It is very good to see the Colosseum looking like a proper concert hall again, and the Watford Philharmonic back in a suitable setting. The large audience appreciated the easy knack with which conductor Terry Edwards introduced each item.

I was glad to find that I was not alone in not understanding John Milton’s poem set to music by Parry as Blest Pair of Sirens. Never mind the meaning, the sound was splendid and the choir gave their all.

The orchestra, led by Rebecca Boyle, came into their own in Beethoven’s Emperor Concerto. A full, rich sound, moving along at a brisk pace, complemented the bright tone and energetic pace of soloist Wing Yun Wu, one of the many brilliant young Chinese musicians transforming classical music. The sound produced from the magnificent Fazioli and the pianist’s artistry dominated the hall. Audience and fellow musicians were equally delighted.

Mozart’s Great Mass completed the programme, with solos for the two sopranos, Ann de Renais and Ida Falk Winland. Additionally, Andrew O’Connor, tenor, and Christopher Keyte, bass, completed the line-up.
An evening of splendid music.

by Julian Taylor

Wing Yun Wu (Piano)

Wing Yun Wu came to England from Hong Kong after being awarded a scholarship to study at the Royal Academy of Music, where she pursued her studies with Vivian Langrish, Gordon Green, Philip Fowke and Christopher Elton.

During her studies there she gained numerous prizes and awards both as a soloist and as a chamber music player. She won the Dudley National competition as well as the Hong Kong Young Musician of the Year Award. She was also a prize winner at the Royal Overseas League Competition. 

Wing Yun often performs as concerto soloist with orchestras and has appeared with, among others, the Croydon Symphony Orchestra, the Chiltern Sinfonia, the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra and the Hong Kong Philharmonic Orchestra. 

She has given recitals for Hong Kong Radio and Television as well as appearing at the Purcell Room, the Fairfield Hall and the Wigmore Hall. At the moment she enjoys a busy schedule of solo playing and accompanying and also chamber music playing. 

Ann de Renais (Soprano)

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Belgian Soprano Ann De Renais began her international career as 1st soprano of the 8-part vocal ensemble, The Swingle Singers, with whom she gave many a cappella performances around the world, as well as contemporary operas at La Scala, Milan and Le Châtelet, Paris. She also features on several recordings of well-loved Swingle favourites.

Opera credits include Mozart’s Queen of the Night, Handel’s Cleopatra for the English National Opera Bayliss Programme, Nannetta (Falstaff) for Opus Gattières in France, the Fire and the Nightingale (L’Enfant et les Sortilèges) for New Tel Aviv Opera in Israel and Susanna (Marriage of Figaro) for Beaufort Opera in London. 

Her concert repertoire covers a wide variety of styles, ranging from oratorio to song recitals, film scores and contemporary music.

Among her most recent performances may be listed Brahms’ German Requiem in Belgium and Holland, Mozart C Minor Mass in the Lavenham Festival, Berio Sinfonia with London Voices and the Berliner Philharmoniker in Berlin, Orff’s Carmina Burana in London, Tippett’s A Child of our Time and Faure’s Requiem in Belgium as well as song recitals at La Monnaie Opera House and at the Belgian Embassy in Berlin. She has been touring extensively as soprano soloist in the Lord of the Rings Symphony by Howard Shore.

Future projects include soprano solo in Brahms’ German Requiem with the Flemish Radio Orchestra and Radio Choir in Antwerp, concerts of Flemish and German song repertoire with the Pannon Philharmonic Orchestra, Hungary, chamber music recitals with the , various recitals with the Andromeda Ensemble in the UK and contemporary chamber music concerts with the Spectra Ensemble in Europe. 

Ida Falk Winland (Soprano)

Ida Falk Winland was born into a family of musicians in Sweden in 1982. In 2002 she won a scholarship to the Royal College of Music and is currently studying with Lillian Watson at the Benjamin Britten International Opera School at the RCM.

Although still a student, Ida is already an active performer in England and Europe, appearing recently as soloist in Bach’s B Minor Mass under Peter Schreier at St John’s Smith Square, St John Passion with London Mozart Players at St Paul’s Cathedral, Mass in A Major at the RCM Concert Hall and the world premiere of Christopher Mayo’s Breakfast for Barbarians, conducted by Neil Thompson.

Ida made her operatic debut in 2005 at the Vadstena Summer Opera in the role of Princess Creusa in Demofoonte by F. Mancini with D. Sarro and F. Leo. Other roles include Dido in Purcell’s Dido and Aeneas, La Virtue and Damigella in Monteverdi’s L’Incoronazione di Poppea and roles in Ravel’s L’Enfant et les Sortilèges.

Recent engagements include a four week Asian tour with Okko Kamu and the Asian Youth Symphony Orchestra, performing Mozart concert arias and Mahler’s 4th Symphony. She was the cover singer for Faure’s La Fête Etrange at the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, has broadcast with the Gothenburg Symphony Orchestra and performed in Handel and Mozart oratorios at St Martin in the Fields and St John’s Smith Square. Future engagements include a number of concerts in Scandinavia and the role of Euridice in Monteverdi’s Orfeo for Drottningholm Opera Company.

Ida has won numerous vocal competitions and scholarships and is among the 25 singers selected worldwide to take part in the BBC Cardiff Singer of the World 2007, where she will be representing Sweden.

Andrew O’Connor (Tenor)

Born in 1977, Andrew O’Connor received his Bachelor of Music degree from the Guildhall School of Music and Drama studying with Robert Dean, with whom he continues to study privately. Whilst there he worked with Sarah Walker, Sir Colin Davis and William Christie as well as receiving coaching from Robin Bowman, Linhe Robertson and Emanuele Morris.

Andrew is a diverse performer and has sung throughout England and Europe, as well as overseas in America, Japan, Australia and New Zealand, in works ranging from Baroque to contemporary. Additionally, he has experience in oratorio, operetta, Gala and corporate engagements, singing at venues such as St John Smith’s Square, the Barbican and the Royal Albert Hall. Andrew has also recorded with the London Voices under Terry Edwards.

He has performed with London City Opera, Opera Holland Park, the Carl Rosa Opera, Musicall Compass, Glyndebourne Festival Opera, Grange Park Opera, Raymond Gubbay Productions and, most recently, the Royal Opera House in La Boheme and Il Trovatore.

Roles include Sailor in Dido & Aeneas, Orpheus in Orpheus in the Underworld, Dancairo in Carmen, Yamadori in Madama Butterfly and Jack “Kid” Berg in Whitechapel Whirlwind at the Bloomsbury Theatre, London.

Andrew has worked extensively with the composer and conductor Ronald Corp with the London Choral Society and the New London Collegium. The song ‘Darest Thou Now O Soul’ composed by Ronald was especially written for Andrew.

In the summer Andrew will sing First Armed Man in Grange Park Opera’s Production of The Magic Flute and Rash Gambler in The Gambler by Prokoviev.

Christopher Keyte (Bass)

Christopher started his career as a Choral Scholar at Kings College Cambridge. He was a founder member of the Purcell Consort of Voices, with whom he made many recordings, and more recently a member of the male voice solo ensemble Pro Cantione Antiqua, with whom he has toured all over Europe and Japan.

A highlight of his career has been with Fires of London, the ensemble dedicated to performance of the music theatre works of Sir Peter Maxwell Davies. He has sung the leading roles in The Martydom of St Magnus, The Lighthouse, Le Jongleur de Notre Dame and The No. 11 Bus. Other contemporary composers who have written works for him include Betty Roe and John Rutter and he was soloist in the highly acclaimed first performance of Paul Patterson’s Mass of the Sea, a role he subsequently recorded with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra.

Christopher has performed in virtually every cathedral and major concert hall in Britain and has appeared on radio and television many times. He has given master classes in many countries and was appointed Professor of Singing at the Royal Academy of Music in 1983.

He has made over fifty solo records, mainly of the baroque and classical repertoire. He has worked extensively with the choirs of Kings and St John’s Colleges, Cambridge and with conductors such as Sir Charles Mackerras, Raymond Leppard and Jurgen Jurgens. His latest recording is of The Lighthouse with the composer , Sir Peter Maxwell Davies, conducting.

Christopher, together with his wife June, has been much involved in bringing music to children, both through the BBC Schools radio programmes, performances of works with children’s choirs and giving presentations to school music departments. 

Blest Pair of Sirens 

This work was dedicated to C. V. Stanford and the members of the Bach Choir, who gave its first performance in 1887. Its success established Parry as the leading English choral composer of his day. Sadly his music is much neglected today.

The text is Milton’s poem ‘At a Solemn Music’. Milton, as it happens, was the son of a composer and presumably had plenty of musical experience. To match the words the music is written in a suitably grand style, mostly in eight parts for the choir. However “That we on earth” can manage only four parts and “disproportioned sin” jars the music temporarily into 3/4 time. But at the prospect of being reunited to “His celestial concert” the music blossoms again into eight parts and builds to a radiant climax.

LUDWIG VAN BEETHOVEN (1770 – 1827)

Piano Concerto No. 5 in E flat, Op. 73 (‘Emperor’) 

This was Beethoven’s last piano concerto and the only one for which he did not give the first performance, possibly because of his increasing deafness, though he was still playing in public at this stage. It was written in 1809, a year which saw Austria fiercely at war with Napoleon’s France and Vienna suffering siege and bombardment. We know that at one stage Beethoven was reduced to hiding in a cellar with pillows tied over his ears. This may account in part for the somewhat military feel of the first movement. The title ‘Emperor’ was not Beethoven’s and he certainly would not have approved of it, but there is a certain appropriateness, particularly to the ‘imperious’ opening. The concerto is, incidentally, in the same key and often in the same mood as the ‘Eroica’ symphony. It was dedicated, as were many of Beethoven’s compositions, to one of his most faithful patrons, the Archduke Rudolph.

The piano is prominent from the start; there is no long wait while the orchestra introduces all the material. Another unconventional feature is the cadenza to the first movement. This starts in the normal way but is fully written out and is much more of an extended coda than just an opportunity for the soloist to show off. The slow movement is a great contrast, muted violins and no brass or timpani. It is in the key of B major, remote from, though hinted, at in the first movement. The last movement is a lively 6/8 rondo.

W. A. MOZART (1756 – 1791)

Mass in C Minor, K 427 

Mozart was a thoroughly practical composer and hardly ever wrote music that was not requested (and preferably paid for) by someone or needed by himself. It is not surprising therefore that this mass was almost his last piece of church music except for the mysteriously commissioned ‘Requiem’. Mozart had abruptly left the service of the Archbishop of Salzburg and settled in Vienna where there was little scope for elaborate church music owing to the rather puritanical edicts of the Emperor.

The composition of this mass was, however, bound up with family matters. Much to the disapproval of his father, Mozart had recently married Constanze Weber and had just become a father himself. In ways that are not quite clear the composition of the mass was intended either as a thank-offering for Constanze’s recovery from an illness, or for the successful marriage, or as a peace-offering to the family at Salzburg. In the summer of 1783 the young couple came to visit Salzburg. The mass was only half finished, but was scheduled for performance at one of the big churches there, though not at the cathedral where Mozart was now ‘persona non grata’. In any case the Archbishop would certainly have disapproved of the big solo sections and fugal choruses.

Speculation has continued ever since as to why the mass was never finished; the coolness of his family’s reception of Constanze may have had something to do with it. The performance duly went ahead. The Kyrie and the Gloria were complete; the Credo was set only as far as “Et Incarnatus” and the Sanctus, Hosanna and Benedictus were more or less finished, but the remainder of the Credo and the Agnus Dei were missing. The missing sections may have been supplied from some of his earlier settings or possibly just chanted. Constanze sang at least some of the soprano solos and Mozart wrote special exercises to help her prepare for the performance.

The work is richly scored, though there are no clarinets and just one flute solo. It uses a wide range of styles. Some of the choruses hark back to the age of Handel and Bach. Both “Cum sancto spiritu” at the end of the Gloria, and “Hosanna in excelsis” are set to fugues in the traditional manner. On the other hand much of the solo writing, such as in the “Laudamus te”, breathes the spirit of a later age and the “Et incarnatus” is wonderfully set as a soprano solo with trio of flute, oboe and bassoon..

A few years later Mozart used much of the music again, now set to a different text, with a couple of new arias added, to form a cantata, ‘Davide penitente’.

Programme notes by Roddy Williams

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