For Alastair
Last Saturday evening alumni of the wonderful Hampstead Garden Opera project came together in St Michael’s church in Highgate for a concert celebrating the life of their Chairman Emeritus Alastair Macgeorge who died earlier this year. Under Alastair’s 35 year leadership the HGO had grown from a ‘local opera club to an influential launchpad for opera talent in the UK’ giving young singers a unique opportunity to sing leading roles which they might otherwise have to wait years to be offered.
The added bonus of the HGO productions is that they always run two casts for each production thus offering double the opportunities for young singers. And a great many of those young singers do go on to forge successful careers on the operatic stage.
Saturday’s concert was a glorious run through of the operatic top ten – Tosca, Samson and Delilah, Eugene Onegin, Rigoletto, Carmen, La Traviata, Boheme, Lakme – plus two of Alastair’s own compositions. Sopranos Luci Briginshaw and Eleanor Pennel-Briggs, mezzo Stephanie Wake-Edwards, tenor Matthew Curtis and HGO Artistic Director Philip Sheffield singing Alastair’s own compositions did him proud, Eleanor’s coloratura and Stephanie’s rich and full blooded rendering of Carmen being especially noteworthy.
The next HGO production will be Monteverdi’s Coronation of Poppea in November. Booking opens in September. Don’t miss it!
Helen Keller and Beethoven’s 9th Symphony
Among the packed audience for the HGO concert I bumped into Catherine Wells, a Highgater and frequenter of our concerts. This reminded me that many months ago Catherine had sent me a link to a letter from Frederick Mendelssohn to his cousin about his Songs without Words to be found on the Letters of Note website. I had followed the link and found not only the Mendelssohn’s letter (very interesting) but the most fascinating letter from Helen Keller, the deaf and blind women’s and disability rights activist who died in 1968 aged 88.
Helen Keller had lost her sight and hearing at the age of two (meningitis) but through the agency of her teacher, Anne Sullivan, who worked with her from the age of seven, she learned to read and write. In due course she became the first deaf-blind person in the US to gain a BA (from Harvard) after which she went on to write 14 books and become a leading public speaker, campaigning for disabilities, women’s rights, labour rights and world peace.
The letter tells how, in 1924, Station WEAF broadcast a performance of Beethoven’s 9th Symphony. She of course could not hear it, but someone who was there suggested that if she were to put her hand on the diaphragm of the speaker, she might get vibrations which would convey something of what the orchestra was playing. She did so and was amazed to discover that she could feel, ‘not only the vibrations, but also the impassioned rhythm, the throb and the urge of the music!’ You can read the whole letter here and it really is extraordinary.
Letters of Note
And if you have not come across Letters of Note before (as I hadn’t) it is also rather extraordinary.
It is now a huge website, still run by its founder Shaun Usher, containing thousands of letters of every kind, and has spawned not only a large range of books, but live readings by luminaries such as Benedict Cumberbatch and Chimamanda Ngoze Adiche that fill the Albert Hall – and, very recently, a new site called Diaries of Note.
The site has been around since 2009 and I am sure that I read somewhere (although I cannot find the reference so this could be wrong) that Shaun Usher started it after spending a year apart from his then girlfriend during which they wrote each other many, many letters. When finally reunited he decided to preserve them on the newly expanding internet – and gradually one letter led to another.
You can go and browse some of the site for free (be warned you will be led down hours worth of rabbit holes) and sign up for a free newsletter. Or you can subscribe for anything from £10 to £100 and get curated posts of the latest additions to the various sites. I am currently trying very hard to resist the temptation to subscribe as I am already on so many lists – but I fear I may have to give in.
Meanwhile, do not forget to sign up for…..
31st August – Summer Jazz Garden Party
Please join us for as long or as short as you like, anytime from 1.30pm to 7pm. Sol and his group will be playing at 3pm and again at 5pm.
Bread, cheese, snacks, fruits (maybe even some from our new ‘Growing Garden’ next door) wine, beers and soft drinks will be on tap all day.
Since this is a party we want to keep the cost as low as possible but we do want to be able to pay the musicians a decent fee – so we are asking for a donation of just £10 for each ticket booked. And please do book (you do not have to specify a time) so that we have some idea of how many people are coming!!
You can book right here.
5th October – Trio Notturno in the Salons of Vienna
Trio Notturno’s programme for 5th October will include familiar names such as Beethoven and Diabelli as well as their lesser-known friends and compatriots – and a recent composition specially written for them.
It will be followed by an early 19th century supper – including the ever popular Cabbage and Caper Salad…
To book for 5th October – go here.
For other events see our Upcoming Events page.
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