By |

Guest post by Ian Tindale, pianist and Artistic Director of Shipston Song

In a quiet corner of Warwickshire, not far from the picturesque towns of Chipping Norton and Moreton-in-Marsh, is a haven for music. At the end of a long track, a farm complex appears and it’s here that locals ‘in the know’ on occasion flock to hear classical music at its best. I had the good fortune to be invited by the owners to give a recital with long-standing colleague tenor Nick Pritchard in their intimate music room for an audience of around 60, and the kernel of an idea started to form. In lockdown in 2021, I remembered this quiet corner of the country and assembled some singing colleagues and made a series of recorded recitals and it dawned on me that this place could be a vehicle for my own creative vision and passion. Thanks to the
endless generosity and willingness of the owners, Shipston Song was formed under my direction and we opened our doors in September 2022 for our first long weekend of song.

My focus in that first year was on what I wanted to do: artists on my ‘wish list’, repertoire I was passionate about, and research projects coming to fruition. In addition to giving a platform to two ‘Shipston Song Rising Stars’, current students who had demonstrated an affinity with song, James Gilchrist, Harriet Burns, Jess Dandy and Julien van Mellaerts joined me on stage, and in a moving tribute James Gilchrist highlighted the crucial nature of small festivals creating a space for an intimate genre in intimate venues, words which continue to resonate for me.

Shipston Song in its 2023 edition very much reflects my desires for the development of our corner of the industry more generally. I believe we have an obligation to redress the imbalance of repertoire that we programme; the realm of song has long been open to many female composers, even if only in a private or amateur sphere, and there are countless works by women that would give a richer fabric to this special repertoire-tapestry of words and music, if only they were heard. In 2022 I focussed a whole recital on the life and music of Josephine Lang, a research project of mine which drew together words and music, and brought to a new audience Lang’s own strife and that of many composers of her sex in the 19th century. This project has gone on to have a life of its own (you can hear it at London’s Conway Hall on 19th
November); the success of the project is down to the unique compositional voice we can discover in her music and the relevance that Lang’s story still has today.

In 2023, as we extend our reach and our platform for performance expands, I have made the decision to commit to equal programming of male and female composers, and so over 3 recitals, we have 35 individual songs by men, and 35 by women. We are surrounding songs by female composers with repertoire by men which has become a core part of the canon – we cannot turn our back on these masterpieces, especially when aiming to attract a wide-range of audiences – so we are marking anniversaries of Michael Tippett and Sergey Rachmaninoff, and other major pillars of the repertoire that feature are Gustav Mahler, Ralph Vaughan Williams, and Gerald Finzi. On the other side of the coin we have the (increasingly) familiar (Fanny Hensel, Clara Schumann, Alma Schindler-Mahler, Rebecca Clarke, Amy Beach, Lili Boulanger) and the still-neglected (Joan Trimble, Ina Boyle, Dilys Elwyn-Edwards, Cécile Chaminade, Nadia Boulanger). It was no small challenge for me, the artists, and our Rising Stars to ensure we maintained this overall repertoire balance, but my hope is that by delving into a body of repertoire which still has many dimly lit corners, we can carry new discoveries out into the world with us.

Another goal for Shipston Song 2023 is to use our platform to programme songs written within the last ten years, and to give a few pieces an invaluable second or third performance. I’m thrilled that Roderick Williams is bringing a new piece by Anna Semple to Shipston, and that we can give its world premiere alongside the piece it was written to partner, ‘Earth and Air and Rain’ by Gerald Finzi. This concert will be the high point of a weekend that also sees Helen Charlston and Laurence Kilsby realise repertoire by Josephine Stephenson, Richard Barnard and Joshua Borin.

On top of this, I wanted to find a way to share the artists’ resources and talents visiting us during the weekend, so I have expanded our ‘Shipston Song Rising Star’ scheme to include three singers and a pianist who will be in residence with us for the whole weekend. These artists (who are current postgraduate students) are invited to take part, and will work together in masterclasses with Helen Charlston, Roderick Williams, and me, as well as perform in one recital each in a now-familiar format. The most formative experiences for me were those in which I was immersed in a community, secluded and protected from the business of the outside world (for a short time at least), living and learning alongside fellow musicians sharing their
insights; I hope we are moving towards being able to offer this kind of total immersion for all our artists at Shipston Song.

Ian Tindale
Helen Charlston
Roderick Williams
Laurence Kilsby

I don’t take my ability to create any of this at Shipston Song for granted; the ongoing plight of many organisations at the mercy of Arts Council England sends shockwaves throughout the profession and its supporters. We are all inevitably led to question our existence, the content of our mission statements, and our purpose. In our corner of the Cotswolds, we are hugely lucky: we rely on the generosity of the local population, both as audience members and as private donors, as well as small grant-giving bodies who support specific portions of our work and help bridge the gap between income from ticket sales and elsewhere – a yearly process of book-balancing where nothing can be taken for granted and which is very much ‘hand to mouth’ right up until the week before the festival begins.

Our festival theme in 2023 is by Walter de la Mare: ‘I sang it under the wild wood tree’,
highlighting our particular closeness to nature as a festival in our Warwickshire home. I hope to continue to bring my passion for song to this special place, where the peace and quiet of our rural setting comes together with intimate music making and collegiality and defines our relationship with artists and audiences alike, in 2023 and beyond.

Ian Tindale
Artistic Director, Shipston Song

Shipston Song runs from 22-24 September 2023. Full details of artists and programmes here

By |

For further listening, here are Dr Michael Low’s top 10 dead pianists of all time:

Gilels:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mb8HFK9Qv7M&t=991s

Rubenstein:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zXlSqNMAhJg&t=4543s

Lupu:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5zI7j3a1ZsM&t=2188s

Horowitz:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CHbf1CSUFvI&t=1457s

Richter:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h60P7rLPnQ8

Arrau:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vmDLK4OOjAY&t=3090s

Lipatti:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y8gG7lQdr_0

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CuZOVSL5woo&t=231s

Berman:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5X-W4Q1lMpo&t=912s

Bolet:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a_QbBGf1UBY&list=PLB0B42A680DF3CD22&index=10

Serkin:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ohbms7cmNSU

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hCG8eTHTOJc

By |

In the apparent constant need by concert promoters, venues and others to attract “younger audiences” to classical concerts and to make them more “inclusive”, it seems to me that the artform’s core audience is being overlooked or even alienated.

John Thomson, Jazz Club from The Fast Show

The latest suggestion to “trendify” classical music and make concerts more appealing to that elusive younger audience is posited in an episode of BBC Radio 3’s The Listening Service, presented by the affable Tom Service. In it he suggests that audiences should be more vocal; that they should chill, let it all hang out, and behave more akin to their rowdier 18th- and 19th- century concert-going predecessors, or be more like audiences at jazz or even pop gigs where a great improv sequence or a particularly juicy number is met with applause, whistling and more. In short, he wants us whooping in the stalls (the inference here being that silence is terribly elitist and all this listening quietly makes classical music hugely inaccessible and exclusive; nevermind that the same etiquette applies to theatre performances….).

When, 3 minutes into the Tristan prelude you next see me leap to my feet yelling “Whoo! F**king NAILED that cor anglais solo!” you must accept that this is precisely what Wagner would have expected and wanted…

– Richard Bratby on Twitter

For many of us, the chief attraction of classical music concerts, apart from the music itself, of course, is the opportunity to escape into quiet introversion for a few hours. There is also the ‘social code’ of the classical concert: knowing when to keep quiet for the benefit of other people, including the performers. We’ve all been to concerts which have been marred by people whispering loudly, opening blister packs of cough sweets, or – horror of horrors! – a mobile phone going off. I was at a recital of Scriabin piano music at Wigmore Hall some years ago where a couple a few rows ahead of me snogged loudly throughout the performance, and were reprimanded with a sharp rap on the shoulders with a rolled up programme by the person immediately behind them. And quite right too! They should have got a room, not seats at WH!

Joking apart, and at the risk of coming over all communist about it, it’s really a simple case of accommodating the many not the few: because even a small interruption can spoil the experience for the majority. It’s also a basic common courtesy to one’s fellow concert-goers.

And, curious as this may seem in our noisy, extrovert modern times, classical music audiences actually like to listen in silence so that they can enjoy and appreciate the music being performed.

So let’s let classical audiences remain quiet. We show our appreciation in other ways – by applauding, cheering and bravo-ing at the end of the performance, and while these behaviours may seem antiquated, or even elitist (they’re not!) to some, to the regular concert-goer this is what comes out of silence.

Just like the music.

A painter paints his pictures on canvas. But musicians paint their pictures on silence. We provide the music, and you provide the silence.

– Leopold Stokowski, May 1967

By |

F-sharp major: “Triumph over difficulty, free sigh of relief uttered when hurdles are surmounted; echo of a soul which has fiercely struggled and finally conquered lies in all uses of this key”. – Christian Shubart, Ideen zu einer Aesthetik der Tonkunst (1806)

“Brilliant and exceedingly clear” – Ernst Pauer, The Elements of the Beautiful in Music (1876)

One of the “black note” keys for the pianist, the key signature of F-sharp Major has a daunting six sharps and its scale includes only two white notes (B and E-sharp – or F natural).

The ‘enharmonic’ key of F-sharp major is G-flat major (exactly the same notes in the scale, but a different key signature comprising six flats) – the key of Schubert’s Impromptu D 899/3 and Chopin’s Impromptu Op 51 No. 3. Curiously, although the pitches are identical, G-flat Major has a different character to F-sharp Major – it’s somehow softer and richer.

From a technical point of view, F-sharp major can be challenging for the pianist, yet piano music in this key is luminous, colourful, and fun to navigate (the opening movement of Ravel’s Sonatine, for example, or Debussy’s Poissons d’or). It’s also warm, affectionate and nostalgic (Beethoven’s Sonata Op 78 or Schumann’s Romance Op 28, No. 2). And in Messiaen’s hands, it is a key of both meditation and ecstasy.

The following piano music in the key of F-sharp Major demonstrates the range of possibilities – sonic, colouristic and expressive – that this key offers: this is some of the most beautiful and arresting music in the pianist’s repertoire:

Liszt – Les jeux d’eaux à la Villa d’Este (The Fountains of the Villa d’Este)

A beautiful musical evocation of the rilling, plashing, glittering of fountains at the Villa d’Este, situated in Tivoli near Rome, from the third year of Liszt’s Années de pèlerinage. This work inspired Ravel’s Jeux d’eau and many other piano pieces depicting water.

Chopin – Barcarolle, Op 60

Composed in 1845-46, three years before his death, this is one of Chopin’s most arresting and ardently expressive works, scored in a rare key for Chopin. A Barcarolle is a “boat song’, its lilting rhythm inspired by the Venetian gondolier’s stroke; Chopin never visited Venice but he would have been familiar with the genre, which he masterfully captures in this sweepingly romantic, wistful piece.

Schumann – Romance Op 28, No. 2

This is the middle of the triptych of Romances, composed as a Christmas gift to his beloved Clara, who described it as “the most beautiful love duet”. Scored in ternary form, is written on three staves (for ease of reading, nothing more scary!), the thumbs playing a serene inner duet in the tenor register, surrounded by a gently undulating accompaniment. It’s deeply romantic, radiant and infused with affection.

Liszt – Bénédiction de Dieu dans la solitude from ‘Harmonies poétiques et religieuses’

As in Schumann’s Romance, a lyrical melody is heard in the mid-register of the piano, enveloped by a rippling accompaniment in the treble and warm bass line. Luscious harmonies abound in this work of deep expression

Ibert – Le Petit ane blanc (The Little White Donkey) from ‘Histoires’

The second piece from Ibert’s Histoires suite (1922), this charmingly characterful miniature depicts a donkey, complete with clopping hooves, braying and even a few noisy “hee haws”!

Beethoven – Piano Sonata No 24, Op 78

Nicknamed “à Thérèse”, because it was written for Countess Thérèse von Brunswick, this two-movement sonata was composed in 1809 and is one of Beethoven’s most good-natured and sunny works. A cantabile introduction is followed by a long, undulating theme in a first movement which looks forward to Beethoven’s late style, while the second movement is a scampering rondo which capitalises on sudden contrasts in dynamics, major and minor, and textures, and even contains a quote from Arne’s ‘Rule Britannia!’

Messiaen – Regard du Pere and Le baiser de l’enfant Jésus from ‘Vingt Regards sur l’enfant Jésus’

F-sharp major was Olivier Messiaen’s favourite key and he used it repeatedly to express his most transcendent moods. Here, he uses it to create a movement of transcendent meditation, in the first of his Vingt Regards.

Regard XV, Le baiser de l’enfant Jésus, is also scored in F-sharp. Like the first movement, it opens in an atmosphere of quiet contemplation but grows increasingly ecstatic, with flourishes and filigree passagework reminiscent of both Liszt and Liberace.

Debussy – Poissons d’Or from ‘Images’

Inspired by a Japanese lacquer panel illustrating a goldfish and its reflection in the water, this piece is rich in visual imagery as the darting, gilded fish is brought to life in a glittering tour de force of virtuosity and harmonic and melodic inventiveness.

Other pieces in F-sharp major to explore: Scriabin Piano Sonata No. 4, Chopin Impromptu No. 2, Gottschalk The Banjo, Albeniz ‘Castilla’ from Suite Espagnole…..

Shameless begging bit:

This site is free to access and ad-free, and takes many hours to research, write, and maintain. If you find joy and value in what I do, why not

BUY ME A COFFEE