On Tour with Yannick Nézet-Séguin

‘A vigorous work-out of Haydn symphonies’ is how The Times described OAE’s opening concert of the Southbank 2009-10 season.  At dawn, a couple of days later, the 42 players checked in at Heathrow for a repeat of the all-Haydn programme in Cologne, some still jet-lagged after recent flights from Montreal (Yannick), Sydney (Nancy) and Kathmandu (Jan).  Neal’s flute had disappeared after the London concert, but Lisa has kindly loaned him another instrument until his turns up.

In Cologne Yannick leapt onto the platform of the Philharmonie, sporting a new ‘Nightshift’ T-shirt (what on earth does the pink shrimp-like logo represent?). 

Still conducting after all these years

I was just trawling through the net trying to find some coverage about a festival we did a few seasons ago when I came across this clanger on the Radio 3 website:

Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment : Listening in Paris , 5 th October to 24 th November 2005 at the QEH. Conductors include Jean Féry Rebel, Frans Brüggen and Vladimir Jurowski.

Unless my memory is playing up I don’t remember Maestro Rebel conducting us at the time – perhaps not surprising as he died in 1747…

William Norris, Marketing Director

New podcast: Sir Mark Elder talks about Maria di Rohan

Our new podcast is just out and can be listened to below – and will be available on itunes shortly. It features singer Christopher Purves and conductor Sir Mark Elder talking about Donizetti’s Maria di Rohan and OAE Principal Oboe Anthony Robson talking abour Elgar’s Dream of Gerontius.

You can also download the podcast here.

Please note that the clip from Maria Di Rohan (supplied with thanks to Opera Rara) is not from the forthcoming recording but is with Nelly Miricioiu and the Philharmonia Orchestra.

We perform Maria di Rohan at the Royal Festival Hall on 7 November (tickets), and The Dream of Gerontius at the Royal Festival Hall on 24 November (tickets), withe further performances in Birmingham Town Hall on 28 and 29 November (tickets).

Maria di Rohan recording

On Friday evening I popped into Henry Wood Hall, where we are currently rehearsing and recording Donizetti’s Maria di Rohan with Opera Rara and Sir Mark Elder. Below are a few pics – not many people around as was taken during the break! What I was surprised about was how we go about recording a piece like this. I had assumed we would rehearse for several days and then record, but it doesn’t work like that – instead there is perhaps a day of rehearsal and then a rehearsal of each section followed by a recording of it. So the opera is built up over several days rather than being recorded in one go. It’s taking just over a week to record and rehearse, though the vocalists and choir have been rehearsing for some time previous to this. Should make for a fanatastic performance at the Royal Festival Hall on Saturday!

William Norris, Marketing Director

Business club launched!

September marked the successful launch event of the OAE King’s Cross Business Club.  Our launch event around our Bite Size Baroque concert was followed by a lively talk by Education Manager, Cherry Forbes.  The event proved so popular we needed to open up a second concert and reception to avoid turning people away!

The club recognises that we are now a key member of King’s Cross ever-changing community.  We are providing an opportunity for businesses to meet, exchange ideas and, of course, enjoy some lovely music together.    While we are relatively new to Kings Place, Cherry has been working in local schools here for many years and she is now a well known force in the area.  Recently, Cherry started a series of schools concerts, with the support of King Place.  This means that 2500 children participate alongside the OAE in performance at Kings Place each year – most of these children would never normally experience live classical music or be able to take their musical abilities to the next level.

The Business Club has three tiers:  £5000 Enlightened, £2000 Wise, and  £500 Clued up.  We are delighted to welcome Green and Fortune and Parabola Land as Founder members.  Sign up now!!!!

More on this as it evolves….

Nicolette Shaw, Development Manager Corporate Giving

 

OAE at St Georges

One of the OAE’s regular ‘homes’ outside of London is St Georges in Bristol. We usually give 3-4 ‘main’ concerts there a season, and often a series of lunchtime chamber music concerts too. However, depite having worked for the OAE for getting on for five years until last week I had never been there! So, I decided to catch the last concert of our mini-tour with Yannick Nézet-Séguin there. It’s a beautiful building – very striking outside, and like St John’s in London it used to be a church. Inside it’s very intimate – and the acoustic is fantastic – very ‘in your face’ but in a good way, and the sound has a nice warm quality to it. being an old building it does have a few drawbacks – including the very creaky floor boards in the balcony. I was up there in the rehearsal being shown around by the Marketing Manager of the venue when we hit a very creaky spot – rather embrasssingly the Orchestra stopped rehearsing and I got a ‘look’ from Yannick followed by general mock stamping of feet from the Orchestra! The performance itself was fantastic – and there was the rare sight backstage of all the players virtually queueing up to say thank you and goodbye to Yannick at the end. An added bonus on the way home was discovering that bars on trains obviously don’t have licensing restructions like pubs and I was able to buy a nice 1/2 bottle of red wine to keep me company on the journey back to London, despite it being after 11!

William Norris, Marketing Director

Last minute concert preparations

Regular readers of the OAE blog will by now have a sense of how much work goes into making a concert happen – booking artists, the orchestra, rehearsal venues, travel arrangements, getting programmes written and printed etc etc. But there is so much more that needs to happen – including last  minute emergency hair straightening for the office team. (with apologies to OAE Project Manager, Ceri Jones, pictured…)

New season kicks off: more reviews

A few more reviews from our Southbank Centre season opening concert with Yannick Nézet-Séguin

The Times

Classical Source

David Nice blog (scroll down!)

OAE on the tube

We are running a very small scale tube advertising campaign at the moment – a couple of pics of it below. You’ll find the posters at Waterloo and Embankment stations – there are several designs to look out for.

Also, I can’t remember if we posted this link before – but here’s blogger opera chic’s take on our ‘look’ for the 2009-2010 Season.

Night Shift pics

We’ve just had the first few pics back from our Night Shift event last week, which we’ve posted to our new Flickr account. More will be added in the coming days. We’re especially interested to see what is on the disposable cameras we let loose amongst the audience. Lets hope it’s all clean… (pics below by Joe Plommer, showing Orchestra, conductor Yannick Nézet-Séguin and presenter Alistair Appleton)