Tag Archives: Virginia Woolf

Wigmore Mondays – Kitty Whately & Simon Lepper: From the Pens of Women

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Kitty Whately (mezzo-soprano, above), Simon Lepper (piano, below)

Jonathan Dove All the Future Days (Autobiography; Penelope; The Siren) (2004) (2:11-13:27 on the broadcast link below)
Vaughan Williams 4 Last Songs (1954-8) (13:58-23:27)
Judith Cloud Night Dreams (Variations on the Word Sleep) (2006) (24:58-28:12)
Lori Laitman Orange Afternoon Lover (I Was Reading a Scientific Article) (2006) (28:15-32:24)
Argento From the Diary of Virginia Woolf (Anxiety) (1974) (32:27-34:25)
Rebecca Clarke Lethe (1941) (35:58-39:00)
Juliana Hall Letters from Edna (To Harriet Monroe; To Mother) (1993) (39:05-43:15)
Jonathan Dove Nights Not Spent Alone (2015) (43:34-52:42)

Wigmore Hall, London
Monday 18 February 2019

To hear the BBC broadcast through BBC Sounds, please follow this link

Commentary and Review by Ben Hogwood

What a refreshing hour of music.

With no criticism intended, Mondays at the Wigmore Hall, where BBC Radio 3 hold a lunchtime concert every week, are a reliable way in which to start the week with quality music. They show off some of the very best in chamber, piano and vocal music, often in imaginative programs, but understandably catering for the audience with relatively well-thumbed pieces of music often included.

Not so on this occasion. Mezzo-soprano Kitty Whately always ensures she has an equal balance of male and female composers in her programs, and likes to sing about the stories of both sexes. From the Pens of Women, then, presented an opportunity to sing songs written by women – which in classical music is still not much as a proportion of the whole. She was joined by her regular recital partner Simon Lepper.

Autobiography (2:11 on the broadcast link) was a brave start, Whately straight into the high notes as she flew like the eagle in the text above the rapidly circling figurations of Lepper’s piano. Jonathan Dove’s sound world is fascinating here, clearly on the wing – and then coming down to earth a little for Penelope (4:46), which has a right hand piano figure not dissimilar to Britten, calling out in the right hand before the vocalist brings softer thoughts, then rising to soar with great feeling.

Then, from 8:04, another striking setting – this time The Siren, where Lepper worked overtime to bring a distinctive, treble-rich piano part that dives from the heights as though into a pool of water before cutting off quite suddenly at 13:27 on the broadcast.

Ursula Vaughan Williams‘ text, as set by her husband Ralph, is a very different story. One of her husband’s last works, the Four Last Songs would inevitably invite comparisons with the more famous works of the same name by Richard Strauss, but they are totally different. Vaughan Williams was less obviously heart-on-sleeve with his feelings, but look deeper and they are still there.

The first, Procris (13:58) is a little restless and decides against following the black humour of the story, while Tired (16:32) is a wonderful song, softly rocking its listener as a lullaby. Whately gave an appropriately understated reading here. Hands, Eyes and Heart (18:32) is a short song but then Menelaus (19:42), the most substantial of the four, finishes the brief cycle in a poignant mood.

Three settings of Margaret Attwood follow, with Judith Cloud’s Night Dreams (24:58) a beautifully observed setting of how the author ‘would like to watch you sleeping’. The song is dappled in half light and is shot through with the intimacy of the sleeping hours, while Lori Laitman’s Orange Afternoon Lover (I Was Reading A Scientific Article) (28:15) is similarly personal, set to a flowing accompaniment. Dominick Argento’s setting of Anxiety from From the Diary of Virginia Woolf (32:27) is propelled by the urgent piano part and keeps a high level of agitation throughout.

The text of Edna St Vincent Millay (above) provided the inspiration for the last third of the concert, a remarkable group of song settings. Rebecca Clarke’s Lethe is the very definition of bleakness, the underworld river supplying no comfort but only sorrow and menace (35:58), particularly in its ominous piano part at the end.

Juliana Hall’s settings of Letters from Edna provide some much-needed light relief, Millay asking humorously for payment from her publisher (39:05-40:22), declaring herself ‘awfully broke’, before passionately declaring her love and admiration To Mother (40:25).

Three settings make up Jonathan Dove’s mini-cycle Nights Not Spent Alone – the down to earth text of Recuerdo (43:34), with a quasi-orchestral piano part brilliantly managed by Lepper, the heady What lips my lips have kissed (47:41) and the passionate I too beneath your moon (50:18).

As an encore Whately and Lepper gave another Dove song, All These Dismal Looks (54:13-56:00), the fourth of five songs making up his Five Am’rous Sighs. The humourous song put the seal on an outstanding hour of music making, full of new discoveries and surprises and passionately delivered. The music and verse will I’m sure provide a springboard for listeners to the broadcast to look further afield. Talking of which…

Further listening

Kitty Whately has recorded the Jonathan Dove songs as part of a disc devoted to the composer’s music, including All The Future Days in its entirety, as well as Nights Not Spent Alone:

The below playlist contains all the music heard in this concert in available versions:

Meanwhile you can hear all the songs of Rebecca Clarke on this disc from Patricia Wright, Jonathan Rees and Kathron Sturrock:

On record: Max Richter – Three Worlds: Music from Woolf Works (Deutsche Grammophon)

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max-richter

Summary

For his follow-up to the extraordinarily successful SLEEP, Max Richter turns his attentions to the works of Virginia Woolf. He has been working on a Royal Ballet production with Wayne McGregor, and this full length album documents his responses to Woolf’s novels.

The resultant soundtrack features Woolf’s own text, read by Sarah Sutcliffe, Gillian Anderson and the author herself, her only surviving recording, where she reads Craftsmanship to the eerie backing of Big Ben. Anderson reads her suicide note, a deeply felt letter to her husband to which Richter responds with the extended meditation Tuesday.

What’s the music like?

Richter shows his versatility as a composer throughout this album, drawing on his legacy as an electronic composer but showing also how he continues to effectively exploit analogue instruments.

The music for Mrs Dalloway is incredibly intimate and has a small-scale setting to go with it. Utterances like Words and In the garden are simplicity itself and are subtly scored, while War anthem features a resonant cello, beautifully played by Hila Karni, that soars in the spirit of John Tavener.

Orlando contains a varied selection of shorter pieces. Morphology has a lovely, open texture, and like a few of the numbers here it would have been nice for the music to have longer to open out and present itself fully. Perhaps because of the constraints of the director, some of Richter’s music adopts more of a sketch form here.

That is emphatically not the case for the final, heartrending Tuesday, Richter’s response to the suicide note that makes up the whole of the Waves section. It is a powerful meditation, deliberately written to connect with Zen Buddhism, and comes close to Hans Zimmer’s music for Interstellar in mood. Richter’s musical development is subtle, the elegiac motif generating a deep and lasting power that leads to a final, exhausted coda.

The Waves, Woolf Works from Ravi Deepres on Vimeo.

Does it all work?

Mostly, and it presents Richter as a multifaceted composer who can work on the small scale of chamber music but also a larger orchestral stage. Tuesday is a really impressive piece of work, showing how he can command the attention of an audience over a longer structure – which SLEEP did of course, but in a very different way!

The music for Mrs Dalloway is very simple – too much at times – but at its best is also deeply effective. The sensitive use of speech around the music is effective.

Is it recommended?

Yes. Not always the cheeriest album, Three Worlds does nonetheless become both a restful and emotionally powerful piece of meditation, a heartfelt response to the works of one of Britain’s finest 20th century novelists.

Ben Hogwood

Listen on Spotify