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For musicians, professionals and amateurs alike, the name Dartington evokes magical memories of intense and inspirational music-making in a beautiful secluded enclave of Devon near Totnes.

A Medieval manor, former home of John Holand, replete with a great hall and verdant grounds, provides the setting for a busy month of concerts, masterclasses, courses and significant interactions between musicians. Friendships at forged in Dartington’s special atmosphere and for many it is the highlight of their musical year.

Since its foundation in 1948, thousands of participants have shared in Dartington’s magic, from renowned musicians such as Imogen Holst, William Glock (the first Artistic Director), Peter Maxwell Davis, Nadia Boulanger, Richard Rodney Bennett, Anne-Sophie von Otter, Alfred Brendel, Natalie Klein, and Tamara Stefanovich (to name but a few) to keen amateur musicians who go to learn, be inspired to play at the highest possible level, mingle with other musicians and like-minded people, and thoroughly immerse themselves in its compelling and diverse community of performers, composers and thinkers. For many it is a wonderful musical “retreat”, and some return year after year.

Music of all sorts pervades the place for those summer weeks – as you walk into the mediaeval courtyard, you hear random snatches of music coming through the windows: the choir rehearsing a Bach Passion in the Great Hall, a string quartet practising late Beethoven in an upstairs room, a duo practising a cello sonata.

This year marks the 70th anniversary of Dartington International Summer School (DISS). Since its creation in 1948, DISS has a long-standing and consistent dedication to music and musical innovation, and it quickly became a meeting ground for those keen to explore a new musical landscape. Stravinsky visited in 1957, and its composition classes have featured Harrison Birtwistle, Alexander Goehr, Hugh Wood, and Cornelius Cardew, all of whom testified to the summer school’s ever-increasing value in the musical world.

Joanna MacGregor credit Kate Mount
Joanna Macgregor

Since 2015 DISS has been led by Joanna Macgregor’s artistic vision. Under her directorship, the summer school has expanded its scope to include poetry, dance, improvisation and film, and to re-establish opera, world music and jazz within a core programme of classic, chamber and contemporary music. This year’s tutors and visiting artists include Imogen Cooper, Jane Glover, Felicity Lott, Tom Randle, Adrian Brendel, folk duo Harbottle & Jonas, Trio Gaspard and the Heath Quartet, and composers Eleanor Alberga, Oliver Knussen and Freya Waley-Cohen. The detailed public concert schedule for the Summer School & Festival offers over 100 concerts this year.

So what makes DISS so special? I spoke to Julian Davis, a retired professor of endocrinology and talented advanced amateur pianist, to get a first-hand flavour of the Dartington experience……

A week at DISS involves music-making throughout every day – for an amateur like myself, it gives the opportunity to aspire to play at the highest possible level, to mingle with a wide variety of musicians, ambitious and often very accomplished amateurs, emerging young professionals, and long-admired performers. The day can start with solo practice, Tai chi on the lawns, or just breakfast with old or new friends – singers, pianists, cellists, conductors… From 9 to 5 the day is full of workshops, master-classes, chamber music coaching, and of course the chance to just sit outside in the Devon sunshine enjoying tea and cake. And then there are concerts at 5pm, 8pm and 10pm, followed by late night conversations at the bar.

Chamber music has long formed a big part of the Dartington experience: from fun play-throughs of well-known pieces, to intensive coaching on major challenges. A recent highlight for me was learning the Ravel piano trio with two friends, with coaching sessions every day for a week… and discovering that a work that had seemed impossibly difficult was finally coming within our reach – at least in principle!

As a pianist I have learned a huge amount from master-classes and workshops – they mix relaxed informality with the tension of playing in front of others. You join in, proud to have worked hard to prepare pieces for the week, but acutely aware of the deficiencies that remain! But the coaching is superb, with patient good humour and the aspiration to turn the music-making into something special. Sitting in workshops with fellow-performers is fun: after a week all of us have had our playing scrutinised, discussed, enhanced and enjoyed, and a strong camaraderie develops.

The Friday night final concert usually involves the big choir and Dartington Festival Orchestra in the Great Hall. Gazing around the faces in the choir and the audience, I have the sense that everyone there has achieved something personally important during the week, be they professional performers, doctors, lawyers, mathematicians, teachers, scientists, accountants, writers… Dartington provides a rich musical experience that benefits from its scale and ambition, with exciting programmes and internationally renowned performers. But it has also fostered many friendships across generations and across diverse professional lives, forgetting the boundaries between amateur and professional, so that all that matters is the music-making: serious, fun, and life-enhancing.

For more about the 2018 Dartington International Summer School, please visit www.dartington.org/whats-on/summer-school

 

I am grateful to Julian Davis for his detailed and enthusiastic account of his experiences at DISS

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An aura of concentrated stillness descends over the London Coliseum as the opening measures of Philip Glass’s opera Satygraha are sung, simply and eloquently, by tenor Toby Spence. He is M.K. Gandhi: dressed in a formal dark suit, he is a young lawyer in South Africa, not yet the stoic nonviolent activist, the “Mahatma”, in his distinctive white dhoti.

Satyagraha, a sanskrit word meaning “truth force”, is a meditation on the early life of Gandhi when, as a lawyer working in South Africa in the early years of the twentieth century, he encountered racial discrimination: his response was the development of non-violent protest as a political tool. This central narrative feels appropriately topical in our troubled times of suspicion towards migrants, refugees, people of colour and those of different faiths, and this gives Satyagraha a relevance and immediacy which makes it all the more compelling.The attendant presences through the three acts of Tolstoy, the Bengali poet Tagore, and Martin Luther King respectively remind us of the wider influences and connections of Gandhi’s story and his philosophy.

Phelim McDermott’s gorgeously theatrical production, first staged at ENO in 2007 (when it broke box office records for modern opera), is a feast for eyes and ears, and the combination of a visually arresting set, enhanced by puppetry, film and projections, and Glass’s haunting, mesmeric soundscape make this quite unlike traditional operas. In fact, someone on Twitter compared it to Parsifal and while I have never seen Parsifal, I can appreciate the comparison: the length, the scale, the absorbing narrative and the sense of a whole art work – the Wagnerian Gesamtwerk.  And in mixing the sacred text of the Bhagavad Gita with the real life incidents of  Gandhi’s formative experiences in South Africa, the opera also has the feel of a grand oratorio.

If you saw ENO’s Akhnaten, also directed by Phelim McDermott, many of the tropes will be familiar: the slow motion and long ritualistic set-pieces, the visual and poetic allegories. These all inform and enhance the narrative – and you need it because the libretto is in Sanskrit and there are no surtitles! (But thankfully comprehensive programme notes, which made for interesting reading on my homeward train journey afterwards.)

The ENO chorus is on superb form, as always, and the orchestra was masterfully and sensitively directed by Karen Kamensek, a Glass specialist, who brought colour and vibrancy to Glass’s spooling repetitions and piquant harmonic shifts.

The entire experience was profound, moving and very beautiful.

Performances continue at ENO until February 27 — details here.

 

 

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Edited highlights, especially for piano fans…..

A welcome return by Russian pianist Igor Levit, whose Beethoven cycle at Wigmore Hall received huge acclaim. He will give a series of concerts on variations including Bach’s ‘Goldberg’, Beethoven’s ‘Diabelli’, and Rzewski’s The People United Will Never Be Defeated

Other pianists appearing in the 2018/19 season include Lars Vogt, Richard Goode, Thomas Ades, Alexander Melnikov, Sir Andras Schiff, Elisabeth Leonskaja, Angela Hewitt, Marc-Andre Hamelin, Jonathan Plowright, Jeremy Denk, Lucas Debargue and Evgeny Kissin

Plus special birthday concerts for Emmanuel Ax (70), Christian Blackshaw (70), Piotr Anderszewski (50)

Full details of the 2018/19 Season will be available from April when the complete season brochure is published. Meanwhile, download the season preview here

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Who or what inspired you to take up conducting and pursue a career in music?

The decision to become a musician was a gradual one; my first post – as organist at Brixton prison when I was 16 – showed that it was possible to be paid for doing what I enjoyed – and my first paid conducting performance (Messiah, when I was 17) further convinced me that this was a congenial way to make a living. It was Adrian Boult, however, who wholly changed my focus of ambition. I went to a concert of his in Oxford during my post-graduate year and suddenly became aware of what a conductor could achieve. I pushed a note under his door in the Randolph Hotel asking if he would take me as a student. Characteristically, he replied the next day inviting me to audition for his advanced course at the RCM and that began a learning process that continued almost until he died. He was unquestionably the most significant influence on my musical life.

What, for you, is the most challenging part of being a conductor? And the most fulfilling aspect?

The most challenging part of being a conductor in this country is that you’re almost always trying to work with a short amount of rehearsal time, so you tend to depend more than you should have to on your musicians being prepared to fill in the gaps for you. That is not the case in the United States and in Europe, where you are given more rehearsal time with professional musicians; the more relevant challenge there is developing the sense of urgency you need for a rehearsal without being over-demanding.

The most fulfilling aspect is the sense of making music with a number of other people, some of whom you’ve known for many years, and still deriving the same intense pleasure from doing so – in some 30 years after our first collaboration. Whether the players feel the same, of course, I cannot say!

As a conductor, how do you communicate your ideas about a work to the orchestra?

I believe the conductor’s job is to communicate as much as possible by gesture; too much talking is a well-known conductors’ disease. That said, offering an orchestra/choir what you hope are helpful images to clarify the sound or character that you are trying for can be beneficial if you can find the right metaphors.

How exactly do you see your role? Inspiring the players/singers? Conveying the vision of the composer?

A conductor needs to be both a manager and a bit of a visionary. Helping musicians to feel that what they do is important and worthwhile – and valued by the conductor – is important, but clearly the composer should be the fundamental reference point for all performers.

Is there one work which you would love to conduct?

There are several works I would like to conduct, which have so far eluded me: Walton’s First Symphony and Cello Concerto, Mahler’s Second Symphony and Morning Heroes by Bliss. More pressingly, there are works I would love to conduct more often – particularly Beethoven’s Glorreiche Augenblick, The Kingdom or the symphonies by Elgar and such neglected masterworks as the Holst Choral Symphony, and the marvellous tone poems by Bax.

Do you have a favourite concert venue to perform in?

I love both the Bridgewater Hall in Manchester and the Symphony Hall in Birmingham, though I also love Dalhalla in Sweden, which is an open-air venue – constructed out of a gravel pit – with a fantastic atmosphere and acoustic. The only drawback is that the conductor has to be rowed to the venue and I can’t swim.

Who are your favourite musicians/composers?

My favourite composers are always the ones I’m currently working on. When you’re preparing something for performance, it occupies the whole of the forefront of your mind and that means you are very closely entwined in what you hope to be the intentions of that particular composer at that particular time.

It is very difficult to identify favourite musicians; almost all of my colleagues are helpful and collaborative. You soon discover the handful who are not, and as far as possible you give them a wide berth. One of my absolute favourites, though, is the marvellous South African baritone, Njabulo Madlala. Brought up in Durban he has made his way to the forefront of the classical music scene purely on merit and a determination which never prevents him from being entirely charming and delightful.

We performed Elijah together four years ago in Leicester. He sang it wonderfully, and I’m thrilled to be able to do it again with him in the Barbican Centre on 13th February. Elijah is one of those works that has drifted slightly out of fashion – a real mistake, as it is full of inspired melody and dramatic invention. And, of course, it brings together professional orchestral players and soloists with one of our leading amateur choirs. A combination which often leads to the best result possible: professional expertise with amateur commitment and enthusiasm.

As a musician, what is your definition of success?

Being the best possible conduit between the composer and the audience. If the audience leaves the concert saying what a wonderful piece they have heard, I think we’ve done the best we can.

What do you consider to be the most important ideas and concepts to impart to aspiring musicians?

Fidelity to the composers’ intentions. We live in a time of absurdly elevated personality cults; the job of the performer is to focus the audience on the composer’s personality and not his or her own.

Hilary Davan Wetton conducts the City of London Choir and Royal Philharmonic Orchestra in Mendelssohn’s ‘Elijah’ at the Barbican Centre on Tuesday 13th February at 7.30pm. Soloists are Rachel Nicholls, Diana Moore, Daniel Norman and Njabulo Madlala as Elijah. More information and tickets

 

Hilary Davan Wetton has been Artistic Director and Principal Conductor of the City of London Choir since 1989. One of the country’s most distinguished choral conductors, he was founder/conductor of the Holst Singers, and is Conductor Emeritus of the Guildford Choral Society and Artistic Director of Leicester Philharmonic Choir. He is also Associate Conductor of the London Mozart Players and Conductor Emeritus of the Milton Keynes City Orchestra.

Educated at Brasenose College, Oxford and the Royal College of Music, Hilary studied conducting with Sir Adrian Boult and was awarded the Ricordi conducting prize in 1967. Over a career spanning 50 years, he is particularly admired for his interpretations of 20th century British music, conducting many first performances for British composers as well as neglected works by Gardner, Parry, Holst, Dyson, Bridge, Sterndale Bennett and Samuel Wesley.

His extensive discography includes recordings for Hyperion with both the Holst Singers and Guildford Choral Society, a series of acclaimed recordings for Collins Classics with the LPO, including Holst’s Planets, Elgar’s Enigma Variations and Mozart’s Jupiter Symphony, and discs for Naxos and EM Records with the City of London Choir. He received the Diapason d’Or for Holst’s Choral Symphony (Hyperion, 1994). In Terra Pax: A Christmas Anthology (Naxos, 2009) reached number two in the Gramophone classical chart and enjoyed wide critical success. Beethoven’s Der Glorreiche Augenblick (Naxos, 2012) has also been much admired, receiving a five star review in BBC Music Magazine; and Flowers of the Field (Naxos, 2014) with the City of London Choir, London Mozart Players, Roderick Williams and Jeremy Irons went quickly to number one in the Specialist Classical Chart.

Hilary has broadcast frequently for the BBC and Classic FM. For six years, he was presenter/conductor for Classic FM’s Masterclass, and he was Jo Brand’s organ teacher for the BBC 1 series, Play it Again. He has been awarded honorary degrees by the Open University and De Montfort University and is an Honorary Fellow of the Birmingham Conservatoire.

www.hilarydavanwetton.co.uk