Mary Wells, soprano
Catherine Wyn-Rogers, contralto
Harry Nicoll, tenor
Jonathan Best, bass
Richard Markham, piano
David Nettle, piano
Peter King, harmonium
University of War\.z\;jgk.,Choflr_:;‘;
Guildford Philharmonic Choir
Conductor — Simon Halsey
Thursday 20 June 1985.
PART |
Kyrie — Christe
Soloists and chorus
Gloria — Laudamus Soloists and chorus
Terzetto for contralto, tenor and bass
Gratias
Domine Deus
Tenor solo
Qui tollis
Duet for soprano and contralto
Quoniam
Bass solo
Soloists and chorus
Cum Sancto
PART Il
Credo
Soloists and chorus
Crucifixus
Soprano solo
Et resurrexit
Soloists and chorus
Preludio religioso during the Offertory, for Harmonium
Sanctus
Soloists and chorus
O Salutaris Soprano solo
Agnus Dei
Contralto solo and chorus
MARY WELLS was born in Bromley, Kent, and made
in-opera. She won the
debut onal
—her professi
International Competition for Singers at Munich, the
Worshipful Company of Musicians Scholarship for Opera
Singers and became a principal soprano at the Royal
Opera House, Covent Garden. Sir Malcolm Sargent
invited her to sing at the Henry Wood Promenade
Concerts and she then sang for him frequently both in
this country and abroad. She has appeared before Her
Majesty the Queen at the Royal Concert in the Festival
Hall. She broadcasts regularly for the BBC, and worked
with Benjamin Britten on several occasions. Mary Wells
has recorded both for EMI and Decca. Recently she has
sung at festivals in Aldeburgh, Harrogate, Norwich,
Nottingham, York, Flanders, Lucerne, Cambridge and
v
Brugge .
CATHERINE WYN-ROGERS studiedat the Royal College
of Music with Meriel St Clair and has sung with Kent and
Glyndebourne Operas. She made her London recital
debut in 1982 at the Purcell Room. Her concert work
has been extensive, and recent appearances include Judas
Maccabaeus and Messiah at the Festival Hall (for Handel’s
300th birthday) and the B Minor Mass on Bach’s 300th
anniversary at the Royal Albert Hall with the English
Concert Orchestra (televised on Good Friday).
At the beginning of the year Catherine Wyn-Rogers went
to Israel with the Bach Choir, which resulted in a return
invitation to work with Zubin Mehta and the Israel
Philharmonic Orchestra in February, and as a result of the
second visit she will be returning again to do seven
Messiahs with the Israel Chamber Orchestra. Catherine
Wyn-Rogers sang the B minor Mass at the opening concert
of the Bergen Festival in Norway in May. She is going
to France to sing with La Chateau Royale in Aix and
later in the year in Flanders with the same group.
HARRY NICOLL was born in Inverness and studied at
the Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama where
he sang in L’Ormindo, Dido and Aeneas, /| Tabarro and
The Tender Land. He has made many television, radio
and concert appearances in Scotland.
Harry Nicoll joined Scottish Opera Go Round in 1979
and his roles included Nemorino in L’Elisir D’Amore,
Ferrando in Cosi Fan Tutte, Alfredo in La Traviata and
Ramiro in La Cenerentola. With Welsh National Opera,
Harry Nicoll has sung Valetto in L“/ncoronazione di
Poppea and Vasek in The Bartered Bride. For New
Sadler’s Wells Opera he has sung Brissard in Der Graf Von
Luxembourg and in the record of highlights from that
production. For English National Opera he has sung
Scaramuccio in Ariadne auf Naxos.
Other operatic
engagements have included School for Fathers for
Phoenix Opera, The Turn of the Screw for the Midlands
Arts Centre, Dorvil in La Scala de Seta and Milthort in
La Cambiale di Matrimonio for Scottish Opera and
appearances at the Glyndebourne, Wexford and English
Bach Festivals and for Musica nel Chiostro. Operatic
engagements abroad have included Thespis in Platee for
the English Bach Festival in Versailles, Pedrillo in Die
Entfuhrung Aus Dem Serail for Opera voor Vlaanderen in
Ghent, Antwerp and Bruges, Peter Maxwell Davies’
Der Leuchtturm (The Lighthouse) and /I Re Pastore in
Berlin, Vasek in Die Verkaufte Brautin Cologne and his
debut at La Fenice, Venice, in staged performances of
the St John Passion.
Engagements in 1985 include Soliman in Zaide at La
Fenice, Polidoro in the new production of La Finta
Semplice for the Park Lane Group at the Camden Festival,
further performances of Vasek in Cologne and Pedrillo for
the Opera voor Vlaanderen and the Christmas Oratorio in
Bordeaux. Engagements in 1985/6 include his debut for
Opera North as Nanki-Poo in The Mikado followed by
Brighella in Ariadne Auf Naxos. He will also return to
Welsh National Opera for a new production of Wozzeck.
JONATHAN BEST was born and educated in Kent.
On
leaving school he was awarded a choral scholarship to St
John'’s College, Cambridge. During his three years there
he toured extensively with St John’s Choir, in Europe,
the USA, Canada and the Far East. He then spent two
years on the Opera Course at the Guildhall School of
Music, London, and won the BP Award in 1982.
In the summer of 1983 Jonathan Best appeared at the
Spitalfields Festival and in Italy in Cesti’s La Dori.
During the 1983/4 season he made his debut with Welsh
National Opera as Sarastro and he returned to the
company in 1984/5 for several roles, including Masetto
in the company’s new production of Don Giovanni, He
sang the same role this season for Scottish Opera. During
the summer of 1984 he sang Plutoin Monteverdi’s Orfeo
in London, Florence and Milan and returns to Welsh
National Opera in the 1985/6 season.
Jonathan Best is also in considerable demand as an
oratorio singer. During the 1983/4 season he made his
debut at the Queen Elizabeth Hall and the Barbican and
recently he has appeared with the Royal Liverpool
Philharmonic Orchestra, the Manchester Camerata and
has also completed for the BBC a recording of Maschinist
Hopkins, an opera by the 20th century Austrian composer
Max Brand.
RICHARD MARKHAM and DAVID NETTLE are
rapidly gaining a reputation as the leading British piano
duo.
Their musical tastes encompass the standard
repertoire as well as less familiar, unjustly neglected
works. The range and variety of the programmes they
devise for one piano/four hands and two pianos is vast.
They also appear as soloists with major orchestras,
including the Royal Philharmonic, Ulster and Halle
Orchestras.
The duo made a special feature of the two piano music of
Percy Grainger during his centenary year, presenting
concerts and recordings both in the UK and in the
Netherlands, and also performed the complete piano duet
works of Stravinsky in centenary recitals in 1982,
Following their recent studio recording for the BBC of
Max Bruch'’s rediscovered Concerto Op 88a for two pianos
and orchestra, they gave the first British public performance
in Manchester on 18 June with the Halle Orchestra,
conducted by Sir Charles Groves, on the opening night of
the 1985 Halle Proms. The London premiere will follow
in May 1986 with the Young Musicians Symphony
Orchestra at the Barbican.
Their recital and orchestral appearances range world-wide
as well as throughout the UK.
They frequently take part
in British festivals and record regularly for the BBC and
European Radio stations. In 1979 they made their
North American debut. Their travels in 1983 included a
tour of the Far East (covering 35,000 miles in three
months) which began in Sydney where the duo joined the
QE2 as performers on the World Cruise, and a tour of the
Middle East, sponsored by the British Council.
Last year
they visited Greece and Bulgaria, where their performance
in the Sofia Music Festival was recorded for radio and
television.
Last January found them giving concerts in
Sri Lanka, and in February they made their German debut.
Future plans include a two piano recital at the Queen
Elizabeth Hall in October to mark the 150th anniversary
of the hirth of Saint-Saens, a tour of the Middle East in
November, and appearances in Cologne and Berlin.
Richard Markham and David Nettle have recently
complete two recordings for Saga Records, Stravinsky's
piano duet transcriptions of Petrushka and Le Sacre du
Printemps.
TW|/ISRo.A1Eay
NoTp—
PETER KING studied the organ with Allan Wicks and
the piano with Ronald Smith. He won the Maine Organ
Exhibiton at Queens’ College, Cambridge, where he read
Law and Music. In 1975 he became Assistant Organist
at Lichfield Cathedral and since 1980 has also been
Accompanist and Assistant Chorus Master to the CBSO
Chorus. In April this year he undertook a concert tour
of the USA with Lichfield Cathedral Choir. Peter King
plays regularly with the CBSO, including performances
in London's Royal Albert and Royal Festival Halls and
on radio and television. He is frequently heard as a
recitalist and broadcasts regularly for BBC Radio 3.
PETITE MESSE.SOLENNELLE
Rossini’s last major work was begun in the summer of
I 1863 when the composer was 71 years old and first
' performed on 14 March 1864 at the consecration of the
! Comptesse Louise Pillet-Will’s private chapel, she being
the work's dedicatee.
For one music lover who has attended a public performance
of it. a hundred are familiar with the comment that the
Messe is neither little nor particularly solemn: and the
work is indeed longer than most masses. As for its
solemnity, a number of conflicting considerations have to
be taken into account: solemnity was never Rossini’s
style but to assume that his approach to the work was
frivolous would be wrong. Like Poulenc, generations
later, he saw no reason why sacred music should always
aspire to the pious and penitential. If then the
seriousness of Rossini’s intentions is not in question,
it should also be remembered that he was a tremendous
teaser or farceur, as the title of the Petite Messe
Solennelle demonstrates, and in a footnote to the work he
wrote: “ls it really sacred music or is it merelv
abominable music? | was born for opera buffa as thou well
knowest. Little skill, a little heart, and that is al].”’
fiYet what Rossini produced is a very substantial, intricately
devised and extended setting of the mass in fourteen
Isections.
It is scored, originally, for a quartet of soloists,
“a small chorus of ‘men, women and castrati ’, together with
two pianos and harmonium.
Eccentric as such
accompaniment might seem today, it was less so in the
1860s. The harmonium, which evolved in France in the
1840s, where it was sometimes referred to as the orgue
expressif, had the advantage of a discreet, sustaining
capacity: moreover, a setting of the mass requiring women
voices was considered ineligible for performance in church
and, as not every concert hall or salon had an organ, the
choice of harmonium proved practical from several points
of view.
The mass is also essentially accompanied by a
single piano, the second having a limited role, being
used
mainly in tutti passages.
Many of the tunes in the mass, whether arresting or
hauntingly beautiful, derive from similar inspiration
to
that which marked Rossini’s long operatic career,
yet a
feature of the work'’s style, relatively new to its compo
ser
(although he had already begun to develop it in the
earlier Stabat Mater) is the increasingly interesting and
innovatory use of challenging harmonies, which would
certainly have been out of place in the opera style. Itis
therefore the chromatic and modulatory richness of the
messe which gives it its unique feel as, for example, in
the Qui Tollis and the Quoniam where sharp dissonances
are frequently employed.
What is more, although Rossini had won acclaim as an
opera buffa composer, he always maintained a passion
for the scared music of Haydn and Mozart and these
two composers may well owe something to the strict
ecclesiastical counterpoint of the opening Kyrie and the
extended splendours of the messe’s two vast double fugues:
Cum Sancto Spiritu and Et vitam venturi. Perhaps
Rossini was also eager to demonstrate that his expert
knowledge of ‘profane’ musical procedures could also
produce dense contrapuntal textures comparable to those
of Cherubini.
The Pretudio Religioso No 11 has, yet again, a different
source of inspiration. An affectingly lyrical four-part
fugue, it recalls many of the cantatas of J. S. Bach. (In
the 1850s Bach’s complete works had once again become
available and Rossini, like many of his contemporaries,
was an avid subscriber.)
A blend of austerity and joy the Petite Messe Solennelle
turned out to be a fitting climax to Rossini’s long career
and perhaps his own, typically understated words deserve
final commemoration: "My main ambition was to leave
one last legacy which might possibly serve as an example
of how to write for the voice. Amen”.
Duncan Hadfield
Monday 24 June
|
UNIVERSITY OF WARWICK SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA
Conductor — Simon Halsey
Soloist — David Curtis, viola
Copland : Rodeo
Walton : Viola Concerto
Sibelius : Symphony No 5
Hall 8.00pm
Thursday 27 June
COULL STRING QUARTET
with James Walker, piano
Mendelssohn : String Quartet in Eb (1823)
Shostakovich : String Quartet No 4
Dvorak : Piano Quintet in A Op 81
INTERNATIONAL CELEBRITY CONCERT SERIES
Friday 4 October
City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra
Conductor — Simon Rattle
Sponsored by Mitchells and Butlers East
Wednesday 16 October
Philharmonia Orchestra
Conductor/Soloist — Vladimir Ashkenazy
Wednesday 23 October
Shura Cherkassky — piano
Sponsored by Arther Andersen & Co
Wednesday 6 November
Royal Philharmonic Orchestra
Conductor — Andre Previn
Thursday 5 December
Vienna Chamber Orchestra
Conductor/Soloist — Philippe Entremont
Friday 24 January
Cecile Ousset — piano
Tuesday 4 February
‘London Philharmonic Orchestra
Conductor — Klaus Tennstedt
Soloist— Radu Lupu
Friday 14 February
Igor Oistrakh — violin
~
Natalis Zertsalova — piano
Friday 21 February
City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra
Conductor — Okko Kamu
Soloist — Pierre Amoyal, violin
Sponsored by West Midlands Gas
Sunday 9 March
Hungarian State Symphony Orchestra
Conductor — Janos Ferencsik
Soloist — Vilmos Szabadi, violin
Thursday 1 May
City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra
and CBSO Chorus
Conductor — Simon Rattle
Sponsored by Arthur Young
Saturday 17 May
English Chamber Orchestra
Conductor — Raymond Leppard
Soloist — Cho-Liang Lin
FOR THE ARTS CENTRE
Director
Secretary to the Director
Andrew Jowett
Maggie Haynes
Theatre Manager and Licensee
Development Officer
House Manager
Performance Manager
Executive Officer (Finance)
Finance Assistant
Secretarial Assistant
Publicity Officer
Assistant Publicity Officer
Peter Cutchie
Stuart Ross
Callum Murray
Technical Director
Chief Electrician
Deputy Chief Electrician
Assistant Electrician
Carpenter
Senior Technician
Technical Assistants
William Logan
Jean Pladdys
Fran Wiles
Louise Robertson
John Gore
Pam Pearce
Barry Griffiths
Michael Reese
John Laidlaw
Neal Vanson
Tony Appletree
Chris Hurworth
Nick Burnell
Ken Davenport
Mike Green
Adam Griffiths
Paul Johnson
=S
Sénior Box Ofif‘i'c'é Assistant
Box Office Control Clerk
Box Office Assistants
Grace Thorne
Julie Jolly
Carol Evans
Audrey Frost
Audrey Hadley
Marsha Kirby
Julie Moore
Julie Raffell
Porters
Trevor Grimes
Percy Jones
For your safety
In accordance with the requirements of Coven
/.
try City Council
the audience may leave at the end of the performance
all exit doors
/.
iii.
by
all gangways, corridors, staircases and passages which
afford a means of exit shall be kept entirel y free
from
obstruction and persons shall not be permitt
ed to stand
or sit in any such gangways during the perfor
mance
smoking is not permitted on stage except as
part of the performance.
an integral
The Arts Centre, University of Warwick, gratefully
acknowledges financial assistance from West
Arts.
Midlands