Death be Not Proud

Death, be not proud! Apparently John Adams’s The Death of Klinghoffer has something to offend everyone. When it was new back in 1991, this quintessential opera, based on the 1985 hijacking of the cruise ship Achille Lauro by Palestinian terrorists, created a mild stir among those who perceived it as insufficiently hard on terrorism and more than a bit unfriendly to Jews. Since 9/11, the smoldering resentment has fairly exploded. The Boston Symphony hastily canceled a performance of concert excerpts. Musicologist Richard Taruskin, in an article in the New York Times, accused Adams of romanticizing terrorists and being un-American. The editor of England’s Opera magazine was appalled by Alice Goodman’s libretto, which he dismissed as “desperately naïve,” and even went so far as to say that the opera is “best left unperformed.” After seeing a production in Helsinki, one critic in the same journal hated the work so much that he declared it “an operatic corpse.”

Ketil Bjørnstad’s passion for the English metaphysical poet John Donne (1572-1631) is a lifelong affair. His settings of Donne’s verse have led to recordings including The Shadow, Grace and the ECM album The Light. “After working with the texts of John Donne for more than twenty years, I still find new approaches to understanding what he wrote and I find music throughout. It is in the language, in the rhythm, in the silence between the sentences - a passionate quest for meaning and reconciliation. Donne's dramatic life is reflected in the texts and everywhere in them you will find the passion, melodies and sounds”. Bjørnstad wrote A passion for John Donne for the Oslo International Church Festival in the winter of 2011/2012 and the premiere performance – documented here – was at the Sofienberg Kirke in Oslo in March 2012.

William Byrd and Thomas Weelkes died in 1623, Byrd in his ninth decade, Weelkes barely half that. Eighteen works, mainly secular in nature and several relatively unknown today, are presented here, along with two inspired new compositions from Roderick Williams and James MacMillan following in the tradition of the musical elegy. The beguiling intertwining of voices and viols throughout the programme remains as potent today as it must have been four centuries ago.

400 years ago, in 1623, England lost two of its greatest composers: William Byrd and Thomas Weelkes. In a pro- gramme marking this double anniversary, The King’s Singers and Fretwork turn their focus to the bold personalities of these two men, Will and Tom.