In youth we trust. That can be the only motto worth anything for 2020, as the world goes into further meltdown.
So it was startling, stunning and cathartic, two days after the big downer of 3 January – the American horror clown seemingly in competition with the Australian apocalypse – to witness 164 teenagers under a conductor they clearly adore, Jaime Martín, making their voices heard, sometimes literally, in 20th century music of fear, anxiety, protest, violence and just a smidgen of hope.
It says so much for the cornucopia of London's classical music scene alone that all five of the most recent concerts I've attended have made the long list for best of 2019. I'll settle for two. The anger and violence of Vaughan Williams's Fourth Symphony is still resonating after the London Symphony Orchestra and Antonio Pappano tore into it with focused fire on election night.
As they celebrate their 50th year, Ex Cathedra have brought their much loved Christmas music by candlelight concerts to churches all across England, before giving five concerts in the run up to Christmas at St Paul’s in the Jewellery Quarter, in their home town of Birmingham.
Why does music suddenly disappear? It is all the more heartening when a work as excellent and enjoyable as Louise Farrenc’s Symphony No 3 takes wing once more, but you do have to wonder how in the world such a terrific orchestral piece was permitted to sink and vanish in its day under a morass of dubious opera.
What a jolting coincidence that one of the 20th century's angriest symphonic beasts should have a rare unleashing on a night of high national anxiety. Whether Vaughan Williams spewed forth his Fourth Symphony in response to darkening European clouds in 1934 or as a sublimation of sexual frustration, given his unhappy domestic life at the time, it hit us all hard last night.
Mirga Gražinytė-Tyla’s programmes in Birmingham are so personal – so utterly bespoke – that in the event of her being indisposed, they present something of a problem. That’s what happened this week.
There is no mention of Marc-Antoine Charpentier in David Cairns's comprehensive Berlioz biography.
“How many times have you heard the conductor sing?” asked William Christie after the final number, but before the two encores, of Sunday night’s 40th birthday celebration for his ensemble Les Arts Florissants. Well, lovers of old recordings know that you sometimes get plenty of impromptu vocalisation from the likes of Bernstein and Barbirolli.
At this time of year the musical world – and particularly the choral world – is full of festive concerts, and the challenge can be to find programmes venturing off the well-worn path of traditional favourites.