Report from York Early Music Festival : Paul McCreesh, Gabrieli Consort & Players and Venezia, 1595 (work in progress)

Report from York Early Music Festival : Paul McCreesh, Gabrieli Consort & Players and Venezia, 1595

More views of - or before - Cambridge Film Festival 2019 (17 to 24 October)
(Click here to go directly to the Festival web-site)

13 July

Report from York Early Music Festival : Paul McCreesh, Gabrieli Consort & Players and Venezia, 1595 (work in progress)

What an entrance! ⁦@BBCRadio3⁩ ⁦@hannahcfrench⁩ ⁦@bonaomi1⁩ - there’s still time to tune in #yemf ⁦@GabrieliCandP⁩ pic.twitter.com/B0m5rPQFca

— NCEM (@yorkearlymusic) July 13, 2022

A superb evening, with @yorkearlymusic, at @York_Minster earlier - transporting us to Venezia, April 1595* !

* When Elizabeth I still had nearly eight more years to reign, and Shakespeare had just written A Midsummer Night's Dream and Romeo and Juliet [https://t.co/behzR1WGWQ].

— THE AGENT APSLEY #ScrapUniversalCredit #JC4PM2019 (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) July 14, 2022

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Unless stated otherwise, all films reviewed were screened at Festival Central (Arts Picturehouse, Cambridge)

#AldeburghFestival2019 : The #UCFF portal-page (in progress)

#AldeburghFestival2019 [This posting is a place-holder]

More views of - or before - Cambridge Film Festival 2019 (17 to 24 October)
(Click here to go directly to the Festival web-site)

20 June

#AldeburghFestival2019 [This posting is a place-holder]

Just for these views, well worth doing a river-cruise at @snapemaltings ! pic.twitter.com/OtaOkpTwOO

— THE AGENT APSLEY #ScrapUniversalCredit #JC4PM2019 (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) June 22, 2019

Sunday 16 June ~ Britten and Bridge
The Britten Studio at 4.00

Or, still as Part I, but swapping 2 and 3 ?

Or did it need to be Part I (not II) ?

The thinking being that Holst seemed to have had something to say to Harvey, but less so to Britten, even if we moved on in time...

Of course, one's spoiled by @BrittenSinfonia programming !

— THE AGENT APSLEY #ScrapUniversalCredit #JC4PM2019 (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) June 16, 2019

Always good to be at the @PloughandSail, and necessary to have one's non-musical space here when at @snapemaltings for Aldeburgh Festival [for Music and the Arts] :

Very glad to hear @VLuminis again for to-night's and Tuesday's concerts (duck terrine and sea bass to follow) !

— THE AGENT APSLEY #ScrapUniversalCredit #JC4PM2019 (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) June 16, 2019

Sunday 16 June ~ Vox Luminis II
The Snape Maltings Concert Hall at 7.30

A report by Tweet on Vox Luminis II at #AldeburghFestival2019

In the opening setting by Britten of Dryden (with a second Ode to Saint Cecilia to come), @CLuminis gave us moments of hushed voices and diction that didn't need the text. When it came to Handel's 'Dixit Dominus', the packed audience was even more esctatic !

— THE AGENT APSLEY #ScrapUniversalCredit #JC4PM2019 (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) June 16, 2019

Monday 17 June ~ Schubert 1828
The Snape Maltings Concert Hall at 7.30

At @snapemaltings, so moving to hear The @DiotimaQuartet play that familiar movement from a G Major Quartet, and so feelingly played, in the context of Schubert 1828 : Schöne Musik, schön gespielt :)

— THE AGENT APSLEY #ScrapUniversalCredit #JC4PM2019 (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) June 17, 2019

#UCFF could not resist, having heard the beauty and insight of last night's playing, buying a ticket to hear the last of Schubert's String Quartets in full (on some numbering, No. 15) :

Thank you, #AldeburghFestival2019, and see you for 11.00 ! :)

— THE AGENT APSLEY #ScrapUniversalCredit #JC4PM2019 (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) June 18, 2019

[...]

Some like to diagnose both Schubert's mental health and how what killed him, in physical terms, must or might not have been evident to him : yet, as with an over-fascination for the Mozart and Salieri story / stories, is it only now that Antonio Salieri's work gets reconsidered ?

— THE AGENT APSLEY #ScrapUniversalCredit #JC4PM2019 (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) June 18, 2019

Tuesday 18 June ~ Il Quatuor Diotima
Aldeburgh Parish Church at 11.00

For #AldeburghFestival2019, #UCFF was delighted to be back at Aldeburgh Church, and @THEAGENTAPSLEY both to be led into the worlds of Karl Szymanowski and Thomas Larcher by @DiotimaQuartet and to get their autographs on the programme ! pic.twitter.com/D7RVI7chOx

— THE AGENT APSLEY #ScrapUniversalCredit #JC4PM2019 (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) June 18, 2019

Tuesday 18 June ~ Britten and Blake
The Britten Studio at 4.00

The singing, of course, of @Sviceridor in no way made it necessary to have the words, and as Clare alumnus Andrew West and he concurred, the biting nature of the setting - the Blake, too, is snarling - leaves one not wanting more from Britten.

— THE AGENT APSLEY #ScrapUniversalCredit #JC4PM2019 (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) June 22, 2019

Quite apart from the voice that ably and almost necessarily disturbingly gave us Britten's setting of Pears' choice of Blake, it is so nice to encounter @Sviceridor affably at @PloughandSail, or before or after the gig -the v. friendly side of #AldeburghFestival2019

— THE AGENT APSLEY #ScrapUniversalCredit #JC4PM2019 (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) June 19, 2019

Britten and Blake were both publicists, but Britten was the better at it, which is why he would not have looked for knottier or more distant texts of Blake's to set than these

Patience Agbabi's reading of her 'homework' was not only a tour de force that outclassed her 'teacher', but also, one likes to think, one whose extent and content were surprising to all hearing them

A present puzzle is Kate Kennedy's claim of 'the logical impossibility' of hearing a manacle (if not 'mind-forg'd' ?) :

It was in Poetry and Music (Songs and Proverbs of William Blake) at #AldeburghFestival2019, so is contending that only a rattling manacle is audible prosaic ?

— THE AGENT APSLEY #ScrapUniversalCredit #JC4PM2019 (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) June 18, 2019

Not really 'a tree falls in a forest' stuff of Berkeley, but whether one *hears* a manacle per se at all :

A wedding-ring can clink, e.g., [against] a glass. Isn't a metal - not a Fifty Shades - manacle in halves, and prone to rattle... ?

— THE AGENT APSLEY #ScrapUniversalCredit #JC4PM2019 (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) June 19, 2019

Tuesday 18 June ~ Vox Luminis III
Pre-concert Talk in The Britten-Pears Recital Room at 6.30 / Snape Maltings Concert Hall at 7.30

Some people declare how dull Heaven must be, with endless praise...

But yet conceive of it as 'the instruments of joy' who are @VLuminis, celebrating in sound the majestic and divine in the first half of the programme Vox Luminis III at @snapemaltings at #AldeburghFestival2019 !

— THE AGENT APSLEY #ScrapUniversalCredit #JC4PM2019 (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) June 26, 2019

As he told #UCFF after the second half of the programme that he had his ensemble bring us at @snapemaltings for Vox Luminis III, what he liked most about it was that it is thirty minutes of silence :

Casting us back into another time as assuredly as Schubert 1828 did this year !

— THE AGENT APSLEY #ScrapUniversalCredit #JC4PM2019 (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) July 10, 2019

Wednesday 19 June ~ Alisa Weilerstein
Blythburgh Church at 7.30

Then, Johann Sebastian's humanity and compassion - nowhere greater in the Suites No. 1 in G Major and No. 3 in C Major than in the Sarabande - comes to us directly

— THE AGENT APSLEY #ScrapUniversalCredit #JC4PM2019 (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) June 19, 2019

It's been good at @snapemaltings and its various venues for #AldeburghFestival2019, but we all know what's said of all good things - and Alisa Weilerstein at Blythburgh gave #UCFF quite a send-off with four Suites from BWV 2007-2012 ! :)

— THE AGENT APSLEY #ScrapUniversalCredit #JC4PM2019 (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) June 19, 2019

It's lovely along there !

After taking a river-cruise out to Iken Cliff on the last day of my Festival visit in June, I walked back out there that evening. pic.twitter.com/vOoiq7ds1n

— THE AGENT APSLEY #ScrapUniversalCredit #JC4PM2019 (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) July 30, 2019

Addenda :

Or 1. @SoundCircusJM...

— THE AGENT APSLEY #ScrapUniversalCredit #JC4PM2019 (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) June 21, 2019

Or 4. @DiotimaQuartet

— THE AGENT APSLEY #ScrapUniversalCredit #JC4PM2019 (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) June 19, 2019

If you want to Tweet, Tweet away here

Unless stated otherwise, all films reviewed were screened at Festival Central (Arts Picturehouse, Cambridge)

A report by Tweet on Vox Luminis II at #AldeburghFestival2019

A report, by Tweet, on Vox Luminis II at Aldeburgh Festival 2019

More views of - or before - Cambridge Film Festival 2019 (17 to 24 October)
(Click here to go directly to the Festival web-site)

17 June

A report, by Tweet, on Vox Luminis II at Aldeburgh Festival 2019
(a concert of Handel and Britten, both setting Dryden, given at Snape Maltings on Sunday 16 June 2019 at 7.30 p.m.)

Prelude :

Always good to be at the @PloughandSail, and necessary to have one's non-musical space here when at @snapemaltings for Aldeburgh Festival [for Music and the Arts] :

Very glad to hear @VLuminis again for to-night's and Tuesday's concerts (duck terrine and sea bass to follow) !

— THE AGENT APSLEY #ScrapUniversalCredit #JC4PM2019 (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) June 16, 2019

Image by David-Samyn

Justly so, and with recognition of not only the tight playing of the band around whom the vocalists were ranged, but also generous appreciation of all four soloists, especially the soprano duettists. More Handel to come...

— THE AGENT APSLEY #ScrapUniversalCredit #JC4PM2019 (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) June 16, 2019

And Ronan Kernoa, on cello, exceptionally demonstrated compelling musicianship in an extended introduction to one of the soprano arias. So much to value here (and the cheers were even longer and louder), but just the sight of people who can be seen enjoying making music together.

— THE AGENT APSLEY #ScrapUniversalCredit #JC4PM2019 (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) June 16, 2019

Except that that is tosh :

Britten was setting (recollections of) Auden !

— THE AGENT APSLEY #ScrapUniversalCredit #JC4PM2019 (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) June 17, 2019

Concluding comments :

As one has learnt to expect, sensitive and sincere performance from Vox Luminis, under the direction of the affable Lionel Meunier - one senses, even from the encore, that this ensemble does not perform repertoire in which it does not believe.


Postlude :

Overheard after @VLuminis at @snapemaltings :

'Yes, she had a lovely voice, a pure voice without vibrato, but not strong enough to be an opera-singer'

1. Handel was a v. fine composer of Baroque opera

2. Bel canto isn't the 'real' opera

— THE AGENT APSLEY #ScrapUniversalCredit #JC4PM2019 (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) June 17, 2019

If you want to Tweet, Tweet away here

Unless stated otherwise, all films reviewed were screened at Festival Central (Arts Picturehouse, Cambridge)