7.30 pm The Nave Southwell Minster Alison Rose (soprano), Susan Bickley (mezzo soprano), Mark Padmore (tenor), Frederick Long (bass-baritone), Festival Voices, Festival Sinfonia, Marcus Farnsworth (conductor)
This was a special concert, celebrating ten successful years of the Southwell Music Festival. Before the concert began in a packed Nave, the Dean of Southwell, Nicola Sullivan, said a prayer for the gift of music, highly appropriate as the meaning music was the subject of the first piece. The Festival commissioned a substantial work of around 20 minutes for soprano soloist, choir and orchestra, from the English composer Cheryl Frances-Hoad. Festival Director and conductor Marcus Farnsworth briefly interviewed the composer, who admitted that writing about what music means was ‘terrifying’. The new piece, With What Sudden Joy, is a setting of a text by the poet Kate Wakeling, collated entirely from the words of local people in Southwell in workshops about the power and effect of music. In her programme note, Wakeling said she found these conversations,
“terrifically rich and unexpectedly affecting. They were playful, moving, inventive and uplifting. [We] explored how music connects to ideas of memory and community, how music and silence interact, and how music can, by turns offer us solace and spark a sense of celebration.”
Frances-Hoad revealed that the words were so moving she sometimes found herself ‘weeping at the piano.’ In her programme note she said the words were, ‘specifically tied to Southwell, and yet so universal.’
The soprano solo part, superbly performed here by Alison Rose, was often florid and complex, whereas the choral parts were much simpler, making the work suitable for a choral society to perform with a professional soloist. In his programme note Farnsworth said he has performed in many premieres that have never seen the light of day since, ‘for no good reason.’ His aim here was to commission a new work that, ‘had the potential to become part of the repertoire’, and Frances-Hoad’s has written a piece which deserves to achieve that; accessible, attractive and profound. Eavesdropping amongst the audience at the interval, the consensus was that it was highly successful.
The first movement, aptly named ‘In the Beginning’, began with a sense of expectation from the strings. Rose sang intricate lines at first but also duetted with the choir as they described powerfully resonant shared memories, including the poignant recollection of a grandmother with dementia who could, ‘still remember every note’ of shared songs,
“Everything else had gone but we sat and sang together
I thought: this is what music is
These are sounds that travel us back”
Composer Cheryl Frances-Hoad
The second movement, ‘A Bright Connection’, began with hymn-like chords from the Festival Voices as Rose’s lyrical, golden soprano voice soared above. In a moment of magic at the end, there was a series of invigorating key changes demonstrating the power of music. The central movement, ‘I drove to my Father’s House’ was profoundly moving, about a woman who very suddenly lost her father and was unable to grieve until she went to his house and played his records for, ‘perhaps three solid days…I cried without stopping.’ The fourth movement, ‘Also Silence’ was a chance for individual soloists from the choir to shine, with reassuring chords at the start and gorgeous chromatic harmonies at the end, a statement of the importance of silence in music but also a practical demonstration of how music can move us. The final movement, ‘With What Sudden Joy’ had a title that sounded like a poem by a Romantic poet like Wordsworth or Coleridge. It expressed the sheer, visceral joy of music-making, with dancing, syncopated rhythms and a soprano part that floated stratospherically above. As the closing words stated, ‘a celebration must have music’, and Frances-Hoad’s new work perfectly suited the celebration of 10 years of the Festival.
From a brand new piece to a choral classic written over two hundred years ago, Mozart’s Requiem, which remained unfinished at the composer’s death in 1791. As Libby Burgess said in her programme note, when he died Mozart had written the opening ‘Requiem Aeternam’ and had sketched out choral parts, bass lines and some orchestral parts for the next six movements from the ‘Kyrie’ to ‘Confutatis’. It’s tempting to view the rest of the piece, completed by Franz Süssmayr as a bit of a disappointment, but as Burgess says,
“…history owes Süssmayr a debt of gratitude for completing the work at all. Incomplete, it would probably not have seen the light of day – and we would never have had the experience of knowing it.”
Whatever your views are on Süssmayr’s completion of the work, Farnsworth and his festival forces didn’t allow the energy to drop at any point, even when Süssmayr took over from Mozart. This was a lively, energetic performance informed by the best period instrument practices, fast but always precise even in passages which lesser choirs find hard to negotiate such as the ‘Osanna in Excelsis.’ Farnsworth often brought out instrumental details that are obscured in other performances, and beautifully controlled the dynamics of the richly operatic voices of the choir. There was a fine quartet of soloists with Alison Rose who we heard in the first half, the distinguished mezzo soprano Susan Bickley, the Festival’s Artist in Residence the tenor Mark Padmore, and the young bass-baritone Frederick Long. There were some lovely individual moments from the soloists, and some excellent duets and quartets. The concert ended with the ‘Lux Aeterna’, featuring a fantastic fugue on the words ‘cum sanctis tuis’. There was a huge cheer from the audience, a fitting celebration of ten years of music making in Southwell, with hopefully many more years to come.
Festival Director Marcus Farnsworth announced this concert, saying it was a ‘great privilege’ to introduce Mark Padmore, the Festival’s Artist in Residence, and pianist Libby Burgess, in a recital of English Song. It was also a privilege for the audience to be present at such a wonderful concert, probably the highlight of a festival of many highlights. Padmore said that the poetry was ‘equal to the music’, and his word painting throughout was sublime. There was also equality between voice and piano. Burgess’ playing was beautifully shaped and controlled, characterful, sensitive and expressive. The gentle smile she gave Padmore at the end of a gorgeous rendition of Butterworth’s Loveliest of Trees said it all.
We began with Stanford’s La Belle Dame Sans Merci with words by Keats. Padmore acted out the words, not only through clear diction but with his whole body, expressing the varied emotions of the song from melancholy to happiness. Then came a series of eight songs, all from the 20th century except Hoopoe written in 2007 by Sally Beamish. Padmore advised us to search for an image of, ‘this wonderful bird’ if we weren’t familiar with it.
The song’s text is Jila Peacock’s translation of a Persian poem by the 14th Iranian poet Hafez about the Hoopoe, a magical bird in Middle Eastern mythology, the messenger between King Solomon and the Queen of Sheba. Padmore sang the bird’s name in a light-voiced and humorous tone, like a bird call. But there was drama too, with an anguished vocal line and discordant piano, a stunning climax, the range of colours in the song matching the vivid plumage of the bird itself. Another highlight of many in this sequence was The Seal Man, set by Rebecca Clarke to words by John Masefield. The poem is about a selkie, a mythical creature that shifts between human and seal forms, which lures a woman into the sea where she drowns. Padmore was completely immersed in the tragic story. Burgess played gorgeously ambiguous chords under the unsettling lines, ‘she went out into the moonlight to him.’ Padmore whispered the final words. ‘She was drowned, drowned’ while the piano part sank down in sorrow.
Padmore introduced Britten’s Winter Words by referring back to the ‘extraordinary’ performance of Variations on a Theme of Frank Bridge in the Strings in the Nave concert the previous evening. He also provided pointers to Britten’s setting of the words by Thomas Hardy, including onomatopoeic effects such as a train whistle and leaves on an autumn day. He asked Burgess to play the hymn tune MountEphraim, the Choirmaster’s favourite tune in The Choirmaster’s Burial, to show us how it is interweaved with Britten’s piano part. When he performed the complete piece, Padmore acted out the humour, to chuckles from the audience, playing the part of the lazy vicar who prefers to have a spoken funeral service for the choirmaster rather than having musicians playing the hymn tune. Another vivid characterisation was in the lovely vignette, At the Railway Station, Upway, in which Padmore played the part of a convict talking to a boy with a violin. There was a twinkle in his eye at the end of the song. Padmore brought all the poems to life, creating a gripping and emotionally draining experience. The encore, introduced by Burgess, was Down by the Salley Gardens, not in the version the audience might have expected but by Rebecca Clarke, whose music we had heard earlier. After the emotional depth of the earlier songs it was a joy to hear this simple folk song in a lilting version with a light-voiced Padmore and sparkling piano from Burgess.
Beethoven Live and Late
Festival Chamber Soloists 9.45 pm The Crossing, Southwell Minster
Some of the greatest masterpieces of western art music were never heard live by their composers. Bach never heard a complete performance of his B Minor Mass – it wasn’t premiered in full until after his death. Beethoven never heard his Late String Quartets (numbers 12 – 17) as he was profoundly deaf by the time he wrote them. So these profound works of art only existed in their composers’ imaginations.
Southwell Minster, 9.30 pm Saturday 24 August 2024
It takes a special performance to realise these works. Ideally, they should speak directly to the audience, so the music appears to emanate from the imagination, exactly as the composers experienced them. The heart of Southwell Minster was an perfect place for Saturday night’s performance of Beethoven’s Quartet No. 15 in A minor (Opus 132). As Festival Director Marcus Farnworth explained, a religious setting was appropriate for a piece that includes a central movement titled Heiliger Dankgesang eines Genesenen an die Gottheit, a sacred song thanking God for Beethoven’s recovery from serious illness. But the setting was appropriate for other reasons too; the performers were powerfully illuminated while the audience on three sides were in almost complete darkness. Looking across to the audience on the other side, all that could be seen were pale, ghostly faces, as if this were a recreation of a concert from 1825 when the piece was written and the audience members had passed away long ago. The grave tolling of the Minster bell between the first and second movements of the Quartet was another reminder of the passing of time, and perhaps also that Beethoven was in fact near his death only two years later. The rapt concentration of the incredibly attentive audience in a packed house increased the effect of this being a cerebral rather than a corporeal performance.
All this would have been for nothing if the Festival Chamber Soloists hadn’t been up to the task of delivering a superb performance in a setting that was both intimate and austere. Fortunately, they were. Jamie Campbell (Associate Director of the Festival) was a sweet-toned First Violinist with immaculate tuning, equally matched by Alessandro Ruisi on Second Violin. The Viola of Lena Eckels was rich, warm-toned and precise. Nathaniel Boyd on Cello was subtle and agile, light-toned when required but passionate at times, attacking the strings with his bow. Together, they had a stunning level of ensemble, with breath-taking levels of concentration. The timeless nature of the performance – and the music – was accentuated by the pillars and arches that soared high above the audience from centuries before. As Libby Burgess said in her programme note,
“In many ways [Beethoven] was breaking with the norms and logic of the Viennese Classical tradition and reaching for something more poetic.”
And in the third movement in particular the music felt both modern and timeless, perhaps partly because, as Burgess says, Beethoven had by now, ‘retreated into an inner world.’ In this performance, it felt as if we had entered this private world, at least for a short time.
Martin Bussey & Anthony Pinching on ‘A Brother Abroad’
Martin Bussey (composer) and Anthony Pinching (librettist) 3.00 pm The Marquee, Palace Gardens
Composer and conductor Martin Bussey
Prof Anthony Pinching is the Director of Pinner Music Festival and a former clinical immunologist and academic. He wrote the libretto for A Brother Abroad for the composer and conductor Martin Bussey. The piece was commissioned for the 700th anniversary of the consecration of Pinner Parish Church in Middlesex. It was premiered at Pinner Music Festival in 2021 and performed at Ludlow English Song Weekend in 2022.
In a very interesting discussion, Pinching introduced Bussey as a son of Pinner. He said he commissioned him to write a piece about Peter of Bologna, Bishop of Corbavia (Krbava) in Croatia, a 14th century Franciscan Bishop whose colourful life led him across Europe. He settled in England as a Suffragan Bishop for five dioceses from 1318 to his death in 1332, and consecrated Pinner Parish Church in 1321, near the Archbishop of Canterbury’s hunting grounds.
Pinching’s libretto recounts Peter’s journey from his ‘simple room’ at Greyfriars to Pinner (then known as Pynnore), where he was greeted by bells and cheering crowds. As he travels, Peter recalls his journey to the ‘far North’ where he was part of a failed papal mission to broker peace between King Edward I and Robert the Bruce, and being attacked by a band of ‘shavaldours’ (brigands) on the way. Despite the violence he suffered, and his nostalgia for his home in ‘La Rossa’ (Bologna), he settled in England. He describes his deep devotion for ‘Brother Francis’, and the rites and rituals that inspire him, contrasting with the distracted figure of the Archbishop of Canterbury, who was more interested in royal politics than ‘the way of Christ.’
Bussey explained that A Brother Abroad is part of a triptych of recent music theatre pieces, along with Mary’s Hand (2018) and Timeless Figure (2020), each written for a different combination of solo voice and three instrumentalists – in this case baritone, flute/piccolo, French horn and percussion. He was given free rein by Pincher to do what he wanted with the text, but the two worked closely together and he described Pincher as, ‘a sensitive librettist.’ Bussey felt that the spiritual aspect of the libretto was crucial, but he decided not to write the solo baritone part in plainsong, an interesting contrast with two recent works by the composer Tim Benjamin The Seafarer and The Wanderer, settings of early English poems. He admitted that it was ‘an enormous task’ for the soloist to sing such a long libretto, but fortunately the Festival’s Director and main baritone soloist Marcus Farnsworth, a ‘musical dynamo’, was up to the task. He fondly recalled first meeting Marcus, when the latter was 16, while he was teaching at Chetham’s School in Manchester. Bussey concluded by explaining that (like any sensible composer) he had recycled some of his material for use in works we were about to hear, using some of the themes from A Brother Abroad. La Rossa for solo flute evokes Peter’s memories of his native Bologna, and The Rites Observed for solo horn describes ‘the noble side of Peter.’
Medieval Masters
Emma Halnan (flute), George Strivens (French horn), Stephen Burke (percussion), Marcus Farnsworth (baritone), Martin Bussey (conductor), Festival Voices 4.00 pm The Crossing, Southwell Minster
Marcus Farnsworth, Festival Director and baritone soloist, introduced this concert as being, ‘from very early music to very new music’ – from 14th century French composer Guillaume de Machaut, and 12th century German composer Hildegard von Bingen to new music by Martin Bussey.
The main piece, A Brother Abroad featured Farnsworth as baritone soloist with the three other musicians. There was no libretto in the Festival programme book, but Farnsworth’s diction was so clear that it was easy to follow the story, particularly after the illuminating pre-concert talk. As Bussey said, this is essentially a piece of music theatre – although without the melodrama of pieces like Peter Maxwell Davies’ wonderfully dramatic Eight Songs for a Mad King. Farnsworth was suitably theatrical in his delivery, drawing on his operatic experience, a majestic and compelling presence as Bishop Peter whose arrival in 14th century ‘Pynnore’ was an important public event. The piece began with an offstage horn, declaiming the start of Peter’s journey. As Peter described the ‘tasks to be done’ heavy drums, dramatic horn lines and intricate flute parts evoked the enormity of his task. The ‘rites to be observed’ were reflected by tubular bells, played by Stephen Burke. Farnworth inhabited his role with dignity and a sense of devotion in the climactic passage describing his religious work, and was suitably animated in his disgust at the Archbishop of Canterbury’s Machiavellian machinations. The excitement of Peter’s entry into Pynnore was onomatopoeically illustrated by ornate piccolo lines representing the crowd, intense runs from the horn representing the post horn announcing his arrival, and tubular bells representing the church bells ringing. But there was simpler music at the end, as Peter described a ‘procession around the church’, the blessing and the final the prayer for peace, a contemplative conclusion to a highly effective work.
Strings in the Nave
7.00 pm The Nave, Southwell Minster Mark Padmore (tenor), Festival Sinfonia Strings, Jamie Campbell (director), Marcus Farnsworth (conductor)
Festival Director Marcus Farnsworth began this concert amusingly by showing the audience, airline style, where the emergency exits were, before introducing the Festival’s Artist in Residence, tenor Mark Padmore and the Festival Sinfonia Strings, several of whom had just taken part in the Aurora Orchestra’s Prom in which they played Beethoven’s ninth symphony from memory. The Sinfonia Strings demonstrated their virtuosity, playing without a conductor for most of the concert, instead being directed from the violin by Jamie Campbell, who also led the Festival Chamber Soloists in more Beethoven on Saturday evening.
The evening began with Farnsworth conducting Dies Natalis by British composer Gerald Finzi, with words by the 17th century English poet, cleric and theologian Thomas Traherne. The opening instrumental movement was a superb illustration of the joys to come. The upper strings were sweet toned with a beautifully mellow sound, with rich lower strings that were powerfully resonant in the generous acoustic of the Minster Nave. Tenor Mark Padmore joined in the second movement, acting out the words in a gorgeously plangent tone. There was a moment of sublime beauty in the passage beginning, ‘The corn was orient…’; a thrilling climax at ‘…almost mad with ecstasy’; and a moving sotto voce passage at the end when, ‘Everything was at rest.’ In the third movement, ‘The Rapture’, Padmore was immersed in the music, bringing out joy and passion, while the strings were beautifully controlled, dancing and elegant. Padmore’s voice was delightfully burnished in the fourth movement ‘Wonder’, with gently contemplative singing on the line, ‘O how divine, how soft, how sweet, how fair!’ His final contribution to the concert was in the fourth movement, ‘The Salutation’, engaging the audience with the angular beauty of the vocal line.
A series of companion pieces followed, firstly Two Canons by the 17th century English composer Matthew Locke, originally written for viol consort. Reduced forces played the first canon with little vibrato, bringing out the clarity of the lines. In the second canon, they drew austere beauty from the music with mournful clarity, with a spellbinding mini-fugue, and an enchanting moment of near-silence. This was followed by Hymn (after Byrd), by the contemporary British composer Edmund Finnis, an arrangement for string ensemble of the fourth movement of his First String Quartet, which was inspired by William Byrd’s setting of the 5th century hymn Christe, qui lux es et dies (Christ, who art light and day). Finnis describes the hymn as an, ‘ancient melody…a prayer for Light within the darkness of the night.’ His piece began with hymn-like chords, like Byrd’s 16th century piece but with subtle dissonances, as if the music were seen, ‘through a glass darkly.’ There were moments of delicate wonder and beauty, played with lovely ensemble. In one moving passage, the music came out of silence, and at the end the piece was reduced to a single note. A stunning performance.
The final work was Variations on a Theme of Frank Bridge, written by Benjamin Britten when he was still in his early twenties, and directed here by Jamie Campbell. In his programme note, Campbell described the work as,
‘….an epic, virtuoso work…I find [it] both thrilling and profound.. [it] demonstrates the dazzling compositional skill the young Britten already had.
Festival Voices, Marcus Farnsworth (conductor) 9.15 pm The Nave, Southwell Minster
Conductor and Festival Director Marcus Farnsworth introduced this late-night concert by saying, ‘what a great privilege it is to stand before singers of this calibre.’ He was right. Throughout this excellent concert, the young singers of the Festival Voices excelled, with beautifully balanced dynamics, a warm sound with rich vibrato, and visceral power when necessary, with great control under Farnsworth’s precise conducting.
One of the joys of the Festival programming was the pairing of old and new music, as in Medieval Masters (see above), and the Tenth Anniversary concert (day three) when a new work by Cheryl Frances-Hoad was paired with Mozart’s Requiem. Cathedrals of Sound celebrated the Austrian composer Anton Bruckner, who was born 200 years ago. The concert’s title was taken from a description of Bruckner’s symphonies as ‘cathedrals of sound’, but the concert was based around five of his motets. Farnsworth explained that the motets showed Bruckner looking backwards and forwards at the same time in his musical style, and the programme reflected this, casting his works in a new light, looking back to the style of Bach and Byrd, and forward to the work of contemporary composers.
The concert began with a sequence of five different reflections on the Ave Maria theme, written in praise of the Virgin Mary. Bruckner’s Ave Maria,with its complex block harmonies, contrasted with the contrapuntal glories of Byrd’s polyphony in Alleluia, Ave Maria, both works juxtaposed with the surprising simplicity of Stravinsky’s Ave Maria. There was a gorgeous flowering of words ‘Virga Jesse’ in the Bruckner motet of the same name. Finally, there was another Ave Maria, by the composer Sarah Cattley, a commentary on Bruckner’s style with dense harmonies that sometimes sounded like Bruckner but with added harmonic clashes, and at other times more modern, with clouds of sound surrounding the words ‘Nunc et in Ora.’
The second sequence sandwiched Bruckner’s Christus Factus Est between two remarkable pieces by composer Gemma Bass, who is also a violinist with several performing groups in Manchester, and who performed in Surround Sounds No.3 (day four). Farnsworth confessed this was the first time the Choir had tackled improvised music, and it worked extremely well here. Bass has written a suite of five compositions, including Missing Pieces – Two, Three which leaves gaps for improvisation. The Choir inserted parts of Christus FactusEst into the gaps, based on instructions Bass provided. Pairs of singers decided their own timing from pre-determined notes while the rest of the choir contributed harmonies from Bruckner, a ‘sonic exploration’, effectively a joint creation between Bass and the Choir. More and more pairs of voices joined in at different speeds, an invigorating babel of sounds, reminiscent of the free-form ‘pleni sunt caeli’ section in the ‘Sanctus’ from Britten’s War Requiem. There were some terrifying dissonances as a cry of anguish led to the complex harmonies of the Bruckner motet, which describes Christ’s death on the cross. Gemma Bass’ piece returned with another heart-rending wail of anguish that illuminated the pain of the Bruckner piece. A stunning sequence of music.
After the relative simplicity of Bruckner’s miniature choral gem, Locus Iste, there was yet more inspired intervention from a contemporary composer, Roderick Williams’ take on Byrd’s Ave Verum Corpus. After the original, we heard Williams’ Ave Verum CorpusRe-imagined, with great slabs of music frozen in time, as if the Byrd piece had been beamed to other galaxies and back again in fragments and clusters. There were snatches of Bruckner-style chords and a plangent tenor solo. There were hints of Messiaen’s early choral piece O sacrum convivium! and Williams’ highly imaginative work ended with a lovely, dissonant ‘Amen’. But the last word was left to the mighty Bruckner – as Farnsworth said, he had ‘left the best to last’ with Os Justi. Farnsworth said he intended to give us, ‘something to think about’, and in this compelling programme he certainly did so.
Southwell Minster, where most of the events take place
Southwell is a market town in the heart of Nottinghamshire, with a grade I listed cathedral, Southwell Minster. For the last ten years, the town has been the home of Southwell Music Festival, founded by the Artistic Director, Marcus Farnsworth.
Farnsworth was born and raised in Southwell and was a chorister at the Minster. He went to Chetham’s School of Music in Manchester and sang in the cathedral choir there. He studied at the University of Manchester and the Royal Academy of Music. He is now Head of Vocal and Choral Studies at Chetham’s, an Associate of the Royal Academy of Music, and Musical Director of Southwell Choral Society. He has performed regularly in recital, as a principal artist with opera companies across Europe and North America, and with major orchestras and early music ensembles in the UK.
The Music Festival draws young professional musicians from major UK and European orchestras and ensembles, and singers who perform with professional choirs and as soloists. Many of them return to the Festival every year, and new ones come each year as well. Farnsworth conducts some of the concerts, and is sometimes a baritone soloist. The Festival Sinfonia Strings are led and directed by the violinist Jamie Campbell, Principal 2nd violin with the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra and the Aurora Orchestra. This year’s Artist in Residence was the distinguished tenor Mark Padmore. The Festival also featured new and specially commissioned music from, amongst others, Martin Bussey, Edmund Finnis, Sarah Cattley, Gemma Bass, Roderick Williams, Sally Beamish and Cheryl Frances-Hoad.
Follow the links below for day by day reviews of a selection of events from the Festival:
