SCHUBERT OCTET & SONGS BEAUTIFUL WORLD, WHERE ARE
Andrew Staples – tenor
Members of the Orchestre
Révolutionnaire et Romantique
Fri 22 Nov 2024, 7.30pm
St Martin-in-the-Fields, London
Friday 22 November 2024, 7.30pm
St Martin-in-the-Fields, London
Monteverdi Choir & Orchestras presents
BEAUTIFUL WORLD, WHERE ARE YOU?
SCHUBERT OCTET & SONGS
Members of the Orchestre Révolutionnaire et Romantique:
Timothy Lines – clarinet
Philip Turbett – bassoon
Anneke Scott – horn
Peter Hanson, Lucy Jeal – violins
Judith Busbridge – viola
Catherine Rimer – cello
Axel Bouchaux – double bass
Andrew Staples – tenor
Schubert composed his Octet 200 years ago this year. As the composer Thomas Adès said recently, ‘the mystery of his Octet is still how it can be so tender and intimate, even domestic, and at the same time cosmically vast’. In a flash, Schubert takes us from the atmosphere of a Viennese tavern to places we couldn’t have imagined; from an intimate conversation to a viewpoint above the stars.
A yearning for a lost idyll seems to pervade the Biedermeier jollity: twice in the final movement, Schubert quotes the music from a song he wrote a few years earlier, a setting of part of Friedrich Schiller’s long poem ‘The Gods of Greece’, which begins with the words ‘Beautiful world, where are you?’. In this concert, we have taken this link as a pretext to intersperse the movements of the Octet with seven of Schubert’s songs, newly arranged by Robert Percival for voice with instrumental accompaniment.
The presence of a voice also highlights the composer’s supremely lyrical instrumental writing, where each instrument is permitted to ‘sing’ as well as form part of constantly varied, colourful texture. If this music is new to you, we hope it gives you a taste of Schubert’s inventiveness, his genius at creating atmosphere and his way of sculpting thrilling musical forms. If you are already familiar with it, we hope that the period instrumentalists of the Orchestre Révolutionnaire et Romantique and the new arrangements of the songs allow you to hear it as never before.
BEAUTIFUL WORLD, WHERE ARE YOU?
SCHUBERT OCTET
SCHUBERT SONGS, arranged for octet by Robert Percival
Schubert Die Götter Griechenlands, D677
Schubert Octet: I. Adagio – Allegro
Schubert Wandrers Nachtlied, Op. 96 No. 3, D768
Schubert Octet: II. Adagio
Schubert Nähe des Geliebten, Op. 5 No. 2, D162
Schubert Octet: III. Allegro vivace
Schubert Octet: IV. Andante con variazioni
Schubert Geheimes Op. 14 No. 2, D719
Schubert Ganymede Op. 19 No. 3, D544
Schubert Octet: V. Menuetto
Schubert Erster Verlust, Op. 5 No. 4, D226
Schubert Octet: VI. Andante molto – Allegro
Schubert Du bist die Ruh, Op.59 No.3, D776
BEAUTIFUL WORLD WHERE ARE YOU?
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PROGRAMME NOTES
Richard Wigmore
We owe the existence of Schubert’s ever-popular Octet to Count Ferdinand Troyer, a fine amateur clarinettist who was chief steward at the court of Beethoven’s friend and pupil Archduke Rudolph. Early in 1824 Troyer requested a follow-up to Beethoven’s Septet. Adding a second violin, Schubert responded with a work that broadly followed Beethoven’s six-movement plan. Like Beethoven, he prefaced the outer movements with a slow introduction, included both a scherzo and a minuet, and between them inserted a set of variations that gave the instruments extended solo turns.
Schubert’s scoring in the Octet is endlessly resourceful. In the outer movements and scherzo he often treats the ensemble like a small orchestra, with the violins in octaves and strong contrasts between solo and tutti sonorities. Elsewhere, especially in the Adagio and minuet, string and wind colours are varied and blended with the finesse of true chamber music. If the mood is predominantly open-hearted, the sense of yearning, of the evanescence of beauty, that suffuses so much of Schubert’s later music is felt even here. Once or twice – in th – Adagio’s shadowy coda, or the slow introduction to the finale – we glimpse the dark, depressive world of the string quartets in A minor and D minor (‘Death and the Maiden’) which Schubert composed more or less simultaneously with the Octet.
The imposing slow introduction immediately announces a motif in dotted rhythm which will permeate the Allegro and influence many of the ideas in the other movements. Just before the Allegro clarinet and then horn sound a rising octave figure, again in dotted rhythm, which also has echoes later in the work. For all its breezy exuberance the Allegro is tightly argued and unified. The opening of the first theme underpins the second theme, introduced by the clarinet in D minor before brightening, courtesy of the horn, to F major. In the development this theme acquires a yearning continuation on the clarinet and is then radically transformed, first by clarinet, then by first and second violin in imitation against the pervasive leaping dotted figure on first violin.
After a characteristic sideslip to A flat major the wind trio intone a chorale-like phrase that obliquely echoes to the slow introduction. To reinforce the link, Schubert then brings back the opening of the introduction just before the recapitulation. Towards the end a speeded-up version of the main theme promises a rousing send-off. Then the pulse relaxes for a haunting reminiscence of the second theme, sounded softly on the horn, as if from the depths of the forest.
Somewhere between a lullaby and a barcarolle, the Adagio is one of Schubert’s loveliest. It opens with a dream of a melody for Count Troyer,
then flowers into a love duet between clarinet and violin. The abiding impression is of a timeless flow of spontaneous lyricism – until the coda. This begins serenely enough, with the violins playing in canon. Then a sudden violent pizzicato accent heralds a strangely disquieting passage where the clarinet broods on the movement’s opening against palpitating strings and an ominously sustained note from the horn.
This momentary glimpse of the abyss is summarily banished in the bracing scherzo, with its overtones of the hunt. High spirits are more subdued in the trio, with its smooth, shapely melody, initially for strings alone, over a staccato cello line.
For his variation movement Schubert pilfered a homely duet from his
unperformed comic opera of 1815, Die Freunde von Salamanka (‘The Friends from Salamanca’). Following Classical precedent, the first four variations, all in C major, are decorative, with first violin, horn and cello in turn taking the tune. But the eerily scurrying fifth variation, in C minor, and the dulcet sixth, dissolving the theme in luminous polyphony, are Romantic character pieces. Sentiment is wickedly undercut in the final variation, where the wind seem to parody a village band against a hyperactively cavorting violin.
The fifth movement is a stylised, faintly nostalgic recreation of the courtly Classical minuet. Led by first violin and bassoon, the lolloping Ländler trio is music for a Viennese beer garden. As in the first movement, the twilit coda
Gustav Klimt Schubert at the Piano II, 1899
introduces a dreamy horn solo against a chromatically falling bass line – a moment of pure Romantic poetry.
With its ghostly tremolos and steepling crescendos, the introduction to the finale conjures a scene of high drama. There are echoes of the Wolf’s Glen scene in Weber’s Der Freischütz, an opera Schubert much admired, plus a reference to the song ‘Die Götter Griechenlands’ (‘The Gods of Greece’), which he likewise quotes in the minuet of the contemporary A minor String Quartet, D804: a reminder of the cross-fertilisation between Schubert’s songs and his instrumental music.
After the music subsides to a ppp shudder, the blurred tonality clears to a cloudless F major for the bristling march theme of the Allegro. A chirpy second theme, linked to the first by a trilling motif, could have fast-talked its way straight out of a Rossini opera. The spirit of comic opera is rarely far away in music
of bustling good humour. Then, towards the end, the slow introduction crashes in without warning, now decked out with eerie violin flourishes. But Schubert quickly dispels the oppressive mood, speeding up the march theme and transforming it into a wild rustic dance.
Woven around and within the Octet are arrangements for the same mixed wind-string forces of seven Schubert Lieder. Opening the programme, aptly enough, is the bleak setting of one verse of Friedrich Schiller’s ‘Die Götter Griechenlands’ (1819). The yearning for the vanished glories of antiquity – and, by association, for an ideal world of the Romantic imagination – is a recurrent motif in Schiller’s poetry. The desolate minor-keyed refrain, to the words ‘Schöne Welt, wo bist du?’, twice yields to a vision of illusory bliss in the tonic major: one of the simplest and most piercing instances in all Schubert of his favourite major-minor contrasts.
Caspar David Friedrich The Temple of Juno in Agrigento, 1828-1830
The next five songs are all settings of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (17491832): poet, dramatist, novelist, scientist, philosopher and statesman. Not for nothing did Thomas Carlyle dub him ‘the universal man’. Goethe wrote the second of his ‘Wandrers Nachtlied’ poems on the wall of the Duke of Weimar’s hunting chalet in the Thuringian hills while contemplating a late-summer sunset. The poem moves serenely from inanimate nature, through the vegetable and animal worlds, to the human. Schubert’s song of c1822 (as so often, the manuscript is lost) catches Goethe’s sublime poignancy and directness in a mere fourteen bars. The barely palpable syncopations at ‘spürest du kaum einen Hauch’ suggest the faintest stirring in the treetops before the soft, transfigured horn calls of the close.
Many of Goethe poems were inspired by pre-existing music, including ‘Nähe des Geliebten’, which Goethe wrote in response to a setting by his musical guru Carl Zelter of a similar poem (‘Ich denke dein’) by Friederike Brun. From Goethe’s melodious verses the eighteen-year-old Schubert creates a rapturous, bel canto love song, ushered in by a harmonically ambivalent introduction that gradually opens towards the home key, like an unfolding flower.
Goethe was fascinated by non-European cultures throughout his long creative life. He had already written poems inspired by the East when in 1814 he discovered the verses of the Persian poet and scholar Hafiz (c1315- ?1390). Writing more explicitly in the Persian style, Goethe expanded his eastern-inspired poems into the fifteen books of the West-Östlicher Divan: an anthology (Divan is Arabic for ‘collection of poems’) of epigrams, lovers’
dialogues and drinking songs that seeks to bridge Eastern and Western cultures. The West-Östlicher Divan in turn inspired a handful of Schubert songs, most famously ‘Geheimes’ (1821). Goethe’s poem blends mystery and eroticism. Schubert perfectly matches its atmosphere of secretive excitement in a song of delicious economy, unified by a quizzical two-note figure in the accompaniment.
There’s also an erotic undertow in the verses of ‘Ganymed’, with its characteristically Goethean theme of the beauty and oneness of all things –man, nature and the divine. Schubert’s song of 1817 vividly illuminates each phase of the poet’s pantheistic vision, from the radiant serenity of the spring morning, through the youth’s awakening ardour and anticipation, to his final heavenly transfiguration, in a key remote from the earthly longing of the opening.
In ‘Erster Verlust’, composed during the miraculously prolific Liederjahr of 1815, Schubert responds to Goethe’s bittersweet lament with a song of touching innocence, based on poignant equivocations between major and minor. Offered as spiritual balm after the Octet’s riotous ending is the sublime ‘Du bist die Ruh’ (1823). The poem comes from Friedrich Rückert’s Östliche Rosen (‘Eastern Roses’), a volume of Persian-inspired poetry written under the influence of Goethe’s West-Östlicher Divan. With its exquisitely simple melody and the revelation of its final strophe, moving majestically to a remote key, Schubert’s song is his supreme expression of an ideal, transcendent love. It is also arguably more truly religious in feeling than any music that Schubert, the unconvinced Catholic, composed for the church.
ARRANGER’S NOTE
Robert Percival
Voice accompanied by small instrumental ensemble is an invention of the early twentieth century. In fact song or lieder accompanied by anything other than a piano (or guitar) did not really begin to appear until after about 1850. So, is making versions of Schubert lieder for an HIP chamber ensemble not somewhat anachronistic?
Well yes. And no.
The Twentieth Century saw a huge commercial market for songs in German – sometimes hundreds were published a month – but initially these were largely performed (or perhaps enjoyed would be a better term) in domestic, even private situations, and by amateurs. It was only slightly later that song became part of something like a modern concert-giving culture.
Mid-century concerts typically separated the movements of substantial works (assuming they were even all played –Schubert’s Octet was first published only in 1853, omitting the minuet and variations) with shorter pieces for quite different forces: rather than works complementing each other, the emphasis was on contrast and variety. This was a perfect opportunity for song performance, but only one or two at a time, to avoid monotony (song cycles were usually interleaved or excerpted too) and still accompanied by a piano. It was only late in the century that the voice (or unison
massed voices) began to be accompanied by orchestra, either in orchestral songs (Mahler, Strauss) or in arrangement, and Schubert’s piano parts were orchestrated by Brahms, Reger, Strauss and Webern, amongst many others.
During Schubert’s lifetime arrangements were very much part of Viennese musical culture: potpourri, foreshadowing later concert programming, were immensely popular entertainments based on existing opera scores or selections of unconnected arias, transformed into pantomimes with new, light-hearted librettos. Publications of orchestral works were advertised alongside versions for string quintet, piano trio, piano duet, piano solo, and various sizes of wind ensemble, and substantial excerpts from the latest fashionable operas (including by Rossini and Bellini) also appeared in versions for winds until at least the 1830s.
Beethoven in 1802 called the practice an “unnatural mania”, but like most composers he was far from averse to making or supervising arrangements of his own pieces, if the financial conditions were right!
These re-workings were not seen merely as ‘arrangements’ but rather as other versions, parallel and independent, and it was accepted and expected that the skilled arrangers would inevitably change fundamental details of the originals in their re-renderings.
Schubert’s music was not widely arranged, but his most popular songs were reworked by instrumental performers, notably by Liszt for solo piano, and by Czerny as very demanding fantasies for horn and piano, and there are any number of instrumental transcriptions of the vocal lines alongside the original piano parts.
There are no historical versions of Lieder for voice and ensemble because they were never performed in this way, but there is no fundamental reason they couldn’t have been. So within the same paradigm of respectful freedom as historical arrangers I have adopted similar approaches and techniques of scoring as that of Schubert (although he is somewhat infamous amongst period wind players for the unforgiving nature of some of his writing!) but also with appropriate nods to the arrangements of Brahms and Richard Strauss.
The scoring of the songs, perhaps, draws out elements that are mirrored more-or-less specifically in the Octet, and vice versa. A couple of the songs are transposed by a step or two to better fit both the tonalities around them and the instruments that are playing: the clarinet of c.1824 was still something of a novelty, only appearing in Vienna some 50 years prior, and the horn is still valveless with interchangeable crooks fixing its natural harmonics, the extra pitches to be coaxed further by the player’s hand.
The sequence tonight does not contrast the songs and Octet movements in the way a mid-nineteenth century concert might have done, but I hope that they comment and feed off one another, creating an opportunity to experience the music in a different, albeit still historically informed, way.
Robert Percival divides his time between performing on historical bassoons and contrabassoons and editing and arranging. His doctoral thesis Top B or Not Top B, and Is That the Question? explores 19th-century practices in wind writing, and acclaimed recent work includes, for Ensemble Pygmalion, a “new” Schubert opera, L’Autre Voyage, and Brahms.
TEXTS & TRANSLATIONS
DIE GÖTTER GRIECHENLANDS D677 THE GODS OF GREECE
Schöne Welt, wo bist du? Kehre wieder
Holdes Blütenalter der Natur!
Ach, nur in dem Feenland der Lieder
Lebt noch deine fabelhafte Spur.
Ausgestorben trauert das Gefilde, Keine Gottheit zeigt sich meinem Blick, Ach, von jenem lebenwarmen Bilde
Blieb der Schatten nur zurück.
Friedrich von Schiller
OCTET: I. ADAGIO
– ALLEGRO
WANDRERS NACHTLIED Op. 96 No. 3, D768
Über allen Gipfeln
Ist Ruh’, In allen Wipfeln
Spürest du Kaum einen Hauch; Die Vögelein schweigen im Walde. Warte nur, balde Ruhest du auch.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
OCTET: II. ADAGIO
NÄHE DES GELIEBTEN Op. 5 No. 2, D162
Ich denke dein, wenn mir der Sonne Schimmer
Vom Meere strahlt; Ich denke dein, wenn sich des Mondes Flimmer
In Quellen malt.
Ich sehe dich, wenn auf dem fernen Wege
Der Staub sich hebt; In tiefer Nacht, wenn auf dem schmalen
Stege Der Wandrer bebt.
Beautiful world, where are you? Return again, sweet springtime of nature! Alas, only in the magic land of song does your fabled memory live on. The deserted fields mourn, no god reveals himself to me; of that warm, living image only a shadow has remained.
Translation: Richard Wigmore
WANDERER’S NIGHTSONG
Over all the peaks
There is peace; In all the tree-tops You feel Scarcely a breath of air; The little birds in the forest are silent. Wait!
Soon you too will be at rest.
Translation: Richard Wigmore
NEARNESS OF THE BELOVED
I think of you when sunlight glints from the sea; I think of you when the moon’s glimmer is reflected in streams.
I see you when, on distant roads, dust rises; in the depths of night, when on the narrow bridge the traveller trembles.
Ich höre dich, wenn dort mit dumpfem Rauschen
Die Welle steigt.
Im stillen Hain da geh ich oft zu lauschen,
Wenn alles schweigt.
Ich bin bei dir, du seist auch noch so ferne.
Du bist mir nah!
Die Sonne sinkt, bald leuchten mir die Sterne.
O wärst du da!
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
OCTET: III. ALLEGRO VIVACE
OCTET: IV. ANDANTE CON VARIAZIONI
GEHEIMES Op. 14 No. 2, D719
Über meines Liebchens Äugeln
Stehn verwundert alle Leute;
Ich, der Wissende, dagegen, Weiss recht gut, was das bedeute.
Denn es heißt: ich liebe diesen
Und nicht etwa den und jenen.
Lasset nur, ihr guten Leute, Euer Wundern, euer Sehnen!
Ja, mit ungeheuren Mächten
Blicket sie wohl in die Runde;
Doch sie sucht nur zu verkünden
Ihm die nächste süße Stunde.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
GANYMED Op. 19 No. 3 D544
Wie im Morgenglanze
Du rings mich anglühst, Frühling, Geliebter!
Mit tausendfacher Liebeswonne
Sich an mein Herze drängt
Deiner ewigen Wärme
Heilig Gefühl,
Unendliche Schöne!
Dass ich dich fassen möcht’
In diesen Arm!
I hear you when, with a dull roar, the waves surge up. I often go to listen in the tranquil grove when all is silent.
I am with you, however far away you are. You are close to me!
The sun sets, soon the stars will shine for me. Would that you were here!
Translation: Richard Wigmore
A SECRET
Everyone is astonished at the eyes my sweetheart makes; but I, who understand, know very well what they mean.
For they are saying: he is the one I love, not this one or that one.
So, good people, cease your wondering and your longing!
Indeed, she may well look about her with a mightily powerful eye, but she seeks only to give him a foretaste of the next sweet hour.
Translation: Richard Wigmore
GANYMEDE
How your glow envelops me in the morning radiance, spring, my beloved! With love’s thousandfold joy the hallowed sensation of your eternal warmth floods my heart, infinite beauty!
O that I might clasp you in my arms!
Ach, an deinem Busen Lieg’ ich, und schmachte, Und deine Blumen, dein Gras Drängen sich an mein Herz. Du kühlst den brennenden Durst meines Busens, Lieblicher Morgenwind! Ruft drein die Nachtigall Liebend nach mir aus dem Nebeltal. Ich komm! Ich komme! Ach! Wohin? Wohin?
Hinauf! Strebt’s, hinauf! Es schweben die Wolken Abwärts, die Wolken Neigen sich der sehnenden Liebe. Mir! Mir!
In eurem Schoße Aufwärts! Umfangend umfangen! Aufwärts an deinen Busen, Allliebender Vater!
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Ah, on your breast I lie languishing, and your flowers, your grass press close to my heart. You cool the burning thirst within my breast, sweet morning breeze, as the nightingale calls tenderly to me from the misty valley. I come, I come! But whither? Ah, whither?
Upwards! Strive upwards! The clouds drift down, yielding to yearning love, to me, to me!
In your lap, upwards, embracing and embraced! Upwards to your bosom, all-loving Father!
Translation: Richard Wigmore
The Orchestre Révolutionnaire et Romantique performing at St Martin-in-the-Fields in May 2024
© Frances Marshall
OCTET: V. MENUETTO
ERSTER VERLUST Op. 5 No. 4, D226
Ach, wer bringt die schönen Tage,
Jene Tage der ersten Liebe,
Ach, wer bringt nur eine Stunde
Jener holden Zeit zurück!
Einsam nähr’ ich meine Wunde,
Und mit stets erneuter Klage
Traur’ ich ums verlorne Glück,
Ach, wer bringt die schönen Tage, Wer jene holde Zeit zurück!
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
OCTET: VI. ANDANTE MOLTO – ALLEGRO
DU BIST DIE RUH Op. 59 No. 3, D776
Du bist die Ruh, Der Friede mild, Die Sehnsucht du Und was sie stillt.
Ich weihe dir
Voll Lust und Schmerz
Zur Wohnung hier
Mein Aug und Herz.
Kehr ein bei mir, Und schließe du Still hinter dir
Die Pforten zu.
Treib andern Schmerz
Aus dieser Brust.
Voll sei dies Herz
Von deiner Lust.
Dies Augenzelt
Von deinem Glanz
Allein erhellt, O füll es ganz!
Friedrich Rückert
FIRST LOSS
Ah, who will bring back those fair days, those days of first love?
Ah, who will bring back but one hour of that sweet time? Alone I nurture my wound and, forever renewing my lament, mourn my lost happiness. Ah, who will bring back those fair days, that sweet time?
Translation: Richard Wigmore
YOU ARE REPOSE
You are repose and gentle peace. You are longing and what stills it.
Full of joy and grief I consecrate to you my eyes and my heart as a dwelling place.
Come in to me and softly close the gate behind you.
Drive all other grief from my breast. Let my heart be full of your joy.
The temple of my eyes is lit by your radiance alone: O, fill it wholly!
Translation: Richard Wigmore
ANDREW STAPLES
Tenor
Andrew Staples stands as a versatile artist of our era. He combines a busy schedule as an opera and concert singer with a career as a film and stage director and photographer. To all his creative output, Andrew brings a collaborative approach and a passion to tell better stories that build connections between artists and audiences.
As a distinguished tenor, he has collaborated with conductors such as Sir Simon Rattle, Daniel Harding, Emmanuelle Haïm, Elim Chan, Gustavo Dudamel, Daniel Barenboim, Sir Andrew Davis, Esa-Pekka Salonen, and Yannick Nézet-Séguin, with renowned orchestras such as Berlin Philharmonic, Vienna Philharmonic, Swedish Radio Symphony Orchestra, Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra, Rotterdam Philharmonic Orchestra, Orchestre de Paris, Les Siècles, Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, London Symphony Orchestra, New York Philharmonic, Los Angeles Philharmonic, San Francisco Symphony, il Pomo D’Oro, Philadelphia Orchestra and Chamber Orchestra of Europe and Mahler Chamber Orchestra, among others.
Staples made his debut at the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden with Fidelio (Jacquino), returning for Capriccio (Flamand), Die Zauberflöte (Tamino), Katya Kabanova (Tichon) and Salome (Narraboth). In 2022, he made his debut with Britten’s Peter Grimes (Peter) at the Teatro La Fenice and his
Berliner Staatsoper debut with the title role in Mozart’s Idomeneo. Staples has sung at the Metropolitan Opera, the National Theatre Prague, La Monnaie Brussels, the Salzburger Festspiele, Hamburg Staatsoper, Theater an der Wien, the Lucerne Festival, and the Lyric Opera of Chicago. Last season he performed Beethoven’s Fidelio (Florestan) with Los Angeles Philharmonic and Gustavo Dudamel; and Strauss’ Ariadne auf Naxos (Bacchus) with Budapest Festival Orchestra and Iván Fischer.
In the 2024/25 season, Andrew will embark on a European tour with three major orchestras. He will perform Strauss’ Ariadne auf Naxos (Bacchus) with the Budapest Festival Orchestra and Ivan Fischer, and Mahler’s Das Lied von der Erde with both the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra and the Swedish Radio Symphony, conducted by Daniel Harding. Additionally, Andrew will return to Munich to perform Bach’s St. Matthew Passion under the direction of Sir Simon Rattle. Other highlights of the season include Mendelssohn’s Lobegesang with the Sinfonieorchester Basel and Ivor Bolton, Bruckner’s Mass No. 3 with the Wiener Symphoniker and Lorenzo Viotti, as well as Bach’s Cantatas and Mahler’s Das Lied von der Erde with the Orchestre de Chambre de Paris conducted by Philipp von Steinaecker.
TIMOTHY LINES
clarinet
Timothy Lines enjoys a varied career as a clarinettist. From 1999 to 2003 he was Principal Clarinet of the London Symphony Orchestra, becoming Chairman of the orchestra during his last year there. From 2004 to 2005 he was Section Leader Clarinet of the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra. He was regular Principal Clarinet of the English Baroque Soloists and the Orchestre Révolutionnaire et Romantique from 2003 until 2023, performing on period instruments.
He is currently Principal Clarinet of the London Mozart Players and performs regularly as guest Principal with many orchestras and ensembles such as BBC National Orchestra of Wales, London Sinfonietta, Rednote Ensemble and the newly-formed Knussen Chamber Ensemble.
He conducts termly concerts with the New Perspectives Ensemble at the Royal College of Music, specialising in performing music by living composers. He has also conducted the RCM Chamber, Philharmonic and Symphony orchestras. He is clarinet coach for the National Youth Orchestra of Great Britain and took the role of Assistant Conductor with them during their Spring 2019 course.
He has been a clarinet Professor at the Royal College of Music since 1998 and he was appointed a Fellow there in 2016.
PHILIP TURBETT bassoon
Philip has worked with the world’s leading period instrument orchestras: English Baroque Soloists, Orchestre Revolutionnaire Et Romantique, Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment Academy of Ancient Music, London Classical Players, Arcangelo, The English Concert, Classical Opera Company, English Touring Opera, Mozartists, Hanover Band, CM 90, Irish Baroque Orchestra, Vienna Academy, and Les Musiciens du Louvre.
He has also worked with many of the world’s leading conductors including Sir Simon Rattle, Sir Charles Mackerras, Sir Roger Norrington, Sir Andrew Davis, Sir John Eliot Gardiner, Sir Mark Elder, Vladimir Jurowski, Edward Gardner, Richard Hickox, Frans Bruggen, Ivan Fischer and Daniel Harding.
He has performed at all the major venues throughout the world and has appeared on hundreds of recordings, many of which have received awards from the music industry. Philip combines his orchestral playing with orchestral management. He has been orchestra manager at English National Opera (20042009), English Touring Opera (2012-2023), and has been orchestra manager for the orchestras of the MCO since 2012. Philip is also Chairman of the Monteverdi Productions record label.
Westminster Abbey
ANNEKE SCOTT
horn
Anneke Scott is a leading exponent of historical horn playing. Her work takes her across the globe with a repertoire incorporating music and instruments from the late 17th century to the present day. She studied at the Royal Academy of Music before postgraduate study in France and the Netherlands. She is principal horn of a number of internationally-renowned period instrument ensembles including the Orchestre Révolutionnaire et Romantique, the English Baroque Soloists, Pygmalion, The Sixteen, Irish Baroque Orchestra, Australian Romantic and Classical Orchestra and Dunedin Consort.
Anneke enjoys an international solo career embracing three centuries of virtuosic horn works. She has recorded three albums of music by Jacques-François Gallay: Concerts Cachés (2010), Gallay: Chamber music for natural horn ensemble (2013), and Songs of Love, War and Melancholy (2015).
Anneke is a member of 19th-century period brass ensemble The Prince Regent’s Band and harmoniemusik ensemble Boxwood & Brass. She regularly works with leading period keyboardists including Steven Devine, Neal Peres da Costa, Geoffrey Govier and Kathryn Cok and period harpist Frances Kelly.
She currently teaches at the Royal Conservatoire Den Haag, Royal Conservatoire Scotland, Royal Welsh College of Music and Drama and Trinity Laban. In 2018 Anneke was elected a Fellow of the RAM and in 2020 she was awarded the International Horn Society’s Punto Award. In 2021 she was awarded an RPS Enterprise Fund grant that financed a series of filmed performances available at annekescott.com
PETER HANSON violin
Peter has been the Concertmaster of the Orchestre Révolutionnaire et Romantique for over 25 years.
Highlights include appearing as Concertmaster soloist for European and U.S. tours of Beethoven’s Missa Solemnis, a 2017 BBC Proms performance of Berlioz’s Damnation of Faust and in 2018, major European and US tours of the Berlioz and Verdi Requiems including two performances at Carnegie Hall, New York. Early 2020 saw performances of all the Beethoven symphonies in Barcelona and New York.
Peter is a Director of the Carmel Bach Festival in California. His role includes Chamber performances, directing the String Orchestra and appearing as Concertmaster for most of the Festival Orchestra concerts. The CBF Orchestra is flexible with regard to period and modern instruments and style: the 2018 Festival saw a performance of Vivaldi’s Four Seasons at Hz415 on baroque instruments, followed by Piazzolla’s Four Seasons at Hz440 on modern instruments, with Peter as soloist.
Peter also appears as Director elsewhere; recent engagements include projects with the Singapore Symphony Orchestra, Kymi Sinfonia in Finland and Orquesta da Camera in Spain. He was recently Guest Concertmaster with the Luxembourg Philharmonic and in 2017, was Guest Concertmaster for a Beethoven and Gade project with Concerto Copenhagen under the baton of Lars Ulrik Mortensen. Peter returned to Singapore in 2018 and Concerto Copenhagen in 2019.
© Nick Gilbert
LUCY JEAL
violin
Lucy Jeal started playing the violin at the age of five. She attended the Purcell School of Music, the Royal College of Music, the Guildhall and then finished her studies with Almita Vamos at Oberlin Conservatory of Music, USA.
Lucy is a longstanding member of the English Chamber Orchestra. Since 2018 she has been Principal Second Violin in the Orchestre Révolutionnaire et Romantique. She is a former member of the Royal Northern Sinfonia, the UK’s only full-time chamber orchestra.
She is the leader of the eclectic Ensemble Reza and the Gustav Holst Ensemble. She regularly freelances with the LSO, Britten Sinfonia and London Mozart Players. She loves giving concerts for ‘Bach to Baby’ and is also a founder member of the relaxed ‘Beer and Beethoven’ series at her local, Goodness Brewery.
She has guest-led the Brodsky Quartet with concerts in Rotterdam, Bologna and across the UK and toured with Alfred Brendel, playing Mozart piano quartets in concerts including Carnegie Hall New York and Musikverein Vienna.
She is a former winner of the London Philharmonic Orchestra’s ‘Young Soloist of the Year’ competition and was also chosen for the Countess of Munster and the National Federation of Music Societies’ artists’ recital schemes.
JUDITH BUSBRIDGE
viola
Judith Busbridge graduated in Music from Birmingham University and completed her viola studies with Thomas Riebl in Salzburg, where she was Solo Viola in the Camerata Academica under the directorship of Sándor Végh for five years. She has been Principal Viola with the London Mozart Players since 1998 and in September 2013 also joined the Orchestra of the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden as one of their Principal Violas. She has a busy schedule there playing for the opera season as well as for the Royal Ballet. As a former member of two multi-awardwinning chamber music ensembles, the Dante String Quartet and Ensemble 360, Judith has performed at major concert halls and festivals throughout the UK and Europe, regularly broadcasting on BBC Radio 3 and winning the prestigious Royal Philharmonic Society Award for Chamber Music both in 2007 and 2013. For the last 25 years she has been Principal Viola in the Orchestre Révolutionnaire et Romantique, which performs repertoire of nineteenth and early twentieth centuries on period instruments. Her varied freelance career includes frequent appearances on film and TV soundtracks and recently she featured on screen, performing a viola recital in the Harry Styles film, My Policeman. On Saturday 6th May 2023 she was one of three violists chosen to play in the orchestra of the Coronation Service for Their Majesties King Charles III and Queen Camilla. The instrument she is playing tonight is a Brothers Amati viola made in 1593, kindly on loan from Charles Beare.
© Sim Canetty-Clarke
CATHERINE RIMER
cello
Catherine Rimer is a versatile cellist and teacher who enjoys a busy freelance career, performing and recording with leading ensembles on both period and modern instruments.
Born and raised on Tyneside, she studied the cello at the RNCM, RAM and with Steven Isserlis at Prussia Cove and Steven Doane at the Eastman School where she was awarded the Graue Fellowship.
She has played with the Orchestre Révolutionnaire et Romantique since 1996 (as co-principal cello on numerous projects) and with English Baroque Soloists since the Bach Cantata Pilgrimage 2000 (including continuo cello for Bach’s John Passion, Handel’s Dixit Dominus and as principal cello on a European tour of Haydn and Mozart).
Other guest principal work includes the OAE, Cecilia Bartoli’s ‘Farinelli & Friends’ Gala, Dunedin Consort, English Concert, ENO, Les Siècles, The Sixteen and recordings with the SCO and Royal Northern Sinfonia.
As a chamber musician, she toured Europe and the USA with the Skampa Quartet and recorded two discs with the Florin Ensemble, with whom she commissioned a string trio, Itháka by the late Hugh Wood.
Catherine has taught at the Royal College of Music since 2003, coached continuo for the MCO, the Britten Pears School and at FEMUSC, Brazil and given masterclasses at the Eastman School and University of North Carolina. She was awarded the A.R.A.M. in 2009.
AXEL BOUCHAUX
double bass
Born in Normandy from a lineage of farmers and musicians, Axel Bouchaux completed his double bass studies at the Paris Conservatoire (CNSMDP) and at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama in London. During his years of apprenticeship he received the most valuable teaching from Frédéric Stochl, Thomas Martin and Evgueni Kolossov.
For 16 years he was a member of the London Symphony Orchestra, a position which allowed him to meet outstanding artists and which gave him the chance to be inspired by colleagues such as Rinat Ibragimov. Since 2000 he has been Principal Double Bass of the Orchestre des Champs-Élysées, an orchestra created by Philippe Herreweghe to perform classical and romantic music on original instruments.
His professional activities have always been shared between musical groups specialising in baroque, classical or contemporary music, and he has appeared throughout the years with Ensemble Modern, Frankfurt and the Ensemble Intercontemporain, and with groups such as Le Concert d’Astrée (Emmanuelle Haïm), Les Talens Lyriques (Christophe Rousset), Les Siècles, Insula Orchestra and many others.
Continuous new encounters with talented instrumentalists lead to new experiences, and he joined the Orchestre Révolutionnaire et Romantique for the first time in May 2024 during a complete Beethoven symphony series.
Still exploring the new repertoire written for his instrument, he is keen to expend it by transcribing music from Couperin to Berio, while learning to live in rural Burgundy.
MONTEVERDI CHOIR & ORCHESTRAS
Monteverdi Choir & Orchestras’ (MCO) mission is to bring fresh perspectives, immediacy and drama to historically inspired musical performances around the world. MCO is made up of three internationally-renowned ensembles that lead the field of period performance: the Monteverdi Choir, English Baroque Soloists and Orchestre Révolutionnaire et Romantique. Our world-class musicians specialise in a variety of repertoire ranging from sacred music and chamber works to semi-staged operas.
Following critically acclaimed European and US tours in 2023, performing Bach’s Mass in B minor, Handel’s pastoral ode L’Allegro, il Penseroso ed il Moderato, and Berlioz’s epic opera Les Troyens, the Monteverdi Choir was named ‘Best Choir’ at the Oper! Awards in January 2024.
The Monteverdi Choir, founded in 1964, celebrates its 60th anniversary in 2024. The 60th-anniversary season opened with a spectacular tour to Amsterdam’s Concertgebouw in February and March performing Brahms’s Ein Deutsches Requiem. Over three mesmerising concerts conducted by Associate Conductor Dinis Sousa, the Choir captivated audiences and critics, and the performances were met unanimously with 5-star reviews from the press, with Bachtrack calling them “truly one of the finest choirs of their time”.
Opposite: The Orchestre Révolutionnaire et Romantique performing at the Philharmonie de Paris in May 2024
The English Baroque Soloists (EBS) joined the Choir to perform Handel’s biblical oratorio Israel in Egypt in March and July 2024, conducted by Peter Whelan at St Martin-in-the-Fields, London, and on tour at the Palau de la Música, Barcelona, Philharmonie, Luxembourg, Chapelle Royale, Château de Versailles, Elbphilharmonie, Hamburg, and Haus für Mozart, Salzburg.
In May 2024 the Orchestre Révolutionnaire et Romantique (ORR), conducted by Dinis Sousa, performed Beethoven’s complete symphonies at St Martin-in-the-Fields in London, and a selection of his symphonies at the Philharmonie de Paris. The Monteverdi Choir joined the ORR for performances of Beethoven’s Mass in C major and Symphony No. 9. The ORR’s recordings of Beethoven’s symphonies have been described as a “tour de force… played at white heat”, “glorious” and “magnificent” by Gramophone magazine.
MCO records on its own label, Soli Deo Gloria and collaborates with prestigious labels including Deutsche Grammophon, with over 150 recordings, films, and live streams, many of which have received critical acclaim. Notable recordings include J.S. Bach’s complete set of Cantatas, as part of the Bach Cantata Pilgrimage project in 2000 and film recordings of Monteverdi’s three surviving operas, as part of the RPS award winning Monteverdi 450 project in 2017.
Alongside performances and recordings, MCO is committed to nurturing future generations of classical musicians. The Monteverdi Apprentice Programme enables outstanding young musicians to train and perform alongside MCO’s three world-class ensembles.
MONTEVERDI APPRENTICES PROGRAMME
The Monteverdi Apprentices Programme is a training scheme for young musicians that seeks to bridge the gap between higher education and a professional, freelance music career. By crafting supportive learning environments for talented young artists, providing rewarding performance opportunities alongside our ensembles, and exposing them to coaching from experts in a range of fields, the Monteverdi Choir and Orchestras aim to nurture the next generation of musical talent.
Over the course of their year-long programme, our Apprentices take part in workshops and masterclasses with a focus on historically inspired performance practices. Recently, these have been led by leading singers and vocal coaches including Jean-Paul Fouchécourt, Sophie Daneman, Mark Padmore, Matteo Dalle Fratte and Richard Stokes, as well as MCO’s Librarian & Artistic Advisor James Halliday and our Associate Conductor, Dinis Sousa.
By the end of each Apprenticeship, we expect to have equipped these young musicians with the skills and experience needed to thrive in their careers, and to work as professionals with the Monteverdi Choir and Orchestras and other similar organisations worldwide. Now in its sixteenth year, the Programme has over 100 alumni, and many former Apprentices still perform regularly with the Monteverdi ensembles.
Each Apprentice is also matched with an experienced member of the MCO, who serves as a mentor, offering personalised artistic and practical support throughout their Apprenticeship. The mentorships provide the Apprentices with invaluable guidance, from navigating project preparation to helping Apprentices integrate into the wider ensemble, whilst also supporting individual growth and development.
The Monteverdi Apprentices are also given the opportunity to perform with our world-class ensembles, and join the Monteverdi Choir and Orchestras for concerts both in the UK and overseas. Our 2023-24 cohort of 10 vocal Apprentices joined the Monteverdi Choir for their spectacular tour of Bach’s Mass in B minor (April 2023), the landmark European tour of Berlioz’s Les Troyens which conquered Festival Berlioz, Salzburg, Versailles, Berlin and the BBC Proms
(August-September 2023), and our critically acclaimed performances of Brahms’s Ein deutsches Requiem with the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra in Amsterdam (February 2024).
FUTURE MONTEVERDI APPRENTICES
Planning for our next year of the Apprenticeship Programme is underway, and we expect to welcome our new group of Apprentices in 2025. Building on the success of previous years, we are designing another enriching programme, filled with learning opportunities to challenge and inspire our next cohort of young artistic talent.
Applications will open in the coming months, with auditions taking place in 2025. More details about the application process and the content of the upcoming Apprenticeship Programme will be available on our website in due course.
The apprenticeship has exposed to me to a level of music making I have never experienced before and continues to inspire me.”
– Joseph Taylor, Monteverdi Apprentice 2023-24
Monteverdi Apprentices rehearsing at The Warehouse in London
SUPPORT THE MONTEVERDI ENSEMBLES
Monteverdi Choir & Orchestras’ (MCO) mission is to bring fresh perspectives, immediacy and drama to historically inspired musical performances around the world. MCO is made up of three internationally-renowned ensembles that lead the field of period performance: the Monteverdi Choir, English Baroque Soloists and Orchestre Révolutionnaire et Romantique. Performing regularly in London concert venues, as well as touring worldwide, MCO is in its 60th year of delivering outstanding performances and recordings to global critical acclaim.
As a registered charity with no public subsidy, the Monteverdi Choir and Orchestras rely on the generosity of our supporters to continue planning our ambitious, historically-inspired artistic programme. This support allows us to deliver projects without compromising on artistic quality or integrity, to share our concerts with music lovers around the world through top-quality film and audio content, and helps us to nurture and develop the next generation of musical talent.
© Paul Marc Mitchell
WAYS YOU CAN SUPPORT US
JOIN OUR MEMBERSHIP SCHEME
Our membership scheme starts from £250 per year. Members enjoy a range of benefits including a personalised priority booking service for all our concerts, monthly newsletters, and invitations to post-concert receptions. At higher levels, additional benefits include invitations to exclusive open rehearsals and backstage access after our performances.
BECOME A BENEFACTOR
By supporting our charity at this highest level, you will contribute substantially towards our landmark projects, allow us to perform regularly in our London home at St Martin-inthe-Fields, and share our music globally via our filmed concerts.
BECOME A CORPORATE SPONSOR
We can offer creative and collaborative sponsorship packages that enable you to align your business with our work. There are opportunities to sponsor individual performances, or an entire season of concerts at our London home, St Martin-in-the-Fields.
LEAVE A LEGACY
By choosing to leave a Legacy Gift to the Monteverdi Choir & Orchestras, you will play a crucial role in ensuring that the performers and listeners of the future will continue to be enthralled by the power of our music-making.
JOIN OUR AMERICAN FRIENDS
Our American Friends play a valuable part in supporting and championing the work of the Monteverdi ensembles both in the US and beyond. The American Friends of the Monteverdi Choir & Orchestras, Inc is a registered 501(c)(3) organisation and donations to it are tax-deductible for US taxpayers to the extent allowed by law. EIN:31-1651106.
CONTACT US
If you have any questions about supporting MCO please get in touch. On our website, you will find the facility to make a donation (which we warmly welcome at any level), purchase one of our memberships, or treat a friend via a Gift Membership. If you would like to discuss becoming a Benefactor, or how your organisation could partner with us, please contact us to arrange a discussion with our General Director.
development@monteverdi.org.uk www.monteverdi.co.uk/support-us
MONTEVERDI SUPPORTERS
The Monteverdi Choir & Orchestras gratefully acknowledges the generous support of the following individuals, organisations and Trusts & Foundations:
PATRON
HM The King
PRESIDENT
Carol Grigor
PRINCIPAL FUNDER
Dunard Fund
BENEFACTORS
Michael Beverley
David & Sandra Brierwood
Christian & Myrto Rochat
Sir David & Lady Walker
MEMBERSHIP SCHEME
PLATINUM
David Best
Lord & Lady Burns
Morny Davison
Lord & Lady Deben
Sir Vernon Ellis
Lady Virginia Fraser
Andrey Kidel
William Lock
Sebastian & Flora Lyon
Francis Norton
Yoshi Onodera
Helen & John Skinner
Clare Woodman CBE
GOLD
Sir Stephen Gomersall
Gordon Gullan
Stephen & Victoria Swift
SILVER
Julia & Martin Albrecht
Geoffrey Barnett
Donald & Corrine Brydon
Rosemary Chadder
Peter & Stephanie Chapman
Sarah & Mike Cuthbert
Yi-Peng Li
Lady Nixon
Mollie Norwich
Nicholas & Christylle Phillips
Professor Richard Portes CBE FBA
Anthony C. Shoults
Professor John Smyth
BRONZE
Tania Bader
Donald D. Campbell
Vanessa Claypole
Dr Carol Cobb
Steve Edge
Jonathan Edwards
Lady Egremont
Nigel Gibson
Jenny Hill
Robert Moreland
Mary Pinnell
Daan Posthuma
Meghan Purvis
Anne Reyersbach
Thomas Richter
Dr Paul A. Sackin
Steven & Olivia Schaefer
Christopher J. H. Thornhill
Jenny & John Wiggins
CORPORATE PARTNERS
Morgan Stanley
TRUSTS & FOUNDATIONS
Dunard Fund
King Charles III Charitable Fund
Garfield Weston Foundation
Mrs F B Laurence’s Charitable Trust
The Thistle Trust
IN MEMORIAM
Roger Chadder
Peter J. Chapman
Ian Hay Davison CBE
Sir Henry Keswick
Judith McCartin Scheide
Nicholas Snowman OBE
LEGACIES
The Estate of Donald Gorman
The Estate of Howard Hodgkin
The Estate of Kevin Lavery
AMERICAN FRIENDS
The Negaunee Foundation
William Dudley
Neil Graham
David Kay
Seth Levi
Jai Shekhawat
Rory Walck
With grateful thanks to those who wish to remain anonymous and to the other individuals who give regular donations in support of our work.
MCO TEAM
Dr Rosa Solinas
General Director
Martin Wheeler
Finance & Administration Manager
James Halliday
Artistic Advisor & Librarian
Emily Parker
Artistic Operations Manager
Andrew Softley
Artistic Projects & Choir Manager
Matthew Knight Partnerships & Communications Manager
David Kay Philanthropy Manager
Emily Denton Tours & Concerts Assistant
Freya Firth-Robson
Development Coordinator
Philip Turbett Orchestra Fixer
Matthew Muller
Stage Manager
Premier Comms PR & media relations
MCO BOARD OF DIRECTORS
Sir David Walker (Chairman)
Christian Rochat (Deputy Chairman)
David Best
Lady Deben
Virginia Fraser
Sir Stephen Gomersall
Andrey Kidel
Francis Norton
MONTEVERDI CHOIR & ORCHESTRAS
Level 12, 20 Bank Street, Canary Wharf, London E14 4AD, UK info@monteverdi.org.uk
Registered in England & Wales Company No. 01277513 Charity No. 272279
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