Michael Berkeley 60th Birthday Concert
Wigmore Hall, London
20 October 2008
Dame Felicity Lott (soprano)
Susan Bickley (mezzo)
Thomas Carroll (cello)
Julius Drake (piano)
Chilingirian Quartet (string quartet)
Michael Berkeley: Chilingirian Quartet
String Quartet ‘Magnetic Field’
Johann Sebastian Bach: Thomas Caroll
Sarabande, Minuet and Gigue from Cello Suite No. 1 in G
Michael Berkeley: Susan Bickley, Julius Drake
Speaking Silence
Blow, northern wynd
Echo
And is it night?
The ragged wood
Pere du doux repos
Interval
Michael Berkeley: Chilingirian Quartet, Thomas Caroll
String Quartet ‘Abstract Mirror’
Francis Poulenc: Felicity Lott, Julius Drake
Montparnasse
Hôtel
Les chemins de l’amour
Michael Berkeley: Felicity Lott, Julius Drake (First concert performance)
Echo – Hommage a Poulenc
Lennox Berkeley: Felicity Lott, Julius Drake
O lurcher loving collier
Frank Bridge: Felicity Lott, Julius Drake
Go not happy day
Benjamin Britten: Felicity Lott, Julius Drake
O Waly, Waly
Sweet Polly Oliver
Cole Porter: Felicity Lott, Julius Drake
Night and Day
Michael Berkeley: Felicity Lott, Susan Bickley, Thomas Caroll, Chilingirian Quartett, Julius Drake
Touch Light
What the critics say
Hilary Finch, The Times, October 22, 2008
A week before the premiere of his new Ian McEwan opera, For You, Michael Berkeley celebrated his 60th birthday with a musical party at Wigmore Hall, inviting musicians who had supported him throughout his life.
The Chilingirian Quartet played two of Berkeley’s most original and imaginative chamber-music pieces. It was Vaughan Williams who declared that the most original composer was the most indebted – and Berkeley freely acknowledges his debts. Indeed, the entire evening paid homage to them. In the case of Magnetic Field (1995), a riveting ten-minute string quartet, it’s the shade of Purcell that is evoked, in particular his Fantasia upon one note. A single F is sounded out, at first keening, then sliding this way and that, becoming fractured between the bows – and finding its true identity only through a compelling journey of rhythmic and harmonic departures and returns.
The cellist Thomas Carroll joined the Chilis for Abstract Mirror (2002), in which Schubert’s use of string quintet was turned on its head, with the second cello prominent, and the viola acting as a chanting central presence. This was an even tougher journey – and still more rewarding.
In between came Berkeley’s 1986 song cycle, Speaking Silence, beautifully performed by Susan Bickley and Julius Drake, with its Brittenesque bright and florid piano writing illuminating often all but unaccompanied settings of poets including Rossetti and Yeats.
After the interval came a re-creation of domestic music-making with guests of the Berkeleys, father (Lennox) and son, such as Poulenc, Bridge and Britten. Felicity Lott garlanded their songs with charm; though Berkeley’s Echo – Hommage à Poulenc and Touch Light revealed that meeting of the coy English stiff upper lip with the Gallic louche: not the prettiest sight in the Berkeley canon.