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Chanticleer, early music, vocal ensemble

Chanticleer: On Music, Modernity, Social Media, & Singing Machaut

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On May 29, 2024

In classical, early music, interviews, tour, voice

When most people hear the words “classical religious music” they might immediately think of Requiems by Verdi and Mozart or sprawling Masses by Bach and Beethoven. The work of Guillaume de Machaut may not be top of mind, yet the 14th century French composer is a central figure within Western musical expression and development. He was also a survivor: Machaut endured the disastrous Black Death that killed a third of the European population.

Messe de Nostre Dame (Mass of Our Lady) was composed in 1365 for the Cathedral at Reims where Machaut was serving as a canon; the work marks the earliest complete setting of the Catholic Church’s Ordinary of the Mass (the part of a mass which is constant) traceable to a single composer. As music writer Davis Smith noted at their website A Taste of the Divine Specific in 2022, Machaut’s Messe (written in Old French) is notable because “it is the first large work of Western music to showcase an individual voice […] perhaps the first truly major musical statement.” More precisely:

Machaut’s music serves the purpose of worship and brings the listener closer to the source—and sound—of his faith through the mastery of poetic idioms, translating the established text into abstract sonic patterns, exploring the potentials of the human voice in combination with others, painting the diction and meaning of the Mass text with meticulous strokes, playing with sonorities and their relationships, testing the boundaries of what poetry and music alike can do. In so doing, he paved the way for all composers within the following 400-year period.
(Davis Smith, “The Poetry of Sound and the All-Wellness of Faith“, June 23, 2022)

Various recordings of the Messe have been made through the years, all of them utilizing a variety of vocal styles specific (or in some cases not entirely tied) to early music performance; the Taverner Consort and Taverner Choir (1984), the Oxford Camerata (1996), and Antwerp-based Graindelavoix (2016) are just a few of the groups to have put their individual stamp on the work. Machaut also composed a wide variety of songs, many of them written in first-person and exploring terrestrial concerns like courtship, longing, and heartbreak; his ironically-titled Le voir dit (“A True Story”) is a meta-fictional narrative which mocks contemporaneous tales of courtly love even as it seduces the listener with its flowing poetry and intriguingly modern-sounding vocal writing.

That paradigm of new and old sounds is something Chanticleer specialize in. The ensemble will be performing the work of Machaut in a series of concerts in California between June 2nd and 9th, with each one featuring the Messe de Nostre Dame interspersed with selection of his secular works and those by medieval contemporaries. This musical curiosity comes naturally to Chanticleer. Known as “an orchestra of voices”, the group was formed in 1978 by tenor Louis Botto, who cleverly named it after the singing rooster in one of Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales. Initially exploring the music of the Renaissance, their musical palette has expanded to include a host of sounds from a variety of eras, thanks in no small part to Music Director Emeritus Joseph Jennings, who joined Chanticleer as a countertenor in 1983. Assuming the position of Music Director a year later, he remained with the ensemble in that position until 2008 when he stepped down and assumed the title of Artistic Advisor; during his tenure the ensemble released a tremendously diverse and often Grammy Award-winning array of recordings showcasing the ensemble’s vocal flexibility, from early music (Josquin, Palestrina, Byrd, Desprez) to spirituals and traditional gospel music to jazz.

Current Music Director and countertenor Tim Keeler has continued this tradition of expanding the ensemble’s oeuvre while happily embracing a 21st century approach. Recent ecologically-themed programs have included tje song cycle The Rivers are our Brothers (which includes “I Am A Tree“, a live performance of which was recently captured during a tour stop at Toronto’s Koerner Hall) by neoclassical-electronic composer Majel Connery, as well as “I miss you like I miss the trees” by electro-acoustic composer Ayanna Woods, who is also Chanticleer’s composer-in-residence. Their social media platforms feature the group performing contemporary and nostalgic pop hits, gospel, and a sample of chant from the video game “Halo: Combat Evolved”. A busy summer is in store for the group, with German dates to include a premiere appearance in Dresden (at the city’s storied Frauenkirche) and another in Ludwigsburg, performing for the first time with British vocal ensemble Voces8 – but before all that, there’s Machaut and his unique Messe. Is it really a work only for the religious and/or early-music-loving ears?

Keeler (TK) and countertenor and Assistant Music Director Gerrord Pagenkopf (GP) think otherwise. “It’s early music,” Keeler recently told San Francisco Classical Voice writer Jeff Kaliss, “but you almost have to approach it with a new-music sensibility.” He and Pagenkopf recently shared their thoughts on the Messe and a variety of Chanticleer initiatives, many of which offer a unique integration of entertainment and education, with any enlightenment for audiences a natural and happy side-effect of smart, approachable musical presentation.

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Photo: Stephen K. Mack

What’s it been like to explore the music of Guillaume Machaut?

TK It’s been a bit of a switch. We do so many different styles of music in Chanticleer. We started as an early music group back in 1978, singing Renaissance music mostly, and we still do a lot of Renaissance music in our programs and on tour; last year was our William Byrd anniversary program, the year before that was another Franco-Flemish program. But rarely do we go so far back as medieval music, which is a genre in and of itself, very unique and very specific. The way you sing it, and the harmonies involved, it almost feels modern in some ways.

How so?

TK Well, in a sense, it’s very unpredictable. As I said we do a lot of Renaissance music, and when you do a lot of Renaissance music, you start to understand the patterns. You can kind of assume what’s going to come next and there’s definitely a tonal soundscape that you get used to. But with medieval music, those conventions are not set up yet. The composers then were experimenting a lot – many musical conventions were being set down for the first time, things as simple as bar lines and time signatures. You think, “Well, how was there ever music before that?”– but there was. These medieval composers like Machaut were really establishing what music looked like, and they were experimenting a lot. Musical lines go where you might not expect them to go; harmonies are up against each other; sometimes you’re completely unprepared for the sounds and you think, “Wait, is that real? Did they really mean to write that?” And you go back to the source material and yes, those in fact are the notes that were written. There was a lot of experimentation, and in a sense, that’s how you have to think about modern music also: you have to forget everything you know about singing and take it for what it is.

Beautiful vs. “beautiful”

How have you adjusted vocally?

TK Gerrord’s been doing more singing than I have, so he’ll have more to say. But I do think there’s really no actual way to know how Machaut would have wanted his music to be sung. We have some small bits of writing from contemporary sources that are mostly just complaining about how things shouldn’t be sung, not telling you exactly how it should be sung. So we don’t really know! There are a few recordings of the mass out there, and they all take wildly different approaches – because nobody really knows. There are Renaissance-inflected approaches that are sort of straight tones, beautiful beautiful sounds, then there’s some that are much more nasal and much more aggressive – for lack of a better term – that take their inspiration from improvisational modern Corsican polyphony and things like that, where it’s a much more visceral sound. And there’s a lot to be said in this regard about modern music as well, because a lot of times we have composers asking us to make a certain kind of timbres with our voices or to go for a certain kinds of sounds. So we get to experiment in the same way with the super early music – because we don’t really know the “should” – so we get to have some fun with it and try things out. What do you think, Gerrord?

Gerrord Pagenkopf Chanticleer, Assistant Music Director, countertenor, singer, musician

Chanticleer’s Gerrord Pagenkopf. Photo: Stephen K. Mack

GP Yeah, that’s pretty much it! In the bel canto era everything was all about beautiful singing and about making the tones as beautiful as possible, and that singing technique was superimposed, for a long time in the 20th century anyway, onto all genres of all time periods of vocal music. I feel like in the 1980s and ’90s, we started to try and perform music in what we think is a more authentic way, pre this bel canto kind of style –so not every single tone has to be quote-unquote beautiful; it can be a little bit nasty, snarly, a bright kind of nasally. And we think that that’s okay. When you hear some of these very dissonant chords, you understand that if you try and do a nice beautiful operatic vibrato, it really obscures the tonality, so maybe a more laser-pointed, bright tone is actually necessary to make those chords ring, we would say, or, have their effect.

“The sounds feel new”

How does this translate to your live presentation? Is there any intentionality in your blend of education, enlightenment, and entertainment with these concerts?

Tim Keeler, Chanticleer, Music Director, countertenor, singer, musician

Chanticleer’s Tim Keeler. Photo: Stephen K. Mack

TK All of the above! Really, that’s a great question. My first thought is that with Machaut, the sounds feel new – actually the time period is called Ars Nova, or the new art, which is fascinating. It was new back then, and it feels new today. It is pretty remarkable how these sound worlds are still a little bit a part of everybody’s subconscious, like everybody knows them if you grew up in the Western world. And so you underline that and all of a sudden people are transported in a way that maybe they didn’t quite understand they could be. One of our videos online is us singing the Halo theme song; it’s a video game which is essentially a Gregorian chant that is just put into this video game to give it a sense of time and space; that sound world is not dissimilar to the Machaut world. The piece is a mass, right? And within the mass there would have been chant as well as polyphony. In the upcoming concerts we’re going to start with a chant in the 10th century style to get everyone into that mystical religious world, which is a very unique space – but one everybody has a little bit of familiarity with already. It’s a tricky business to program an entire religious work of such length in a concert and make it feel like something that people want to sit through.

GP But there’s a wide variety of audiences for Chanticleer: we have people who love Kansas’ music and people who love early music. So our goal is to find a way to do a medieval music concert in a way that feels accessible to all of those people. I’m sure we’re not going to be entirely successful with that, but we’ll do our best. The way the program is structured is that we split the mass into the beginning and the end of the program so it’s not all in your face, all at once.

TK Obviously we’re not going to perform it as part of a religious service, which it would have been done. Our concerts will be more of an exploration of the sound and its world, and the effect of that sound, as opposed to an exploration its religious aspects – that being said, most of the places we’re performing in are churches because that’s where the acoustics are best, and quite frankly, there aren’t very many spaces in America that act as gathering places that also have good acoustics other than churches! In the middle of the program, in between the two halves of the mass, we’re going to explore a lot of Machaut’s secular music, a lot of his chansons. These works feel very modern, very personable, very intimate and relatable. They are also reminders that people in the 1300s had a lot of similar emotions, desires, and fears – so if we can relay those same things, even though we’re singing in old French, the hope is that the audience will come along for the ride and be a part of that journey.

You normally have little explanations between songs in your concerts, correct?

GP That’s right. In our regular programs we would sing every single genre, and in those situations it is helpful to explain and speak between songs, like, “This 1500s piece is paired with this 1800s piece, and is also paired with this completely new piece, and they all relate like this.” And I think it’s good to help the audience make those connections because we do have program notes usually for our regular program – but during the concert people generally aren’t reading them or they might read them beforehand and then forget all about them, so it’s good to just sort of keep them with us during the performance and be like, “Okay, here’s where we are, and here’s where we’re heading, and this is how this all relates together.” But as Tim said for this Machaut presentation, we want it to be more of a journey.

Happiness = Many Sounds

Chanticleer was founded on Renaissance music, but I am curious how your varied musical choices relate to your mandate and how they have helped to expand it and your audiences.

TK When Chanticleer was founded, Renaissance music was still very much a niche market, and it still is to some extent today, but there was really a need for exploring this repertoire at that time, because not a lot of people were singing music from that time. Over time we realized that there were people who wanted to hear more of what Chanticleer was able to give so we started to expand our repertoire. We decided early on that we wanted to tour and in order to make ourselves more marketable we needed to incorporate more styles and genres into our music and repertoire. Our mandate is to perform all music at its highest level. So that if you do hear a Renaissance piece, you’re going to hopefully hear it at the highest level you can possibly hear it; likewise Max Reger, you’re going to hear it at the highest level. That’s really what we lean into now.

GP We have this amazing opportunity to do all these different genres and to bring people together. If you visit the Chanticleer Instagram account you might click on something and think, “Wow, this Kirk Franklin piece is awesome. What else is on here? Oh, William Byrd, who is that? I like that, it’s awesome!” – and vice versa. It’s often the case that the people who love Renaissance music are maybe the least exposed to other kinds of music, so we have this way to give them exposure to old music or a gospel song – or both. Also, I don’t think any of us in Chanticleer would be happy just performing one genre of music.

How important has social media been to this expansion?

TK Pre-pandemic we really didn’t have much of a social media presence but with the turnover in our administration and even some singers it was interesting seeing several of our musical colleagues leaning into their social media presences. We saw then just how vital it is. It’s been amazing to see how much of an impact it has had, to have exposure to people all over the world who engage with us and write things like, “When are you coming back to Sweden?” and “When are you coming back to Japan?” It’s been really amazing to see our appeal not just locally nationally but internationally and it serves as a reminder that what we’re doing is important.

Do you feel like ambassadors for vocal music?

TK Absolutely – ambassadors for early music, and ambassadors for all other genres of music also. You know, our Music Director Emeritus Joe Jennings has arranged so many gospel quartets and African-American spirituals for the ensemble, and that aspect is now very much part of our identity. It’s an aspect we try to carry forward as respectfully as possible.

GP We have a responsibility not only to early music but to all these other musical genres that are so much a part of what we do, and of us.

Top photo: Stephen K. Mack
Bayerische Staatsorchester, Bayerische Staatsoper, BSOrec, orchestra, classical, opera, recordings

Bayerische Staatsoper Recordings: “A Microscopic View Into The Orchestra”

By

On September 23, 2023

In art, classical, Europe, interviews, music, new music, opera, tour

History looms large when you’re 500 years old. The Bayerisches Staatsorchester might know a thing or two about the weight of such a history – but in-house record label Bayerische Staatsoper Recordings renders the present, as much as the present and future, profound, polished, and yes, portable.

The orchestra of the famed Bayerische Staatsoper began life in 1523, when regularized performances started at the Bavarian court. Its musicians became famous following the 1563 appointment of composer Orlande de Lassus, though their output was reoriented with the start of opera performances in the mid 17th century in Munich. Mozart himself led the orchestra in the world premiere of Idomeneo in 1781, which was also written in the city. But it was 1811 when, crucially, members of the Bavarian court orchestra found the Musikalische Akademie e. V. association; that decision led to the creation of Munich’s first public concert series, known as Akademiekonzerte. The orchestra gained particular fame in the latter half of the 19th century in their hosting the first performances of numerous Wagner operas, including Tristan und Isolde (premiered at the National Theatre in 1865)  Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg (1868), Das Rheingold (1869), and Die Walküre (1870). One of the institution’s most famous General Music Directors (GMDs) was composer Richard Strauss, whose father Franz was a noted principal horn player with the orchestra, then known as the Court Opera. But Strauss Jr. was far from the only famous music figure in the position; subsequent leaders have included a who’s who in classical history, including Bruno Walter, Clemens Krauss, Georg Solti, and more recently, Zubin Mehta, Kirill Petrenko, and currently Vladimir Jurowski, who led acclaimed productions of Prokofiev’s War and Peace and Brett Dean’s Hamlet last season. Whether either will see their way to formal releases remains to be seen.

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BSOrec CD releases. Photo: mine; please contact me to reuse.

Bayerische Staatsoper Recordings (or BSOrec), run in-house, will be the label to make it happen. The independent announced itself in 2021 in a rather unique fashion, not with a splashy opera production but via big symphony – Mahler’s immense Seventh Symphony, to be precise. Captured live in 2018 and led by contemporaneous GMD Petrenko, the recording – and indeed label – generated big buzz across the classical world, with many music writers noting the orchestra’s responsiveness to the material. In a review for Gramophone at its release in 2021, Edward Seckerson wrote that “I really thought I knew this work – every facet of it. But Kirill Petrenko has a way of hearing deep into textures and harmonies that is at times really quite startling. He gives us X-ray ears.” The label quickly followed the Mahler release with a DVD of the acclaimed 2019 staging of Korngold’s Die Tote Stadt featuring tenor Jonas Kaufmann and soprano Marlis Petersen. In his assessment at Adventures In Music, classical blogger Jari Kallio praised Video Director Myriam Hoyer while noting that “the orchestral lines are drawn with acute intensity and tremendous sonic beauty.” In early 2022 the label released a DVD of The Snow Queen by composer Hans Abrahamsen and conducted by Cornelius Meister. Based on a fairytale by Hans Christian Andersen, the presentation features Barbara Hannigan and was recorded in late 2019-early 2020. All three releases went on to achieve significant accolades within the classical world, including four big wins at the 2022 Gramophone Awards. It was the first time in the history of the prestigious British organization that a Recording of the Year was won by an audio-visual title; it was also only the second time an orchestra won both the Orchestral and Opera categories. Quite the achievement for a young label.

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BSOrec DVD releases. Photo: mine; please contact me to reuse.

BSOrec marched on, releasing DVDs of  a combined ensemble production of Stravinsky’s Mavra and Tchaikovsky’s Iolanta (released in 2022) and Andrea Chénier (released last month) again featuring Jonas Kaufmann and led by Marco Armiliato. It’s a curious if inspired selection, with an even more curious choice of design; in place of cover photos is bold silver lettering, with not one name larger than the other, set within sturdy holders, each in solid, rainbow-like colours. The eye-catching design, originally by Mirko Borsch, sends a clear message across both audio and video titles, along with the many thoughtful essays and interviews contained within, the majority penned by talented dramaturg Malte Krasting, who knows a thing or two about the role of context.

The first BSOrec release with current General Music Director Jurowski (from 2022) pairs Brett Dean’s Testament and Beethoven’s Second Symphony, and includes Krasting’s thoughtful interview with the Russian maestro in its liner notes. Releases (all of which enjoy distribution via Naxos) this year have marked the 500th birthday of the Bayerisches Staatsorchester though they also highlight the unique talents of individual sections. Original Grooves by Opercussion, and Voyager by the Munich Opera Horns, both released earlier this year, are a showcase of creative thinking within the recording paradigm. Original Grooves features a creative mix of classical, Latin, and jazz (Bach, Astor Piazzolla, Dizzy Gillespie) in original arrangements by ensemble members. Voyager offers music by Strauss, Dubois, Reicha, and Franz alongside compositions by contemporary composers Urs Vierlinger, Hans-Jürg Sommer, and Konstantia Gourzi. Such interlacing of sounds, with a keen eye on drama, was also realized via the the release of contemporary children’s piece Der Mondbär: Ein Hörspiel mit Musik für Kinder, with music by Richard Whilds/ libretto by Sarah Scherer, and based on the popular German books and animated series. BSOrec’s upcoming audio release is a firm nod to its storied history, if also an ambitious wave to the future. Mendelssohn’s Elias was captured in July 1984 and features a dream team of soloists (Dame Margaret Price, Brigitte Fassbaender, Peter Schreier, Dieter Fischer-Diskau) and choir (Chor des Städtischen Musikvereins zu Düsseldorf), led by celebrated conductor (and former company leader) Wolfgang Sawallisch.

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Conductor and former Bayerische Staatsoper GMD Kent Nagano meets with Bayerisches Staatsorchester in Hamburg September 10, 2023. Photo: Geoffroy Shied

Such an auspicious combination of elements (past/present; theatricality; dramaturgy; passion) could be experienced through recent concerts given as part of the orchestra’s recent European tour, which included stops in London, Paris, and Berlin. Tour repertoire was chosen thoughtfully, a true reflection of not only composer connections to Bayerische Staatsoper (Wagner, Strauss) but to the orchestra’s home city as well (Mahler’s Fourth Symphony was premiered in Munich in late 1901). Past and present mixed in certain programmes, with Ukrainian composer Victoria Vita Poleva’s Symphonie Nr.3 White Internment opening select concerts, and soloists ran the gamut between generations, with violinist Vilde Frang, pianist Yefim Bronfman, and sopranos Louise Alder and Elsa Dreisig. The orchestra’s stop in Hamburg included a visit with conductor and former GMD Kent Nagano; on their home turf in Munich they entertained over 10,000 spectators who had gathered in Marstallplatz as part of an “Oper für Alle” event which featured the music of Schumann and Strauss. Earlier in the month in Lucerne, the orchestra’s performance of Bruckner’s Fourth Symphony was interrupted by climate activists whose presence was acknowledged with utmost diplomacy by conductor Jurowski; it was a moment of elegant humanism, a quality deep within the orchestra’s DNA and palpable throughout BSOrec’s output, and its small if highly dedicated team, led by Managing Director Guido Gärtner.

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BSOrec’s Guido Gärtner. Photo: Frank Hanewacker

Gärtner joined the Bayerisches Staatsorchester in 2008 as a violinist, a position he continues concurrent to BSOrec duties. He and I enjoyed a wide-ranging conversation in late summer, which touched on a myriad of topics, including that fashionable thing discussed so often within classical circles now, brand identity. I was also curious to know what advantages perceives Gärtner within the in-house label paradigm – Bayerische Staatsoper certainly isn’t the first big organization to do it (the Berlin Philharmonic is another notable example) but the challenges of the recording industry (and the weight of being 500 years old) are no small thing. What role does (or should) an independent label play in a decidedly difficult classical landscape? How to choose archives? What about new work? Whither relevance (another word so frequently thrown around in the classical world)? And what’s with the BSOrec design? Gärtner has the answers, and then some.

Why have an in-house label?

People might look at the orchestra solely within the context of musical theatre, so for us, being in charge of our own musical well-being, and our own concert performances, is a very strong and vital thing. We don’t just play because it’s fun – that’s a big part – but we want to be seen, and we want people to know what we stand for and why we do what we do. The key is to be accessible and visible; we don’t always travel, but the media travels for us.

With the Mahler 7 release, it was a stunt to start – we are an opera label but we made our introduction with a big symphony. We showed the world that the Bayerisches Staatsorchester is not just an opera orchestra but one of the finest orchestras in the world. By doing that, and doing it successfully, we really made a point, and it worked out really well.

So for the Mahler CD and the Die Tote Stadt DVD we had two real gems, especially with Kirill Petrenko being one of the greatest of his art, and the orchestra under him being on top also. We knew that together there was something worth sharing and exploring. We always aim to show how much is happening in one house, so the recordings recognize the versatility of the orchestra but also the entire system in our house, and how deep and broad it all actually is. We knew from the beginning it wouldn’t be just operas, or just concerts we would release, but everything this house produces, which is why we decided to release ensemble work as well.

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Bayerische Staatsoper’s Oper für Alle concert featuring Bayerisches Staatsorchester performing at Munich’s Marstallplatz, September 16, 2023. Photo: Wilfred Hösl

How does that label change or influence your position within the classical ecosystem of Munich?

It’s amazing – we have this relatively small city with this extremely large amount of fantastic musical institutions and ensembles like the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra and the Munich Philharmonic. At the BSO we are always telling a story; I always say, it’s stopping the heart. A C# minor chord is never just a chord but a statement, part of a larger story. That goes for onstage work as much as recordings. What makes the orchestra so special is not that it’s the oldest one in Munich but it’s actually an orchestra whose DNA derives from theatre music: there’s spontaneity; there’s agility. But every orchestra stands for itself, and there’s enough space for all of them, especially in a city like Munich, which has so much music, and more widely in the state of Bavaria. We are very happy where we are. The Bayerisches Staatsorchester is identified as a theatre orchestra, as an opera orchestra, and we’re not trying to get away from that, but the point we’re making is we have even more to offer.

In terms of strategy and artistic development, it’s important to develop this awareness – if you want to survive as an orchestra I think it’s very important everyone knows why you exist. The education programs; the concerts and chamber concerts; the children’s pieces; things done within the community; the recordings: if you have all of these things to offer, it’s difficult to say you’re irrelevant. Relevance is everything to an orchestra.

Relevance seems very connected to BSOrec’s brand – what was the thinking behind its cultivation?

Being your own brand is powerful. Our in-house label gives us the freedom to choose which repertoire we want to release, because we genuinely like it. But more importantly, this choice gives us the possibility to influence how we are being perceived, not only as a label, but also as an artistic institution. As opposed to a major label, in our case the institution and the label are the same brand. That is an absolutely important element that gives us a lot of freedom.

How does this sense of freedom help to attract audiences, especially those new to the art form or those who know you exclusively for opera?

We can show what’s actually in the orchestra –who we are, what we do and where we come from.  We can of course show what incredible musicians we have. There are so many different people with so many different interests and styles. There’s also the possibility for that thing I mentioned before, storytelling: we tell stories about Strauss’s father, who was a horn player; we tell stories about various aspects of contemporary music; we offer tales on new aspects to well-known music that has been here for a long time. The label offers a microscopic view into the orchestra. The first archived recording being released is also a very important block in the overall idea of the label and tells its own story.

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Wolfgang Sawallisch in rehearsal. Photo: Sabine Toepffer

How do you find new approaches for archived recordings?

It’s an interesting question. For this latest release, Mendelssohn’s Elias, the statement is: it isn’t an opera; it isn’t a symphonic work; it’s an oratorio. It shows the versatility of the orchestra but first and foremost it shows the excellence. The cast and the orchestra are a dream team. It’s not that they just convened for this one thing and took off to various places when it was finished; all of these singers were often guests in the National Theatre back in those days. It’s not just one moment in the history of the house but shows the general level that was here in 1984. Also, this piece was premiered for both the Münchner Opernfestspiele and the 88th German Katholikentag (Catholic Convention). It’s music composed by someone with a Jewish background who converted to Protestantism. Sawallisch was also making his own statement on unity and religious beliefs.

When I first listened to the recording, it didn’t take me long to realize this is something we have to publish, because it was a moment, because there was so much energy in the room, and you can really hear it. In so many ways it felt like the perfect way to start the archived releases for the label.

conductor, Bayerische Staatsoper, Bayerische Staatsorchester, General Music Director, Vladimir Jurowski, composer, Ukrainian, Victoria Vita Poleva, tour, classical, performance, stage, talking, discussion, art

Conductor and Bayerische Staatsoper GMD Vladimir Jurowski speaks with composer Victoria Vita Poleva before Bayerisches Staatsorchester’s performance in Berlin, September 11, 2023. Photo: Wilfred Hösl

What is the role of new compositions then?

The idea was always to give contemporary music a real platform. We started with Mahler, yes, then released Die Tote Stadt; we knew those two would have momentum and be successful. They would give the label a good entrance into the world and get everyone interested in the next release. The next release after them was a contemporary opera, Hans Abrahamsen’s The Snow Queen, a project not many labels would have taken on. The other thing we released was Beethoven 2 – by the way that was the main piece played in 1811 at the inaugural Akademie concert – and that symphony was combined with a contemporary piece by Brett Dean. His “Testament” relates to the Beethoven immediately and also showcases Vladimir Jurowski’s approach to music and programming, which I find highly interesting.

For the Voyager release there was a contemporary work by Konstantia Gourzi, who wrote it specifically for the Munich Opera Horns. The entire album circles around her “Voyager 2”, which I find very strong, and which was chosen by the musicians themselves, as was the contents on the whole album. We didn’t intervene, because I like to think musicians have fantastic ideas when it comes to this kind of a project.

I like the idea of the Trojan Horse: as was seen with the Beethoven release, it’s good to combine the big great old repertoire with something brave and new, something that speaks to our time, and gets attention because of the combination. It’s an approach Jurowski uses a lot, and it works when you do it well. You have to find a good balance between everything and I’m sure the label will try to keep going in that direction.

To what extent does BSOrec’s package design reflect this balance?

When you see releases from other labels, you see the piece in big letters, or more often these days the singers, and in small letters you see the institution – the house isn’t the main thing. If you put those productions from all these labels in a row, everything looks different and what you recognize is the piece. But if you now put all the BSOrec releases together, it’s very clear which institution is behind it. It’s clear. The idea is, it isn’t about pictures, it’s about institution, and many different repertoire styles; it also signals a certain quality, and a certain idea or concept, all within one house. The door you open to all of that looks the same. I won’t tell you which colours are next – that’s the magic trick! But it’s always nice that people ask about that particular thing.

Interesting the DVD features Jonas Kaufmann and Marlis Petersen in what was a very acclaimed production but their photos aren’t on the cover – that’s a brave choice!

It equalizes. Some love it, some hate it. Whenever you see it it sticks out, and that of course is the oldest trick in the branding book: recognizing a logo or a certain style. And that style has to match the idea, and have the quality of the physical in terms of how the products feel when you touch them. All of this is important, but all of it, entirely, has to precisely match the musical content, the production content, but also, the written content. This is why I’m so grateful to have Malte on the team. The booklet, the music, the style, the sound, the way it feels in your hand – it all has to be one experience and it has to be a fine, subtle, and beautiful combination to give you one beautiful experience.

orchestra, classical, performance, stage, art, culture, music, Bayerisches Staatsorchester, tour

Bayerisches Staatsorchester performs under the baton of  Bayerische Staatsoper GMD Vladimir Jurowski in London on September 19, 2023. Photo: Geoffroy Shied

Top photo: Bayerisches Staatsorchester on the stage of the National Theatre, Bayerische Staatsoper. Photo: Nikolaj Lund.
Originally published 9 September 2023.
Edited and republished 23 September 2023.
Merton College, Oxford, choir, music, choral, university, history, England, United Kingdom, song, British

The Choir of Merton College, Oxford: Listening, Singing, Making Music Together

By

On September 7, 2022

In classical, interviews, tour, voice

Throughout much of the Northern Hemisphere, the month of September heralds the idea of return: to schools and universities; to work projects; to extracurricular events and some form of cultural life in locales where summer festivals are scant if even extant. There is a hunger for routine, perhaps now more than ever, given the added impetus that the notion of “return” carries with it an end to the disruption wrought by years of pandemic. The urgency toward a “return to normal”, however one defines it, feels more tenuous than ever, given a tightening of budgets, of strikes, of continued sacrifice for some, of a winter that threatens cold and expense. Amidst all of this: whither music? Is it now firmly slotted as an extra? As temperatures drop and bills rise, priorities, especially for those on limited incomes, would seem to become plain. How, then, ought live classical culture to respond? How should it be encountered, engaged with, and supported?

Perhaps there is an answer in simple things – things like singing, and most especially singing with others. If the notion of ‘return’ engenders a thirst for community, what better way to slake it? Singing may be off the plate for most, but it need not be; there is no reason to feel daunted by any perceived lack of talent. Choral life in many parts of Europe and the UK is active, evidenced not only in a huge variety of live offerings but in audience response; attending performances of various Passions, it was lovely to note the extent to which respective audiences knew the words of various sections (and sang or hummed along, or mouthed the texts). There are many active choral communities across North America as well (Canada’s Nathaniel Dett Chorale is but one example), some secular, some not. Choral singing is, as practitioners might say, made up of far more than the annual Xmas ritual of Handel’s Messiah. The act of singing together within a confined space was one of the first things unfortunately lost in the pandemic lockdowns of early 2020; it was also one of the things fought hardest over in some places, with certain groups utilizing distancing techniques to try and continue their activities. Togetherness matters; making sounds together, certainly matters, as much an individual as a collective good.

The Merton College Choir is embarking on an American tour next week, one that seems as much about showcasing the talents of its members as serving to remind  audiences of the centrality of communal cultural experience. The tour is a good reminder that singing need not be as formal as what the talented troupe present, but can be an act of recognition, of support, of active imagination and empathy. Made up of a rotating group of 30 members taken from Oxford University’s student body (via annual auditions), the choir (who has its own Youtube channel) is dedicated mainly to liturgical works, but also has (as their upcoming tour attests) a history of commissioning and presenting the work of living composers. Merton’s Choral Foundation was established in 2008, and since then, has acquired an international reputation for stellar performances and recordings. Awarded Best Choral Album at the 2020 BBC Music Magazine Awards for their 2019 recording of The Passion of our Lord Jesus Christ (Delphian) by Bermuda-born composer Gabriel Jackson (b. 1962) (a work Gramophone writer Alexandra Coghlan hailed for both its textural as well as meditative qualities) the troupe has also enjoyed collaborations with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra (Elgar’s The Apostles, 2018), Instruments of Time and Truth (Bach’s St Matthew Passion, 2017) and Oxford Baroque (Bach’s Mass in B minor, 2018). Previous tours include visits to Hong Kong and Singapore, France, Italy, Sweden, and the United States. The upcoming tour to the latter is the first the choir has undertaken since the start of the pandemic in early 2020.

With dates in Cambridge, New Haven, New York, and Princeton, the programme is an inspiring mix of new and old works by a range of celebrated composers, including William Byrd (1543-1623), Henry Purcell (1659-1695), Ralph Vaughan Williams (1872-1958), Maurice Duruflé (1902-1986), Lionel Rogg (1936), Judith Weir (1954), and Nico Muhly (1981), among others. I spoke with Director of Music Benjamin Nicholas recently, and we discussed some timely topics: the choice of touring repertoire; what audiences might glean from the experiences of seeing, and being in, a choir; and what singing means in a post-(or whatever this is)-coronavirus world.

Benjamin Nicholas, choir, Merton College, Oxford, director, music, classical, choral

Photo (c) John Cairns

Your American tour is an interesting balance of contemporary and traditional works; why these works, and why include them on a tour?

Well, I think what we’re doing on tour is pretty typical of what we do most of the time. I do try and think about the concert programmes – the art of putting together a programme is a really exciting thing to do. It’s tough to get it right, and I’m aware we’re going to be singing in places that have great choral music already, and so I think it was a question of bringing something with us that might be unique in the sense that one piece is written specifically for us, other contemporary pieces are perhaps not performance so often – so I’m quite keen to put together a programme that contrasts the old with the new, which as I say is pretty typical of our repertoire.

During the university term we sing three services a week in the chapel at Merton and I would say that we include a lot of Renaissance music, obviously some romantic music, and 20th-21st century music, and so the tour programme is an extension of what we do in those services.

Do you program with themes in mind, or is it more instinctual, i.e. “I like how this sounds with that” ?

It’s a bit of both if I’m honest. I have gone for some contrasts, where we put two pieces next to each other. One of those pairings is the Byrd Motet “O Lord, make thy servant Elizabeth” running straight into Judith Weir’s “Ave Regina caelorum” – one connection is simply that they are in the same key, so it makes for a very neat segue way, but also I think that it’s interesting that William Byrd wrote for Elizabeth I – he was indeed part of the Royal household – and Judith Weir is the current Master of the Queen’s Music, and obviously writes for the greater state occasions in the UK. So that was one thing, to put them together. The Judith Weir piece is also a bit of a personal piece, because it was written for us – it is particularly special. And then there’s the Purcell piece (“Jehova, quam multi sunt hostes mei”) moving directly into David Lang (“again”) – there’s no great link there, apart from the fact that I felt the contrast after the Purcell would be, hopefully, really arresting for the audience.

The act of communal singing, of this programme in particular, seems especially pregnant with symbolism. Singing was the first thing we lost in the pandemic.

That’s true.

What has the return been like for you and your members? 

The very obvious practical change, when we came back to the university after the first lockdown, related to the basic guidance: yes we could sing, but only at a certain distance from one another. Merton Chapel is a good size and we were able to resume singing straight away, but all distanced. There’s no doubt that distancing honed everyone’s listening skills; everyone was so much more attuned, and they knew they had to have amazing antennae – the ears of an elephant – to hear everyone else, to make the performance whole. We did record a CD under those circumstances; it seems mad on one hand, but on the other I think all the work paid off. The choir has moved back together now, and are standing at a normal distance, but their listening skills have been enhanced by the distancing over the course of the pandemic. But whilst the pandemic is fresh in everyone’s minds and people missed being in university and missed touring and did miss singing three times a week in the chapel, I think people have got used to (the old routine) again very quickly; we’re basically back to normal and have been for about a year.

Now it’s been quite a striking difference at the BBC Proms concerts – what I found really staggering as an attendee is to hear all the great choral works in the Royal Albert Hall with hundreds of performers, because that didn’t come back last summer; it has taken much longer for that kind of music-making to resume. For all of us who’ve been at the Proms or heard things on the radio in the last couple weeks, things like Mahler’s Resurrection Symphony or The Dream Of Gerontius and so on, I think that’s been a very powerful reminder of what we lost. But I think when it comes to chamber music – and Merton Choir is, I suppose, the size of a chamber choir – I think we’ve now gotten used to being back together, and one of the great things of working with students is aht they move on pretty quickly. I think as far as they’re concerned we’ve been back to normal for some time, and normal is what they expect now. From my point of view I’ve used it as an opportunity to think about our repertoire a little bit. I hope it’s increasingly diverse, that it’s more interesting; I dropped some pieces which were not that great but which we did because they were in repertoire, so (this pandemic time) has been a chance to rebuild.

The pandemic time has many in classical thinking about that word “rebuild” – why organizations and artists do it ; how they do it; just who they are doing it for. This relates, I think, to the growing awareness around the need for diversity. What’s your feeling?

I completely agree. The interesting thing is that in terms of who we perform for back in the UK, our work is largely about enhancing the liturgy in medieval chapel, so that’s quite different from just being a concert-giving outfit. There are already these parameters in what we’re doing; the liturgy of the day dictates a lot of the music. So that means that there are certain texts that need to be sung and so on. Now, you then have a vast library of music from the last 500 years with the settings of those texts and so on and of course, a lot of the time we’re singing that music, however, we’ve always tried to commission new music at Merton, because it’s a choir of students, and part of the educational process is to introduce them to new music, some written by them or their peers, but other music is written by a cross-section of composers from all over the world. I’ve commissioned Nico Muhly in the US; Dobrinka Tabakova (1980), born in Bulgaria although she’s in London at the moment; Eriks Esenvalds (b. 1977), who is Latvian; Kerry Andrew (b. 1978) and Hannah Kendall (b. 1984); and obviously Judith Weir and James Macmillan (1959), both Scottish. The composers come from all over, because I want our repertoire to be as broad as it possibly can. Each of these composers brings a unique musical language and that enhances what we do in the chapel.

In terms of the membership of our choir, we want it to be as representative of the UK as possible, and, in terms of who we are singing for, I want audiences to come along, hear an English choir, and I just want them to experience something of what we do. So (on this tour) I’ve included two American composers, and that was because over the last few years we’ve explored a lot of contemporary composers – Libby Larsen (1950); Stephen Paulus (1949-2014) before he died; Glass (1937), Lang (1957), and Muhly. We recorded an album of American music just before the pandemic which we never had a chance to take to concerts. In a way this is a snapshot of the repertoire we sing, and you know, we hope audiences enjoy such varied kinds of music.

Merton College, Oxford, choir, music, choral, university, history, England, United Kingdom, song, British

The Choir of Merton College, Oxford. Photo: Hugh Warwick

A choir seems like a symbol of community, reciprocity, support – things that went missing during the pandemic, and continue to be largely absent. What role do you see for choir membership in a post (or whatever this is) covid world?

The first thing to say is that the act of being in a choir brings people together. That whole thing whereby people have been separated – well, a choir immediately offers a reason for people to come together. Then there is the fact they have come together to make music; the active breathing in sync, the fact they’ve got to respond to one another in terms of pitch within an ensemble, these things make the connections between people all the stronger. So for the people who sing, getting back into a choir is a really important thing.

In this country we’ve found it’s been slow-going – yes, we’re lucky that at the university we’ve not been hugely impacted by that, but I’m aware a lot of the large choruses are down in numbers and it’s taken time for all these things to build back up. I do recognize it hasn’t just gone back straight away, and that people need to be reminded, particularly now, of the benefits of being in a choir and making music together.

It’s like the difference between playing team sports versuss things like skiing, tennis, or swimming; I was a pianist and sometime-band/orchestra member, but the experience of singing St. Matthew Passion in Berlin in 2018 was very much a thing apart from any individual experience. Singing is intimate, and singing with others, even more so.

It is exactly that. In terms of musical education I can understand there was a time when one of the conservatoires, the Royal College Of Music, insisted that first-year students be part of a chorus, and the students at the time didn’t understand why they had to do this, but it was, simply, all the skills one can take for granted are so enhanced and developed by being in a choir: pitch, rhythm, placing one’s voice, text, languages…

… awareness of others.

Yes, absolutely – the skills you might learn in general musicianship, you might do them in a class, but go into a choir and you are putting the repertoire study into real practice. So I can only think it’s a really good thing for all musicians to sing in a choir for a bit, and I would say in Merton College Choir we’re essentially a choir of 30 students, some of whom read music as their degree but many are scientists and lawyers and historians…

I love that kind of professional variety in your membership.

I love that too, and I love the fact plenty of people who will not be professional singers have wonderful musical skills regardless of their formal study routes. So we have good pianists, and good horn players singing with us, and as far as I’m concerned, as a director, you need all these ingredients. Yes, you need stellar voices, but you also need a lot of very good musicians, people who just want to enhance those musical skills they happen to have. You need those different elements to make a choir.

Top Photo: The Choir of Merton College, Oxford. Photo: Hugh Warwick

Stormy Pacific

By

On February 28, 2011

In interviews, music, theatre, tour

For all its sheen, there’s something awfully disquieting about South Pacific. The beloved Rodgers and Hammerstein musical, about the shenanigans of a group of U.S. army men stationed in the south seas, features some super-famous tunes (including “Wash That Man Right Out Of My Hair”, and “Some Enchanted Evening”), but some genuinely uncomfortable moments that, in the Bartlett Sher-directed version currently back in Toronto after last summer’s run, don’t get smoothed over, but underlined. I love this. Few things are more annoying than a musical production that isn’t conscious of its own dated attitudes or troubling subtexts. Sher doesn’t want cute, shiny, and lovable; he’s more interested in difficult, ugly, and awkward. Those dark places are where the humanity of the piece reside, silent, lurking, and treacherous.

The Tony Award-winning production (running at the Toronto Centre For The Arts through April 10th) features top-notch performances and choreography, but it’s in the show’s design, and particularly, its direction, where one really notices the troubling underbelly lurking within James Michener’s tales. The alarmingly leanings of earnest Lieutenant Joseph Cable (Aaron Ramey) for the young native Liat (Sumie Maeda) gives the gorgeous “Younger Than Springtime” a much darker undertone. Her ambitious mother, Bloody Mary (Jodi Kimura), lurks around the two young lovers after their first initial tryst, singing “Happy Talk” as more of a desperate sales pitch than a romantic lullaby, stalking and wildly gesturing at the stunned Cable and pushing her pie-eyed daughter toward him: “If you don’t have a dream / you got to have a dream! / How you gonna make a dream come true?” But whose dream is it? And how much compromise does it take to make that dream a reality? What’s the price? Sher’s production doesn’t provide any easy answers.

Equally, the dark undercurrent of racism that snakes through Sher’s production gives it an edge against the saccharine moments, that, once they occur, seem at once beautifully poetic and confusingly florid; the powerful ballad “You’ve Got To Be Taught” is delivered as two black airmen stand on one side of the stage, and two white cohorts on the other. It isn’t hard to recall the words of transplanted Frenchman Emile De Becque (David Pittsinger) talking about why he left France -the ostensible reason he gives is “freedom” -but the fact he has no problem having a black servant becomes all the more troubling. Suddenly he and his nurse love-interest Nellie Forbush don’t seem so different after all. Their “Some Enchanted Evening” ballad is indeed, enchanting, but you can’t quite forget that they’re working through the same difficult issues around race, hypocrisy, and Western privilege.

By the musical’s end, love conquers all, though we sense a long road ahead for the couple. Playing a role as complicated -and as fraught with historical baggage -as Nellie isn’t a walk in the park, even with that beautiful, catchy music. American soprano Carmen Cusack captures the frustrations, fears, and outright confusion of a women at an emotional crossroads: trust a man her logical mind says “no” to, or trust her heart, which says just the opposite.

Carmen and I recently exchanged ideas about the challenges of playing Nellie, of singing Rodgers and Hammerstein with opera singers, and what South Pacific might tell a newer generation.


What’s the biggest challenge to playing Nellie?

The challenge with Nellie is going through her emotional ride every night without exhausting myself too much. She laughs, sings, dances and cries, she is tormented at various points and to genuinely give that to an audience, my body has to endure her journey. So keeping myself strong and healthy to maintain 8 shows a week is the main goal.

How much did past interpretations of the role affect your own (or did they)? It must be challenging, knowing so many people are walking in with an image of Mitzi Gaynor in their heads.

I can’t say that any particular interpretation of Nellie affected mine. I looked at the script and saw a woman that I could relate to on certain levels and then just watched a bunch of old 1940s films and came up with something that worked for me. Although, I will say that Mary Martin’s spunky, sort of tom-boy feel was inspirational.

Your leading men in this touring show (David Pittsinger and Jason Howard) come from operatic backgrounds. Does that change the way you approach the music, vocally? How much has your own style and approach influenced them?

The music is written so well that there really aren’t any adjustments vocally to be made. The songs come into the scenes and are a perfect flow of the conversation. Rodgers and Hammerstein certainly knew what they were doing. I am lucky to have had several years of opera training behind me so I can blend with my operatic costars. As for my style influencing them…. you’d have to ask them.

One of the hardest things about playing Nellie is the accent -it must be dangerously easy to fall into Hee-Haw rhythms. How conscious are you about this when you’re onstage?

I don’t really think too much about that. As soon as the wig and costume goes on the accent comes. I just try to keep it subtle.

The music from this is so famous and so beloved; how hard is it to stay in character onstage, and not totally swept up by that music?

Not hard at all! It’s the music that helps put me into character and places me on that tropical paradise and keeps me there for those three hours. It’s an awesome ride!

South Pacific has a timeless, and yet timely quality to it. What sorts of things do you think it says to a 21st century audience, one that hasn’t lived through civil rights or World War Two?

How much we’ve learned and yet how much there still is to learn.

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