Sunday 31 October 2021

Festival of The Voice - Tuesday 2 to Thursday 4 November 2021 - all at 7.30 p.m.

Cambridge's Festival of The Voice - Tuesday 2 to Thursday 4 November - all at 7.30 p.m.

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

31 October (updated 3 November)

Festival of The Voice at Cambridge Early Music -
Tuesday 2 to Thursday 4 November - all at 7.30 p.m.


Three Concerts at Downing Place United Reformed Church, Downing Street
Formerly St Columba's (entrance now on the side, hence Downing Place = CB2 3EL)



Having heard The Marian Consort before, though not in their programme The Constant Heart, this is my personal choice of concert to attend – it would be a shame to miss them, so, although travelling NW the following day, I'm risking a night out (and maybe giving ad hoc help, if my CEM friends need it (I may also be around to help, before the gig, on Tuesday)) :

The Marian Consort explores loss and lament in sacred music by Tudor composers and presents new works by Ben Rowarth and Donna McKevitt in that context


Link to the gig-page here

£25.00 (no booking-fee, but donations are welcome)


There is also a combined ticket for all three concerts (Tuesday 2 to Thursday 4 November), subject to availability - £70.00 (or £65.00 to Friends of Cambridge Early Music)



Fayrfax Quincentenary – Ensemble Pro Victoria

On the day before, Tuesday 2 November, there is a programme called Fayrfax Quincentenary, given by Ensemble Pro Victoria, since...

This year is 500 years since the death of Robert Fayrfax (probably the most important composer of the Tudor era ?).


Including this one, to open this year's Festival of The Voice at Cambridge Early Music, Ensemble Pro Victoria is celebrating Fayrfax’s canon with a series of concerts, plus, as well as videos and podcasts, a new recording of selected sacred and secular works.


The aim of this concert in Cambridge will be to offer not only a taste of all genres and styles in which Fayrfax was prolific, but also the chance to hear world-premiere reconstructions and some rarely-performed works.


http://www.cambridgeearlymusic.org/booking/?event=Fayrfax%20Quincentenary

£25.00 (as above)



Echo (conductor by Sarah Latto)

On Thursday 4 November, the final concert in this year's Festival has Gorczycki’s Missa Paschalis as its centrepiece, but will interlace it with the work of composers who lived and worked in Warsaw and Krakow in the 16th and 17th centuries :


* Missa Paschalis – Kyrie – Grzegorz Gerwazy Gorczycki (1665 – 1734)

* Iniquos odio habui – Luca Marenzio (1553 – 1599)

* Missa Paschalis – Gloria

* Gaudent in caelis – Asprillo Pacelli (1570 – 1623)

* Missa Paschalis – Sanctus

* Ego flos campi – Vincenzo Bertolusi (c. 1550 – 1608)

* Missa Paschalis – Benedictus

* Laetentur caeli – Mikołaj Zielenski (1560 – 1620)

* Missa Paschalis – Agnus Dei


http://www.cambridgeearlymusic.org/booking/?event=The%20Polish%20Court

£25.00 ea.


As mentioned above, there is also a combined ticket for all three concerts (Tuesday 2 to Thursday 4 November), subject to availability - £70.00 (or £65.00 to Friends of Cambridge Early Music)...





Unless stated otherwise, all films reviewed were screened at Festival Central (Arts Picturehouse, Cambridge)
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Friday 29 October 2021

Top Tips for Cambridge Drawing Society's Autumn Show, which finishes on Saturday 30 October 2021

The Agent's Top Tips for Cambridge Drawing Society's Autumn Show (on till Saturday 30 October)

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

29 October

The Agent's Top Tips for Cambridge Drawing Society's Autumn Show, currently on at The Pitt Building, Trumpington Street, Cambridge, but finishing at 4.00 p.m. on Saturday 30 October 2021


In what follows, a figure in bold face denotes the numbered screen on which each work is hanging (unless preceded by a 'W', for 'Wall' - in the main exhibition space) ; the standard of work is generally very high, but the factor on which an item appears here is based, trying to look at every work on show, on listing those that ought to stand the test of time, by being looked at anew each time in The Agent's eyes, rather than delivering one, however impressive, bundle of impressions on first being viewed.


Highly commended, including Best in show (as voted by #UCFF), in alphabetical order (of title) :

• 22 : A Breath of Fresh Air ~ Sue Walker

• 30 : A New Day ~ Ann Massing

• 86 : Autumn Trees ~ Cathy Parker

• 86 : Birch Woods ~ Cathy Parker

• 66 (?) : Blue Composition (?) ~ Christine Lockwood

• 60 : Byron's Pool ~ Katy Bailey

• 33 : Cherries ~ Rachel Haynes

• 55 : Chicken ~ Svetlana Baibekova

• 4 : Dandelions in a Jam Jar ~ Carol Whitehouse

• 20 : Ethel ~ Sara Woodall

• 39 : Green Cavern ~ Maggie Ecclestone

• 84 : Harbour Lights Honfleur ~ Vivienne Machell

• 39 : Joseph's Rock ~ Maggie Ecclestone

• W2 : Landscape No. 1 : Complications ~ Christine Lafon

• 59 : Mow Fen XVIII ~ Iona Howard

• 91 : Myrtle ~ Yvonne Jerrold

• 72 : On The Level ~ Janet Gammans

• 25 : The Pond ~ Mary Seymour

• 72 : Silent Fen ~ Janet Gammans

• 3 : Snow Berries and Rosehips ~ Carol Whitehouse

• 36 : Stare ~ Rob Jones

• 8 : Strawberries ~ Lydumila Sikhosana

• 28 : Tied Up ~ Alan Noyes

• 2 : Trinity Lane, Cambridge ~ Yang Yuxin

• 10 : Winter Hillside, Islay ~ Jill Ogilvy




Also mentioned in dispatches (likewise in alphabetical order (of title)) :

• 39 : Arthur's Cave~ Maggie Ecclestone

• 91 : Big Little Owl ~ Yvonne Jerrold

• W3 : Blizzard ~ Ann Gascoine

• 60 : Brancaster Staithe ~ Dan Walmsley

• 71 : Channel Island Porcelain ~ Bill Everett

• W3 : Fleam Dyke, Springtime ~ Hatty Richmond

• 31 : Frozen in Time I ~ Liz Hales

• 15 : King's Cross ~ Willy (Willie ?) Wilson

• 49 : Long Shadows ~ Caroline Furlong

• 60 : Looming ~ Katy Bailey

• 10 : Mountain Stream ~ Jill Ogilvy

• W3 : Dr. Pat Owens ~ John Glover

• 32 : Rosy Glow ~ Chris Lockwood

• 6 : Shoreline ~ Elaine Purcell

• 30 : Silver Sunset ~ Ann Massing

• 50 : The Staithe ~ Alan Noyes

• 55 : Vietnam ~ Svetlana Baibekova




Also ran :

• 86 : Paul Edwards appears to like Bridget Riley's Hesitate (19??) [and, perhaps, her Fall (1963)] enough to meld his style with hers by way of pastiche

• 80 – 81 : In his turn, Geoff Goddard looks to like Gerhard Richter's photo-realism and also the style of his model – 4 x variants





Unless stated otherwise, all films reviewed were screened at Festival Central (Arts Picturehouse, Cambridge)
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Thursday 28 October 2021

Poem by Tweet : What did FK mean by FB ?

Poem by Tweet : What did FK mean by FB ?

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

28 October

Poem by Tweet : What did FK mean by FB ?












































Unless stated otherwise, all films reviewed were screened at Festival Central (Arts Picturehouse, Cambridge)
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Wednesday 27 October 2021

The Naked Truth ? : Naked Wines

The Naked Truth ? : Naked Wines

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

27 October

The Naked Truth ? : Naked Wines






It's worse than watching Caine / Urfe in The Magus (1968) :








































Unless stated otherwise, all films reviewed were screened at Festival Central (Arts Picturehouse, Cambridge)
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Sunday 24 October 2021

Poem by Tweet : 'Juno and Co.'

A Nupe Ohm : Juno and Co.

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

24 October

A Nupe Ohm : Juno and Co.




PS If one's on Crete, with the use of a hire-car, etc., maybe resist going to see Zeus' Cave, as - unless it's en route - one's time is better employed travelling elsewhere, whether it's Heraklion, Spinalonga, or even The Amari Valley.




Unless stated otherwise, all films reviewed were screened at Festival Central (Arts Picturehouse, Cambridge)
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Saturday 23 October 2021

Fenland, Google and driving on The Isle of Jura [and / or The Isle of Islay]

Fenland, Google and driving on The Isle of Jura [and / or The Isle of Islay]

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

23 October

Fenland, Google and driving on The Isle of Jura [and / or The Isle of Islay]








Unless stated otherwise, all films reviewed were screened at Festival Central (Arts Picturehouse, Cambridge)
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Friday 22 October 2021

Nerina Pallot [and Roxanne de Bastion] at Wavendon, The Stables, Milton Keynes, by Tweet (response in progress)

Nerina Pallot [and Roxanne de Bastion] at Wavendon, The Stables, Milton Keynes, by Tweet (response in progress)

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

25 October

Nerina Pallot [and Roxanne de Bastion] at Wavendon, The Stables, Milton Keynes, by Tweet ~
Monday 25 October 2021 from 8.00 p.m. (response in progress)




Merch, with Roxanne de Bastion, at The Stables : Resorting to cash when the wireless tech disappoints









[...]


more to come


[...]








[...]


more to come


[...]































Unless stated otherwise, all films reviewed were screened at Festival Central (Arts Picturehouse, Cambridge)
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Wednesday 20 October 2021

Bach connections : Mahan Esfahani at Cambridge Music Festival (work in progress)

Bach connections : Mahan Esfahani at Cambridge Music Festival (work in progress)

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

20 October

Bach connections : Mahan Esfahani at Cambridge Music Festival (work in progress),
Wednesday 20 October 2021 at 7.30 p.m. at Downing Place United Reformed Church





The Sonata in G Minor (Wq65/17) by C. P. E. Bach – a somewhat fractured and fissile work ? – was played with due theatricality and considerable poise for, apart from the so-called London Bach, he was the son of Johann Sebastian's who had most caught the imagination of generations after his father's, with a compositional style that was quite other than that of the master of the complexities of counterpoint and of how to craft and interweave fugal-subjects :

Mahan Esfahani gave an unfamiliar work, whose movements appeared to end with the same somewhat casual gesture (as if endings were so 1750 ?), pacing and plenty of space in which to talk, before J. S. Bach's Chromatic Fantasia and Fugue (BWV 903), where there was more scope, and therefore more need, not to adopt some 'accepted' approach to performance, which can lead to oxidization and rust.

The Fantasia and Fugue had been known, first, to #UCFF from inclusion in Blandine Verlet's intense 2-LP set of Sämtliche Toccaten (The Complete Toccatas) from 1978, listened to, o'er and o'er (though latterly by making a recording on a C120 audio-cassette, rather than playing and turning and playing the vinyl) : such things, and the means that were then relatively limited for knowing more about the performer / music (beyond the immediate sleeve-notes), inevitably colour one's relations, for good or ill, to a repertoire or a piece.





Esfahani could initially be heard, slowing down the musical flow of the Fantasia in favour of its rotational or pausal elements – which was, perhaps, done in a nod both back to the affect of Emmanuel Bach², whose work he had just played, as well as forward, to that of Johann Kuhnau's Sonata, as it was to be presented to us (as one has to doubt how many there already knew or had specifically come to hear it ?).

Towards its end, Esfahani adopted a very lively, non-U manner to Bach in the energetic and vigorous delivery of notes (which some might typically call 'pounding' on the instrument's manual ?) – its vivid impressions of drama, and in no conceivable way to be mistaken (in its euphemistic sense) for authentic performance, with someone who plays so-called early music, but does not see himself as an early-music performer.


In the opening of the fugue, Esfahani was playing at a fairly modest tempo, and then, in the course of the work, started introducing special emphases, and what seemed to be² deliberate hesitations or changes of direction. At later points, he was playing very densely, such that we were presented 'a wash' of echoic sound :

To the extent that one might not have envisaged outside a piano forte and employing the sustain-pedal, or otherwise possible without the sound's being amplified or modified, and with a very pronounced bass register. (All of this began to set one wondering whether a sound-desk and speakers were in operation in the venue.)

The conclusion of the work was met with a roar of enthusiasm – though it was unclear whether for a rendition of a familiar work, from the novelty brought to it, or both. However, to judge from which Esfahani certainly seemed not to have been exaggerating, in telling Katie Derham² that there was something different about music in this city from its university rival that consisted in how audiences listen.






















End-notes :

¹ When he spoke to the audience, after the BWV 903 and pacingly inhabiting the front of the performance-space, there was, as well as a suavely provocative or subversive content, a pedagogic tone to how he addressed us :

Mahan Esfahani knew, because he not only underlined the point, but also drew attention to it, that we assuredly did not know whether, in addition to having been a lawyer, etc., Kuhnau had, in fact, written a novel about a harpsichordist who was or may have been, as he put it, 'a quack' - in that there was not only a twinkle in saying that, but a sort of off-hand and slightly sotto voce 'Make of that what you will...' afterwards.


² Then again, appearing in conversation with Katie Derham by telephone on Monday's Radio 3 In Tune (on air between 5.00 and 7.00 p.m. BST), Esfahani had not left for the UK, but, as he told us, had finished packing to travel for the recitals in Cambridge (on Wednesday), and then at Wigmore Hall (Thursday ?). [Regrettably, for some reason doubtless to due with construing the pandemic-related risk, the former was confined to one bill of fare, i.e. with no interval, despite four works on the bill (as one had heard had been the case at other CMF concerts).]







Unless stated otherwise, all films reviewed were screened at Festival Central (Arts Picturehouse, Cambridge)
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Friday 15 October 2021

Sophie Taeuber-Arp at Tate : Imagine if Paul Klee had been so relativ unsung...

Sophie Taeuber-Arp at Tate : Imagine if Paul Klee had been so relativ unsung...

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

15 October

Sophie Taeuber-Arp at Tate : Imagine if Paul Klee had been so relativ unsung...





Friday 15 October


Composition of Quadrangular, Polychrome, Dense Strokes (1921)
Gouache and graphite on paper








Sunday 17 October






































Unless stated otherwise, all films reviewed were screened at Festival Central (Arts Picturehouse, Cambridge)
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Monday 11 October 2021

Films that make you wish that you were watching some other work - In the Mood for Love (Fa yeung nin wah) (2000)

Films that make you wish that you were watching some other work - In the Mood for Love (2000)

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

11 October

Films that make you wish that you were watching some other work - In the Mood for Love (Fa yeung nin wah) (2000) [seen at Saffron Screen]












































Unless stated otherwise, all films reviewed were screened at Festival Central (Arts Picturehouse, Cambridge)
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Saturday 2 October 2021

Report from Hatfield House Chamber Music Festival 2021 : [Place-holder for Saturday 2 October]

Report from Hatfield House Chamber Music Festival 2021 : [Place-holder for Saturday 2 October]

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

2 October

Report from Hatfield House Chamber Music Festival 2021 : [Place-holder for Saturday 2 October]






[...]







































Unless stated otherwise, all films reviewed were screened at Festival Central (Arts Picturehouse, Cambridge)
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Thursday 30 September 2021

Report from Hatfield House Chamber Music Festival 2021 : [Place-holder for Thursday 30 September]

Report from Hatfield House Chamber Music Festival 2021 : [Place-holder for Thursday 30 September]

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

30 September

Report from Hatfield House Chamber Music Festival 2021 : [Place-holder for Thursday 30 September]




As one might expect, Barron's dramatic work or for the stage informed her approach this evening (at 5.00 p.m.), but not perhaps, given that she is mentored by Barbara Hannigan and working with Ian Bostridge, any more than befitted the audience or occasion.

In such a lovely, but relatively small, performance-space [The Marble Hall at Hatfield House], one simply could not give a performance that was audaciously writ large – unlike The Maltings, at Snape, where Bostridge let rip one summer at Aldeburgh Festival [reviewed by #UCFF as 'A swaying, snarling, even spitting Schubert for our times'] ! – and large gestures were unnecessary, when small ones (such as, early on, fluttering eye-lids) worked in this context much better, alongside the usual recital-room process of clearly and visually thinking her way to, and into, the next Lied.


Even if partly filled in by Müller in Die schöne Müllerin (?), he is anyway handling the universals of love, life and their loss, so there is no need for him or us to delay on the particulars – and those, similarly, who still remark that they are hearing a mezzo-soprano perform Winterreise are perhaps missing the point of its universality, and that there is no good reason why any character of voice cannot inhabit these texts* (or they the singer ?).

The texts speak to us, from and through the performers, of things that extend far beyond any literal scenario outlined, and, excepting, perhaps, the strangely placid encounter (or non-encounter [as of Beckettt's Murphy with Mr Endon] ?) with the vision that ends the cycle (and the eerie scoring that might as effectively have launched Pierrot lunaire from Earth), who cannot relate to the narrator's awareness of how perspectives can be curiously mixed and changed by time, as recalled in 'Der Lindenbaum' or, say, 'Die Post' ?


On half-a-dozen occasions (in live concerts alone), it appears that one can have followed the poems that make up Winterreise and seemingly not have noticed before that – except in three cases ('Die Post' [no. 13], 'Täuschung' [19] and 'Die Nebensonnen' [23]) – they compromise some number, between 8 and 3, four-line stanzas. However, one palpable reason not to be aware (other than that each poem is headed by a title) is that substance far outweighs form in this Liederkreis, and this is not La divina commedia's intense terza rima, or equivalent to a sonnet-sequence (such as Sidney's Astrophel and Stella).

Winterreise is far more condensed, so, with its many different scenes (those titles, again), let alone changes of heart or direction of thought, its progression is at a different scale, and of a different scope, from Shakespeare's sonnets or those of Sidney (though some have disputed that the former appear in the correct order) : there can be (in fact, need to be) such changes, but the formality and requirements of fourteen lines, even if they are constituted as three quatrains, is then affected by leading up to ending with a couplet. (Or there may be, say, a differently structured division, with a rhyme-scheme for the first eight lines, and another for the final six.)





[...]



Ich bin zu Ende mit allen Träumen*



[...]
























One emotional centre that Fleur Barron found and gave to us in this series of pieces was in 'Im Dorfe', from which the words that head this review are quoted*, and these words, in particular, threw into retrospect other times when dreaming and dreams had occurred in the texts of Wilhelm Müller's poems :

Seven poems away from the seeming inevitability of 'Der Leiermann', and after the narratorial voice has already passed through – and given us insights into – such moments as something heartfelt, resolution, noble feeling, moodi- and vengefulness, pride, and despairing***, its experiences seem to have come to one definite conclusion, from which the remaining poems will not deviate – although of course, and not least in 'Der Leiermann', there are more realizations, dreads and existential horrors to come.



[...]



End-notes :

* Maybe we cannot easily forget Dylan Thomas, reading his own work, once heard, but he is not the only one who can or should be heard, reading it aloud.

** #UCFF would render this I'm through with all these dreams. (As perhaps too prosaically translated as 'I am finished with all dreams' in the English version, by Richard Wigmore, provided ?)

*** To capture ones just from the first four poems ('Gute Nacht', 'Die Wetterfahne', 'Gefrorne Tränen' and 'Erstarrung').




Unless stated otherwise, all films reviewed were screened at Festival Central (Arts Picturehouse, Cambridge)
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Monday 20 September 2021

The Invented Quotations [and Ascriptions] : A Compendium (in subject order)

The Invented Quotations [and Ascriptions] : A Compendium (in subject order)

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

20 September

The Invented Quotations [and Ascriptions] : A Compendium (in subject order)





Attentiveness :




Bagels :




Brinkmanship :




Charitable objects :




Cromer Delicacies




Deceit :




Employment and its so-called rights :




Insincerity :




Kissing :




Lives led well :




London :





Love-apples :




Low-achievers :




Lunar eclipses :




Need :




The Night Sky :




Parfums :




Parties :




Penguins :




Poverty :




Set-backs :




Sex :





'Sporty' clothes :




Standards in public life




Tchaikovsky :



















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