Making music again – an interview with Alexander Van Ingen of the Academy of Ancient Music
There is no substitute for live music and we are missing it. For the past three months performance venues have fallen silent. Festivals we had hoped to attend later this year have been cancelled. Orchestras and opera companies are having to adjust to an unprecedented fall in income. To gain some insight into the current challenges I spoke earlier this week to Alexander Van Ingen, Chief Executive of the Academy of Ancient Music (AAM), the period instrument ensemble based in Cambridge but with a strong presence in London and beyond.
The AAM was formed under the direction of Christopher Hogwood in 1973 and has maintained a stellar trajectory in the years since. It’s a comparatively small orchestra with a very small administrative tail and, together with Richard Egarr, the Music Director, all the musicians are freelance performers. The Academy receives no Arts Council or other public subsidy and relies entirely on private donors, promoters and ticket sales for its income. Notwithstanding this it has been an orchestra determined to provide outreach and education from pre-school to university-level with the goal of increased support for baroque music.
Alexander was fundamentally upbeat. AAM would be back performing as soon as they are allowed to and within whatever continuing Covid-19 restrictions still applied. The most difficult aspect at present is the lack of certainty: “If we knew what the situation was going to be in November or January or whenever, then we could plan around that and either put projects on ice or get ready to launch”. But there are “so many variables, so many uncertainties over future regulations, that it is pretty much impossible to plan”. Modelling for the rest of this year and into 2021 is difficult. “Without knowing whether performances can be indoors or only outdoors,” he says, “the implications of distance measures in venues for players as well as audiences as well as the financial implications of all such variables, is very difficult indeed”.
How is AAM sustaining the morale and loyalty of regular ensemble players, though? They are trying to keep a positive spirit, to keep everyone involved. They have been as supportive as possible to their core players particularly.
“Even before the government announced support for the self-employed, AAM launched an emergency fund-raising campaign which quickly garnered £36,500 and allowed us to make ex gratia payments to all our freelance players, in addition to us offering some compensating payments for cancelled concerts at which they had been due to play, and provide other support to those who fell between the cracks of the government’s support scheme. A number of our promoters have also been enormously helpful, including Longborough Festival Opera and the Stour Festival, with both of which we were due to perform and who have generously passed on to us donations given to them by their own supporters.”
He highlights ongoing planning for performances and events in 2021 and beyond. The AAM’s continuing focus is on musical discovery and revival, he says. Working with academic researchers at Cambridge (they are Orchestra-in-Residence at the University) and elsewhere, the ensemble will be building on recent work combining scholarship with performance.
Their new recording and edition of Handel’s Brockes-Passion has been very well received. They are expanding their repertoire to cover more baroque music from Spain and Portugal, with a world premiere recording of Francisco Valls’ Missa Regalis issued last month. They are also seeking out the unusual and unexplored in a way Hogwood would have applauded, including releasing a world premiere recording later this year of Dussek’s Messe Solemnelle, followed by the Semele composed by John Eccles around 1707. A particular focus in October will be a performance of Mozart Piano Concertos by Robert Levin which they will subsequently record; indeed they are intending to complete Hogwood and Levin’s renowned recordings of Mozart’s Piano Concertos over the next few years.
Alexander is encouraged by the administratively nimble and musically agile working methods of AAM. “Rehearsal and setup times are quite short compared to large ensembles or opera companies and, if our freelance players are available, AAM can put on a performance rather quickly,” he says.
Among the many post-lockdown variables however was the vital importance of support from AAM’s donors, both individual and corporate, for particular projects and of promoters for concerts in venues away from AAM’s Cambridge and Barbican bases. He hopes that the economic downturn from Covid-19 will not impact adversely on their loyal supporters.
But perhaps the most worrying issue among the many uncertainties was less about the performers than the audiences. As Alexander says: “How soon will people be ready to go out of their homes to attend public concerts? Will they be willing to travel to them by public transport?” Here too though he speaks of finding an innovative way forward: “We are really interested, for example, in exploring performances with small groups of players dispersed across an outside space. The model here would be London’s pleasure gardens which saw such concerts in the 18th-century. Why not now, too? Players could be distanced from each other and entry times for audience members staggered so that they could walk safely between groups of players.”
It is good to hear that the Academy of Ancient Music is ready to deliver for the months and years ahead, whatever the challenges. Alexander and the AAM team are keen to get back to playing live music. And hopefully all of us will be ready to get out of lockdown and go to hear them play and divert us.