Tim Mead

AAM: Messiah

~ Andrew Benson-Wilson

Handel: Messiah
Academy of Ancient Music, Laurence Cummings
The Barbican, 17 December 2024

Handel’s Messiah is a curious piece. Usually ritualistically churned out at Christmas and Easter, it was first performed at Easter in Dublin in 1742 after a mere 24 days of composition (a speed not unusual in Handel’s opera compositions), the autograph score bearing witness to the compositional haste. It went through several revisions in the following years, generally to suit the available forces for each performance. The score wasn’t published until eight years after Handel’s death. The version used for this Barbican performance from the Academy of Ancient Music stems from the early 1750s. The rather obtuse libretto was put together by the wealthy landowner, Charles Jennens, from the King James Bible and Psalms from the Book of Common Prayer, seemingly in support of his staunch Anglican leanings. The text is not easy to follow, let alone understand, but Handel composed with apparent relish, making no change to the texts to suit his musical ideas.

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Academy of Ancient Music. St Matthew Passion

~ Andrew Benson-Wilson

St Matthew Passion
Academy of Ancient Music, Laurence Cummings
The Barbican, 29 March 2024


The Academy of Ancient Music (an Associate Ensemble at the Barbican Centre) is celebrating the 50th anniversary of its foundation by Christopher Hogwood. At a time when practically everybody else was concentrating on the St John Passion, in its anniversary year, they promoted a special performance of the Matthew Passion in the Barbican Hall, directed by their Music Director, Laurence Cummings. What was special about it was that they took the music back to its Leipzig roots, with a small orchestra (or, to be exact, two small orchestras) and a choir of just 8 (4+4) singers, all of whom contributed solos (of various importance), including, in Choir 1, the key roles of the Evangelist and Christus and the multi-character bass in Choir 2.

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Rodelinda

~ Andrew Benson-Wilson ~ Leave a comment

Handel: Rodelinda
English National Opera
The Coliseum. 26 October 2017

I avoid checking back on my past reviews before going to an opera revival, but will sometimes do so after the event to see if my views have changed. In the case of this revival of Richard Jones’ production of Handel’s Rodelinda, they haven’t. A very popular production at the time, and gaining enthusiastic applause from the opening night of the revival, this left me less than inspired, with a few specific exceptions.

To start with the positive exceptions, I cannot praise the ENO orchestra high enough for their absorption of period style in recent years, despite remaining a modern instrument band. It has been a long road, aided by the influence of a series of inspirational conductors, the most recent being the excellent Christian Curnyn (who also conducted the first run in 2014). He is the current ENO go-to conductor for Handel, succeeding Laurence Cummings who did so much to start the ENO period performance revival. The orchestra played with stylistic conviction, and Christian Curnyn continued to confirm his reputation as a leading interpreter of Handel – his control of the pacing was exemplary. Continue reading →

Spitalfields Music: Shakespeare in Love

~ Andrew Benson-Wilson ~ Leave a comment

Spitalfields Music: Shakespeare in Love
The English Concert, Harry Bicket, Mary Bevan, Tim Mead
Shorditch Church, 7 December 2016

St Leonard's, Shoreditch.jpgThe Spitalfields Music Winter Festival is one of the highlights of the London musical calendar, sensibly positioned in early December just before the Christmas musical silliness takes hold. Founded in 1976, initially to raise interest and money for the restoration of the fabulous Nicholas Hawksmoor Christ Church Spitalfields, Spitalfields Music has grown to became a major arts and community organisation working throughout the year in the East End of London. It’s 40th year included 15 new commissions, programming more than 65 performances across East London, enabling some 5000 local people to take part in free musical activities, and working with communities ranging from 1500 local school children to care home residents. The week-long festival ranged from contemporary jazz, a Bollywood show with ‘a tuba the size of Belgium’, a show for toddlers, musical dinners in a hidden Masonic Temple together with the usual array of top-notch classical music events, with the usual focus on early and contemporary music.

I missed the first few days (including Gothic Voices in the Tower of London, The Sixteen, Melvyn Tan, and a dance and music theatre show. So for me, the festival started with The English Concert’s tribute to the music inspired by Shakespeare in his own anniversary year. A cleverly designed programme focused on Purcell’s Fairy Queen and Handel’s Guilio Cesare in the two halves, and featured soprano Mary Bevan and Countertenor Tim Mead, two of the finest singers around.  Continue reading →

BBC Prom 63: Bach B minor Mass

~ Andrew Benson-Wilson ~ Leave a comment

BBC Prom 63: Bach B minor Mass
Les Arts Florissants, William Christie
Royal Albert Hall, 1 September 2016

However many times I hear Bach’s B minor Mass, I never stopped being amazed at its compositional history. Almost certainly never heard during his lifetime, and with many of the sections lifted from earlier compositions, it was cobbled together over many years, the first part with the aim of securing a royal appointment in the Saxony Court. Despite all that it is one of the most, and arguably, the most extraordinary piece of music ever composed.   So it was no surprise that more than 5,00o people wanted to hear its performance at the BBC Proms in the Albert Hall.

And therein lay the problem. How to perform a work, intended to be performed in an (albeit sizeable) church by the normal Baroque orchestral and choral forces, in a vast auditorium designed (if indeed it was designed for anything) for enormous forces. Nowadays most period instrument groups makes few concessions to the space and acoustics, and play the music in the way they normally do. This is what William Christie did, with a 24-strong choir and a typical Bach orchestra. This will not produce a sound to fill the hall. But it will produce a sound that Bach might recognise. And for me, that is the key thing. Prommers are, by and large, pretty intelligent people, so should be used to letting their ears adjust to the relatively subdued volume. Continue reading →