English Song tour

Britten Sinfonia performs English Song with Mark Padmore in Dartington, Cambridge, London, Southampton, Birmingham and Norwich and with James Gilchrist in Leeds.

SouthWestShows.co.uk
The Guardian
The Arts Desk
The Times
The Telegraph
The Independent
Birmingham Post

SouthWestShows.co.uk
Philp R Buttall, Monday 7 February
Dartington Hall

It seemed especially apt that the centrepiece of this outstanding concert by the Britten Sinfonia should be a work by the ensemble’s namesake.

Britten’s Serenade for Tenor, Horn and Strings is a wonderful example of his supreme mastery of word-setting and atmosphere, and in the glorious voice of tenor, Mark Padmore, it could surely have had no finer exponent since Peter Pears, Britten’s original singer.

With perfect diction and phenomenal accuracy, allied to such an easy and relaxed delivery, Mark Padmore brought out every possible nuance from the text, ably supported by Stephen Bell’s fine horn-playing.

Again in three Purcell songs, Mark Padmore confirmed his position as one of the country’s most expressive tenors, where his innate ability to involve his listeners so intimately with the imaginative world of each one was so masterful, enhanced by John Woolrich’s string realisations of Tippett’s original keyboard accompaniments.

But all this would not have been possible without the dazzling string-playing by the Britten Sinfonia.

Opening with Tippett’s Little Music the instrumentalists showed an almost uncanny sense of ensemble cohesion and dynamic variety, with just the merest hint of direction from leader, Jacqueline Shave.

Music by Purcell, and John Woolrich’s Another Staircase Overture provided a perfect aperitif for the Sinfonia’s final offering, Walton’s Sonata for Strings, where the sheer virtuosity and rhythmic drive of the finale were simply second to none.

The Guardian
Andrew Clements, Wed 9 Feb
West Road Concert Hall, Cambridge

4 stars

Previous generations of tenors have tended to treat Finzi’s ecstatic word setting cautiously, keeping their emotional distance, bleaching their tone, and making the whole thing rather churchy. Even if a few of his emphases were mannered, Padmore made it much more warmly expressive, the childhood innocence and wonder of the texts joyously conveyed, and the balance between voice and strings ideal, though three Purcell songs (edited by Tippett and arranged for string orchestra by John Woolrich) fared slightly less well.

The rest of the concert was superbly played by the Britten Sinfonia. Tippett’s Little Music is heard much less often than his two larger-scale string-orchestra works, while Walton’s Sonata for Strings, a late arrangement of the string quartet he wrote in the mid-1940s, runs through the familiar repertoire of Walton gestures stylishly enough. There was a newly renovated piece, too – Woolrich’s Another Staircase Overture, composed for the Purcell anniversary in 1994. It’s an overlong homage, stuffed with quotes and Purcellian allusions.

Broadcast on Radio 3 on Friday.

The Arts Desk
Alexandra Coghlan, Thu 10 Feb
Queen Elizabeth Hall, London

It was Leonard Bernstein who declared of English music that it was “too much organ voluntary in Lincoln Cathedral, too much Coronation in Westminster Abbey, too much lark ascending, too much clodhopping on the fucking village green”. Fey, whimsical and faintly patterned with chintz – English music doesn’t always get the best press. In the hands of the Britten Sinfonia however, it defies any notion of pastel prettiness, stepping out in only the feistiest and most glorious Technicolor.

Any half-decent orchestra can start a note convincingly – just watch your local amateur symphony in action of a Saturday night. Far rarer are those who can finish one. Beginning a note is an act of precision; finishing it is one of interpretation. Taking musicianship and interpretative autonomy to extraordinary levels, the Britten Sinfonia and their leader, Jacqueline Shave, last night proved their quality. Stewarding and shaping each phrase into the next, playfully alive to the ironic possibilities of articulation as well as the lyric, they shaped a programme around Finzi’s Dies Natalis – that most quintessential of English works.

‘There’s no denying the affinity and rightness of this music under Padmore’s voice’ 

Balancing Tippett’s familiar realisations of Purcell songs with Tippett’s own Little Music and Purcell’s Overture and Rondeau from Abdelazer (better known as the theme for Britten’s The Young Person’s Guide to the Orchestra), the organic relationship between 20th-century English music and its Baroque forebears was elegantly explored.

A true gamut of technique, we moved immediately from the crisp period swagger of the opening Purcell to the broader gestures of Tippett’s Prelude and Fugue. With exposed organum-like intervals and frenzied portamentos, Little Music is a work that sets off as if for the battle scene of a 20th Century Fox Roman epic, but soon gets distracted by the pastoral delights of the Palatine meadows (a loose-limbed fugue) and never quite makes it to the action. With fizzing string textures rivalling for supremacy, the whole had an intent that kept whimsy at bay, even in the throwaway flightiness of the close.

The second-half counterbalance came in the form of Walton’s Sonata for Strings, a late re-orchestration and reworking by the composer of his String Quartet in A minor. Aggressive unisons and snappish rhythmic exchanges jostle up against a lyric impulse that refuses to quit – above all the Sonata is an exercise in textural contrast. A call to arms for Shave and her musicians, there was clarity to even the fussiest of passages, and the syncopated gambits of the closing Allegro Molto had the whole hall twitching and pulsing.

Dies Natalis saw the orchestra joined by regular collaborator Mark Padmore, the go-to tenor for expressive Englishness. There is a lyric stature to Thomas Traherne’s verse – “The corn was orient and immortal wheat” – that finds harmonious echo in Finzi’s long lines and folk-infused melodies. Given weight and grounding here as well as release, the Britten Sinfonia anchored Finzi’s solo tenor with a sweep of orchestral colour. The violas – stars of The Salutation – gave glossy chestnut warmth, but little could match the collective frenzy and syncopated energy of The Rapture, a barn-dance transported onto a neatly mown English lawn.

While I’m not always convinced by Padmore’s technique, there’s no denying the affinity and rightness of this music under his voice. We really were driven “almost mad with ecstasy”, secure in his musical architecture and tonal control. Just occasionally, however, I yearned for him to project less, to draw inward into a pianissimo head voice and take us with him, rather than reach out so generously.

Explicitness was also an issue in the Purcell songs. Far less sung-in, these intimate little episodes lacked a sense of being cherished or made his own, not aided by the rather less flexible accompaniment of string orchestra (arrangements by John Woolrich) rather than the more conventional harpsichord or piano. Sitting a little awkwardly in Padmore’s register, they also forced his already clipped, Baroque articulation to compensate for a lack of lower resonance, keeping the voice from flowering freely.

Emphatic in his rejection of all things English, I suggest that even Bernstein might last night have been swayed by the sinewy energy of the Britten Sinfonia and their soloist. Yes, there were hedgerows and the upland meadows, but there was also passion and plenty of dung.

The Times
Richard Morrison, Wed 9 Feb
West Road Concert Hall, Cambridge

3 stars

Echoing across three centuries, Purcell was like a talisman to mid-20th-century English composers. (To some of their 21st-century successors he still is.) When they weren’t imitating his floridly quirky text-setting, his bouncily syncopated counterpoint of his astringent, not-quite-tonal dissonances, they were fleshing out his songs for performance on the modern grand piano, or adopting his favourite structural device – the recurring ground-bass, Baroque forerunner of the 12-bar blues for their own uses.

Why? That’s a question for psychologists and sociologists as well as musicians. By making Purcell their idol they not only acknowledged their English roots. They also flicked a Churchillian V-sign at the atonal complexities of what was then being composed on mainland Europe, thus demonstrating a very English distrust of clever-clogs continentals and their inflexible doctrines.

This typically intelligent Britten Sinfonia programme with the tenor Mark Padmore brought these links to the fore. Padmore sang three of Purcell’s greatest songs, doctored not once but twice; first by Tippett with his piano realisation of Purcell’s baseline, then by John Woolrich, who has turned Tippett’s piano parts into string music. I wanted to enjoy them but found them convoluted, unidiomatic and odd.

Not as odd, however, as Woolrich’s other Purcell-inspired effort. His Another Staircase Overture (Purcell write a Staircase Overture) offered a deconstructed, disjointed mishmash of Purcell’s characteristic gestures. Often they were turned into high chords of harmonics that were presumably meant to sound unearthly, but actually sounded like nothing on earth.

No wonder that the normally excellent strings of the Britten Sinfonia, led by Jacqueline Shave, sounded more convinced and convincing in the pieces that weren’t sieved through the imaginations of two or three different composers. Tippett’s Little Music and Walton’s Sonata for Strings are both gloriously polyphonic minor masterpieces that aren’t played as often as their quality would justify, probably because they have some fiendishly tricky corners. The Sinfonia had a few raw moments, but caught the ebullient spirit. And without a conductor the ensemble was remarkably tight.

I felt the absence of a firm baton more in Finzi’s lovely song-cycle Dies natalis. Padmore’s beguiling delivery of Thomas Traherne’s ode to unsullied childhood innocence often seemed slightly ahead of the accompanying string chords. But what serene music is evoking Finzi’s adored Cotswold meadows with every lush harmony and wistful cadence. Catch it at the Queen Elizabeth Hall tonight, then on tour.

The Telegraph
John Allison, Fri 11 Feb
West Road Concert Hall, Cambridge

Rating: * * * 

Gerald Finzi’s masterpiece Dies natalis may be well-loved, but performances are still rare enough to count as something of an event. Happily, the tenor Mark Padmore and the Britten Sinfonia have toured with it this week (and give a final performance in Norwich on Sunday, Feb 13), making it the centrepiece of a programme for voice and strings.

In its unassuming way, Dies natalis also sits as a central work in English music. Its celebration of childhood innocence, drawn from the prose and poetry of Thomas Traherne, makes this “Day of birth” a sort of converse companion piece to The Dream of Gerontius: in place of Elgar’s soul at the point of death, Finzi gives us a soul at birth.

Padmore is in many ways an ideal interpreter here. His tenor projects a fluid, gleaming line and he finds colours to match Traherne’s verbal nuance.

Yet his increasingly self-conscious, saintly persona sometimes obscured the work’s true metaphysical depth. And though this performance caught the sprung rhythms of “The Rapture” and the gentle rocking of “The Salutation”, it could have done with a conductor, rather than being led by the violinist Jacqueline Shave.

The intelligently designed programme also had Padmore singing three Purcell songs, in John Woolrich’s arrangements of Tippett’s editions, and included both Tippett’s Little Music, and Purcell’s Overture and Rondeau from Abdelazer.

Woolrich’s own Purcellian tribute, Another Staircase Overture, tries hard to be clever yet loses itself up a succession of neo-Baroque alleyways.

But it was good to hear Walton’s Sonata for Strings, a late arrangement of his own String Quartet in A minor. Its Englishness is refracted through radiant Mediterranean light, and biting, spitfire rhythms brought out the best of this excellent orchestra.

This review also appears in Seven magazine, free with The Sunday Telegraph

The Independent
Michael Church, Fri 11 Feb
Queen Elizabeth Hall, London

(Rated 3/ 5 ) 

What is Englishness in music? The young string players of the Britten Sinfonia don’t pose the question explicitly in their current touring programme, but it’s hovering in the surrounding ether.

Henry Purcell was their starting point: the Overture and Rondeau from his score for ‘Abdelazer’ emerged with that open-hearted generosity which characterises the English Orpheus at his happiest. Then came Michael Tippett’s ‘Little Music’, which was a reminder of the blind alley up which many of his twentieth-century successors got lost. Tippett’s tragedy was that he seldom received a visit from the Muse, and this four-movement work demonstrates all to clearly what he used to fill the gap: strenuously self-conscious craftsmanship, and the appropriation of gestures culled from Stravinsky.

Next came a rarity in the form of ‘Dies Natalis’ Gerald Finzi’s song-cycle on a mystical poem-sequence by Thomas Traherne. Composed in the dark days of 1940, this work is shot through with a lyricism which mirrors the visionary quality of the verse, and in tenor Mark Padmore the Sinfonia have found its ideal exponent. Austere yet intense, Padmore’s sound is extraordinarily distinctive: Finzi’s word-setting may at times be mannered and predictable, but when his music flies, the result is an evanescent beauty which Padmore caught to perfection. No other composer ever wrote like this: Finzi’s musical Englishness is still not treasured as it should be.

With nothing from Britten, it was clear the Sinfonia wanted to push the boundaries, and in the second half they did, with acts of homage to Purcell by John Woolrich which really made one stop and think. If Woolrich’s ‘Another Staircase Overture’ answered Purcell’s ‘Staircase Overture’ with a cod-Purcellian jeu, his settings of Tippett’s arrangements of three of the Elizabethan master’s best-known songs – ably delivered by Padmore - threw out a provocative challenge to the loyal Purcellian listener. With ‘Music for a while’  the accompaniment was mischievously pulled about, and ‘If music be the food of love’ had an infectiously lively momentum.

The send-off was another oddity – William Walton’s string orchestration of one of his own string quartets. No whiff of inspiration disturbed the laborious progress of this forgettable work, but the superb Britten Sinfonia gave it their all, as they did everything else.

Birmingham Post
Review: Britten Sinfonia, at Birmingham Town Hall
By Christopher Morley
Feb 18 2011 

Rating * * * *

There was a delicious interacting of links in last Friday’s programme from the Britten Sinfonia, larger than in most of its appearances on this gracious stage, but still playing with the empathy of chamber-music intimacy under the discreet direction of its leader, Jacqueline Shave.

Purcell was the seed-corn, leading three centuries later to some of our greatest composers. Music from his Abdelazer, crisp and shapely in its delivery, led naturally to Tippett’s Little Music for Strings.

Rich in tone, well-hewn textures responsive to its eloquent rhetoric, this was an account totally attuned to the marvels of Tippett’s writing for this medium.

Tippett and Purcell came together for John Woolrich’s orchestral realisation of three Purcell songs from Tippett’s edition (after a devoted reading of Woolrich’s tediously meandering Purcellian homage Another Staircase Overture), with tenor Mark Padmore sweet and caressing in his delivery.

And Padmore was alternately dark and wide-eyed visionary in the extraordinary nocturnal [projections of Britten’s Serenade for Tenor, Horn and Strings. Here, too, was an object-lesson of how to wait in repose while another protagonist took centre-stage – Stephen Bell, achieving marvels on both natural and “modern” horns, something I’ve never seen juggled before in this wonderful work.

Equally wonderful was the Sinfonia’s performance of Britten’s kaleidoscopic, deeply-felt and deftly allusiv Variations on a Theme of Frank Bridge, the players combining so hearteningly under Jackie Shave’s so unobtrusive yet totally effective direction.

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