Archive for year: 2011

Norden Farm Centre for the Arts is one of those rare theatre venues which is attractive to look at and well equipped but is also acoustically excellent and has a great piano! Having played here with Alexandra and Charlotte Reid a few years back, it was a pleasure to return with Marcus Farnsworth as part of this year's Maidenhead Music Society series. Our first half comprised a set of Schubert songs and then Mahler's glorious Rückert Lieder; it has been a joy to perform these several times so far this year and to feel them settle and our understanding of them continue to grow! The second half gave us a chance to reprise Barber's Op 10 settings of James Joyce from last week's Manchester recital, and then concluded with one of the absolute staples of our repertoire, and one of the glories of the English repertoire, Finzi's Earth and Air and Rain. Looking forward to repeating this programme in Machynlleth next week!

Pleased to hear that I'll be playing in the Kathleen Ferrier Award semi-final with Marcus Farnsworth at the end of the month – a nice excuse to be back at the Wigmore!

Hugely enjoyable concert with Cara Berridge last night at Dunsfold Music Circle. This series rotates around a number of venues in the village, and yesterday we were performing in the beautiful home of Rupert and Claire Howell. This was the first outing of a programme which we will repeat in various guises over the next year: Beethoven's C major sonata was framed with pieces by Francoeur and Fauré, and then the second half consisted of Rachmaninov's sonata. It was wonderful to perform this huge work for the first time; written shortly after the second piano concerto, this is a glorious Rachmaninov combination of virtuosity and stunning melodies!

The world premiere of Peter Maxwell Davies and David Pountney's new opera Kommilitonen! seems to have been a triumph. An invited audience (ranging from Lesley Garrett to Simon Callow to a Who's-Who of British opera houses and companies) gave the piece a rapturous reception with a standing ovation for cast, chorus, orchestra, production team, and especially Max himself. It is such a rare and exciting opportunity to be involved in the process of getting an entirely new opera from the dots on the page to this finished product, and it has been a privilege to be involved at such close quarters as chorusmaster and off-stage conductor.  Congratulations and thanks to everyone involved at every step of the way.

Today saw the sitzprobe for Kommilitonen!; adding the orchestra is always an exciting stage in preparing an opera, but that is particularly the case for a new piece where no-one has ever heard the orchestration before! Max's colourful writing is so vibrant and luscious and energised and it was great to have him there again today, alongside various people from the Juilliard, who jointly commissioned the piece with RAM, and will be performing it in November. An intensive schedule of stage & orchestra sessions and then dress rehearsals fills the next week until curtain up on 18th!