Lady Macbeth is a dramatic setting of sections of Shakespeare’s text edited by the composer to form a coherent narrative of the play from Lady Macbeth’s point of view. Commissioned by the NZ early music ensemble Affetto (soprano, cornetto, viola da gamba, theorbo, and harpsichord), the work traces Lady Macbeth’s exultation as she hears the witches’ prophecies about Macbeth’s great future, her invocation to persuade her husband to murder, her triumph turning to despair during her first banquet as queen, her lamentation when she realises that “Nought’s had, all’s spent, Where our desire is got without content”, and her disintegration into madness. Affetto toured the work for Chamber Music New Zealand in 2015.
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ReviewAffetto has been on a tour of nearly a dozen cities under the auspices of Chamber Music NZ, so they came to Wednesday night’s concert well-rehearsed indeed.
Top performers never relax completely on stage, but the five members of the group seemed to be having a party, playing music they loved to people who responded with enormous enthusiasm. They played with such éclat and vigour, and communicated such drama, such feeling, that this audience will remember the evening for a very long time. They played – nay performed – a remarkably dramatic work commissioned for this tour, Lady Macbeth, a work in five parts, using lines from Shakespeare’s text set in a perfectly matching musical environment by composer Janet Jennings. Jennings was present and must have treasured the performance which offered drama, intense passion, and such an evocative musical interpretation of Shakespeare’s character. Jayne Tankersley’s dazzling interpretation of the final, clashin and disturbing tonalities combined matchless technique with flawless delivery. The audience loved it. Sam Edwards, The Waikato Times, July 15, 2015 St Peter’s Cathedral, Hamilton. |
Praise for Lady Macbeth
... A brief word concerning the one piece of contemporary music in the programme, written for the group by Waikato-based Janet Jennings – a work for soprano and ensemble exploring the character of Shakespeare’s Lady Macbeth. The group performed the opening movement of this five-part work, one depicting Lady Macbeth’s ruthless determination to make her husband King of Scotland. The music’s ceremonial, cornetto-led opening cleverly took our sensibilities back in time, before reflecting the character’s murderous, determined intent with haunting, close-knit harmonies and convoluted chromatic lines for both singer and the ensemble, the music chillingly underlining the strength of the text’s concluding statement “We’ll not fail”. On this evidence, what a compelling entertainment the whole work promised to be!
During the interval we were invited to “inspect the goods” at closer quarters, and so had a lovely time examining the intricacies of the theorbo and the simplicities of the cornet and baroque trumpet, the experience giving more girth to our appreciate of the sounds wrought for us by this talented ensemble. Afterwards, we felt pleased and delighted that the wishes of the group, as expressed in the accompanying notes – to create “a very entertaining program of lively, poignant, and uplifting music” – had been so satisfyingly realized.
Peter Mechen, July 2015
During the interval we were invited to “inspect the goods” at closer quarters, and so had a lovely time examining the intricacies of the theorbo and the simplicities of the cornet and baroque trumpet, the experience giving more girth to our appreciate of the sounds wrought for us by this talented ensemble. Afterwards, we felt pleased and delighted that the wishes of the group, as expressed in the accompanying notes – to create “a very entertaining program of lively, poignant, and uplifting music” – had been so satisfyingly realized.
Peter Mechen, July 2015