1/About Streetwise Opera/ 'Fables'/ 'The Nightingale and the Rose'/ Spitalfields Festival 2010
Evening Standard 20/12/2010 (4 stars)
Kieron Quirke. FABLES Shoreditch Church
A glorious avant-garde show that was as musically interesting as it was spiritually stirring
The highlight was Emily Hall's Nightingale and the Rose, a folk-pop-infused meditation on Wilde's fairy tale. Complemented by Gaelle Denis's incomprehensively lovely film, its central number is a beautiful reworking of Yeat's Down by the Sally Gardens. Two homeless soloists, David Sanchez-Remade and Kevin Woodward, imbued the timeless words with incalculable regret:"But I was young and foolish,"runs the lyric-"and now I'm full of tears". Wow.
The Daily Telegraph 20/12/2010 (4 Stars)
Rupert Christiansen. Fables, Shoredich Church
A joyful event, culminating in a thrilling rendition of a sea shanty by all four casts, lifting the church roof with exhilerating glee
Most sophisticated was a version of Oscar Wilde's The Nightingale and the Rose, shot in a gorgeous glow of Pierre et Giles colours by Gaelle Denis, with a lyrical, folk-inspired score by Emily Hall.
Independent on Sunday 26/12/2010 (4 stars)
Anna Picard. Fables: A film opera
The strongest fable, however, focuses on a broken heart and a simple folk song. Company members Victor Sande, David Sanchez-Remade and Kevin Woodward, with Revivalist drones and descants for violin and cello, led Emily Hall's adaptation of The Nightingale and the Rose, a wistful story of unrequited love, sensitively filmed by Gaelle Denis
Financial Times 21/12/2010 (3 stars)
Laura Battle. Fables - a film opera
Immediately appealing is The Nightingale and the Rose, Emily Hall's delicate interpretation of Oscar Wilde's short story. Cast members fill the church with whistled birdsong before launching a heartfelt refrain that repaets throughout the score and Gaelle Denis's ravishing film.
2/About release of 'think about space'/ London Sinfonietta/ Jerwood Series CD
From BBC Music Magazine, December 2009: *****performance, ****recording
‘This penultimate release in the London Sinfonietta’s excellent Jerwood Series features works drawing inspiration from beyond the normal Classical sphere, ‘crossover’ if you like, though certainly not in the way used by bean counters at major labels. This is most obvious in Anna Meredith’s axeman, in which a single bassoon, aided by guitar pedals, makes a credible impression of a strutting rock-guitar solo. It is terrific fun, as reflected in the whoop of appreciation at the end of this performance, though it begs the question why not just have a guitar? Meredith’s other piece, flak, combines performers and electronics. Its inspiration comes in part from dance music, though this is only obvious in the relentless final section.
The rollicking violin part of Ian Vine’s wonderful ocre oscuro, played here by Clio Gould, opens the disc. It is soon adorned with rich layers, the title referring to the raw umber used as the initial layer of an oil painting. Emily Hall’s Think About Space uses laid-back guitar and melodeon with delay to build undulating cross-rhythms. Its quirky charms are hard to resist.’
Christopher Dingle
3/About 'Sante'
The Times, Tuesday, 23 May 2006
World premier of Sante, 24 May 2006, ****
Geoff Brown
Father disapproves of his daughter's lover. All hell is let loose. The synopsis could serve for many operas. Tchaikovsky's Mazepa covers the territory in three and a half hours. Sante, generated by the Genesis Opera Project, mounted by the London Sinfonietta and Aldeburgh Productions, whisks through in 59 minutes.
This length seems just right for a young composer new to the genre, and Emily Hall -- the winner of last year's Royal Philharmonic Society composition award -- doesn't waste a second. She and her librettist Kit Peel tell an urgent, painful tale, set during the Rwanda genocide in the spring of 1994. Sante, a Hutu villager, is in love with Obietsu, a Tutsi travelling salesman Her surrogate father, the village priest, urges upon her a local man, Anastase, a Hutu militant. Violence spreads; the last scenes bring a forced marriage, a rape and a death.
No surprises in the plot, or the plain words of Peel's libretto. They fuse nonetheless with Hall's music to create powerful sequences of foreboding and terror. Hall's ensemble is individual: clarinet, two trombones, single strings, electric and bass guitars, an accordion. Their sounds come in two chief categories, the atmospheric blur and the dramatic stab; African elements are used lightly.
Some of these effects are overdone: repeated notes plucked from guitar or harp are a blunt weapon of expression. You might also wish for larger drops of lyrical phrasing, at least to lubricate the singers. Yet Hall need only tighten the screws slightly for music and drama to explode; the finale's rhythmic stamping and ugly thrusts prove devastating for everyone.
Performances, Philip Walsh's conducting and Tim Supple's staging? All to the point. A tree; a cross; a Sante worth rooting for (Yannick-Muriel Noah); an Anastase (Rodney Clarke) of fearful power. Joey Masemola's Obietsu needed more heft, but it wasn't crucial. The big news is simple. Youth is on the march, making and singing a dynamic new opera, worth everyone's time and hopes.
The Guardian, Friday, 26 May 2006
World premier of Sante, Wednesday May 24, 2006, ***
Erica Jeal
Sante is the first opera by young composer Emily Hall and librettist Kit Peel. A fruit of Aldeburgh's Genesis Opera Project, which brought this rookie team together with experienced director Tim Supple, it goes to the Suffolk festival next month.
Peel has drawn on his journalistic background to provide a concise narrative for this 75-minute work. Its setting - rural Rwanda during the genocide of 1994 - carries a certain responsibility. But its real subject is a story of thwarted love of the kind that writers have been re-creating for centuries.
Hall's music, expertly performed by nine members of the London Sinfonietta under Philip Walsh, is sparsely scored, coloured with accordion and, especially, harp. There are suggestions of the soundworld of African music, but no more than that; Hall is no musical tourist, though she seems more confident writing for the players than for the singers.
The opera starts with the buzz of an untuned radio; a potent symbol considering that propaganda played such a role in Rwanda's tragedy. On stage, however, the hateful speech played on a battered 1980s wireless - hanging from a white cross representing the church in Ti Green's simple, evocative set - seems merely to reinforce decisions already made. There is little illustration of how hatred could spread so insidiously among normal people.
But do Hall and Peel intend to attempt an exploration of the genocide, or is the love story their priority? It's the former that sticks in the mind, but this is partly down to the individual performances. Yannick-Muriel Noah has expressive presence in the title role, but Joey Masemola is too stilted to be convincing as her lover. The strongest performance is from Rodney Clarke as Anastase, the Hutu agitator driven by desire for Sante.
The final scene, Anastase's thugs banging their machetes on the stage loud enough to make the audience flinch, is perhaps clumsily brutal, but it is hard to imagine what else it could be. It certainly makes an impact - and for a first opera, that's a good start.
Opera Magazine
Stephen Pettitt
"An impressively promising first opera"
4/ Older reviews
The Guardian, 18 th November, 2003
Music of Today: Philharmonia, Royal Festival Hall
Reviewed by Geoff Brown
Youth had a ball earlier when two promising composers in their mid-twenties, Emily Hall and Anna Meredith, shared the platform in the Philharmonia's occasional series, Music of Today. We heard four pieces, none longer than eight minutes, all with substance, bite and a refreshing desire to connect with an audience.
Clear points of reference helped, from a drunken jazz trumpeter in Hall's Chatelet to the minor ninth interval that haunts Meredith's The Seventh Door. Music with a human face , ebulliently performed. More from both, please.
The Guardian, Saturday January 29, 2005
London Sinfonietta, LSO St Lukes
Reviewed by Andrew Clements
Emily Hall's Think About Space, sounded fresh and distinctive.
The Times, Saturday January 31, 2005
London Sinfonietta, LSO St Lukes
Reviewed by John Allison
It was good to hear the angst-free sound-scape of Emily Hall's think about space. Disjointed rhythms jostle each other in this short piece, to which a reedy melodeon and electric guitar lend strong colour
