known so I have included links here to recordings by other orchestras.
We started the concert with the suite 'Penillion' by the Welsh mid-twentieth century composer Grace Williams - a lovely piece that draws on the eisteddfod tradition of improvised penillion singing, usually accompanied by harp. This four movement work for full orchestra features a prominent role for the harp, but the faster second and fourth movements also feature Eastern European and Spanish influences. Listen to 'Penillion' by Grace Williams, played by the BBC National Orchestra of Wales, at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WIU2vT0tJ5Y
Errolyn Wallen's 'Triple Concerto', for a trio of violin, viola and accordion, accompanied by string orchestra, is an entertaining, genre-defying piece written in 2018 for the Kosmos Ensemble. It was exciting to see Kosmos perform it with the NSO - featuring Harriet Mackenzie on violin, Meg-Rosaleen Hamilton on viola and Miloš Milivojević on accordion. And Kosmos brought the house down with their encore of Astor Piazzolla's 'Libertango'. You can watch Kosmos playing Errolyn Wallen's 'Triple Concerto' with Worthing Symphony Orchestra in 2018 at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jdR7oM2BYPw
The second half of the concert opened with 'Turbulent Landscapes' by Thea Musgrave - a suite in which, like Mussorgsky’s ‘Pictures at an Exhibition', each movement is inspired by an artwork, in this case paintings by JMW Turner. Each movement also features one member of the orchestra as a soloist. I wrote here previously (in February 2023) about the significant challenge of playing the solo horn part in the third movement, ‘Snow Storm: Hannibal and his Army crossing the Alps’. It was a nerve-wracking experience, particularly having to stand up to play it, but I think it went pretty well. The other soloists within the orchestra sounded fantastic: Nick Tollervey on tuba, Sarah Mourant on oboe, Terry Mayo on trumpet, Robert Reid on bass clarinet, Paige Johnson on piccolo, and Naomi Muller on clarinet. These solos were not like the short solo passages we often have to play within a symphony: here each movement is almost a mini concerto, and I know from my own experience how much time each of my fellow soloists must have spent preparing for the concert. 'Turbulent Landscapes' was a really challenging work to play but I think our performance was very impressive and I've really grown to like this unusual, programmatic work. You can listen to Thea Musgrave's 'Turbulent Landscapes' performed by the BBC Symphony Orchestra, while looking at the relevant Turner paintings at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hnokpA37ieY
At last year's Edinburgh International Festival I saw the Philadelphia Orchestra, conducted by Yannick Nézet-Séguin, performing Florence Price’s ‘Symphony No 1’ (reviewed here in September 2022). This symphony, premiered in 1932, was the first work by a Black woman composer to be performed by a major US orchestra. We finished our NSO concert with Florence Price's Concert Overture No. 2 - one of several of her works that might have been lost had it not been discovered among Price’s affects in an abandoned Chicago residence where she lived toward the end of her life. You can listen to Florence Price's Concert Overture No. 2 played by the BBC Concert Orchestra at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vk4ST2sGDvI It's an enjoyable weaving together of several well known spirituals and was a lovely way to end what felt like a very special concert. As one audience member said on Facebook: “If you missed this, you missed a fantastic evening. I knew none of the pieces and only one of the composers (Florence Price) and yet I'd rank that as one of my best orchestral evenings ever. Wonderful.”
Labels: Concerts, Music
Danny Baker
24 March 2023
Regular readers may remember I'm a big fan of the writer and broadcaster Danny Baker. When we saw him at Warwick Arts Centre in 2018 (reviewed here in May 2018) his anecdotes and reminiscences focused on the 'rock ‘n’ roll years’ – recounting his experiences of working as a journalist at the NME and getting his break as a television presenter. When we caught his latest tour (possibly his last - he seems determined to retire on his 66th birthday this June) at Milton Keynes Theatre last Saturday, he promised to bring his story up to date. But he still spent the entire first half of the evening (an hour and three quarters before the interval) recapping his childhood and early career for anyone who had missed his previous shows. After the break he covered the happenstance of his discovery of radio broadcasting as his true home, and his extensive career as a writer, for Angus Deayton, Jonathan Ross, Chris Evans, Rob Brydon, Peter Kay and many others. Danny Baker is a compelling storyteller and this performance was an amazing tour-de-force. Eager to squeeze in as many stories as possible, his rapid nonstop delivery, with barely a pause for breath and no sip of water to ease the throat, while constantly pacing the stage, lasted more than three and a half hours. And even then you felt he was disappointed he hadn't managed to get through everything he had wanted to say. But it never felt like the marathon ordeal this makes it sound. I felt completely drawn into every story to the point I sometimes forgot I was in a theatre watching a bald middle aged man wearing a fez and clutching a snooker cue (to point to the pictures projected on a screen above the stage). Danny Baker's reflections on his life are jaw-droppingly incredible, laugh-out-loud funny and surprisingly humble - and brilliantly performed. If he does retire this summer I'm so glad I got to see him one last time.
Labels: Comedy, Theatre
'Henry V' by William Shakespeare
17 March 2023
On Saturday we were at the Royal Theatre in Northampton to see 'Henry V' - a joint production by Royal & Derngate, Northampton, Shakespeare’s Globe and Headlong, with Leeds Playhouse, directed by Headlong’s Artistic Director Holly Race Roughan. This was an interesting take on 'Henry V', played in casual modern dress on a bare stage with all the actors on stage for most of the performance, sitting on chairs to watch the scenes that didn't involve them. Dispensing with the role of Chorus, the cast took turns to introduce each scene, speaking the stage directions and announcing which characters they were playing, making the audience feel like we were eavesdropping on the rehearsal room. Oliver Johnstone played Henry V, not as the traditional soldier king but more like Hamlet, a troubled soul who talks to his dead father (introduced at the start with a scene from the end of 'Henry IV Part 2') and a reluctant leader. His "Cry God for Harry, England and Saint George!" is spoken quietly to himself as if rehearsing what he plans to say to his troops. And the final words of his rousing St Crispin's Day rallying cry are interrupted by another character changing the subject. While it was interesting to consider Henry as someone whose miraculous transition from the playboy Prince Hal to warrior monarch might have been more political spin than reality, the production's host of clever ideas removed much of the emotional punch of the play. I was, however, fascinated by the essay in the programme by Jane Grogan which relates the way Shakespeare portrays Henry's imperial ambitions to conquer France with the political context when the play was written. Elizabethan England had no empire but had established plantations in Ireland and Virginia, and the ships of the joint stock trading companies were setting off from London to trade with the powerful Ottoman empire. Shakespeare was writing in a time of emergent empire and used Henry V to reflect on the new 'empire state of mind'. Having just been listening to the wonderful 'Empire' podcast (reviewed here in January 2023) discussing the Ottoman empire it was really interesting to connect this to what was happening in England at the same time.
Labels: Drama, Theatre
'The Merchant of Venice 1936' by William Shakespeare, adapted by Brigid Larmour
10 March 2023
Last Saturday we were at the Watford Palace Theatre to see ‘The Merchant of Venice 1936’, Brigid Larmour’s adaptation of Shakespeare’s play, set in the East End of London, starring Tracy-Ann Oberman as Shylock. Casting the Merchant, Antonio (Raymond Coulthard), Portia (Hannah Morrish) and others as black-shirted followers of Oswald Mosley’s British Union of Fascists immediately shifts your sympathies to Shylock’s East End matriarch. And showing the events of the play against the backdrop of The Battle of Cable Street gives a very different feel to most productions of ‘The Merchant of Venice’. This idea, suggested by Tracy-Ann Oberman, is not just a very clever way of dealing with a ‘difficult’ play, but allows for a much wider exploration of anti-semitism and prejudice. Watford Palace Theatre has used Brigid Larmour’s production as the basis for a wider project which includes an extended online storytelling platform: https://www.merchant1936.co.uk/ Tracy-Ann Oberman is excellent as Shylock and Hannah Morrish’s Portia as Diana Mitford is a very clever mix of sensible and sinister.
Labels: Drama, Theatre
'Othello' by William Shakespeare
3 March 2023
On Saturday we were at the Curzon cinema at Milton Keynes Gallery to see the NTLive stream of Clint Dyer’s production of ‘Othello’ from the National Theatre in London. Using a bleak, monotone set dominated by broad stone steps on three sides, this production suggests a 1930s fascist state with almost everyone dressed in black shirts. Giles Terera’s Othello is the only person of colour and the constant refusal of other characters to accept his offered handshake is subtle but noticeable. Rather than simply seeing the play as a study in jealousy, Clint Dyer focuses on its racism and misogyny. Paul Hilton’s Iago, complete with an Enoch Powell thin moustache, is perhaps a little too obviously dastardly. Giles Terera gives an outstanding performance as Othello, and Rosy McEwen is great as Desdemona but I felt Tanya Franks as Iago’s wife Emilia was the revelation here. Clearly showing her as a woman physically and emotionally abused by her husband made sense of her willingness to assist Iago’s deceit of Othello. Having Iago address his interior monologues to a Greek chorus of actors sitting on the steps across the stage, rather than breaking the fourth wall to address the audience directly, was a clever way of implicating the wider society in his prejudices and his actions. It’s a fairly bleak production of a very grim play but excellently acted.
Labels: Drama, Film, Theatre
