Dame Patricia Routledge trained not only as an actress but also as a singer and had considerable experience and success in musical theatre, both in this country and in the United States of America.

Her many awards include a Tony for her Broadway performance in the Styne-Harburg musical “Darling of the Day” and a Laurence Olivier Award for her performance in Leonard Bernstein’s “Candide”. Her one woman show “Come for the Ride” toured the UK in 1988 and in 1992 she played Nettie Fowler in the highly acclaimed production of “Carousel” at the National Theatre. In 1998 she was honoured with the Gold Badge of Merit by the British Academy of Songwriters, Composers and Authors.

In this fascinating encounter she recalls this very special part of her career with access to some rare and treasured recordings.

Upcoming dates for my show chronicling one of the best kept secrets in the business – Dame Patricia’s extensive career in musical theatre:

REVIEW: Caz at Let’s Go To The Movies

Facing the Music: A Life in Musical Theatre with Patricia Routledge

Patricia Routledge in conversation with Edward Seckerson

When checking what’s coming at the Customs House a month or so ago I noticed that they had Patricia Routledge as an event in conversation with Edward Seckerson. No way I thought Mrs Bucket from Keeping Up Appearances coming to South Shields?! That was certainly something I was very interested in, even more when it was all going to be based around her background in musical theatre. A background that is in fact not massively well known. Although I will admit that I did do a little bit of research before the evening and saw that she was a Tony and Olivier Award winner.

The information about the evening claims it is one of the best kept secrets in show business and I certainly think that makes it even more fascinating. I must first start off by saying that it did not disappoint and it was a truly fantastic night at the theatre listening to stories and hearing singing clips from the brilliant actress/performer and woman.

A table with flowers, two glasses of water and chairs were set up already for the show. The applause was fantastic as she appeared on stage after listening to a song and a short introduction from Edward Seckerson. The theatre was packed out in the main stalls, I was sitting higher up on the side.

We were taken down memory lane all the way from her childhood which she attributed to how she ended up in Musical Theatre. With plenty of singing at home in Birkenhead just over the river from Liverpool. Not that you would ever guess that she should have a Scouse accent due to how well spoken she has always been. Elocution lessons were once seen as very important and that always contributed to Patricia ending up on the stage. She was very humble about her up bringing and that she never really expected anything to come from singing and acting.

She also had a little dig at the schools now claiming to be academies and that should go back to being Council schools. Interesting to hear her thoughts and views on some recent events when it comes to schooling. A lot of which makes a lot of sense in all honesty considering how bad some of them have become. But also sad that the Arts seem to be forgotten about now, not as much singing and learning of heritage.

We learn about how she worked her way up in Theatre from being Assistant Stage Manager and then getting into productions one step at a time. I really do think this talk would have been brilliant for anyone trying to get into the Theatre business and realising that you have to work hard and work your way up and get to know people along the way.

It was such an engaging evening as we were told all about the different shows she had appeared in, as well as listening to different songs from them and truly hearing the range of her very powerful voice which very nearly went into Opera with experience in that area. Truly inspiring to know how hard she worked to get into Theatre and continuing singing lessons, as well as studying English at University all of which would lead to performing on stage.

The musical clips were put together very well even though at one point she did have to tell them it was too loud and to turn it down for the next song! Which had the whole audience laughing out loud. She is a naturally funny person as even little things were amusing especially in exchanges with Edward. Who seemed to be having the time of his life showing such passion not only for Musical Theatre but for Patricia Routledge’s career. Something which made the evening even more enjoyable. It started at 7:45pm and did not finish until just before 10:40pm with about a 20 minute interval, making it incredible value for money. I am pretty sure everyone would have been very happy to sit and listen to them both talking all night.

Was lovely to find out her favourite musicals among them being My Fair Lady, Oliver and Fiddler on the Roof. Although it did not seem as though she was a big fan of more recent shows. Was mortified that some leading stars have alternates who would do some shows for them so they didn’t have to do eight shows per week!

It really was fantastic to learn more about the actress as well as an in-depth look into the world of Musical Theatre in both the West End and Broadway. She was very emotional when talking about her Broadway debut and getting ready for the curtain call, the role for which she won her Tony Award as well.

Thank you Edward Seckerson for wanting to do a brilliant show like this, giving so much knowledge and insight from start to finish. It really was well worth heading to the Theatre to listen to such great stories.

Listen below to Dame Patricia discuss her 2016 New Year’s honour with Sarah Vaughan on the BBC’s Today show 31-12-2016 during which she mentions not only this show but a few of her many other accomplishments:

Early in the development of Adam Guettel and Craig Lucas’ extraordinary The Light in the Piazza it was thought that Chicago Lyric Opera might be tendering a commission for the piece. It wasn’t to be. Broadway beckoned. But this most sophisticated of hybrids has a foot in both worlds and the presence of RENÉE FLEMING in the London Premiere of the piece is testament to its uniqueness – a free-flowing lyric seductiveness that is all about the intoxication of love amidst the statues and squares of Florence, Italy.

During a break in rehearsals for Daniel Evans’ Southbank staging EDWARD SECKERSON spoke exclusively to the celebrated opera diva about Piazza, Guettel, the legacy of his grandfather Richard Rodgers, the crossing of musical genres, the celebration of vocal diversity, and the magic of the microphone in facilitating a more confidential tone.

In 2007 Gramophone magazine uncovered an extraordinary fraud that rocked the classical music industry. Concert pianist Joyce Hatto – a little-known artist of moderate talent – was suddenly the name on everyone’s lips when a series of recordings (some 100 of them) flooded the market winning plaudits in the press and on BBC Radio 3 where one of them was selected as “Best in Catalogue” in a comparative review on CD Review’s popular “Building a Library” feature. The only problem was that these weren’t Hatto’s recordings at all but those of other established pianists whose recordings had been pilfered and even digitally “enhanced” by her husband and greatest champion Barrington Coupe. Hatto was dying of cancer and Coupe wanted to create a legacy for her that would far exceed anything that would she would have been capable of in life. The fraud was only discovered when an American journalist put one of her CDs into Itunes and the read-out revealed another artist altogether.

Now the story has been dramatised for television in a BBC film entitled Loving Miss Hatto written for the screen by Victoria Wood and starring Francesca Annis and Alfred Molina. In this exclusive audio podcast for Sinfini Music Victoria Wood talks to Edward Seckerson about the project which she so exhaustively researched to bring to dramatic fruition. It’s a fascinating insight into the working process of a seasoned writer. Wood talks, too, about her own musical beginnings and enduring musical passions.

Originally published: 16th December 2012.

Loving Miss Hatto is a Left Bank Pictures production for the BBC

This podcast was originally created on behalf of Sinfini Music .

TIME is the overriding motto for the 2016 DRESDEN FESTIVAL. Music can play with time in so many interesting ways, music can even suspend time creating frozen moments, moments of stasis where time ceases to exist – and in the words of festival director Jan Vogler “A good concert always provides us with a magical discourse between the past and the future.” In this exclusive audio podcast Vogler talks to Edward Seckerson about the mysteries of time and motion as it relates to the 2016 festival beginning as it does with an extraordinary all-night vigil of music set in motion by the work of British minimalist pioneer Michael Nyman known to the world for his extraordinary scores for Peter Greenaways’ ground-breaking films like The Draughtsman’s Contract. Vogler talks about the cleansing force of minimalism and the changes that it wrought on an ever more complicated musical landscape. He talks, too, about the international character of the Dresden Festival and how keen he always is to create a sense of “music without borders”.

And the question of borders, with regard to the ever growing refugee crisis engulfing the world, is addressed, too. The Israel Philharmonic Orchestra and Jerusalem Quartet will remind us how composers like Mahler and Shostakovich deployed Jewish folk music as a source of irony, of pathos born from bathos, and how music became the weapon of choice in the arena of peaceful protest.

Vogler himself plays the Schumann Cello Concerto – a work he loves – twice at this year’s festival and in doing so he explains how important it is that each individual performance or event is unique to that time only. Time may be fleeting but the memories linger on.

image © Jim Rakete

Simon Stephens’ Carmen Disruption upends the expectations of anyone entering the Almeida Theatre. It’s a kind of living poetry, taking its cue from Bizet’s ever-popular opera but taking it into ever darker territory. When does an artist’s assumption of a role end and real life take over?

This is the Carmen we know and love, thoroughly deconstructed – and the man tasked with creating the musical soundscape for this trippy odyssey to the dark heart of the piece is composer, instrumentalist and actor Simon Slater. In this exclusive audio podcast he talks to Edward Seckerson about the genesis of a unique theatrical event.

http://www.almeida.co.uk/

http://www.slatermusic.com/

The brothers Erik, Ken, and Mark Schumann founded the SCHUMANN QUARTET in 2007 and it might well have been an all-family affair had the cellist’s twin sister chosen to switch from violin to viola and join them. The Schumann brothers are of German/Japanese heritage – an interesting mix of temperaments – and perhaps because of their sister they were drawn to a female becoming the fourth among equals. The Estonian violist Liisa Randalu did so in 2012 and in this exclusive audio podcast she is spokesperson for the group – only fitting since she is at the centre of the sound – and talks to Edward Seckerson about the quartet’s journey so far. It’s been a wild ride to date with the quartet turning heads and attracting notice wherever they perform. Their reviews have reflected the excitement they generate and with their second CD release – an ARS Production – challenging expectations and bringing together Mozart, Verdi, and Charles Ives the plot certainly thickens. Schumann is a name to live up to and how could the quartet bearing such an extraordinary composer’s name not want to push the envelope.

http://www.schumannquartett.de/

Every now and again – but only very rarely – a professional engagement comes along that is so personal, so loaded with treasured associations, that it transcends all normal parameters and takes on a significance all of its own. This was such an occasion.

I first met Dame Janet two years ago on the jury of the Guildhall Gold Medal for singers and somehow or other, despite the pressures of the evening, we managed to find a few quiet moments to reflect on some of my memories of her performing career. She was most gracious (and illuminating – we shared some Leonard Bernstein memories) and afterwards in a one of those pinch-me-is-this really-happening moments I escorted her from the Barbican to the underground (no chauffeured car for her) through that dank tunnel chatting the while about singing and singers, conductors, accompanists, musical styles, trends, you name it.

We met subsequently in a social situation and then word came through from the London Jewish Cultural Centre – where I have begun to do a number of “audience with” events – that they had secured Dame Janet for an evening at Ivy House. We all know how very rare public appearances from this legendary artist now are. Her premature retirement from stage and platform has been very private and in recent times has been given over to caring for her ailing husband Keith Shelley whose management of her illustrious career was nothing short of devotional.

Part of the joy and satisfaction of this evening came with putting the elegant and erudite Dame Janet before her audience once more and somehow validating the many years of pleasure she brought to those of us who admired and followed her every performance and recording. There are many treasures there, of course, and by necessity I was only able to represent six composers – Elgar, Bach, Berlioz, Britten, Gluck, Mahler. But they wove a musical thread through some riveting and highly philosophical reflections on the art and the “business” (in the commercial sense) of being a singer at Dame Janet’s level; the importance of audience, of the right teachers and the right collaborators. There were fascinating thumbnail sketches of the great (but diminutive) Barbirolli; of Sir Charles Mackerras and his obsession with the ornamentation, of the tyrannical George Szell and humane Carlo Maria Giulini. We now know (and I was intrigued to know) why Dame Janet has never “chested” for dramatic effect either on stage or in a piece like Elgar’s Sea Pictures where the temptation is strong. I assumed it was because she preferred to use the words for dramatic effect when in fact it was something far more practical – as in the configuration of her voice and technique simply didn’t allow for it. Or, put more simply, she didn’t know (or want to know) how to do it. We learned also how the physical abandon of her work on stage (from one so “composed” on the platform) was incredibly liberating for her – freeing her instrument, her whole being.

Part of the evening’s magic lay in watching Dame Janet listen intently (“sheer torture”, she described it) to her own recordings – sometimes with visible dismay, sometimes amusement. To be sat alongside her as the last of Mahler’s Rückert Lieder – “Ich bin der Welt abhanden gekommen” – unfolded was positively surreal. In a song about the isolation and loneliness of the artist it conjoured so many emotions. Her second recording with Barbirolli – in my view one of the great lieder recordings of our time – transcends mere performance and takes us to an altogether other emotional plane. In her stillness and concentration it was as if she was actually singing one last time.

At the close of the evening I quoted back to her a line from her book Full Circle: “We are all soon forgotten; five minutes after I leave the platform for the last time I shall be forgotten.” It hasn’t quite worked out that way, has it.

Now that you can relive the event by clicking below, I just want to share a priceless moment that happened before we both went on. I felt a hand on my arm accompanied by the words ‘Are you alright?’ ‘Im fine’, I replied, ‘A little nervous.’ ‘So am I’ were the words that came back. How special was that.

The Polish composer Miecyzlaw Weinberg – his Holocaust opera The Passenger caused quite a stir in David Pountney’s premiere staging – has a new champion. The talented young German violinist Linus Roth has taken his music and his legacy to heart in a big way. New recordings of the complete Sonatas and the little heard Violin Concerto (in a coupling with the Britten Concerto) on the enterprising Challenge label reveal a composer of many facets and a deep and abiding conviction. His music chronicles a life of tragedy, determination, and defiance, and in this exclusive audio podcast Roth talks to Edward Seckerson about Weinberg’s extraordinary journey – his flight from the Nazis, his kinship with Dmitri Shostakovich, and the finding of his own distinctive voice. Roth reveals what it was about Weinberg that spoke so directly to him and how he believes that the Violin Concerto is a major work which will in time achieve the widest currency. He sees his advocacy of the new and the neglected, past and present, as a responsibility – and that it is players not promoters who keep the repertoire growing.

Photo by www.wildundleise.de

http://www.linusroth.com/

http://www.challengerecords.com/

With the final release in Vasily Petrenko’s much-lauded Shostakovich cycle on Naxos the young maestro talks to Edward Seckerson about a masterpiece the Soviet authorities tried but failed to sabotage at its first performances. YevgenyYevtushenko’s poem “Babi Yar” with its accusations of anti-Semitism was the flashpoint but social protest runs deep in the piece and nothing in the composer’s output hits home quite as hard or as movingly. It is, in effect, his testimony.

In February 2013 Corinne Winters created an absolute sensation in her operatic European debut when Peter Konwitschny’s starkly intense staging of Verdi’s La Traviata arrived at English National Opera. Vocally, physically, dramatically her Violetta (“the whore who gets all the best tunes” according to Konwitschny) was so “complete”, so unanimously greeted by superlative reviews, that it marked a highly significant arrival on the international opera scene. According to the American born Winters, twelve important contracts arose directly from that run of performances. In this exclusive audio podcast she talks to Edward Seckerson about life before and after the London Traviata; about growing up with rock and pop music and something close to a resistance of opera. She talks most eloquently about the development and health of her voice, of the support team of trusted advisors who help steer her choices. She is currently back at ENO in Terry Gilliam’s hotly anticipated staging of Berlioz’ rarely performed Benvenuto Cellini which she believes further ratchets up the excitement and pushes the possibilities of operatic staging. Her Royal Opera debut beckons in 2016 – a new production of a challenging classic. 

http://corinnewinters.com/