Have you booked yet for Clemmie, Victoria and Emily’s love songs next Saturday? From Hildegard of Bingen and 14th century troubadour songs to 21st century offerings from Helen Chadwick and Ayanna Witter Johnson – taking in traditional folk songs and sephardic chants on the way.
7pm – 9th September – at the Highgate School Chapel – £20 to include a free glass of wine in the interval – book here.
For other upcoming concerts see below – but I also want to give a shout out about the Aurora Orchestra’s Rite of Spring at the Proms last night.
Aurora, as you may know, perform from memory – but they also inject a wondeful sense of theatre into their performances. Back in March I posted about their Beethoven’s 5th Symphony at the Printworks, a massive industrial pop venue in Surrey Quays. So knowing what they do – and knowing how dramatic the Rite of Spring already is – I was expecting something pretty exciting from their prom. And I wasn’t disappointed.
The Rite itself is only just over half an hour long so, rather than pairing it with some other piece, the first half of the concert was devoted to a theatrical exploration of how the ballet came to be. Two actors and Aurora’s conductor Nicholas Collon played the parts of Stravinsky himself, Diaghilev, Nijinsky, the designer Nicholas Roerich and a narrator. And each stage the ballet’s development – and the arguments and dramas that accompanied such a revolutionary conception – were illustrated by members of the orchestra, dissecting Stravinky’s nightmarishly complicated rhythms and dramatic dissonances. To draw us even further in, we in the audience were briefly asked to sing and to clap to some of those feindishly complex rhythms. Meanwhile, the drama was heightened by some brilliantly inventive lighting evoking the forest scene, the march of the elders and finally the death dance of the sacrificial virgin.
After the interval the orchestra gave an inspiring performance of the full piece in all its dramatic glory – but even then they weren’t finished. After the sort of stand up mega enthusiastic reception that only a Proms audience can provide most of the orchestra left the stage. Conductor Nicholas Collon took up his microphone to thank us, to tell us that playing in a symphony orchestra was the best the experience in the world – and to ask us if we would like a little more. At which point members of the orchestra were seen, with their instruments, filing down the gangways into the audience. So to give us some idea of what indeed it was like to be embedded in an orchestra, they then played two short reprises from all over the Albert Hall!
Interesting note. The nephew of a school friend plays with Aurora and I asked him what it was like playing without music. Scary, initially, he said – no safety net – but also liberating. Because the notes and the technicalities have to be so deeply embedded in your head that you scarcely think consciously about them, you are free to focus on the music in a way that you could never be with the distraction of a score on a stand infront of you.
Upcoming concerts
24th September – Madeleine Mitchell and Richard Crabtree – Boccherini, Bartok, Bach – and Judith Weir.
Doors open at 6.30; concert to start at 7pm followd at 8.15 by a buffet supper.
For more details and to buy tickets go here.
22nd October – Highgate Society Sunday Lunchtime concerts.
The Ladies of the Salons Accompanied by Matt Redman, Patricia Hammond sings parlour songs from the 1830s to the 1930s.
For more information and to buy tickets
4th November – The baroque Spinet
Leading harpsichord player, Nathaniel Mander will be giving his new baroque spinet its very first London outing with us on November 4th.
A wonderfully baroque programme of music will be followed by an equally baroque supper which could have been enjoyed by any of our composers.
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