Month: February 2015

Meeting

The last meeting of the Society was on Monday, March 2nd.  We were pleased to welcome a speaker from EM Records, based locally at Blandford Forum, which is the recording arm of the English Music Festival and fulfils the EMF’s aims of celebrating and preserving overlooked works by British composers throughout the centuries.  It has a strong focus on the early twentieth century: the Golden Renaissance of English music. EM Records resolves to bring this glorious music to a world-wide audience. In keeping with the unique spirit of the Festival, each disc released by EM Records will contain at least one World Première recording. 

As well as learning some of what is involved in preparing, recording and producing CDs of the highest quality, we also gained an insight into the issues raised when unearthing and interpreting previously unpublished manuscripts.  Recordings of better known English composers like Vaughan Williams, Holst and Stanford were interspersed with some lovely recordings of works by lesser known lights such as David Owen Morris and Henry Walford Davies, the latter being the composer of the instantly recognisable RAF March past.

This is the second time the Society has gone behind the scenes, so to speak, and heard about the process of recording a CD.

See also English Music Festival

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Telemann

Telemann was a prolific composer and probably composed more music than any other – over three thousand works are known including 1043 cantatas.  He was a contemporary of JS Bach and to Handel and was probably better known than either in his lifetime.   However, he is less well known now and the fame of his contemporaries has eclipsed him.  There is much to admire and the Society’s presentation by Angus Menzies on 16 February introduced us to the range of his output.

Telemann
Telemann

George Philipp Telemann was born in 1681 at Magdebourg in Germany and was clearly a child prodigy being able to play four instruments by the age of 10.  His parents wanted him to go into the church and he did indeed start studies in this direction but gave them up after a year.  He studied at Leipzig and at 21 became the musical director of the opera there.  There were subsequent appointments in Zary, Frankfurt and finally in Hamburg.  His first wife died young and his second left him for a Swedish nobleman.

Angus played a range of music from some of his earliest compositions up until his death in Hamburg.  Pieces included Concerto in G major for recorder; oboe and violin; Overture in D major from Jubeloratorium; a scene from Orpheus, and the curious Volker overture Turcs; Suisses and Muscovites.  He wrote nine operas.

telemann scoreHe titled his talk: Geese, frogs and old pepper sacks.  The frogs referred to sounds included in one of his early works – a violin concerto; the opera house was once in the goose market (much like Covent Garden used to be adjacent to the market) and pepper sacks was how prosperous members of the Academy were referred no doubt because of their girth.

It was interesting hearing echoes of Handel in some of the pieces with whom he exchanged bulbs as they were both keen on this activity.  Handel borrowed much from Telemann.  Telemann was godfather to CPE Bach.

He was ‘an amazing, varied and fascinating composer’ Angus said.  Although far from unknown he has been overshadowed certainly by Bach and to an extent Handel but nevertheless, he composed much that can be admired.  Part of the entry in Groves says: Telemann’s music is easily recognisable as his own, with its clear periodic structure, its clarity and ready fluency.  Though four years senior to Bach and Handel, he used an idiom more forward looking than theirs and in several genres can be seen as a forerunner of the Classical style.‘

An enjoyable evening and we were pleased to welcome some more new members.

New Season gets underway

Frida cropped
Frida Backman

The Society’s new season got off to a flying start on Monday night with a presentation by Frida Backman of the Backman Trio.  The substance of her talk was the making of a music CD which rather underplays what might have been a rather workmanlike presentation.  However, it was much more than that.  Frida had uncovered a previously unpublished work by Sibelius no less, which they had managed to piece together and perform as part of their first CD.

Frida won’t be unknown to local music lovers and only last Friday, she performed with Salisbury based pianist Lynda Smith in Sarum College as part of their lunch time series of concerts.  The Trio was founded in 2009 in London by British pianist Marcus Andrews, Finnish violinist Freda Backman and British cellist, Ruth Beedham.  In 2014 they returned to Finland and performed at the Aino Atke festival in Helsinki as part of the CD launch.  With financial support from the Swedish Cultural Foundation in Finland, the group was able to resurrect the composer Eric Bergman’s piano Trio No 2 of which we heard an extract.  Bergman (1911 – 2006) is another of those composers of whom little is heard today but he has a large repertoire of work.

Backman Trio
Backman Trio

Frida went through the lengthy process of making a CD and included a discussion of the differences between a live and studio performance. With the former of course, there is only one chance and the tension is high to get it right.  A studio performance on the other hand involves many hours of takes and retakes and keeping the performance fresh can be difficult to achieve.  Unless one is lucky to have a recording contract, there are the costs to consider and then how to launch and promote the finished thing.

The evening ended with a performance of a previously unknown work by Sibelius – Fantasia, performed by the group.  It was remarkably accessible and the recording was – in the opinion of the writer – clear, well balanced and bright.  It is available from the Collectors Room in Salisbury UK.

A most enjoyable and informative evening.