Our local mezzo Sarah Connolly has just released a new CD on the Signum label entitled A Walk with Ivor Gurney, in collaboration with Tenebrae and the Aurora Orchestra - there's an interview with Sarah on the Presto Classical website:

"Gurney and his contemporaries are the focus of a new album that sees award-winning choir Tenebrae join forces with the Aurora Orchestra and mezzo Dame Sarah Connolly; I spoke to Dame Sarah about the fascinating mix of elegiac works on this album, and about Gurney's unique place within the history of English music in the twentieth century.The thread is Ivor Gurney, his music and influence on those around him during his lifetime and now. Ralph Vaughan Williams was his professor of composition at the Royal College of Music, but he also became a good friend. Throughout Gurney’s lengthy confinement in the City of London Mental Hospital, Dartford, Vaughan Williams was one of a handful of people who consistently visited him. Several times Gurney escaped and ran to Vaughan Williams's house deeply distraught; with a heavy heart, Vaughan Williams returned him the next day. I often wonder what today’s treatment of Gurney’s bipolar disorder would be; his only wish was to be in the Cotswolds, walking day and night, and because this was disallowed, he decided never to go outside again. I find that desperately sad. The disc was made to capture some of the music performed at the Gloucester Cathedral Ivor Gurney window fundraising evening concert in August 2013 organised by myself." 

Of particular interest to us here in Elgar country - Classical Music magazine reports that two lost works by Elgar – plus two forgotten arrangements – have been recorded by the BBC Concert Orchestra, under the baton of David Lloyd-Jones, who discovered the pieces while editing the Elgar Complete Edition’s volume of Elgar’s Short Orchestral Works.

​Air de Ballet and Introduction to the Gavotte were reconstructed from parts discovered in the Elgar Birthplace archive.

One of the arrangements is a version of the beautiful song Pleading for violin and orchestra, which together with the Canto Popolare from In the South, for chamber orchestra was published during Elgar’s lifetime, but remain virtually unknown.

Read more here

We have an excellent ambassador for the arts in Nicholas Serota, now chair of Arts Council England.  Read his article from London's Evening Standard

"The arts can change our lives for the better, and it can happen in an instant...Figures show that in 2015 the contribution to the economy of the arts and culture grew by 10.4 per cent to £11.8 billion, five times the growth rate of the UK economy as a whole. The Government is making £5 in taxes for every £1 it puts into the sector. 

At present, London is our powerhouse, offering 45 per cent of jobs in the sector. From film companies and theatres in the West End to the Whitechapel Gallery and young designers in east London, London is a vast “creative cluster” of cultural organisations and creative industries....Imagine if London’s model could be replicated nationally. We need to build “creative clusters”, large and small, as generators for new talent and business, across the UK. Public investment in art and culture came as a response to the people’s appetite for the arts during the war; it has gone on to be one of the great legacies of that era...With more resources we could reach more places that still lack basic cultural experience and opportunity. That would be a fantastic investment in all our futures."

I frequently enjoy the writings of artist Norman Perryman, and this one, entitled Serendipity (always a favourite word) has particular local interest.

Čiurlionis was an Lithuanian ​artist who was also a prodigious musician, poet, philosopher, activist and much more

Mirga Gražinytė-Tyla will be conducting a performance in 2018 of his symphonic poem The Sea (Jüra).

The need for more silence in our lives was the theme of The Daily Telegraph's Weekend front page article by Olivia Parker on Saturday, inspired by a new film In Pursuit of Silence - "We're so used to ubiquitous sound that even a couple of minutes of quiet feels unnatural.  To spell this out, director Patrick Shen deliberately opened his film with near-silence: four minutes and 33 seconds of it, to be precise, in honour of John Cage's experimental composition 4' 33'' in which performers sit in silence for that length of time."

But pianist Stephen Hough, in his interview for BBC Radio 4's Desert Island Discs broadcast on Sunday morning, told Kirsty Young, when asked about his favourite places to perform spoke about the particular quality of silence in the Royal Albert Hall, with thousands of people waiting to hear him play - let's open our ears, Cage is saying, and we discover it's not silence at all.

An article in International Arts Manager reminds us that "Creative arts are crucial for those with Alzheimer’s"  - "An Alzheimer’s or dementia diagnosis can often lead to a person becoming cut off from the things they used to enjoy, including creative outlets. But that shouldn’t be the case", writes Emma Bould, programme manager for Dementia Friendly Communities. 

Read more here.

The Alzheimer's Society also runs the Singing for the Brain project - and there's a local charity, Mindsong, which takes music therapists and singing groups into care homes around the Gloucesteshire area.  If you'd like to know more about volunteering for Mindsong please do get in touch with them.

You will receive training, and then be allocated to a group running a fortnightly hour-long singing session in a care home near you.  It's fun, rewarding and very worthwhile.

Thanks to a fellow singer I've recently heard about BISYOC - Bedstone International Summer Youth Orchestra Camp (named after the place in England where the first exchange was held): "Our annual Youth Exchange project, part-funded by the European Union's Erasmus Plus Programme, is based on a unique approach to combining cultural exchange with music-making of a high standard."

They're currently working at Moor Park School near Ludlow and have two concerts coming up this weekend - please do support them if you can!  I'm told that ticket will be available on the door.

BISYOC Symphony Orchestra and Choir - LudlowSaturday 13th August 2016 at 19:30 | St Laurence's Church, LudlowAn international youth orchestra of 90 players combined with a local choir of 60 singers:
Camille Saint-Saëns Symphony No. 3 “Organ Symphony"
Eric Whitacre The Seal Lullaby
José Pablo Moncayo Huapango
Eric Whitacre Equus (For Symphony Orchestra and Choir)
Conductor Julian Gibbons

Online Ticket Booking: WeGotTickets
Ticket Price: £12.50
Sun 14th Aug
19:30BISYOC Symphony Orchestra and Choir - Leominster Sunday 14th August 2016 at 19:30 | Leominster PrioryAn international youth orchestra of 90 players combined with a local choir of 60 singers:
Camille Saint-Saëns Symphony No. 3 “Organ Symphony"
Eric Whitacre The Seal Lullaby
José Pablo Moncayo Huapango
Eric Whitacre Equus (For Symphony Orchestra and Choir)
ConductorJulian Gibbons
Online Ticket Booking: WeGotTickets
Ticket Price: £12.50

There's a lot of discussion over when to clap in a classical music concert, and people sometimes worry that they'll get it wrong.  Should I clap after a particularly impressive performance in the middle of a concerto or string quartet?

Recently I was at the Everyman in Cheltenham for the English Touring Opera production of Donizetti's Pia de' Tolomei (a fantastic show, well worth catching by the way).  And I was slightly taken by surprise - PEOPLE CLAPPED IN THE MIDDLE!!  Just after a showy aria, when the singers were obviously ready to carry on with the story, the whole thing was interrupted by applause.  

So why can't we do this at concerts??

 
BBC Radio 4 is looking for people who have had significant experiences in their life in which Mozart’s Requiem has played a central part, for a radio documentary. It’s part of a series called ‘Soul Music’ which features people’s emotional or personal stories to do with a piece of music. It could be to do with recalling a particularly important time in their life, or major events, even deeply personal things like marriage, birth and death. Or to recount a remarkable time when this music was played, in concert or radio or CD, and the impact it had on their life. Previous editions of the programme are here: http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b03lpfww
 
The producer Melvin Rickarby would be very happy to have a chat with people who might have a story to tell. People are welcome to forward this on to friends and family, if they know of someone who might have a story.
 
They can contact Melvin on 07715 038 511 or email melvin.rickarby@bbc.co.uk

Dave Todd from the Cheltenham Symphony Orchestra recently sent me a link to a review of the orchestra's last concert by the Bard of Tysoe - this local band really impressed him; he begins his piece "last night’s (again) dazzling performance by the ever-sublime and -sensational Cheltenham Symphony Orchestra, conducted by the deeply thoughtful and passionate David Curtis. (I know, after their barnstorming – or, more accurately, Town Hall-storming – rendition of the Fifth, I should not really have been so taken aback: but they are so cohesive, subtle, technically and emotionally gifted, that it is impossible to think of them in any way as “not a full-time professional ensemble”.)

Their next concert is on 12 March, with a fiery Russian programme:
Stravinsky: Firebird Suite, 1919 version
Prokofiev: Piano concerto no. 2 in G minor Op. 16 (soloist Anna Shelest)
Tchaikovsky: Symphony No. 2 in C minor (Little Russian) Op.18