West End’s Phantom of the Opera slices orchestra in half ...

... leaving musicians without a job

Phantom of the Opera orchestra halved when show returns to West End. Picture: Getty

By Maddy Shaw Roberts, ClassicFM London

 

Phantom of the Opera was celebrated for having the largest orchestra in the West End. Now, it’s being sliced in half.

Despite promises the original production would return after coronavirus restrictions are lifted, The Phantom of the Opera’s orchestra will be cut in half when it returns to the West End.

Andrew Lloyd Webber’s hit musical, once celebrated for having the largest orchestra in the West End, has reduced its players from 27 to just 14.

All 27 members were released from their contracts while Her Majesty’s Theatre was undergoing refurbishment, with hopes they might be rehired. Now, while 14 musicians can re-audition for the show’s return on 21 July, 13 of the jobs no longer exist.

Instruments including the oboe, harp, percussion, trumpets and horns have been cut, and there will be a trimmed-down violin section.

The production will replace traditional instrument sounds with keyboard effects. A statement says the “modern instrumentation… will give this timeless score the freshness of a new musical”.

Read more: Phantom orchestra records virtual ‘All I Ask of You’ response for Lloyd Webber >

The West End show has been closed since March 2020. Picture: Getty

Phantom producer Cameron Mackintosh, and the Really Useful Group, say this reduced orchestration, which is used for the UK touring production, has also already been “created for the international productions of the show”.

“These orchestrations are just as thrilling and rich as the original but would not have been possible with the technology available in 1986,” they added.

There are great concerns the move will leave musicians high and dry in what has already been a disastrous year for the arts.

Matt Dickinson, the percussionist for Phantom, was devastated to find out his job had been cut. “I sacrificed so much, willingly, to be a part of this wonderful show and yet I will leave with nothing more than the shirt on my back: no severance to speak of and my livelihood and that of my family in absolute tatters,” Dickinson tweeted.

“I don’t even have the opportunity to re-audition for my job and am unclear what the future holds.”

Horace Trubridge, general secretary of The Musicians’ Union, said the organisation was “sad and disappointed” by the move.

Read more: Musicians still ‘falling through the gaps’ as £400m promised to arts >

Phantom's producer, Cameron Mackintosh, and composer, Andrew Lloyd Webber. Picture: Getty

The Phantom of the Opera, London’s second-longest-running musical, closed its curtains on 16 March 2020 due to the coronavirus pandemic.

Last year, it was promised that “the brilliant original” production would return.

In August 2020, Lloyd Webber said: “Phantom will be back up there and even better than before. We’re going to have the original production and it will be fantastic.”

The composer and orchestra have historically enjoyed a close relationship. In April last year, the entire orchestra recorded a virtual ‘All I Ask of You’ to “show their support and respect for Andrew”. Lloyd Webber said he was “incredibly touched” by their creation. 

The move to cut the orchestra in half has been widely criticised by industry figures, including British composer Thomas Hewitt Jones, who tweeted: “This has been a rumour in our industry for a while, but here it is confirmed in plain sight. It is incredibly disappointing that theater mega-producers set this kind of example.”

Meanwhile on Broadway, Phantom’s producers have committed to return with a full pit and have condemned the “downsizing of musicians” in the West End.

Adam Krauthamer, president of the New York City musicians’ union, told Playbill: “Producers who take advantage of a worldwide pandemic in order to cut live music are cheapening their productions and robbing the audience of the full experience of musical theater.”

‘It’s genius’ – classical music stars on why we love The Lark Ascending so much

By Rosie Pentreath, ClassicFM London

@rosiepentreath

 

As ‘The Lark Ascending’ tops the Classic FM Hall of Fame a record eleventh time, a new film has been released featuring classical musicians sharing their personal experiences of the popular piece.

The enduringly popular Lark Ascending has topped the Classic FM Hall of Fame for another year.

But why do we love it so much? Inspired by the piece’s enduring place at the top of our Hall of Fame, the Royal Philharmonic (RPS) has created a film exploring just this.

The RPS asked famous musicians and dedicated music lovers to talk about what the piece means to them, in a beautiful new film.

We see several personalities from different corners of the music profession – including violinist Tasmin Little OBE and composer Sally Beamish OBE – each sharing, from lockdown, their own impressions of Vaughan Williams’ beloved masterpiece, telling us about what it means to them.

“I’ve played The Lark Ascending more than 60 times and each time has been a unique experience. I feel there’s something else at work in this music,” Little says in the film. “The idea of this little bird in this huge sky, soaring closer and closer to heaven… I think there’s something very spiritual about this concept, and such peace and tranquillity in the music that it helps us to find our own sense of peace inside.”

Violinist Elena Urioste says she experiences “a sense of inhalation and exhalation” throughout different phrases of the piece.

Conductor Ben Gernon shares what it’s like to face the orchestra from the podium, during a performance of the piece. “I always look forward to conducting The Lark Ascending. I find in performance it has this amazing ability to reach absolutely everyone. It’s a beguiling and mesmerising piece, but it’s actually quite simple – and its success lies in how it brings the outside world inside the concert hall.”

Meanwhile, composer Sally Beamish OBE describes Vaughan Williams’ music as “genius”, pointing out how innovative it would have been at that time to write something so descriptive and free for the violin.

“The violin writing is just stunning,” Beamish adds.

Pianist Tom Poster also features, introducing his thoughts on the original violin-piano arrangement of the piece. And cultural historian Gavin Plumley is on hand to round the story off, with where it fits in a wider historical and social context.

It makes for an inspiring watch – and beautiful too, with George Meredith’s poem that originally inspired the work woven throughout the film.

Read more: How to become a member of Royal Philharmonic Society >

To watch, sign up to RPS’s membership here. RPS Membership is designed for music lovers to further their curiosity in classical music and get the chance to attend exclusive in-person and online events, and nominate artists for the prestigious annual RPS Awards.

Watch the film The Lark Ascending in full on the Royal Philharmonic Society’s website by becoming a member today. Visit: royalphilharmonicsociety.org.uk/lark to find out more.

Clara Schumann - Her Music and Her Life

 

Clara Schumann née Clara Wieck (1819 – 1896)

Biography

Clara Schumann née Clara Wieck (1819 – 1896) was a German composer-pianist and wife to Robert Schumann. They formed a beautiful musical business partnership until his untimely death.

From an early age Clara's prodigious talent at the piano was esteemed throughout Europe. Her talent at the keyboard attracted fellow composer Robert Schumann, and the pair married in 1840. Clara also shared many years of close friendship with Brahms, who said she inspired all his best melodies.

Clara continued to perform throughout her life, championing many works by her husband and Brahms, but her skills as a composer were never fully realized. Balancing her husband's mental instability, the pressures of a solo career, and a family of eight children put pressure on her time, but she still managed to create many important works: her Piano Concerto, Piano Trio and songs set her apart as one of the most talented - if not one of the most overlooked - composers of the era.

Did you know?

Clara was unsure if she should continue to write music because she was a woman. She said: "A woman must not desire to compose — there has never yet been one able to do it. Should I expect to be the one?"

The time a Russian icebreaker played classical music...

... and saved thousands of Beluga whales

The time a Russian icebreaker played classical music, and saved thousands of Beluga whales. Picture: Getty

By Sian Moore, ClassicFM London

 

By playing classical music through a loud speaker, the ice-breaking ship Moskva was able to guide 2,000 beluga whales to safety.

In 1985, a herd of beluga whales found themselves in a life-threatening predicament: they were trapped by a wall of ice and were at risk of suffocating or starving to death as breathing pools began to shrink.

Facing a race against the clock, a ship called Moskva – the world’s toughest icebreaker at the time – was called in to help the mammals by breaking through the thick ice.

But when the 13,000-tonne vessel reached the whales, they were too frightened by the roar of its engine and deafening propellers to follow it to their freedom.

The ship’s crew members were at a loss for what to do, until someone made a wild suggestion... to play classical music.

Beautiful music soon echoed from the Moskva’s top deck from a loud speaker, and sure enough, the whales began to follow.

By playing classical music, the ice-breaking ship Moskva was able to encourage 2,000 beluga whales to follow the vessel to safety. Picture: Getty

Writing about the incredible feat at the time, The New York Times shared some of the details published by Russian newspaper Izvestia.

“This operation was truly experimental,” the Times wrote.

“At last someone recalled that dolphins react acutely to music. And so music began to pour off the top deck. Popular, martial, classical.”

The broadsheet continued: “The classical proved most to the taste of the belugas. The herd began to slowly follow the ship.”

In the end, it was estimated that around 2,000 whales managed to escape an untimely death.

The rescue mission later became known as ‘Operation Beluga’, and cost the Soviet government about $80,000 (£58,302).

Beluga whales routinely hunt and hide beneath thick ice, but they must surface every twenty minutes or so to inhale air.

A wonderful marriage of music and nature. We wonder what they were played – ‘Deeply wailing’, perhaps?

OPM icon Claire dela Fuente passes away at 62

by Robert Requintina, Manila Bulletin

OPM icon Claire dela Fuente passed away due to cardiac arrest this morning, March 30. She was 62.

Dela Fuente’s passing was confirmed by composer/producer Jonathan Manalo who is close to the family, according to a report by ABS-CBN.

Dela Fuente is the popular singer behind the immortal OPM songs “Sayang,” “Nakaw Na Pag-Ibig,” and “Minsan Minsan” in the 1980s.

During an exclusive interview in 2017, Dela Fuente said that she was thrilled to hear her songs on the radio on weekends. “Naririnig ko yan. Proud ako dahil ilang arttist ba ang may ganyan? Kokonti lang talaga kami.”

Dela Fuente also said that while her song “Sayang” is very popular, her biggest-selling record is “Minsan Minsan.”

“Yung ‘Minsan Minsan’ yun talaga ang nagconfirm sa akin sa stardom bilang sikat na singer,” she said.

Dela Fuente was discovered by noted composer George Canseco when she joined a singing contest at the age of 15. “Member ng board of judges si George nun sabi nya gusto mo bang kumanta sa commercial? Ako ang original voice sa Hope cigarettes commercial.”

When asked what she did with her first paycheck for her debut single “Sayang,” Dela Fuente said: “Naku ang liit lang nun! Ibinigay ko sa nanay ko pandagdag sa baon ko.” –

Sought to give advice to upcoming singers, Dela Fuente said: “Napakahirap kasi ngayon sa showbiz. If you want to succeed sa career, kailangan mo talagang mag-focus. At saka dapat alam mo ang sarili mo at realistic ka. Kung hindi ka naman ganun kagaling, paano? Kung hindi magaling, move on na. Sa ibang career na tayo pumunta. Ganun yun eh. Sa lahat ng bagay, pati sa negosyo, destiny rin ‘yan.”

In those days, Dela Fuente revealed she had cold war with rival singers Imelda Papin and Eva Eugenio.

“May iringan din kami nun. Mga bata pa kami nun syempre iba ang ugali namin. Pero ngayon, wala na yun. Nagkikita pa rin kaming tatlo,” she said.

Nico Dostal - His Music and His Life

 

Nico Dostal (full name: Nikolaus Josef Michael Dostal) (27 November 1895 – 27 October 1981) was an Austrian composer who later specialised in operetta and film music.

Dostal was born in Korneuburg, Lower Austria, and was the nephew of composer Hermann Dostal. He initially studied law at the University of Vienna, but turned to studying music at the Academy for Church Music in Klosterneuburg, and made a name for himself when his Great Mass in D major premiered in Linz in 1913.

After participating in World War I, Dostal worked as the theatre Kapellmeister in Innsbruck, St. Pölten, Vienna, Chernivtsi and Salzburg, before moving to Berlin in 1924, where he turned his hand to secular music. He worked in music publishing and as a freelance arranger for Oscar Straus, Franz Lehár and Robert Stolz, among others.

Whilst working as a Kapellmeister and composer, Dostal wrote the music for the film The Emperor's Waltz (1933) and enjoyed great success with his first operetta Clivia. This was followed by Die Vielgeliebte (1934) (The Much-Loved), Die ungarische Hochzeit (1939) (The Hungarian Wedding), and numerous pieces of film music.

In 1946 Dostal moved to Vienna, then in 1954 to Salzburg, where he continued to devote himself to composition, writing there among other pieces the chamber musical So macht man Karriere (1961) (How To Make a Career). Dostal also composed church music along with operettas and film music.

In 1942 he married the opera singer Lillie Claus, by whom he had one son, Roman Dostal, later a conductor. Dostal died in Salzburg, where he is buried in a grave of honour in the main cemetery, the Salzburger Kommunalfriedhof.

Works

Operettas

Die exzentrische Frau, 1922 (The Eccentric Woman)

Lagunenzauber, 1923 (Lagoon Magic)

Clivia, 1933

Die Vielgeliebte, 1934 (The Much-Loved)

Prinzessin Nofretete, 1936 (Princess Nefertiti)

Extrablätter, 1937 (Extra Sheets)

Monika, 1937

Die ungarische Hochzeit, 1939 (The Hungarian Wedding)

Die Flucht ins Glück, 1940 (The Flight into Happiness)

Die große Tänzerin, 1942 (The Great Dancer)

Eva im Abendkleid, 1942 (Eva in Evening Dress)

Manina, 1942

Verzauberte Herzen, 1946 (Enchanted Hearts)

Ein Fremder in Venedig, 1946 (A Stranger in Venice)

Süße kleine Freundin, 1949 (Sweet Little Girlfriend)

Zirkusblut, 1950 (Circus Blood)

Der Kurier der Königin, 1950 (The Queen's Courier)

de:Doktor Eisenbart, 1952 (Dr. Eisenbarth)

de:Der dritte Wunsch, 1954 (The Third Wish)

Liebesbriefe Operette, 1955 (Love Letters Operetta)

So macht man Karriere, 1961 (How To Make A Career)

Rhapsodie der Liebe, 1963 (Rhapsody of Love)

Der goldene Spiegel (The Golden Mirror)

Don Juan und Figaro oder Das Lamm des Armen, 1990 (Don Juan and Figaro, or the Lamb of the Poor)

Film music

Jedem seine Chance, 1930 (To Each, His Chance)

Three Days Confined to Barracks (1930)

Headfirst into Happiness (1931)

The Emperor's Waltz (1933)

The Cabbie's Song (1936)

Der Optimist, 1938, with Theo Lingen (The Optimist)

Mordsache Holm, 1938 (The Holm Murder Case)

Thirteen Chairs (1938)

Heimatland, 1939, with Wolf Albach-Retty (Homeland)

Das Lied der Wüste, 1939, with Zarah Leander, Gustav Knuth (The Desert Song)

The Vulture Wally (1940)

Black on White (1943)

Glück bei Frauen, 1944, with Johannes Heesters (Luck/Happiness with Women)

Child of the Danube (1950)

Spring on Ice (1951)

Das Herz einer Frau [de], 1951 (The Heart of a Woman)

Seesterne [de], 1952 (Sea Stars)

A Night in Venice (1953)

Die Ungarische Hochzeit, 1969, with Maria Schell (The Hungarian Wedding)

This Polish wartime composer’s music lay buried in a suitcase ...

 

... in his garden. Now, it lives again.

Polish wartime composer's music lay hidden in suitcase for years. Picture: iStock

By Maddy Shaw Roberts, ClassicFM London

 

Until after his death, the score for Polish composer Ludomir Różycki’s forgotten violin concerto lay buried in a suitcase in the garden of his deserted Warsaw home.

Amid the countless horrors of the Second World War were policies designed to try to extinguish Poland’s cultural identity, from its thriving music scene to its treasured artworks.

During the Nazi occupation, thousands of Polish artists were killed, several historical artefacts were looted, and many musicians and orchestras were forced to go underground in the face of a cultural genocide.

Ludomir Różycki, a Polish composer, belonged to a group of music-makers who, after the First World War, sought to reinvigorate their country’s music. He found great success with his ballet Pan Twardowski, which became the first Polish large-scale ballet to be performed abroad.

Różycki began work on his Violin Concerto in 1944, the summer of the Warsaw Uprising – an operation to liberate Warsaw from German occupation.

It became clear that Różycki and his family urgently needed to find a safe haven. They fled their home in Warsaw, but not before Różycki had hidden the manuscript in a suitcase and buried it at the bottom of his garden.

Janusz Wawrowski premiered Różycki’s Violin Concerto in 2018. Picture: Fabrizio Maltese

Różycki’s family home didn’t survive the traumatic uprising. After the war, he found work teaching and composing in Katowice, some 300km south-west of the Polish capital, and had resigned himself to the loss of the concerto.

Years later, construction workers clearing the ruins of his house came across the unexpected piece of history. The scores inside found their way to the archives of Poland’s National Library, where they lay forgotten until very recent years.

In 2018, violinist Janusz Wawrowski came across the scores and was mesmerised. “It was some years ago that I first encountered fragments of the manuscript,” says Wawrowski, who is one of Poland’s leading classical violinists.

“This wonderful work spoke to me immediately, and the thought was planted in my head that, like a phoenix rising from the ashes, it should be reborn and enjoyed by audiences around the world.”

With the help of a researcher and much scouring of the archives, Wawrowski managed to piece the work together and track down the missing, opening 87 bars of the orchestrated full score.

Working with pianist and composer Ryszard Bryła, he set about reworking the concerto, editing the solo part to fit comfortably under a violinist’s fingers. The project took several years, and in 2018, Wawrowski eventually premiered the opulent, post-Romantic concerto to a live audience.

“The result, we hope,” says Wawrowski, “Is as close to Różycki’s original thinking as possible…

Read more: 10 incredible photos of composers’ original pianos >

“To me, the concerto is full of the energy and life of Warsaw before the war, and I think the composer was trying to conjure up and convey this positive energy as he wrote it in 1944 – a very dark time, as the artillery of the Nazis rained down on the city,” the violinist adds.

Now, the concerto has been officially released as a recording, in a new album paired with Tchaikovsky’s Violin Concerto. While the latter has long been one of the world’s favourite violin concertos, the Różycki was never performed in the composer’s lifetime, and assumed lost by the composer himself, who died in 1953 before it was rediscovered.

“Looking back at the turbulent history of our civilisation and at times of unrest, we see that culture and art have always played an essential role in humanity,” Wawrowski says. “Artists, in the face of sad realities, have consciously used their creative power to produce works bringing both hope and joy.

“This is the message of the two violin concertos recorded on this album. Both were written at very difficult moments in the lives of their creators – Tchaikovsky was seeking refuge in composition after the painful breakdown of his marriage.”

Wawrowski adds: “It is incredible that Różycki’s concerto was written in the darkest times and carries such positive energy. In spite of the daily reality engulfing the composer, his spirit of hope for a better future was well and truly still alive.”