What I love about the London Handel Festival is that they render the greatest respect to traditional Handel, played and sung in the traditional way – see the amazing series of concerts in St George’s Hanover Square over the last couple of weeks. But they are not afraid sometimes to veer off the straight and narrow with seriously exciting and disruptive new approaches to the music. I am sure that Handel would have loved it!
He would certainy have loved Thursday night’s concert at Stone Nest with nonclassical, Lotte Betts-Dean, Xiaowen Shang and Akkordeon Baroque The Handelbot.
And I am sure he would also love the opera, A mythical Double Bill: Tales of Apollo & Hercules which opens at Shoreditch Town Hall on Thursday. Director Thomas Guthrie joins rising-star choreographer Valentino Zucchetti to create ‘mythical and fantastical storytelling through drama and dance’. If the last two years’ worth of operas are anything to go by, it will be a cracker. None of us volunteers has so far had a peek but I have heard from one who has that it is AMAZING. But if you want a sneak preview the festival has just released this short video.
I think the first night is all but sold out but there are four more performances on Friday and Saturday so you have time to grab a ticket here.
But back to Stone Nest and Arias Reimagined
An aria is but a melody – any melody from any century and musical tradition – so why not pair Handel with Britney Spears? How would Britney’s songs have sounded accompanied by a harpsichord instead of a band? The answer is – stunning! To prove it mezzo Lotte Betts Dean and harpsichordist Xiaowen Shang performed four arias from Theodora interspersed with I Believe by Caroline Polachek, Everytime by Britney Spears, Can’t Get Over You With You by ML Buch and Blue Bell Knoll by the Cocteau Twins.
The magic dust that Stone Nest sprinkles around performers did its work but Lotte was magnificent, transitioning seamlessly across the centuries in impassioned renderings of all eight songs – while Xiaowen Shang’s harpsichord found a whole new life in her 21st century accompaniments.
They were followed by Loré Lixenberg, a British mezzo and long time performer of experimental music, and London based accordionist Lore Amenabar Larranaga with AKKORDEON BAROQUE.
And they brought experimental Handel to whole new level. ‘Inspired by accordion players on and around Berlin’s U Bahn, they take Baroque music to epitomise something quirky, unexpected, sexy, off-kilter, virtuosic, maybe ugly-beautiful’. Which means that Handel is accompanied by traffic noise, breaking glass, builders at work and who knows what other unidentifiable noises – all of which blended remarkably acceptably.
The high point of their perfomance came with their take on Handel’s Concerto Grosso (Opus 6 No. 10) – traditionally played by baroque string ensemble. But in their version the strings are replaced by multitracked voice, ‘unfolding tendrils revealing Handel’s counterpoint’. We in the audience were given a ‘song sheet’ (see the video) and invited to get involved – which indeed the more musically gifted did!
Ater such excitement I am afraid that the third piece, Bianca Scout (voice, electronics, harpsichord, movement), got fairly short shrift. Maybe come back and hear it another day.
To book for any of the programmes in the remaining 3 weeks of the festival, go here.
Jennifer Vyvyan – A great Handelian – but so much more
As it happens, 2025 is 100th anniversary of the birth of Jennifer Vyvyan – a leading British singer in the 1950s and ’60s revival of interest in the music of Handel – but also a leading figure in the ‘new music’ scene of the time working with Arthur Bliss, Lennox Berkeley, Malcom Williamson and, above all, Benjamin Britten.
Jennifer was born in Broadstairs (although her family originally came from Cornwall) in 1925. She entered the Royal Academy at 16 to study piano but was persuaded to shift her focus to voice, initally as a mezzo and then under the guidance of Roy Henderson, voice teacher to Kathleen Ferrier, to soprano. Life was hard but very gradually she started to get professional work. In 1947 she joined the Glyndebourne chorus and in 1948, Benjamin Britten’s newly formed English Opera Group. This was the start of an invovlement with Britten that would last all her life.
(For anyone with a little time to spare, The Jennifer Vyvyan Foundation has a comprehensive and absolutely delightful website about her life. It includes short excerpts from her recordings, letters, pictures, diary entries, interviews with others and with herself. It is worth logging in if only to hear her actually sing – spool down on the home page for her glorious No, No, I’ll Take No Less from Semele, or further in on the site for How beautiful it is from Turn of the Screw – for which she created the role of the governess.)
By the 1950s Jennifer’s career was well underway. Regular broadcasts with the BBC, ten or eleven concerts a month, wall to wall Messiahs at Christmas and Easter, operatic roles at Glyndebourne and Sadlers Wells and a leading role in Britten’s new opera, Gloriana at Covent Garden in 1952. And throughout the rest of the ’50s and ’60s she continued to tour, ever more successfuly, and to perform on the concert and operatic stage, ‘headlining’ most of Britten’s new works into the early ’70s.
But alas, it was all to come to a crashing halt. In April 1974 Jennifer suffered complications from a bronchial/asthmatic condition she had been struggling to control for years, and died very suddenly at her home in London aged only 49.
However, thanks to the efforts of her son Jonathan and music critic Michael White, she is most definitely not forgotten. On April 3rd at 6.30pm at the Royal Academy of Music there will be a concert to celebrate the centenary of her birth with music performed by Daisy Livesey the current recipient of the Jennifer Vyvyan Award, and words and images presented by Michael.
You can book here for Remembering Jennifer Vyvyan on April 3rd.
Meanwhile, back in N6….. We are booking now for:
Tuesday 15th April – 6.30pm – Hampstead Lane
Dani Sicari and James Girling offer an intimate take on their Easy Rollers jazz septet’s signature sound in a stripped-back duo. More details here.
£30 to include supper and wine – book here.
Sunday 18th May – 6.30pm – Hampstead Lane
Madeleine Mitchell and her London Chamber Ensemble return to Hampstead Lane with a programme of Haydn and Charles Wood.
£30 to include supper and wine – book here.
Thursday 12th June – 6.30pm – Hampstead Lane
The Return of Flanders and Swann. After their sell out recital last July Michael Mates and William Godfree are returning for another evening of Flanders and Swann songs – complete with 1950s supper.
£30 to include supper and wine – book here.
For future happenings in at Hampstead Lane and elsewhere – see our Upcoming Events page.
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