Thursday 21 June, 7pm
St Giles-without-Cripplegate
Storm and Refuge
Full Reviews
From Russia with Love, Love's Labours (2024)
Tier3 Trio
Thursday 13th June, St Giles-without-Cripplegate
"‘Love’s Labours’ is the title of this year’s Summer Music in City Churches festival, based opposite the Barbican Hall in St Giles Cripplegate. The ten day-long enterprise is proving ample consolation for the much-missed City of London Festival, which once captivated audiences in the Square Mile for three weeks and offers music of equal range and imagination.
For the second year in succession the Tier3 Trio visited for a lunchtime recital, following up last year’s tempestuous Tchaikovsky Piano Trio with an attractive programme subtitled From Russia with Love. They began with a curiosity, playing Saint-Saëns’ little-known arrangement of Liszt’s symphonic poem Orpheus for piano trio. A highly effective transcription, it retained its dramatic thread in this fine performance, notable for its attention to detail and well-balanced lines when reproducing Liszt’s slow-burning music. Pianist Daniel Grimwood successfully evoked Orpheus’ lyre, while Jonathan Ayling’s burnished cello sound probed in counterpoint to Joseph Wolfe’s violin.
Tier3 was formed during lockdown, and in the same period when he was performing Tchaikovsky’s Piano Concerto no.2 in Germany, Grimwood realised the suitability of the work’s slow movement for trio. He rightly complemented ‘the extent to which Tchaikovsky was an experimenter in form’, a trait found in many works but at its inventive peak in the second concerto, whose slow movement is in effect a piano trio with orchestra. Here the arrangement was just right – balanced, elegant and fiercely dramatic towards the end. Clarity of line was secured through sensitive pedalling from Grimwood, the trio using the resonant acoustic to their advantage, while the individual cadenzas were brilliantly played.
These two notable curiosities linked beautifully into one of the best-known works of Anton Arensky, his Piano Trio no.1 in D minor. Arensky is not a well-known composer, fulfilling in part an unkind prophecy from his teacher, Rimsky-Korsakov. However that does not mean his music is without merit – far from it, as in his brief life of 45 years he wrote two symphonies, four orchestral suites, a substantial output of piano and high quality chamber music, of which the first piano trio is the pick.
Dedicated to the cellist Karl Davidov, it is equal parts elegy, drama and ballet – with a powerful first movement setting the tone. The balletic second movement Scherzo demands much of the piano, but Grimwood was its equal, sparkling passagework from the right hand dressed with twinkling figures for cello and piano. The emotional centre of the trio was in the slow movement, with a heartfelt tribute to Davidov in Ayling’s first solo, while the finale rounded everything up in a highly satisfying payoff, a return to the first movement’s profound theme capped with an emphatic closing section.
These were very fine performances from a trio at the top of their game, navigating the resonant acoustic of St Giles with power and precision. On this evidence, Rimsky-Korsakov would have had to eat his words!"
Ben Hogwood, arcana.fm
In Memory of a Hero, Legends & Heroes (2023)
Tier3 Trio
Friday 9th June, St Giles-without-Cripplegate
"Summer Music in City Churches is a week-long festival in London’s Square Mile, bringing a wide range of classical music to the capital’s audiences in a format that brings fond reminiscences of the much-missed City of London Festival.
For their fifth year, the City Churches concerts run under the theme Legends & Heroes, inspiring creative programmes from solo piano (Mark Bebbington’s Liszt-themed hour) through to a centenary performance of Walton’s Façade and a welcome pairing of Haydn’s Nelson Mass and Bliss’s Pastoral: Lie Strewn The White Flocks, closing the festival on Thursday 15 June.
St Giles’ Cripplegate played host to the Goliath of piano trios, the Tier3 Trio bringing us Tchaikovsky’s sole but very substantial essay in the genre. The composer had tried his hand at the format within the confines of his Piano Concerto no.2, writing the slow movement almost exclusively for violin, cello and piano. Here, he seems to go the other way, writing music for trio that sounds orchestral both in concept and sound. The piece is a sizeable memorial, the subtitle ‘À la mémoire d’un grand artiste’ a recognition of Tchaikovsky’s great friend and mentor, pianist Nikolay Rubinstein.
The challenge facing Tier3 – named after the pandemic conditions in which they were formed – was to get their sound to fill the roomy acoustic of St Giles without it losing detail, and this they commendably achieved. The balance between the instruments was ideal, thanks to Daniel Grimwood’s sensitive and clear phrasing at the keyboard, as well as careful attention to dynamic detail from violinist Joseph Wolfe and cellist Jonathan Ayling.
This is such a passionate piece that it would be easy to peak too soon, but this interpretation was borne of experience and a clear love for Tchaikovsky’s music. The sizeable first movement, clocking in at over 20 minutes, was ideally paced and compelling throughout. A sense of sorrow pervaded the soulful opening, with a profound solo from Ayling, but gradually chinks of light began to show, especially in Grimwood’s heroic second theme, block chords pealing like bells.
Despite its orchestral outbursts the trio does contain music of great tenderness, and these were found in sweetly toned violin and doleful cello, set against arpeggiated chords from Grimwood’s piano – a telling episode before the return of the main theme, radiating great sorrow.
The second and third movements effectively merge into a huge finale, Tchaikovsky presenting a Theme with 11 variations and a vast coda of boundless invention and variety. Here they kept the audience on the edge of their seats.
Early on there was brilliant virtuosity from Grimwood, the tumbling variations of the third variation giving it a balletic quality. These led into a passionate cello solo from Ayling, immediately contrasted by celesta-like sonorities from the upper range of the piano. An appropriately heroic seventh variation led to a fugue of impressive clarity and dexterity, before the figurations of the ninth variation unexpectedly conjured the vision of flowers falling onto a coffin.
A quirky tenth variation and relatively serene counterpart led us to the coda, an emphatic and exuberant theme surging forward. Here the players were at the limit but rose to the occasion magnificently, emotions close to the surface, before the final twist when the music returned to the minor key. Here there were parallels to the funeral march from Chopin’s Piano Sonata no.2 before the music gradually and respectfully subsided to silence.
This was an extremely fine performance of a piece whose impact remains considerable, an outpouring keenly conveyed to the St. Giles’ audience by players relishing the experience. As an encore Tier3 made a most imaginative and suitable choice, giving us a the fourth of Widor’s short Pieces en Trio. Titled Sérénade, it was a charming complement to the sunshine outside."
Ben Hogwood, arcana.fm
A Midsummer Night's Serenade, Words and Music (2019)
London Mozart Players, City of London Choir, Hilary Davan Wetton, Tama Matheson, Rebecca Bottone, Maya Wheeler-Colwell
Friday 9th June, St Giles-without-Cripplegate
"The festival Summer Music in City Churches is in only its second year, filling a gap left by the demise of the long-running City of London Festival.
This year’s festival had the theme of Words and Music and offered an enticing programme of recitals, talks and walks, focusing on English music through the ages, and finding enterprising ways of combining solo performers with resident ensembles the London Mozart Players and the City of London Choir. The closing concert showcased works inspired by Shakespeare plays, presenting them alongside Shakespeare’s words, spoken by actor Tama Matheson.
The orchestra were on fine form in the opener, William Walton’s suite from Henry V, described by (the not disinterested) Laurence Olivier as “the most wonderful score I’ve ever heard for a film”. Matheson, dressed in tweed jacket and a union jack t-shirt, declaimed the St Crispin’s Day speech from the pulpit, leading into the fabulous overture, trumpets blazing. The slower central movements featured the strings, conductor Hilary Davan Wetton taking “Touch her soft lips and part” at a no-nonsense tempo, avoiding any threat of sentimentality, but allowing the triple-time pulse to breathe. The “Agincourt Song” gave the choir its opportunity: first the men, then everyone intoning Walton’s stirring patriotic hymn. It sounded wonderful – literally spine-tingling – in the big church acoustic.
Gerald Finzi’s music for Love’s Labours Lost is exquisite but rarely performed. The overture has a terrific tune, Elgarian in both tone and calibre. Leader Ruth Rogers here played the first of several excellent solos through the evening. “Soliloquy I” had enough moments of astringency to avert cosiness, and the rhythmically intricate “Finale” offered lively playing from the woodwind.
Vaughan Williams’ Serenade to Music, heard in its version for choir and four soloists, was touching, the choir providing a bed of sound over which the solos could float. Soprano Rebecca Bottone was excellent in the high register, and tenor Aaron Godfrey-Hayes shone in his brief moment. But perhaps the pick was mezzo Maya Colwell (pictured left by Hope Lavelle), whose big, rich sound was gorgeous: she is one to watch.
Where the three pieces of the first half were all written in Britain within a few years of each other in the mid-20th century, the second half dived back to the 19th for Mendelssohn’s complete incidental music to A Midsummer Night’s Dream. This was presented with a linking monologue, written and spoken by Tama Matheson, that told the story of the play, interspersed with verbatim extracts. Matheson’s narration was in cod-Shakespearean couplets, replete with modern references, that called to mind Roald Dahl’s Revolting Rhymes or Ogden Nash’s version of Carnival of the Animals. It was at times a bit de trop – describing the lovers’ misunderstanding as “hashtag: abuse” was a bit, well, “awks” – but there were some clever rhymes: “Helena” with “put a spell on her” or “Hermia” with “hypothermia”. The decision to narrate the entire play, in all its intricate silliness, stretched the second half to an overlong 80 minutes but Matheson was an engaging personality, and his Shakespeare speaking really very good.
The music itself is, of course, extraordinary. The overture, written when Mendelssohn was 17, is miraculous, and the orchestra’s skittering strings and nimble woodwind drove it forward. Davan Wetton kept his players on a tight rein but found a real energy and sense of fun. Also amazing is that Mendelssohn could pick up his thread several years later and add the rest of the incidental music in the same vein. The “Scherzo” was sprightly, not to say spritely, the “Lullaby” irresistible and the “Finale” magically works its way back to the opening music of the overture for the final words of the play."
Bernard Hughes, The Arts Desk
Gathering Storm Clouds, Swords & Ploughshares (2018)
Mark Bebbington, Rebeca Omordia, Irene Loh
Wednesday 27th June, St Giles-without-Cripplegate
"Normally I wouldn’t offer my services as a music critic, but the concert by Mark Bebbington and two young pianists as part of the Summer Music in City Churches, on June 7th in St Giles Cripplegate deserves at least a report. The general theme was ‘Swords and Ploughshares’, specifically in this case ‘Gathering Storm Clouds’, and Bebbington generously shared the limelight with Rebeca Omordia and Irene Loh, as duet partners.
Three works by Ivor Gurney opened the recital: Sehnsucht (Longing), The Sea, and the Prelude in D flat major. The first two, from 1909 and 1908 respectively, are slight, and probably written as qualifying entry pieces for the Royal College of Music. The last, sadly, was written after Gurney was gassed and shell-shocked at Passchendaele. Played with sympathy by Bebbington, they served to highlight the shocking waste of the young composer’s life.
The Ireland London Pieces are more substantial. Lewis Foreman, in his authoritative book on Ireland regards the first, Chelsea Reach, as the major work. Written apparently as a retreat from the horror of war into a more Dickensian world, it is an impression of the Thames, says the programme note, '…as it seeps along the Chelsea Embankment'. Well performed, it nevertheless seemed a trifle too long on this first hearing, and I preferred the more boisterous and extrovert Ragamuffin and Soho Forenoons.
Three works by Vaughan Williams followed, the first being the exquisite, mysterious The Lake in the Mountains. Known to me in my late husband John McCabe’s recording, Bebbington took the work slightly more slowly and more romantically – none the worse for that, and beautifully played, with a wide range of tone colour. He was then joined by the gifted Nigerian/Romanian pianist Rebeca Omordia, for a piano duet version of the transcription of the Fantasia on a theme by Thomas Tallis for two pianos, by Vaughan William’s’ friend, Maurice Jacobsen. I admit to a little prejudice against the Tallis arrangement, feeling the work required string colour, rather than the more percussive sound of not one, but two pianos, but in fact it worked movingly well, Bebbington, as the more experienced performer, obviously watching to ensure synchronicity with his young partner. His piano, a splendid Bechstein, had sounded a little strident in the extreme upper register, the result no doubt of the unrelenting stonework of St Giles, but the warmth of its bass and middle registers helped bring out all the nobility of the theme, and Omordia’s Steinway seemed well-matched, both pianos beautifully in tune.
In the second half Bebbington was joined by Irene Loh. Again, the Delius On Hearing the First Cuckoo in Spring seemed to come off remarkably well in this piano duet version by Warlock. Bridge’s Sonata, written by him with agonising effort, between 1921-4, completed the programme. A massive, c.30- minute work dedicated to his fellow composer, Ernest Farrar, killed in action in 1917, it makes great demands on the pianism and concentration of the performer. Supposed to be played without a break, Bebbington did in fact pause briefly for breath after the demanding 14-minute first movement, before plunging into the continuous second and third movements. His short introduction to the works of the second half was of great assistance, and he performed the Bridge with passion, power, and compassion, again revealing a wonderful range of pianistic colour. All the participants, and the organisers, are to be congratulated on the this out-of-the-ordinary concert."
Monica McCabe, Musical Opinion Quarterly (Oct-Dec 2018)
Flowers of the Field, Swords & Ploughshares (2018)
Roderick Williams, City of London Choir, London Mozart Players (leader, Ruth Rogers), Hilary Davan Wetton
Wednesday 27th June, St Giles-without-Cripplegate
"A new festival has been launched, Summer Music in City Churches, here commemorating the centenary of the First World War, with an emphasis on British composers affected by the Great War.
This programme was carefully constructed to present an elegiac nostalgia for simpler times. Peter Warlock’s Capriol Suite set a lively mood, the London Mozart Players strings playing with finesse, the stately richness of the ‘Pavane’ balanced by the dashing ‘Mattachins’. George Butterworth’s settings from Housman’s A Shropshire Lad followed in a sensitive arrangement for strings by Roderick Williams. His vocal performance was exemplary, with effortless phrasing in ‘The Loveliest of trees‘ and ‘Look not into my Eyes’, and the solo scoring for ‘Is My Team Ploughing’ proved a masterstroke.
Patrick Hawes’s choral I Know the Music (2014) sets an unfinished poem by Wilfred Owen in a highly effective and descriptive fashion. The intimate details from the Front contrast with the descriptions of Nature and country life in the poem. George Butterworth’s The Banks of Green Willow (1913) provided folksong in sophisticated musical clothes and Elgar’s Chanson de matin anchored us securely in his Edwardian soundworld, and then Ruth Rogers transported us to the skies with her delicate impersonation of The Lark Ascending.
The bucolic dream continued in Gerald Finzi’s Requiem da Camera, haunted by strains of Butterworth and also Housman’s melancholy, especially in the opening section where ‘Loveliest of Trees’ and the bugle-call of battle are quoted. The setting of nine stanzas of Masefield’s 'August 1914' is quiet and close and was conveyed with light simplicity by the City of London Choir; hushed and profoundly moving. The baritone solo found Williams’s bass notes resonant with Finzi’s distinctive chromatic turns and triplets, and the final verse 'We who are left' evokes the despair of the bereaved and the hope enshrined in renewal and birdsong, part of a performance to be treasured under Hilary Davan Wetton."
*****
Amanda-Jane Doran, Classical Source
Storm and Refuge, Swords & Ploughshares (2018)
City of London Choir, Marta Fontanals-Simmons, Mark Williams, Bozidar Vukotic, Hilary Davan Wetton
Thursday 21st June, St Giles-without-Cripplegate
"The beautiful churches of the City of London are among the capital’s glories, and wonderful places to hear music – especially at this time of year, when the City of London Festival normally takes place. The demise of that festival was a definite loss, which Ian Maclay, former MD of the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra was determined to fill. Together with Jenny Robinson, he’s created a week-long festival named Summer Music in City Churches, based around the the centenary of the end of the Great War.
The theme has been interpreted loosely, as the opening concert in St Giles Cripplegate from the City of London Choir showed. It included settings of Psalm 29 and 48 by Elgar, which actually date from the beginning of the War, or just before, and aren’t yet touched by it. But already one detects an elegiac feeling, alongside the outbursts of fervour, and at times – in the second – a strange harmonic unease, as if the music has temporarily lost its moorings.
All these feelings were beautifully caught by the choir under their artistic director Hilary Davan Wetton. They summoned a terrific intensity of tone in the final tumultuous lines of Psalm 48, but even this was topped by the incandescent ending of the evening prayer Nunc Dimittis by Gustav Holst. It’s an extraordinary piece which began with an uncanny feeling of harmony emerging from a vast distance, and gradually took shape as a homage to the great Renaissance tradition of Byrd and Palestrina.
After the interval we heard the Requiem by Maurice Duruflé, a piece composed in 1947, which may seem to be stretching the First World War theme implausibly far. But in spirit the piece is close to Gustav Holst, in the way it recreates something precious from the past, as a way to stave off the spiritual confusion of the present. In Duruflé’s case that precious thing is church plainchant, which winds its way through the choral writing like a golden thread.
The performers, including baritone soloist John Lee caught the music’s seraphic calm, while the incisive playing of organist Mark Williams made sure the music’s radiance never seemed becalmed, which is always a danger with this piece. Occasionally the rapture was disturbed, as in the tragic Pie Jesu, which was thrillingly sung by mezzo soprano Marta Fontanals-Simmons. In all it was a fine start to the festival, which promises many good things over the coming week."
****
Ivan Hewett, The Daily Telegraph