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| A Concert by Lorenzo Costa |
One of my favorite ensembles is voice and guitar. Due to an enlightened voice teacher, my very first public concert was a performance of Benjamin Britten's Songs from the Chinese in 1972 at the University of Victoria (British Columbia, not Australia). And by the way, the guitar part is quite difficult so I don't recommend it as your first voice and guitar repertoire!
The combination of voice and some guitar-like instrument is probably thousands of years old, though evidence is scarce. The first notated repertoire is for voice and vihuela in 16th century Spain and after that is a flood of music from Italy, France and especially England where we have the wonderful and extensive repertoire for voice and lute from John Dowland, Thomas Campion, Philip Rosseter, Thomas Morley and others.
Due to the collaboration of Peter Pears and Julian Bream, England saw an efflorescence of music for voice and guitar post-WWII with the previous mentioned cycle by Benjamin Britten and another by Lennox Berkeley. Britten also did some lovely folksong arrangements with guitar.
This post is prompted by a review by Jay Nordlinger of a concert by Karim Sulayman, an American tenor, and Sean Shibe, a British guitarist in New York. The concert was very well-received but ironically, my favorite section from the review was:
Speaking of sounds, I heard a dog not barking in this recital: Sulayman and Shibe did not talk. They did not lecture. They did not recite the program notes from the stage. What a blessing this was. It preserved the musical ambience of the evening. The program was ripe for pontification, and the musicians refused to indulge.
Yes, please let's lay this need for commentary from the performers to rest. In Europe it never happens.
Now let's have a listen to some of the songs by Lennox Berkeley from the cycle Songs of the Half-Light because we rarely get to hear them. None of the recent live videos are very accomplished so here is Pears and Bream with the first song.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=47nMbO4evr8
And Ian Partridge and Jukka Savijoki with the second and third songs.
Re not talking between pieces, there also seems to be a slight trend towards making concerts as continuous as possible -- i.e. no breaks between the pieces. Early music ensembles sometimes do this by improvising between pieces. But also modern ensembles find ways to blend or connect the pieces. It often works very well I think. Even intervals seem slightly less common now.
ReplyDeleteThat's interesting, and awfully good to hear. In my small city, all invited performers are asked (required?) to chat us up before every piece.
ReplyDeleteYes I'd say for more local concerts that's the case here as well. It can seem implicitly rude not to talk, unfortunately. But if you go to the top London venues, concerts definitely can be more interesting and imaginative. One of my favourites this year was when, immediately following the penultimate piece, the ensemble seamlessly transitioned into one of Cage's time bracket pieces, but with each of the musical ideas in the time brackets being motifs from the previous works. It was astonishing how well it worked.
ReplyDeleteWow, I wish I had seen that concert.
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