Brewster News
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2024-03-29
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2024-03-18 07:35:00
Quite an achievement: the North London Chorus' ambition rewarded in a performance of Ethel Smyth's The Prison that intrigued and engaged
Henry Brewster (HB) in 1897Beethoven: Meeresstille und glückliche Fahrt, Smyth: The Prison, Brahms: Nänie: Rebecca Bottone, Alex Otterburn, North London Chorus, Meridian Sinfonia, Murray Hipkin, Lucy Stevens; St James Church, Muswell HillReviewed 16 March 2023A welcome opportunity to hear Ethel Smyth's late work live, in a fine performance which rewarded the choir for its daring in programming The PrisonEthel Smyth's late work, The Prison, which she described as a 'Symphony for soprano, bass-baritone soli, chorus and orchestra' does not get many concert outings, despite being rediscovered on disc [see my review]. The enterprising North London Chorus under their conductor Murray Hipkin gave a rare performance of Ethel Smyth's The Prison at St James Church, Muswell Hill on 16 March 2024 with the Meridian Sinfonia and soloists Rebecca Bottone and Alex Otterburn. Also in the programme was Beethoven's Meeresstille und glückliche Fahrt and Brahms' Nänie. Lucy Stevens, who has developed a show […]
2024-02-23 12:43:00
Being performed for the first time for almost 20 years: Murray Hipkin & the North London Chorus give us a chance to finally experience Ethel Smyth's The Prison in concert
[…] to finally explore the composer's original version of the opera and her other operas have all had a patchy life and though finally we have all but one (the score of which has disappeared) available on disc. But what about the rest of Smyth's oeuvre? The early Mass certainly, but the rest of her work is only patchily covered.I discovered her late oratorio/symphony The Prison back in the 1990s when I came across the re-issue of H.B. Brewster's philosophical treatise The Prison: A Dialogue in an edition with Smyth's valuable memoir of HB. This book was issued in 1931 at the same time as the first performances Smyth's The Prison but for some reason Smyth's symphony for soprano, bass-baritone, chorus and orchestra never seemed to have anything of a life after her own death.The work was finally recorded and issued in 2020 on Chandos in a terrific performance, by an American choir and orchestra [see […]
The Boston Musical Intelligencer
2024-02-20 20:24:21
Lookouts Aloft! A Composer Puts Out to Sea
[…] least crossed the channel) in 1877 at age 19 to study at the Conservatorium in Leipzig. One of the top Smyth scholars, Amy Zigler, has a brief biography available HERE. BMInt is happy to publish this preview in the context of a Cappella Clausura’s performance of Smyth’s Mass in D at Emmanuel Church at 4pm on March 3rd. Tickets HERE. Smyth characterized herself as making “on average 12 intimate friends per annum” (letter to Henry Brewster, 1892). Her first core in Leipzig was the Herzogenbergs, a musical family whose young matriarch, Lisl (only 11 years her senior), took a maternal interest in Ethel, and a deep, life-changing relationship began. Lisl’s brother-in-law was Henry Brewster, who was also to become a deep and romantic partner, although married. Brewster, a poet, was the librettist for many of her operas. On her many trips to Germany, her friends introduced her to more friends, […]
2023-09-20 06:51:00
Why the wait? Ethel Smyth's first major success, Der Wald, finally receives its premiere recording in a terrific account from John Andrews and BBC Symphony Orchestra
[…] its UK premiere (in 1902) in a small-scale performance [see my review]. Now the work's full romantic atmosphere can be appreciated in a new recording on Resonus Classics from John Andrews, the BBC Symphony Orchestra and BBC Singers on Resonus Classics with Natalya Romaniw, Claire Barnett-Jones, Robert Murray, Andrew Shore and Morgan Pearse on a recording supported by the Ambache Charitable Trust. The work's libretto, by Smyth and her friend (and sometime lover) Henry (HB) Brewster, was written in German, but is here given in English in the translation, I presume, that Smyth had done for the work's triumphant UK premiere at Covent Garden in 1902.The opera begins and ends in the forest, atmospheric choral scenes full of Romantic atmosphere. The idea is that the emotional turmoil of the opera's main scenes are set within the longer time-frame of the wood itself, barely disturbing a thing. The opera proper opens […]
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