A few months ago I reviewed a recording of Morton Feldman’s Three Voices which I had never heard “live”. On Sunday evening I got the chance to hear Lindsay McIntyre perform it at Arrayspace. It’s a roughly one hour long piece in which the soprano performs with two tracks that she has recorded in advance. It was really interesting to hear the nuances of two recorded voices versus live which, of course, doesn’t really come across the same way on a recording, however good. It’s the subtlest of textural difference but it’s definitely there.
Soprano
Two pre-recorded tracks
Last night saw the first of two performances of Haydn’s rarely performed 1791 work Orfeo: L’anima del filosofo. I know how much effort and indeed passion went into creating this production and the singing is pretty good. I wish I could say I enjoyed it but I can’t. There were just too many issues.
On May 26th and 27th in the MacMillan Theatre there’s a chance to see Haydn’s rarely performed Orfeo: L’anima del filosofo. It was composed for London in 1791 but was shut down during rehearsals because the Lord Chamberlain’s office thought it subversively supportive of enlightenment values at a time when Pitt’s government was cracking down brutally on pro French Revolutionary sentiment in the UK.
Sunday, at Grace Church on the Hill, Soundstreams presented Celebrating R. Murray Schafer. It felt like a cross between a concert and a memorial service. There were no prayers but there were eulogies and Eleanor James drew the parallel between Schafer’s sources of inspiration and Pentecost; that feast of the Church having been chosen deliberately for the event.
operaramblings 