This time last year, consternation over the draconian funding cuts imposed on opera companies and companies by a seemingly uncaring Arts Council England dominated the headlines. A year later, much of that consternation still remains and, in some ways, has only increased, while the consequences of those cuts are still emerging.
As Manchester-based new band Psappha disbanded, the future of Leeds Lieder was called into question as a result of the withdrawal of their grants in both cases, despite both being organizations that met all the criteria of ACE, including regionalism and “levelling up”.
Meanwhile, it has been announced that Cheltenham music festival, one of the UK’s longest-established music festivals, will be a pale shadow of its former self from next year. Since then, Creative Scotland and Arts Council Wales have emulated their British counterparts by attracting funding from the Lammermuir festival and Mid Wales Opera respectively; the first a treasured autumnal oasis of world-class music-making, the second an imaginative, small-scale touring company committed to taking opera to parts and borders of Wales that no other company can reach.
Uncertainty continued over the future of English National Opera, the most significant victim of ACE. The year ends with the company’s music director, Martyn Brabbins, resigning when plans to significantly reduce the orchestra were made public.
Confusion and anger have only intensified since plans for ENO’s forced relocation from London were finally announced: it looks like the company’s new base in Manchester will only bring smaller-scale works to the city, with full-scale productions to go ahead. It is performed annually at the Coliseum in London during a four- or five-month season; More or less like he does now. In addition, there is still no mention of the company touring its stagings; This is a move that may finally justify the title “national”.
As for opera hitting the stage this year, productions of Wagner’s Das Rheingold, presented at the ENO in February and Covent Garden in September, led to a generally mixed reception of the first opera, directed by Richard Jones, and a generally mixed reception of the second . Staged by Barrie Kosky, it is considered a promising start to the Royal Opera House’s new cycle. Additionally, the Colosseum featured artistic director Annilese Miskimmon’s staging of Korngold’s The Dead City, superbly directed by Kirill Karabits, and David Alden’s reimagining of Britten’s magnificent 2009 Peter Grimes production, a stark reminder of much happier times. There was a revival. It presented new versions of Berg’s Wozzeck, directed by Deborah Warner and starring Christian Gerhaher, and Verdi’s Il Trovatore, vividly presented by Adele Thomas.
Covent Garden also presented three of the most remarkable new works. Whatever its dramatic shortcomings, The Innocence of Kaija Saariaho offered an orchestral score of characteristic brilliance, but it was an event remembered with sadness as the composer’s death was announced a few weeks later. The subtle, fairy-tale simplicity of George Benjamin’s Picture of Such a Day was matched by music in which not a note or instrumental color was out of place, while Brian Irvine’s poignant portrayal of Rosemary Kennedy’s story, Least Like It, was projected onto the stage. by the Irish National Opera to the Linbury Theatre, London. The Aldeburgh festival also opened with a strikingly inventive opera premiere – Sarah Angliss’s Giant (coming to the Linbury next year) – while the year’s highlight, Osvaldo, at Welsh National Opera (another company ending the year without a permanent conductor) It was production. Golijov’s Ainadamar has been seen before in Scotland.
While orchestras seized the 150th anniversary of Rachmaninov’s birth as an opportunity to overdo his symphonies and concertos, the year’s other important anniversary, the 400th anniversary of William Byrd’s death, was also widely celebrated, albeit more quietly. The BBC Proms predictably had a lot of Rachmaninov and less Byrd. However, Mahler’s performances, especially Simon Rattle’s account of the Ninth Symphony in his last concert in England as principal conductor of the London Symphony Orchestra, and the Aurora Orchestra’s attention to detail in a masterfully presented theatrical package commemorating Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring Its attractive performance made this clear. Some of the most memorable evenings included the UK premiere of György Kurtág’s semi-staging of Endgame and weekend concerts by Iván Fischer and the Budapest Festival Orchestra. All this happened in a year when other major European orchestras were conspicuous by their absence from the Albert Hall.
However, Klaus Mäkelä and the Oslo Philharmonic Orchestra were among the visitors to the Ball, and they brought with them Yuja Wang as a soloist; He was as dazzling in Rachmaninov’s Paganini Rhapsody as he was in the UK premiere of his Magnus concerto at the LSO earlier in the year. Lindberg composed music for him.
Wang and the Oslo orchestra also visited the Edinburgh international festival, which this year is starting to show signs of returning to its former reputation under the artistic leadership of Nicola Benedetti. In London, the Southbank Centre, once the center of the capital’s musical life, has continued its gradual decline. Occasional concerts, such as the UK premiere of Heiner Goebbels’s A House of Call and Ligeti’s 100th anniversary celebrations, were reminders of the special events that were a regular part of the Southbank programme, but they were concerts proper. Apart from that, there were also rare ones.
Truly outstanding piano recitals were also few and far between, but Steven Osborne’s Rachmaninov evening at Wigmore Hall, Emanuel Axe’s evening of Schubert and Liszt at the Chipping Campden festival, and Vikingur Ólafsson’s international performance promoting the release of Bach’s Goldberg Variations CD Her London recital on tour would have stood out in any year.
The huge success of Ólafsson’s Bach disc was perhaps the highlight of the year’s classical albums. A year ago, the recording industry was still recovering from the impact of Covid and the inevitable restrictions it placed on new projects, whether studio or concert-based. These knock-on effects are now completely gone, but the shape and emphasis of the industry has almost certainly changed forever. Studio recordings of large-scale works have become vanishingly rare.
Listeners’ reliance on CDs has also changed, with an increasing share of the market now going to digital downloads. Although the proportion of recordings released solely via download is still relatively small, the emergence of Apple’s Music Classic app, which offers high-quality streams across an impressively high portion of the catalogue, has certainly been accelerated by Hyperion’s decision to finally make its work streamable, significantly enhanced by Hyperion’s decision to finally make its work streamable. Moving towards disc-free listening.
The ecology of classical music and opera in Britain may still be fragile, but if you look hard enough there is still something to enjoy and even reasons to be optimistic.