REVIEW OF THE YEAR 2016
Despite increasing mobility difficulties and shortness of breath, I have had a full and active year, thanks to family, adopted granddaughter Michelle, friends and HomeInstead caregivers. Most of my days are spent in front of my computer, writing reviews, maintaining my website while listening online to BBC Radio 3.
This has been a busy year musically with many events centred both in Oxford and in Nottingham, where I stay with Richard and Amanda in Bleasby. In Oxford there are the regular festivals spread throughout the year: from Oxford May Music at the end of April, Oxford Early Music Festival in June, Oxford Chamber Music Festival in September and Oxford -Lieder Festival in October. Scattered throughout the year are the Sunday afternoon Oxford Chamber Music Society concerts, the Orchestra of St John Proms at the Ashmolean Museum and the International Piano Series at St John the Evangelist. From Bleasby, we attended the third Southwell Music Festival.
This year, the Lieder Festival was special and one of the two outstanding events of the year. The theme was The Schumann Project and German Romanticism. We were able to support it in three ways. Most importantly, the family retrospectively marked my eighty-fifth birthday by sponsoring soprano Christina Gansch (pictured above with Sholto Kynoch, Artistic Director) as the Rose in Schumann’s cantata The Pilgrimage of the Rose. I also sponsored a song in memoriam Johanna Taylor for whom I played every Sunday morning for very many years. As a member of The Schubert Circle I was enabled to sponsor pianist Bengt Forsberg.
On the operatic front, regular transmissions ‘Live from the Met in HD’ seen at the Phoenix Picturehouse are now supplemented by other companies – in October I saw Norma from Covent Garden, Tristan und Isolde and Don Giovanni from the Met and Saul from Glyndebourne on Tour. Live performances took in Glyndebourne Béatrice and Benédict, Garsington L’Italiana in Algeri and at Buxton an indifferent production of Handel’s Tamerlano but the other outstanding event of the year was Opera North’s concert production of Das Ring der Niebelungen in June, an unforgettable week of total immersion in Wagner.
Highlights of the year’s music were Handel Israel in Egypt at the Early Music Festival and Saul, Nina Stemme in Elektra (enjoyment of Stemme’s Isolde was seriously marred by a ridiculous intrusive production) and, also by Richard Strauss, the original twenty-three string version of Metamorphosen in Southwell Minster, The Archduke Trio played by the family Grier Trio in the Sunday afternoon series.
Despite loss of finger dexterity and fading eyesight, I continue to play the piano, for myself, with violinist Irene Butcher and in the inexhaustible study of Haydn Piano Trios with cellist Christopher Watson.
I now look forward to our New Year’s Day party to see how many old friends can still make it!
I WISH YOU ALL THE BEST FOR 2017.
Peter
This has been a busy year musically with many events centred both in Oxford and in Nottingham, where I stay with Richard and Amanda in Bleasby. In Oxford there are the regular festivals spread throughout the year: from Oxford May Music at the end of April, Oxford Early Music Festival in June, Oxford Chamber Music Festival in September and Oxford -Lieder Festival in October. Scattered throughout the year are the Sunday afternoon Oxford Chamber Music Society concerts, the Orchestra of St John Proms at the Ashmolean Museum and the International Piano Series at St John the Evangelist. From Bleasby, we attended the third Southwell Music Festival.
This year, the Lieder Festival was special and one of the two outstanding events of the year. The theme was The Schumann Project and German Romanticism. We were able to support it in three ways. Most importantly, the family retrospectively marked my eighty-fifth birthday by sponsoring soprano Christina Gansch (pictured above with Sholto Kynoch, Artistic Director) as the Rose in Schumann’s cantata The Pilgrimage of the Rose. I also sponsored a song in memoriam Johanna Taylor for whom I played every Sunday morning for very many years. As a member of The Schubert Circle I was enabled to sponsor pianist Bengt Forsberg.
On the operatic front, regular transmissions ‘Live from the Met in HD’ seen at the Phoenix Picturehouse are now supplemented by other companies – in October I saw Norma from Covent Garden, Tristan und Isolde and Don Giovanni from the Met and Saul from Glyndebourne on Tour. Live performances took in Glyndebourne Béatrice and Benédict, Garsington L’Italiana in Algeri and at Buxton an indifferent production of Handel’s Tamerlano but the other outstanding event of the year was Opera North’s concert production of Das Ring der Niebelungen in June, an unforgettable week of total immersion in Wagner.
Highlights of the year’s music were Handel Israel in Egypt at the Early Music Festival and Saul, Nina Stemme in Elektra (enjoyment of Stemme’s Isolde was seriously marred by a ridiculous intrusive production) and, also by Richard Strauss, the original twenty-three string version of Metamorphosen in Southwell Minster, The Archduke Trio played by the family Grier Trio in the Sunday afternoon series.
Despite loss of finger dexterity and fading eyesight, I continue to play the piano, for myself, with violinist Irene Butcher and in the inexhaustible study of Haydn Piano Trios with cellist Christopher Watson.
I now look forward to our New Year’s Day party to see how many old friends can still make it!
I WISH YOU ALL THE BEST FOR 2017.
Peter