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Fancy a duplex in the middle of beautiful countryside, yet across the road from one of the world's finest concert halls? Well fancy no more. You can live the dream at Snape Maltings.
I have already written about the inspirational new creative campus at Snape that builds on the artistic vision of Benjamin Britten and Peter Pears. As part of this redevelopment some of the redundant Maltings buildings are being converted into residential properties. In my header visual the concert hall is on the left, the new creative campus in the center, and the new properties are on the right. Below are two visualisations of the properties.
The first eighteen properties went on sale off plan late last year. As I write just three are still available. They are all two bedroom duplexes. The cheapest is £425,000 (US$875,000), the most expensive is £550,000 (US$1.13million). This is for a property with one parking space and a six mile drive to the nearest shops and railway station. Jet set conductors and other wealthy readers can find more details of the properties here.
Now playing - Benjamin Britten's The Building of the House op. 79 with Simon Rattle conducting the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra. The 1967 Aldeburgh Festival opened with a visit from Queen Elizabeth and a concert in the new Snape Maltings Concert Hall which included this overture, composed to celebrate the ‘building of the house’. The music is as lively as the wonderful acoustics in which it was first performed. The version performed in 1967 was for chorus and used an English text of Psalm 127 adapted by Imogen Holst, but there are alternative versions which omit the chorus.
Now read how about the rebuilding of the house.
Any copyrighted material on these pages is included as "fair use", for the purpose of study, review or critical analysis only, and will be removed at the request of copyright owner(s). Report broken links, missing images and errors to - overgrownpath at hotmail dot co dot uk
The advertisement above is from the Royal Opera House's current press campaign. Their production of Parsifal, which gets a tiny mention bottom left, is conducted by Bernard Haitink (age 78) and John Tomlinson (age 61) is singing Gurnemanz. Which makes it one of the musical events of the year in my book. But, sadly, Holy Fools don't have as much sex(ist), or age appeal, as a 29 year old soprano.
Below is an advertisement from the programme for another memorable musical event in London, Otto Klemperer's 1961 London Beethoven Festival. It is followed by part of the acceptance speech Maestro Klemperer made when he was awarded an honorary doctorate in law from Occidental College, Los Angeles.
'The lawyer fights for justice; his highest duty is to go and permanently fight for innocent people, to save their life against the attacks of their enemies. And what are we doing, we musicians? We fight for the innocent Lady Music. Is she not accused? I think she is. She is accused of being useless, a thing of luxury. And is she not innocent? Is there any reason to condemn music to death? I do not believe it. The contrary is true. We musicians have to protect this noble Lady, Music; we have to save her from the attacks of materialism'.
Attitudes towards Lady Music have changed very little in some parts since that speech was given on 24 September 1936. But recognition of her contribution is increasing. A wonderful book has just been published which chronicles an important contribution to twentieth-century music. It celebrates the life and work of Imogen Holst, who was an important influence on English music for more than three decades, and who worked alongside that great figure of twentieth-century music, Benjamin Britten, for twelve years.
The stereotype of Aldeburgh portrays it as an exclusively male domain. But the inclusiveness of that most musical of places is reflected in the location of Imogen Holst's grave, alongside that of Britten and Peter Pears in Aldeburgh churchyard. The words on her headstone, from her father Gustav Holst's Hymn of Jesus, deliver a message that is still not fully understood today:
The heavenly spheres make music for us
All things join in the dance
Now join in the dance here, here, here, here, here, here, here and here, and read about Britten's women here.
The Beethoven Symphonies advertisement comes from my own collection. The Occidental College speech is from Klemperer on Music (Toccata Press ISBN 0907689132) - highly recommended for advertising agencies everywhere. Imogen Holst - A Life in Music is published by Boydell & Brewer ISBN 9781843832966. Any copyrighted material on these pages is included as "fair use", for the purpose of study, review or critical analysis only, and will be removed at the request of copyright owner(s). Report broken links, missing images and other errors to - overgrownpath at hotmail dot co dot uk
A classical record label suffered a major setback when master copies of its debut projects were stolen during a burglary in London. The files were stored on a laptop belonging to Court Lane Music, which was taken during a break-in at an apartment near London's South Bank.
The material included a choral disc scheduled for possible release on the Naxos label, and the final edit of a world premiere recording of Imogen Holst's string chamber music Imogen Holst was daughter of Gustav Holst and assistant to Benjamin Britten. The photo above shows Holst and Britten together in the 1950s. The Holst disc, which had already been previewed on BBC Radio, was due for release on October 22nd to celebrate the composer's centenary, but will now be postponed.
Thomas Hewitt Jones, producer at Court Lane Music, said: "We are absolutely devastated. This recording represented several months of work. Thankfully,the intruders did not take all of our backup drives, so we're hopeful we can salvage most of the disc from the original source files of the Imogen Holstrecording session. But we will have to re-record the choral disc in early 2008."
Thomas, a songwriter and TV/Film composer, also lost many original compositions that were stored on the stolen computers. Despite the loss, a promotional live tour of music by Imogen Holst and Frank Bridge will still be going ahead in November, with performances at the Holst Museum, Cheltenham, and the Britten-Pears Library in Aldeburgh.
Imogen Holst minitour November 2007
Cheltenham - 2 November, St Andrew's Church (in association with the HolstMuseum)Swansea - 3 November, St Mary's Church
Aldeburgh - 4 November, Britten-Pears Library
London Hampstead - 7 November, Burgh House
All concerts start at 7.30pm. Tickets online or by phone 020 7060 0607. Cheltenham tickets (2 November) from the Holst Museum on 01242 524846
More on the Imogen Holst centenary here.
Picture credit Britten-Pears Foundation. Any copyrighted material on these pages is included as "fair use", for the purpose of study, review or critical analysis only, and will be removed at the request of copyright owner(s). Report broken links, missing images and other errors to - overgrownpath at hotmail dot co dot uk
Ask any opera buff who sung the roles of Quint and Miles in the first performance of Benjamin Britten’s Turn of the Screw in Venice in 1954, and they will have no problem answering Peter Pears and David Hemmings. But ask them who took the pivotal role of the Governess and they will probably struggle for the answer.
Glyndebourne Opera’s new touring production of The Turn of the Screw left me musing on the conundrum of gender in Britten’s operas. So often the male leads in today's Britten productions seem to be singing someone else’s role. It is hardly surprising, as we are familiar with the original casts through the astonishingly good recordings made with the composer himself conducting, and Pears, Hemmings and other artists singing the roles Britten wrote for them. But although the women in these recordings often reflect the first performance casting, posterity hasn’t been so kind to the sopranos. The Governess at the Teatro La Fenice in 1954 was Jennifer Vyvyan, and she is seen in my header photograph trying to connect with Quint, sung of course by Pears. 
Britten also created the roles of Lady Rich in Gloriana, Tytania in A Midsummer Night’s Dream, and Mrs Julian in Owen Wingrave for Jennifer Vyvyan. So it was quite remarkable that in Glyndebourne’s new Turn of the Screw the startling new soprano Kate Royal (who I wrote about back in July 2005) made the female lead her own, and scored a real home run for gender equality with a performance which put the Governess firmly at the center of the plot. Watch out for Kate Royal (above), she is a real star in the making.
The gender bias in Britten’s operas is reflected in their critical treatment, with the male roles consistently in the spotlight. Following the premiere of Turn of the Screw Antoine Golea wrote in L’Express of Britten’s ‘intense preoccupation with homosexual love and the futility of struggling against it’, while predictably Virgil Thomson in the New York Herald Tribune described David Hemmings as ‘adorable all round’. This bias does Britten an injustice as he wrote superb roles for his ‘house’ sopranos. As well as Jennifer Vyvyan, the British singer Joan Cross had roles created for her, including Mrs Grose in The Turn of the Screw, Female Chorus in The Rape of Lucretia, Lady Billows in Albert Herring, and Elizabeth lst in Gloriana (below). 
Unfortunately she retired before Britten committed the operas to disc, the exception being a 1955 mono Turn of the Screw. Cross had a close working relationship with Britten, lived in Aldeburgh after her 1955 retirement, and is buried in same churchyard in the town as Britten and Pears. Britten also worked closely with women who were not singers. In 1952 Imogen Holst, daughter of the composer Gustav Holst, joined the staff at Aldeburgh to work on Gloriana, and she was an artistic director of the Aldeburgh Festival from 1956 to 1977, and continued to live in Aldeburgh until her death in 1984. A portrait of her by Mary Potter hangs in the Snape foyer.
John Bridcut’s recent book Britten’s Children has justifiably enjoyed considerable success. Perhaps someone will now recognise the brave new world of gender equality by writing Britten’s Women?
* To keep things equal the other members of the excellent cast for Glyndebourne’s Turn of the Screw were Daniel Norman as Prologue/Peter Quint, Joanna Songi as Flora, Christopher Sladdin as Miles, Anne-Marie Owens as Mrs Grose, and Rachel Cobb as Miss Jessel. The conductor of a fine musical evening was Edward Gardner, and the director of a production that could have turned a little less was Jonathan Kent.
For more on gender bias take An Overgrown Path to BBC Proms 2006 lacks the eternal feminine Any copyrighted material on these pages is included for "fair use", for the purpose of study, review or critical analysis only, and will be removed at the request of copyright owner(s). Report broken links, missing images and other errors to - overgrownpath at hotmail dot co dot uk
