A Year of Writing for EMR
At the end of February last year I reviewed Scottish Opera’s ‘Nixon in China’ for the Edinburgh Music Review. It was my third review for the website which Hugh Kerr set up in January, and my most exciting commission so far! The production by James Fulljames was new, with an international cast conducted by young Portuguese conductor, Joana Carniero. I enjoyed the performance greatly, but also had fun doing the research, both into the politics of the Nixon era, and into the writing of the opera in 1988. I was given freedom to write at length, something which this re-thinking of the opera for a 2020 audience merited. Maybe I might have been less verbose in other things I’ve written this year! But Hugh has remained an indulgent editor.
Kate Calder
It’s a shock is to look back over my diary for the first three months of 2020. Concerts, plays, films, lunches, choir rehearsals, volunteering in Oxfam Books – how did I fit it all in? The EMR was reviewing live performances every week, with a team of four of us by mid-February.
I didn’t take on any reviewing in the first weeks of March as my partner and I planned a rail trip to Europe on 4th March. With two days to go, we cancelled, and took the decision to go to Tyneside (probably the NE of England was just as infected as NE France!). I saw Opera North’s ‘Street Scene’, not as interesting as I’d hoped, and Samling Masterclasses at the Sage – a revelation. I’d never heard of the musical charity, and was astonished at the range of talented singers, some from Scotland, who’d received the benefit of a week’s study with resident experts. I wrote about them for EMR.
Back in Edinburgh Hugh asked on 12th March if I could review the SCO concert that night. By the time the concert started with a depleted audience, I was already sure it would be the last time I’d hear live music in a while. The concert, with soloists Nicola Benedetti and Laurence Power, was lovely. I’d heard Benedetti often but Power’s viola playing was new to me. He and Benedetti shone in Mozart’s Sinfonia Concertante. But the highlight was the encore, Peter Maxwell Davies’s ‘Farewell to Stromness’ in a String arrangement by Sally Beamish. My review said “During the repeat of the first theme, the players walk off the stage one by one, leaving the violin and viola playing the last few notes pizzicato.” I didn’t say that there were a few tears shed, and that I played the BBC’s recording of the SCO’s Glasgow concert several times in the next month.
I’d got the writing bug by then, and assuming that live music would be paused for only a few months, started eagerly on reviewing free operas from the Met. I saw ‘La Fille du Regiment’, in a production I’d missed at Covent Garden, and caught up with the Joyce DiDonato and Juan Diego Florez in Rossini performances. DiDonato’s ‘Maria Stuarda’ featured as part of the Donizetti series. I’d sat a few feet away from her some years earlier when she performed the role at Covent Garden. With the best will in the world, how could a screen version compare with that?
By the late spring I wrote less about streamed recordings. I wrote two articles on novels featuring musicians, rereading such dissimilar texts as Seth’s ‘An Unequal Music’, Kingsley Amis’s ‘The Alteration’ (a splendid alternate history of a 20th century Catholic England about a boy soprano - and featuring Harold Wilson as the Pope), Reginald Hill’s Dalzell and Pascoe novel about a Yorkshire singer and Mahler’s ‘Kindertotenleider’. That was engrossing writing, though, as an English graduate, I found the ‘lit crit’ harder to write than the music crit, in which I am an amateur!
Two other longer pieces followed. As the Black Lives matter movement grew, I decided to write about Samuel Coleridge-Taylor, whose name was – not for the first time - invoked as a black British musician. And yet no-one was playing his music. I’d known about Coleridge-Taylor since I was at secondary school when I sang in his cantata, ‘Hiawatha’. I wrote about that experience and about Coleridge-Taylor’s short life and his role in British music of the period, and also his relationship to African and African American music. The documentary by Lennie Henry and Suzie Klein later in the year raised Coleridge-Taylor’s profile. Now we’re more regularly hearing music by him and other black classical musicians. I remain puzzled that ‘Hiawatha’, his major work, now seems to be considered completely off-limits in the UK because it’s based on Longfellow’s poem about native Americans…
2020 marked the tenth anniversary of Charles Mackerras’s death, and I wrote about his associations with Edinburgh, his many appearances at the Festival, and his work with the SCO. My research strengthened my admiration for Mackerras as a musician, and I enjoyed listening again to some of his recordings – while noting that none of his performances either for the SCO or the Festival seems to have been filmed.
Meanwhile live or recently recorded performances started to form the basis of musical output. The Wigmore Hall led the way in June with a month-long series of concerts broadcast live - to an empty hall - on Radio 3, with video streaming available. These were high-quality performances by British-based musicians. The filming was basic, and over the next months that aspect of streaming from various venues improved markedly. The Edinburgh Festival’s pre-recorded pieces, especially its lunchtime recitals from the Hub were beautifully filmed performances, with lighting and camera angles designed to enhance the music.
Into the autumn, the Scottish musical organisations all worked to improve at-home audiences’ experiences of their performances. My reviews indicated that some types of filmed production worked for me better than others! I didn’t manage to review any of the Dunedin Consort’s performances, but these were exemplary films, made in Greyfriars Kirk, making the most of that venue’s atmosphere. They were informally introduced by the performers - a style which nearly everyone soon adopted.
There have been many performances to admire. It was exciting to hear larger musical forces in Wexford Festival’s Petite Mess ‘Solennelle’ in October, and in the RSNO’s pre-recorded concert season. I especially enjoyed their January performance of Dvorak’s New World Symphony, with Mahler Songs sung by Karen Cargill, and ‘Mighty River’ by Caribbean-British composer, Errolyn Wallen, now resident in Scotland. The SCO has featured shorter concerts with a variety of forces. My favourite was Stravinsky’s ‘Soldier’s Tale’, with nine musicians and actor, Matthew McVarish performing the role of the Glaswegian soldier.
My experiences of opera performances have been patchier. I saw my only live performance since March in September - Scottish Opera’s delightful Pop-up Operas, ‘Don Giovanni’ and ‘The Gondoliers’. Sitting outside in “pods” in the courtyard of the Festival Theatre was fun, and seemed to promise better days ahead… Scottish Opera have consistently added to their online archive of performances throughout lockdown, all still available free on their website, including such gems from the past as John Mauceri’s ‘Candide’ and a (strange) STV broadcast about their trip to Avignon with Purcell’s Dido, starring Janet Baker. In their new work, the quality of the singing and playing has been wonderful. I’ve found the productions harder to like, with some silly moments in the staging. The best streamed opera I’ve seen this year was Opera North’s ‘Fidelio’. Recorded in November, after their live concert performances couldn’t go ahead, it was an austere production, almost in monochrome, with the performers in dark work-clothes. But with a strong British cast, and an outstanding Florestan from Toby Spence, it developed a clear depiction of hope emerging from suffering.
There’s no doubt that the experience gained by musical organisations from these months of filmed performances – not to mention the investment in equipment - will pay dividends in the medium to long term. For the next year at least a sizeable audience will be happier to watch streamed performances rather than live, whether they’re unable to attend for health reasons or because they can’t travel. Live streams can provide a significant extra income and will build up a bank of materials for future use and – not unimportant - to build up a historic archive.
What next? Buxton Festival yesterday announced a full programme of operas. The Book Festival is moving to the Art College, which provides a good set-up for both live and streamed events. In a piece in September I suggested that the Fringe and the EIF needed a more drastic rethink, but so far their willingness to compromise seems lacking, with the Fringe Society this week bemoaning how much money it will need to return to the capacity of 2019. Really?
The RSNO and the SCO have streamed events planned into the spring and will be hoping that more normal service can be resumed in the autumn. Scottish Opera have made no announcements since the last performance they recorded went online last month. Maybe we will see the way ahead more clearly by the summer!
Many thanks for their help and support to Hugh, Christine and Adam, and to my fellow contributors, Brian and Mary-Ann, whose work has provided much enjoyment.
