Tag Archives: Marta Fontanals-Simmons

On Record – Gavin Higgins: The Fairie Bride, Horn Concerto (Lyrita)

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Gavin Higgins
Horn Concerto (2023)
Fanfare, Air and Flourishes (2021)
The Fairie Bride (2021)

Marta Fontanals-Simmons (mezzo-soprano), Roderick Williams (baritone), Ben Goldscheider (horn), Three Choirs Festival Chorus; BBC National Orchestra of Wales / Jaime Martin (Horn Concerto), Martyn Brabbins (The Fairie Bride)

Lyrita SRCD440 [84’14”] English/Welsh libretto included
Producer Adrian Farmer Engineer Andrew Smilie

Recorded in Hoddinott Hall, 11 January 2024 (Horn Concerto), Concert Hall, Wyastone Leys, Monmouth, 4 April 2024 (Fanfare, Air and Flourishes), live performance from Gloucester Cathedral on 23 July 2023 (The Fairie Bride)

Reviewed by Richard Whitehouse

What’s the story?

Lyrita adds to the already growing discography of Gavin Higgins (b.1983) with this release featuring two recent major works, both of which are heard in their first performances and thereby confirm this composer’s place among the leading British voices of his generation.

What’s the music like?

Listeners may have come across Higgins’s music via the release Ekstasis (see the link below), a collection of chamber pieces which attests to a distinctive and searching personality. Such is equally true of those here, not least the Horn Concerto that takes its place in a notable lineage of such works ‘in E flat’, while taking in Schumann and Ligeti as part of its range of stylistic or conceptual allusions. Its three movements have as their inspiration the Waldhorn – the first, Understorey, duly outlining an emergence from the (Wagnerian) depths to the forest floor in mounting waves of activity. There follow Overstorey with its airily expressive evocation of the forest canopy as builds considerable fervency over its course, then Myelium Rondo with its overtones of the hunt and energetic fanfares which propel this work to an affirmative close.

No stranger to the horn (being his own instrument), Higgins had indirectly prepared for this concerto with Fanfare, Air and Flourishes, a brief but eventful solo triptych which tries out several gestures or motifs to be developed in the larger work as well as in his second opera.

Commissioned by the Three Choirs Festival, The Faerie Bride takes a legend from the Book of Hergest for its synopsis of the coming together but eventual (its being inevitable) disunion between water spirit and earthly man. This is played out over seven scenes divided into two parts – Francesca Simon’s succinct yet artfully constructed libretto moving from their initial encounters at the lake, via the gradual dissolution of their relationship through events during each of the four seasons, to a climactic juncture when the woman returns with her extended family into the depths. Musically the work encompasses the range of Higgins’s idiom up to this point, its richness and variety of texture complemented by an instrumental clarity which ensures vocal audibility throughout – certain discrepancies between the libretto as published and as sung being immediately evident. That this opera keeps its emotions close to its chest much of the time only makes the closing stages the more powerful, not least in the way the ending reaches back to the beginning for a tangible sense of resolution borne of experience.

Does it all work?

Yes, in that Higgins is able to integrate his influences into a coherent and personal language. It helps that these performers are audibly attuned to this music – not least Marta Fontanels-Simmons as an otherworldly Woman and Roderick Williams as the uncomprehending Man – with Ben Goldscheider a consummate exponent of works for horn. The Three Choirs Festival Chorus characterizes the Villagers with suitable aggression, while Jaime Martin and Martyn Brabbins secure idiomatic playing of real finesse from the BBC National Orchestra of Wales.

Is it recommended?

Very much so. Those yet to do so should certainly acquire the earlier release on Nimbus, but the works featured here round out the potency of Higgins’s music accordingly. Detailed and informative notes by Gillian Moore, though watch out for those discrepancies in the libretto.

Listen & Buy

For purchase options, you can visit the Ulysees Arts website. For information on the performers, click on the names to read more about Ben Goldscheider, Marta Fontanals-Simmons, Roderick Williams, Jaime Martin, Martyn Brabbins and the BBC National Orchestra of Wales. Click to read more about composer Gavin Higgins and about Ekstasis

Published post no.2,465 – Thursday 6 March 2025

In concert – Soloists, University of Birmingham Voices & CBSO / Martyn Brabbins: Stanford: Requiem

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stanford-requiem

Stanford Requiem Op.63 (1896)

Carolyn Sampson (soprano), Marta Fontanals-Simmons (mezzo-soprano), James Way (tenor), Ross Ramgobin (baritone), University of Birmingham Voices, City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra / Martyn Brabbins

Symphony Hall, Birmingham
Saturday 25 July 2022

Written by Richard Whitehouse

Its official season may have ended over a week before, but the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra was heard this evening in a rare revival of a work whose premiere it gave 125 years ago at the Birmingham Triennial Festival – that of the Requiem by Charles Villiers Stanford.

As historian Paul Rodmell recounted in his programme note, this Festival saw the launching of a host of major choral works during its 128 years of existence – notably Mendelssohn’s Elijah in 1846 and Elgar’s The Dream of Gerontius in 1900. That the latter piece was soon regarded as trailblazing despite a largely unsuccessful premiere might be thought ironic given that, just three years earlier, Stanford’s Requiem had been received with some acclaim only to fall into obscurity along with the greater part of his sizable output in the wake of the First World War.

Not unexpectedly, Brahms instead of Berlioz or Verdi is the main presence – thus the Introit with its understated opening theme that recurs often in the work, while its distinction between sombre choral and aspiring vocal music is further emphasized by those expressive contrasts in the Kyrie. The vocalists come into their own in a Gradual whose orchestral textures find this composer at his most felicitous. A telling foil, moreover, to the Sequence with its menacing Dies irae or proclamatory Tuba mirum, then what follows bringing the soloists into individual focus: hence the heightened fervour of Carolyn Sampson, the more circumspect eloquence of Marta Fontanals-Simmons, slightly hectoring impulsiveness of James Way, and the brooding power of Ross Ramgobin; though the sequence overall exudes an almost symphonic cohesion.

Arguably the finest portion, however, comprises the final three movements. The Offertorium makes much of the contrast between warmly martial and intensively fugal sections, while the Sanctus has an ethereal radiance which carries through the ruminative Benedictus and into deftly resounding Hosannas. The funereal orchestral music preceding the Agnus Dei affords the darkest emotion of the whole work, but this only enhances the ensuing Lux aeterna with its serene fatalism that Frederic Leighton – artist and friend of Stanford, whose death early in 1896 was the catalyst – would doubtless have appreciated. Throughout this performance, the University of Birmingham Voices responded with alacrity to choral writing whose poise and translucency were always in evidence – not least in the most earnestly contrapuntal passages.

Special praise for Martyn Brabbins who, whether or not he considers it a masterpiece, directed this work with unwavering conviction. The balance between soloists or chorus and orchestra might largely take care of itself, but orchestral textures need astute handling if these are not to risk uniformity or even monotony and Brabbins drew a committed response from the CBSO such that the autumnal hues of Stanford’s writing came through unimpeded. Good to hear this performance is being released commercially, as it did full justice to a largely neglected work.

A last thought. One of Stanford’s earlier choral pieces is The Resurrection, a setting of the ode by Friedrich Klopstock. Maybe when the CBSO performs Mahler’s Second Symphony in a future season, it would be worth programming these assuredly very different works together?

For more information on the CBSO visit their website. For more information on Charles Stanford, meanwhile, visit the website of The Stanford Society