Mary, Queen of Scots, ENO, 15 February 2025

Coliseum

Images: Ellie Kurttz
Queen Mary (Heidi Stober)

Queen Mary – Heidi Stober
James Stewart, Earl of Moray – Alex Otterburn
Henry Stuart, Lord Darnley – Rupert Charlesworth
James Hepburn, Earl of Bothwell – John Findon
David Riccio – Barnaby Rea
Cardinal Beaton – Darren Jeffery
Lord Gordon – Alastair Miles
Earl of Ruthven – Ronald Samm
Earl of Morton – Jolyon Loy
Mary Seton – Jenny Stafford
Mary Beaton – Monica McGhee
Mary Livingston – Felicity Buckland
Mary Fleming – Siān Griffiths

Director, designs – Stewart Laing
Associate costume designs – Mady Berry
Lighting – D.M. Wood

Choreography – Alex McCabe  

Chorus of the English National Opera (chorus director: Matthew Quinn)  

Orchestra of the English National Opera

Joana Carneiro (conductor)

Written to the composer’s own libretto based on Amalia Elguera’s unpublished play Moray – direct collaboration having proved difficult – Thea Musgrave’s Mary, Queen of Scots has had, by contemporary operatic standards, rather a happy history since its 1977 Edinburgh premiere. It has reached various stages in the United Kingdom, United States and Germany. Last year, a new production was mounted in Leipzig. Now, in co-production with San Francisco Opera, it receives its premiere at ENO. It may have seemed a bold step for the company in its current, parlous condition, yet it was rewarded with both an artistic success and something approaching a full house. It was a delight to see the composer, approaching 97, in the audience and receiving justly warm and prolonged applause. 

Earl of Bothwell (Barnaby Rea), James Stewart (Alex Otterburn), Mary

People can create, perform, and appreciate successful art regardless of personal circumstances; there nevertheless seems something apt for a Scottish woman who received part of her education in France (studying with Nadia Boulanger) who thereafter spent much of her life, if not in exile then working in another English-speaking country (the USA), to have written an opera on this theme. If it does not fall into the category of experimental opera, seeking to reinvent or reimagine the genre, to expand its theatrical and/or musical boundaries; nor is it seeking to do so, without proving self-consciously archaising. Mary Queen of Scots is rather a highly competent, engaging work which, in its three acts, come across as the equal of many an accomplished work by the likes of Britten or even, in some moods, Henze. In musical dramaturgy, if hardly language, the opera takes its place more in a line from Verdi than Wagner. Musgrave is equally, palpably adept at many of the classic set pieces and expectations of the genre, evoking with similar sureness requirements and shifts in general atmosphere, music for dancing, and crowd scenes set against individual feeling. Turning inwards for an aria, in which certain instrumentation colours a character’s – and our – response, music and drama might be understood as traditionally operatic, without pushing any particular aesthetic as to what anything other than itself should be.

Likewise, a broadly tonal musical language sounds straightforwardly to be what it is, rather than self-consciously reinstating tonality—or anything else. I could sense a mind at work planning its musical structure in tandem with the drama, without bringing that modernistically to the fore. The ENO Orchestra and (a regrettably thinned down) Chorus under conductor Joana Carneiro were surely instrumental to realising this success. One would never have had the sense this was not a repertory work they had been playing for years—save, perhaps for the keen sense of discovery. We felt, even knew, we were in safe hands, though. 

The cast was, of course, similarly crucial to such achievement. Heidi Stober gave a touching, multi-faceted performance in the title role, in no evident sense bound by the expectations such a portrayal must necessarily greet. One felt in her plight the twin demands of life and fate ground tragically by politics low and high. Alex Otterburn’s quicksilver James Stewart proved nicely enigmatic. If there remained a nagging suspicion one should dislike the character more than one did, that stood testament to the artists’ gift for bringing alive both the character and his own necessities. Rupert Charlesworth had one properly despise Darnley in his amoral weakness. I struggled somewhat to gain the measure of the Earl of Bothwell, but that seemed to be more inherent in the drama, perhaps the staging too, than in John Findon’s well-sung performance. Darren Jeffery’s Cardinal Beaton and Barnaby Rea’s Riccio were clearly, vividly presented; not that the two have much in common beyond that. Smaller roles were all well taken, rebuking the idea that one can, let alone should, uproot a company such as ENO and dump it somewhere else; such depth comes from building on a living tradition, not that the Arts Council has idea or interest in such an idea. 

David Riccio (Barnaby Rea), Lord Darnley (Rupert Charlesworth), James Stewart

Stewart Laing’s production was at best a mixed bag, though that may in part have been a matter of limited resources. If it tried to do more with a broadly comparable black-box space than Ruth Knight had for Britten’s Gloriana in 2022, Knight’s caution emerged all the wiser. A marquee was built and taken down with considerable noise: a metaphor, no doubt, yet one that added little. Other than that, we had strangely inappropriate costumes, their lack of social differentiation was puzzling. Warm anoraks were the thing across the board, perhaps because the opera is set in Scotland, although, especially in crowd scenes, we appeared to be closer to the world of The Flying Dutchman. If the idea – and I think it may have been – was to evoke twentieth-century Protestant-Catholic sectarianism, then it might have been more rigorously applied, strange exceptions throwing the whole thing into disarray, unaided by other aspects of the staging. To be fair, though, one could certainly understand why Mary would only have returned to this Scotland with the greatest of reluctance; it was difficult to imagine how what we saw would have been worth a mass, a Lord’s Supper, or anything else. 

Cardinal Beaton (Darren Jeffery)

I could not understand why Alastair Miles’s dour yet honest Lord Gordon wore a dog collar; let alone why, if so, he should be dressed more as Presbyterian minister than Catholic priest. But then his part in the drama more generally seemed strange on any discernible historical terms, not least in his stabbing of James Stewart (as the Earl of Moray is referred to). Conflation of characters, however much it may pain historians, is far from an unusual dramatic device; if we go down this route, we shall be here all day. This nonetheless remained a perplexing choice. Bothwell’s rape of Mary nevertheless registered in duly horrifying fashion. I do not know the work itself well enough – indeed at all, other than from this performance – to be sure whether the nature of the act is originally so clear. I sensed there might be a suggestion of greater ambiguity, though that may be entirely wrong. In any case, there none here; it cast its dark, terrible shadow over all that remained to be shown.

Das Rheingold, Regents Opera, 9 February 2025

York Hall, Bethnal Green

Images: Matthew Coughlan (unless stated otherwise)
Rhinemaidens (Jillian Finnamore, Justine Viani), Alberich (Oliver Gibbs)

Wotan – Ralf Lukas
Donner – Andrew Mayor
Froh – Calvin Lee
Loge – James Schouten
Fricka – Ingeborg Børch
Freia – Charlotte Richardson
Erda, Flosshilde – Mae Heydorn
Alberich – Oliver Gibbs
Mime – Holden Madagame
Fasolt – Henry Grant Kerswell
Fafner – Craig Lemont Walters
Woglinde – Jillian Finnamore
Wellgunde – Justine Viani

Director – Caroline Staunton
Assistant directors – Eleanor Strutt, Keiko Sumida
Designs – Isabella van Braeckel
Lighting – Patrick Malmström
Producer – CJ Heaver

Regents Opera Orchestra
Ben Woodward (conductor)

Fricka (Ingeborg Børch), Wotan (Ralf Lukas)

 
In some ways the most radical of all Wagner’s dramas and, far from coincidentally, both the most brazenly socialist in its content and the most aesthetically distant from traditional ‘opera’, Das Rheingold will never cease to astonish. Should it not, them something has gone seriously awry. Experience nonetheless teaches one to be prepared for anything. What a joy, then, to be quite unprepared for the extraordinary success of the first instalment of Regents Opera’s Ring at York Hall, Bethnal Green.

 The space itself is part of the magic. (Doubtless the venue for earlier Regents Opera performances, the contemporaneous yet very different Freemasons’ Hall in Holborn, will also have been.) The Wimbledon or Wembley of British boxing, yet speaking far more clearly of its East End working-class roots, York Hall will doubtless have been new to many in the audience; it was to me, though I lived for some years further east, in Poplar. This is a Ring in the round, encircling what would be the (boxing) ring itself. I have never experienced a Ring so close to the stage, however small the theatre, and that both allows an intimacy one would never otherwise experience and necessitates a form of detailed acting that might otherwise only intermittently be noticed. Fortunately, Caroline Staunton’s production, as theatrically alert as any I have seen, offers Personenregie fully equal to the task—and singers fully equal to it too. 

Production and performance tell the story, but also allow you to (re-)tell it. What characters do, who they are, what this might represent and mean: these are not only accomplished through words, music, gesture, and staging, but captivatingly so. Isabella van Braeckel’s set and costume designs may stand for themselves; they tell us important things about the world in which this is taking place. They are also amenable to interpretation, without imposition (not that I am opposed to this, far from it) of any one conceptual strand upon the performance. Plinth-like objects suggest the world of the gods, notably ruling over the first scene too, with resonances of the Attic tragedy Wagner so revered but also something more recent, Speer-like, as well as the vain sacrifices to a belief that in Götterdämmerung will already all but have died. They can also suggest workbenches for and display for the products of Nibelheim, and adapt readily to the transformation in circumstances of the final scene. Objects are indeed to the fore throughout: crucial in Wagner, as has been wearily established in recent stagings (Dmitri Tcherniakov in Berlin and, far worse, Valentin Schwarz in Bayreuth) that have blithely disregarded the near-necessity of having something that on some level might represent the spear, the gold, Freia’s apples, and so on. How this is accomplished is entirely open. Here, a variety of resourceful solutions is found. Lighting, costume, gold paint, physical (in one case, highly phallic) objects, a disturbing, power-based contagion leaping from victim to victim, blocking, dance, and of course the text of the work in performance. All has been thoroughly thought through; yet equally important, all comes up fresh as new. This is, in short, a splendid theatre-piece: one that is in some sense about theatre and music, and what happens when they come together, without wearing metatheatricality on its sleeve (as in, say, Stefan Herheim’s wonderful Deutsche Oper Rheingold). 

Froh (Calvin Lee), Alberich, Loge (James Schouten), Wotan

It is not only that, of course. Wagner’s musicodramatic dialectic is such, like that of any opera composer worth his/her/their salt, that intensification of one element necessitates elements of the other. (As we see painted on Alberich’s back: GESAMT KUNST WERK). Any orchestral reduction will have consequences, yet this scaling down to twenty-two-piece orchestra (on the stage above) does a splendid job in situ of conveying more than one would ever have thought possible, very much of a piece with the intense, intimate theatricality of the staging. Ben Woodward’s conducting does likewise, as does the instrumentalists’ playing. If I say that I rarely noticed them in themselves, that is not to say they were somehow neutral or featureless, but rather that the finely judged ebb and flow seemed to spring from the same source as staging and vocal performances, so that one could hardly be distinguished from the others. Use of a synthesiser was, wisely, sparing, yet assisted, for instance, with deeds of staging rendered audible (to invert Wagner’s own formulation) such as the Tarnhelm’s mysterious magic, itself splendidly acted out by Oliver Gibbs as Alberich. 

If I say that portrayal was an excellent instance of the singer-actor’s art – I could of most I saw and heard – that is not, as I know we sometimes do, to use the term as a euphemism for vocal shortcomings, but again to point to a fine alchemy in which all was considerably more than the sum of its parts. Indeed, Gibbs’s growth – negative growth, if you will – as a character was achieved precisely through that alchemy. His great antagonist, Wotan, received a thoughtful, dignified, yet ruthless performance from Ralf Lukas, finely matched by Ingeborg Børch’s human yet steely Fricka as consort. A fine Loge will always steal the show; James Schouten accomplished that and more in as complete a performance as I can recall on any stage, from Bayreuth to Bethnal Green. His palpable commitment was truly infectious—and surely a first-class invitation to consider words, music, and their meaning in a production that was text-driven in the fullest sense. (So many fall into the trap of thinking ‘text’ refers only to words—and in Wagner of all composers.)

Mime (Holden Madagame)

Yet there was more than one showstealer, Holden Madagame’s quicksilver, traumatised Mime another case in point, stage and vocal energy combined in a veritable whirlwind. Henry Grant Kerswell’s faltering, latterly lovelorn Fafner stood in dark contrast with the cynical thuggery of his brother Fafner from Craig Lemont Walters. Estimable contributions also came from an uncommonly fine trio of Rhinemaidens, distinct characters who blended with similar finesse, Mae Heydorn doubling as Erda, and well-sung Donner, Freia, and Froh (Andrew Mayor, Charlotte Richardson, and Calvin Lee).

Image: Steve Gregson
Erda (Mae Heydorn)

I now regret more deeply than before my inability to attend Die Walküre and Siegfried. However, I shall be back next Sunday for Götterdämmerung and shall hope this Ring will receive another outing. It certainly comes with my highest recommendation, whether for dyed-in-the-wool Wagnerites, neophytes, or anyone in between. New to the work, my guest loved it, apparently now as eager as I for the end of the world to come. As for the Arts Council – sorry, the article-less ‘Arts Council England’ – and its determination to destroy what remains of English operatic life, the resounding success of this project offers a stinging rebuke to its threefold rejection of Regents Opera’s applications for funding. If you can, please consider giving, lest such opportunities wither, like the World-ash, forever. Any purchase or donation will be generously repaid in terms that Nadine Dorries and Nicholas Serota could never understand, but which will long outlive their ephemeral notoriety.

Le nozze di Figaro, English National Opera, 7 February 2025

Coliseum

Count Almaviva – Cody Quattlebaum
Countess Almaviva – Nardus Williams
Figaro – David Ireland
Susanna – Mary Bevan
Cherubino – Hanna Hipp
Marcellina – Rebecca Evans
Dr Bartolo – Neal Davies
Don Basilio, Don Curzio – Hubert Francis
Antonio – Trevor Eliot Bowes
Barbarina – Ava Dodd
Bridesmaids – Claire Mitcher, Sophie Goldrick

Director – Joe Hill-Gibbons
Set designs – Johannes Schütz
Costumes – Astrid Klein
Lighting – Matthew Richardson

Associate director, movement – Jenny Ogilivie  

Chorus (chorus director: Matthew Quinn) and Orchestra of English National Opera

Ainārs Rubikis (conductor)

Images: copyright Zoe Martin

Joe Hill-Gibbons’s production of The Marriage of Figaro opened briefly at the Coliseum in 2020, only for Covid to put a stop to it. Five years have passed before it has had another opportunity. I wish I could say it had been worth the wait. Hill-Gibbons claims, in the programme, that his ‘primary job was to deliver Figaro in all its joy, power and complexity, rather than remake it for today’. Judged by his own criterion, I am afraid this can only be accounted a failure, though I am not sure he managed to ‘remake it for today’ either, whatever that may mean. 

Put simply, the production, as opposed to musicians’ performances, offered no sense of: who these people were; how they might relate to one another; why they might be doing what they were doing; and, quite often, even of what they were doing. In the latter case, the fourth act’s ‘complexity’ was entirely absent, yet still managed to confuse. The audience managed nonetheless to destroy any sense of, well, anything by laughing when the Count begged for forgiveness. Everything was flattened. There was no sense of social hierarchy, and certainly no sense of social or political, let alone religious, meaning. It was perhaps the most singularly boring Figaro I have seen: a singularly perverse achievement. My companion indeed described it as ‘almost unbearable’, like a sitcom, albeit without the dramatic depth or content. 

Plain to a fault, Johannes Schütz’s white set suggested a hotel room corridor slightly abstracted, with occasional views of something, though very little, downstairs. That was it, really, not only for the set design but for any sort of dramatic concept. To be fair, Astrid Klein’s costumes, well designed in themselves, seemed to represent an attempt to offer a sense of updated commedia dell’arte. All well and good, although Figaro, whether as play or opera, is not The Barber of Seville, and Hill-Gibbons is certainly not Ruth Berghaus. In both cases, there was something rather dated and somewhat ‘German provincial’ to the ‘look’, without that dated quality seeming to be the point. Memories of Michael Grandage’s Duty Free staging for Glyndebourne surfaced. Cherubino’s strange appearance made nonsense of his character. Any mezzo worth her salt would usually be able to portray him as an adolescent. Here, poor Hanna Hipp, who sang and, within the constraints imposed upon her, acted very well, was left looking no more like a page boy or an army officer than if she had worn a dress all along. 

Jeremy Sams’s English translation proved variable, presumably deliberately—and often deliberately wordy. Perhaps some, comatose since c.1955, found Dr Bartolo repeatedly singing ‘that bastard Figaro’ edgy. For me, it was simply out of place, whether with respect to the work or other parts of the translation. In some cases, it remained reasonably faithful, whilst in others, it went beyond paraphrase: all the while a little too keen to attract attention. At least, though, there was an intelligent mind behind it, which, if one must have translation at all, is something. 

Conductor Ainārs Rubikis was clearly going to have his work cut out to make anything much of the musical drama. Hamstrung as he was, that he did so intermittently was again something. I should be interested to hear what he might make of this or another Mozart opera in a different context. Rubikis and the ENO Orchestra were often at their best when bigger boned, conjuring a sense of coherent drama entirely lacking onstage. There were some fine intimate moments too. What lay in between was sometimes more of a problem, as was proportionality of tempo, the sections of, say, the second-act finale sitting oddly with another. Alas, the musicodramatic life and form of the recognition sextet, key to the entire third act (at least), also fell flat. But then so did everything else about it, some people in strange outfits simply standing nowhere in particular, singing to no one in particular about nothing in particular. There was little or nothing after all, to recognise. Secco recitatives were sometimes a little heavy, but that was more a matter of having to deal with the English translation than anything else. I think the fashionable ‘Moberly-Raeburn’ reordering of the third act may have been used; yet, truth be told, even on the morning after, I cannot quite remember, even on the morning after—which may indicate something about how inert the drama turned out to be. ‘Standard’ excisions were certainly made from the fourth act. They would doubtless have been well sung; for once, keen as I was for it all to end, I welcomed them. Music long since having been reduced to ‘incidental’ status, a finely crafted libretto likewise, there was little to stay awake for.

Fortunately, there was some good singing, though it was more difficult to tell than would usually be the case. In addition to Hipp, the female cast acquitted themselves especially well, Nardus Williams’s Countess somehow maintaining presence, dignity, and well-spun line throughout. Mary Bevan offered a lively Susanna, though the production militated against her becoming the truly animating presence she might have been. ‘Deh vieni’ gave a powerful sense of what we lost. Rebecca Evans’s Marcellina, like Neal Davies’s Bartolo, were keenly observed and equally finely sung. David Ireland’s Figaro deserved better. He made the best of a poor hand, his way with the libretto, even in translation, second to none, converting it with an art concealing art into an excellent performance. The ‘smaller’ roles were all well taken. Cody Quattlebaum’s Count, though, was a decidedly odd portrayal: doubtless in good part the production, which seemingly had no idea what to do with the character (!), but strange vowels and intermittent wooliness of tone were also a problem. Perhaps, not unreasonably, he would have been more comfortable singing it in Italian. 

Ultimately, then, this seemed designed to be a Marriage of Figaro for people who do not like or understand the opera. It is difficult to imagine such people exist, but there they were, chattering, guffawing, and, I kid you not, noisily guzzling popcorn (now on sale at the bar, so as also to provide a miserable olfactory auditorium ‘experience’). It was less Twelfth Night than Terry and June without the characterisation or the drama—although, to be fair, even the latter might have had its moments compared to this. I cannot have been unusual among opera lovers in having Figaro as one of the first operas I grew to know and love. Had this been my first encounter, I fear I might not have pursued work or genre further. 

I shall conclude with words from an interview with assistant/movement director Jennie Ogilvie, supplier of the tediously silly dancing long mandatory for any such production: ‘I find it frustrating when people need everything to make sense in an opera. … we have all been watching music videos for 30, 40 years, which really do not make sense, and yet they are the best way of expressing that bit of music. I wish that we could come to other live forms of music like opera and extend the same permissions.’ Hmmm.

Aimard/Philharmonia/Honeck - Weber, Beethoven, and Dvořák, 2 February 2025

Royal Festival Hall

Weber: Overture: Der Freischütz
Beethoven: Piano Concerto no.3 in C minor, op.37
Dvořák: Symphony no.9 in E minor, ‘From the New World’, op.95

Pierre-Laurent Aimard (piano)
Philharmonia Orchestra
Manfred Honeck (conductor)

Manfred Honeck’s unfussy musicianship has long offered an antidote to crass media veneration of mediocre ‘star’ performers. Much the same might be said of Pierre-Laurent Aimard, who, although certainly celebrated, could not stand further removed from the likes of… [I had better stop there]. The Philharmonia, on better form than I have heard it for some time, clearly relished the opportunity to perform with both in this Sunday afternoon concert at the Royal Festival Hall, which also went to show there is life yet in the ‘classic’ overture-concerto-symphony programme, whose popularity may have been attained with good reason. 

Weber’s Freischütz Overture announced a reassuringly large orchestra, sounding very much as ‘of old’. Taken in gorgeously relaxed fashion, the introduction unfolded rather than being harried. Not that it lacked the tension and release of incipient drama, whether in dark, threatening intimations of the Wolf’s Glen or elsewhere, later glorying in the gentlest of lyricism and well-nigh Brucknerian power of silence. 

A smaller Philharmonia, strings thinned by several desks, reassembled for Beethoven’s Third Piano Concerto, Aimard at the keyboard. As Donald Tovey observed, the opening movement’s difficulty lies first in the ‘sheer symphonic exposition’ offered by the orchestra; ‘it rouses no expectation of the entry of a solo instrument, and … leaves nothing essential for the pianoforte to add when its time comes.’ Save to the most strenuous musical minds, doubtless counter-productively strenuous, Beethoven saves the day, although a fuller learning of Mozartian lessons, such as we see in very different ways in the Fourth and Fifth Concertos, would have avoided the problem in the first place. Why mention this? Because, perhaps through estimable fidelity to the work in all respects, Honeck and Aimard brought that difficulty to the fore, before settling down to a fine performance. Honeck’s ‘first exposition’ was motivically coherent and imparted a strong sense of goal-orientation; but it was only after the piano’s second attempt, as it were, announcing a true partnership between soloist, conductor, and orchestra, that all fell quite into place, the basic tempo slightly broadening in a reading of mutual responsiveness. Aimard’s way with the piano was, as one might have expected, not to be pigeonholed. Neither old-fashioned, nor ‘period’, doubtless modernist in its way, though without shouting about it, it gave a sense of having considered the music anew, without stinting on spontaneity of the moment. The first movement close provided a case in point, suspense and climax working so well because fully prepared from all. 

That disinclination to be categorised was certainly to be heard, if so inclined, in the slow movement too. Shaped rather than moulded, it was always heading somewhere, yet with plenty of space to enjoy what arose during the journey. Possessed of an ultimately long line, yet with much variegation within, it spoke of a Beethoven once again – is he not always? – in transition, in a noble, deeply felt utterance from piano and orchestra alike. Taken attacca, the finale sounded as a necessary response. Occasional slight gear changes might have been better avoided or integrated, but the crucial thing was a feeling of life, of drama. No ‘designer Beethoven’ here. Fortunately, this was not a performance in keeping with a bizarre programme note attributed to Andrew Mellor, reading at best as if the work of ‘artificial intelligence’ (sic): ‘That realisation [of deafness] had a cataclysmic effect on Beethoven as a person and shot entirely new sentiments and concepts into his music, starting with this piece. … Beethoven got wise to that new reality in this piece.’ It is difficult to know where to start with that, so let us instead end by saying performers and audience, let alone Beethoven, deserved far better. In all other respects, they received just that—other programme notes, by Joanna Wyld and Douglas Shadle, included. 

Dvořák’s ‘New World’ Symphony came up similarly fresh, even if I left not quite convinced that elements were strongly integrated enough to avoid accusations – more justly levelled at work than performance – of the episodic. As might be expected, I felt that above all in the finale, though I should not wish to exaggerate. Otherwise, there was much to enjoy from the large orchestral forces reassembled. The first movement’s introduction proved tender and wistful, speaking of both darkness and light; in essence, it told, as surely it must, of many things. Indeed, that movement as a whole proved full of drama, flexible without meandering, musicians at the top of their game both in solo and tutti work. Antiphonal violins had one ask why anyone would ever have considered placing them together. 

Warm, dignified, excellent playing from all, not only but certainly including Henry Clay’s cor anglais, characterised the slow movement: much implied, no overstatement. Horns, as in the Weber, were simply to die for. String playing would have gladdened any of the great conductors from the past who had led this work, whether with the Philharmonia or other orchestras. The scherzo was urgent, perhaps at times a touch hard-driven, yet certainly giving a proper sense of release and relaxing without meandering. Transition to the trio was intriguingly disorienting, suggesting a more ‘modern’ Dvořák than many of us might be used to, material almost dream-like prior to sharpening of focus. The finale was likewise urgent, though not breathless. Tender strings, characterful woodwind, and implacable brass more or less suspended those nagging formal doubts.

MCO/Uchida - Mozart and Janáček, 1 February 2025

Royal Festival Hall, London, 1.2.2025 (MB)

Mozart: Piano Concerto no.18 in B-flat major, KV 456
Janáček: Mládi for wind sextet
Mozart: Piano Concerto no.21 in C major, KV 467

Mitsuko Uchida (piano, director)
Mahler Chamber Orchestra

Mitsuko Uchida’s series of Mozart piano concertos with the Mahler Chamber Orchestra reaches nos 18 and 21, on this occasion sandwiching an outstanding performance from MCO soloists of Janáček’s Mládi. If KV 456 took a little time to settle – its first movement a little too ‘neutral’ in character – then its later movements and the whole of KV 467 witnessed pianist and orchestra alike on excellent form. 

B-flat major is a funny key. My ears ‘tuned’ by orchestral tuning, I could not help but notice its flatter character. Even beyond that, though, that first movement sounded somewhat subdued. The MCO strings offered more extroverted playing in some tutti passages; there were gains too in the intimacy and the need properly to listen. It was only later on, though, that I really felt the music’s inherent drama, though tempo and balance could not be faulted. A barrage of coughing notwithstanding, the opening of the slow movement suggested the subtle tragedy of a great seria aria, and that sense only increased with its passage. There have doubtless been more overtly Romantic readings, but the MCO’s relative understatement did not undersell; nor did Uchida’s dignified response, voice-leading and harmony already pointing toward Mozart’s later years. Orchestral Furies vied with Orphic pleas, leading to a mesmerising close in which time stood still and once again moved—for it could do no other. In the best sense, that drama hung over a finale that truly smiled – rarest of delights – though sterner moments were equally moving. A slip from Uchida went for little; if anything it enhanced the sense of deeply human music-making. 

It is difficult not to regret a relative lack of concert music from Janáček, though certainly not at the cost of his operas. In any case, Mládi showed us how intimately connected are both ‘sides’ to his output, the music breathing the air of the late operas, instruments assuming the roles of dramatic characters, as if in anticipation of the music theatre of composers such as Birtwistle. As characteristic as it was compelling, a kaleidoscope of emotions was unleashed in the first movement, only to be added to or deepened in its successors. The second emerged as if the composer’s counterpart to that in the preceding piano concerto, its multiplicity of inflections and incitements, moods both shifting and abruptly changing, highly dramatic throughout. As bubbly as they were mysterious, the third and fourth were not only dramatically consequent but blessed by tremendous, unfailingly eloquent wind playing. 

The C major Piano Concerto, KV 467, had the second half to itself. From the off, the orchestra – still on the small side – sounded more energised than at the start of the earlier concerto, as did Uchida’s direction. A larger wind section made its presence felt, as did the commitment of the MCO strings—and of course Mozart’s (natural) trumpets and drums. Phrasing, mood, detail: all came into grater focus. Mozart’s oscillation between major and minor structured an emotionally engaging tonal drama, replete, where called for, with imperious C major ‘public’ grandeur. I assume the cadenza, conceived on a grander scale and inflected with greater modernity than those for the B-flat concerto, was Uchida’s own; at any rate, I did not recognise it. 

In the slow movement, the strings again were at least equal partners, whether in their celebrated pizzicato passages or bowed music with meaningfully varied vibrato. A black and white pearl, one might say, of a movement. The tempo, if a little faster than once might have been the case, felt right. Mozart’s music sang and bewitched, in a performance that seemed to conceive his writing in a single breath. At times, I found the finale just a little hard-driven, at others, it scampered delightfully. Uchida’s collegial music-making – rarely did I think of her as a ‘soloist’ – nonetheless proved throughout a treat.

Lowe/Fisher/Mozartists/Page - Ordonez, Hasse, Mozart, Haydn, and Benda, 29 January 2025

Cadogan Hall

 

Karl von Ordonez: Symphony in G minor, Gm8
Hasse: La Danza: ‘Se tu non vedi’
Mozart: ‘Si mosra la sorte’, KV 209; ‘Con ossequio, con rispetto’, KV 210; ‘Voi avete un cor fedele’, KV 217
Haydn: Il ritorno di Tobia: ‘Quando mi dona un cenno’
Georg Anton Benda: Medea: extract
Haydn: Symphony no.67 in F major

Alexandra Lowe (soprano)

Alessandro Fisher (tenor)

The Mozartists

Ian Page (conductor)

Unable to attend this year's Salzburg Mozartwoche, I caught instead this fascinating concert of music from 1775 by The Mozartists (formerly Classical Opera Company) and their artist director Ian Page, joined by soprano Alexandra Lowe and tenor Alessandro Fisher at London’s Cadogan Hall. Chelsea is not Salzburg, although the site of the Mozarts’ home for a few weeks eleven years earlier on Ebury Street – then ‘Fivefields Row’, now Mozart Terrace – stands less than ten minutes’ walk away. 

It made for an enlightening alternative, though, nowhere more so than in a G minor symphony by the Viennese violinist and composer (both pursuits of his spare time) Karl von Ordonez. The first movement’s material was characterful and consequent; here, unquestionably, was someone who understood symphonic form rather than simply using it by default. Page’s chosen tempo sounded ideal. Work and performance alike showed counterpoint and harmony in excellent balance and interrelationship; one could well imagine the composer playing second violin, as remarked upon by Charles Burney, for Haydn quartets at the home of the British Ambassador a few years earlier. A warmly expressive Andante was not rushed, as is so often the case today. Indeed, it was difficult not to find many of these accomplished performances considerably more sympathetic than those of the ‘period style on modern instruments’ crowd, which have a tendency, not always but often, to offer the worst of both worlds. A duet for two solo violas made for an appealing surprise. The fast – but not too fast – and furious finale was closer to Haydn than Mozart, but certainly not to be reduced to or merely likened to him. The Mozartists’ unshowy rhetoric, properly rooted in Classical style, made a fine case for Ordonez, from whom I should be keen to hear more. Might we even hope one day for one of his two operas, or some sacred music?   

A sequence of arias followed: first, one of two from Hasse’s late cantata La Danza, to a text by Metastasio previously set by Giuseppe Bonno (1744) and, in extended form, Gluck as a one-act opera in 1755. Hasse’s final opera, Il Ruggiero, had a few years earlier (1771) been eclipsed by Mozart’s Ascanio in Alba at the Archduke Ferdinand’s wedding to Maria Beatrice d’Este. It was difficult not to hear some of the younger composer’s influence – yes, even at so tender an age – in this aural glimpse of Hasse’s Venetian retirement. Pastoral, though not generically so, the performance was again stylistically well situated, enabling Lowe’s character, Nice, to step forward from the text even in excerpted form. Her vibrato focused attention on the line rather than obscuring it, the Mozartists proved lively and supportive throughout. Should the aria be a little over-extended for some modern tastes, so much the worse for them; it held my attention throughout and, again, made me keen to hear more. 

The three Mozart arias are naturally better known, if hardly everyday encounters. The first two are tenor insertion arias from May 1775, the destination of ‘Si mostra la sorte’ still unknown. If the Hasse aria had come surprisingly close to Mozart, here was the real thing—and it sounded like it in music whose drama and lyricism were far from confined to Italianate performance of the vocal line, wooden flutes offering balm of their own. ‘Con ossequio, con rispetto,’ for Niccolò Piccinni ‘s L’astratto, fizzed in energetic contrast, again highly operatic in its creation of character. Lowe returned for ‘Voi avete un cor fedele’, written for Baldassare Galuppi’s Le nozze di Dorina, revealing writing that gave a remarkable impression of a greater drama and characterisation at least as striking as anything in the preceding Il re pastore. With splendidly expressive coloratura, this was rightly a performance on the grand scale. Haydn’s ‘Quando mi dona un cenno’ offered a rare, edifying opportunity to hear music from his ‘other’ oratorio, Il ritorno di Tobia and Fisher the chance, beautifully taken, to turn inward to expressivity of a different nature in a sweetly sung performance of striking emotional sincerity and estimable stylistic command.

Georg Anton Benda’s three melodramas are frequently cited in music histories, yet seldom heard in the concert hall. The English-language excerpt from Medea, Benda’s second, opened the second half. Lowe again showed herself a fine actress – I recalled a Pierrot lunaire from 2022 – from the offset: ‘I am still Medea…’. Stillness and horror prior to ‘It is done’ said it all, against a somewhat Gluck-like (for instance, the Don Juan music) musical cauldron. Here was another work I should love to encounter in full in the concert hall. 

Haydn’s received a performance of admirable clarity and purpose, only sometimes lacking a little in warmth. Its minuet was a little on the rushed and acetic sides and perhaps lacking in the harmonic grounding one finds in, say, Antal Doráti, although the lovely surprise (even when one ‘knows’) of the trio’s viola duet, in delightful echo of Ordonez, will surely have warmed many a heart. Similarly delightful was the element of surprise in the first movement’s development section, the exposition having done precisely what the term implies: delineating material and character in duly consequent fashion. ‘Hunting’ elements delighted in a dramatic, energetic account that exuded grace. If I am often sceptical of the value of employing natural horns, here their use brooked no argument. The second movement was likewise familiar—until one listened. Rhetorical flourishes were given their due without exaggeration. Certain characteristics seemed close to late Mozart, though of course it is the other way around. If I have heard performances of stronger ‘line’ in the finale, it brimmed with character, twists and turns generally well traced. Strings, led by Matthew Truscott, used and varied vibrato expressively. Whatever my odd cavil, here was a performance of numerous delights to conclude a concert of many more.

LSO Chamber Ensemble et al./Pascal - Boulez, 27 January 2025

Milton Court

Initiale
Messagesquisse
Dérive 1
Sonatine for flute and piano
Anthèmes 2 for violin and live electronics

Benjamin Marquise Gilmore (violin)

David Cohen (cello)

Gareth Davies (flute)

Joseph Horvat (piano)

Sound Intermedia

LSO Chamber Ensemble

Guildhall School Cellos

Maxime Pascal (conductor)

The Boulez centenary celebrations are underway. If London’s – and much of the rest of the world’s – response so far looks more muted than one might have hoped, something is better than nothing and there is all the more reason to cherish what we have. Following an afternoon symposium (oddly timed on a Monday, when most of us must work) the Barbican Centre offered an excellent chamber concert of five works, from LSO musicians and friends, directed where appropriate by Maxime Pascal.

What could have been better as an opening than the 1987 brass fanfare Initiale, which I had last heard at the opening of Berlin’s Pierre Boulez Saal thirty years later? Although Milton Court lacks a ready possibility – at least unless electronics are employed – for the Gabrieli-like spatial element deployed in Frank Gehry’s Berlin hall, the LSO players’ balcony elevation nonetheless signalled development of our concert expectations beyond Boulez’s ‘museum’ of the musical past. Metrical complexity, rubato implied through exactitude, was there from the off. More kaleidoscopic and varied in mood than your typical fanfare, its cascading, proliferating echoes of Répons helped establish aural expectations for what was to come.

Messagesquisse was given by David Cohen and six cellists from the Guildhall School (Gabriel Francis-Deqhani, Kosta Popovic, Nathaniel Horton, James Conway, Theo Bently Curtin, and Seth Collin), conducted by Pascal with properly Boulezian precision and commitment. I was again intrigued and delighted by the tricks music could play on my perception—or perhaps the other way round. Initially, I could have sworn one cello was not playing, only to see and then hear that it was, at a pitch I had mistakenly thought another was: a smaller-scale sense, perhaps, of that sense of spatial magic squares that would so inform a later masterwork such as sur Incises (via, perhaps, common inspiration ultimately in Les Noces). Brimming with melody, impassioned of mood, harmonically compelling: it was everything Boulez is, and everything his detractors would say his music is not. Dynamic contrasts and all manner of other post-Beethovenian dialectics abounded in ‘organised delirium’. Contagious proliferation of a single line suggested at times a very French inheritance in the music of the clavecinistes. At times, I even thought of Nono. And what performances these were, reminding any who might need it of the crucial role of performance in Boulez’s music.

The shifting transformations of Dérive 1 proved an similar yet different delight, music spiralling before our ears in a mesmerising tour of aural pleasure. The temptation was to ask for more, which of course we should eventually have in its successor, Dérive 2. This music, though, spoke for itself, no mere precursor but a masterwork of proliferation in its own right.

The Sonatine for flute and piano received an outstanding and confounding performance from Gareth Davies and Joseph Havlet. No one would dispute the work’s allure, yet the array of elements in its first movement that might – just might – have to them something of the more neoclassical Schoenberg (and Debussy) seemed more than ever to rejoice in the necessity of internal and eternal explosion and destruction. It might not sound quite ‘like’ the Second Piano Sonata, but the Sonatine’s progress suggested ever closer kinship, emotionally and intellectually. Here, it felt, was instantiated a post-Notations world of infinite possibility.

Last up was Benjamin Maruise Gilmore with Ian Dearden and Jonathan Green of Sound Intermedia in Anthèmes 2. Its world of violin and electronics sounded, like much else, both old and new: not so very different from Messagesquisse or other works with solo and double/shadow, and yet… Echoes expected and unexpected beguiled and surprised as music from plainchant to Messiaen and beyond ricocheted around us. Indeed, an unsuspected harmonic sweetness suggested what remain less acknowledged lessons learned from Boulez’s teacher. As waves of sound lapped upon our consciousnesses, it was Debussy’s La Mer, endlessly transformed, that next suggested itself as fons et origo; that and, of course, the composer’s own endless imagination. The museum lives and develops; so do music and performance history of Boulez, one of its newer recruits.

Fin de partie, Staatsoper Unter den Linden, 24 January 2025

Hamm – Laurent Naouri
Clov – Bo Skovhus
Nell – Dalia Schaechter
Nagg – Stephan Rügamer

Director – Johannes Erath
Set designs – Kaspar Glarner
Costumes – Birgit Wentsch
Lighting – Olaf Freese
Video – Bibi Abel
Dramaturgy – Olaf A. Schmitt

Staatskapelle Berlin 

Alexander Soddy (conductor)

Images: Monika Rittershaus

Just short of his 99^th birthday, György Kurtág sees Fin de partie, his sole opera to date, receive a new full staging, what I believe to be its third. The first, by Pierre Audi, was seen in several European houses. I reviewed its 2022 French premiere here; it had already been seen in Milan and Amsterdam. Last year, Ingo Kerkhof directed Fin de partie anew in Dortmund, its German premiere; Herbert Fritsch directed the Austrian premiere in Vienna; and both London and Cologne offered semi-stagings. There have also been concert performances in Budapest. There may have been others of which I am unaware. Not bad, then, for a new opera, but to call this crowning masterpiece of the last man standing from what once we called the postwar avant garde ‘not bad’ would be akin to saying that of the Beckett play in which its ‘scenes and monologues’ have their origin. At a point in which the titans of Kurtág’s generation reach their centenary – Nono last year, the unholy alliance of Boulez and Henze this year, Kurtág himself next – the twin urgency and poignancy of this work and others become ever more apparent. The wider musical world at last seems ready to recognise and acknowledge them. 

That Paris performance made a huge impression on me. Indeed, it inspired a chapter due to be published later this year by Edinburgh University Press (part of a volume edited by colleagues Christine Dysers, Peter Edwards, and Judith Lochhead, The Music of Absence: An Aesthetics of Loss in the New Millennium). Coming to my second production – if only I had known of the Dortmund staging – following a period of further and, I hope, deeper acquaintance with the work, was necessarily a different experience, as will be the case for all of us as the opera takes its place in the repertoire. (For that reason, I do not intend here to give an account of the work ‘itself’; my initial review may be read for first impressions.) I do not think it was entirely down to me that it seemed more conventionally ‘operatic’ – these things are relative – under Alexander Soddy’s musical direction than when conducted by Markus Stenz, though that may well be part of it. This was for the most part a fluent account, keenly alert, as was the Staatskapelle Berlin, to Kurtág’s colouristic invention. That a sort of Klangfarbenmelodie could and did work motivically was triumphantly affirmed in dramatic context. 

Soddy’s conception of the work and his role seemed, moreover, concerned to consider and highlight the role of the singers; indeed, a vocal conception, extending to instruments and their combination, may be a good way of considering it. Taken as a whole, the work’s course seemed more sectional, even on occasion dragging a little, although a sectional quality can work both ways: Kurtág’s description is, after all, of ‘scènes et monologues’. (That may also have been in part a consequence of Erath’s production, conceived more as a succession of scenes than Audi’s.) What I missed above all was a greater sense of the intricacy of texture—even, paradoxically or rather dialectically, when spare. There seems in Kurtág’s writing to be a Beckettian implication of loss or absence, rarely apparent here. How sympathetic one’s response to a performance that came across as locating Kurtág in surprising succession to Verdi – not unlike Antonio Pappano’s Covent Garden occasional forays into contemporary music – may ultimately be as much a matter of taste than anything else, though I think this was also, to its advantage, more conversational than that might imply. 

Erath’s staging offered further surprises, perhaps all the more so given not only the familiarity of the play but also the familiarity of what it should look like and how it should unfold, carried forward into the premiere production. I had assumed familiar issues with the Beckett estate had played a part in determining the ‘fidelity’ of Audi’s approach, and perhaps they did; perhaps they even played a part in permitting the transformation into an opera in the first place. I was therefore a little taken aback by a staging that would not necessarily have seemed radical in any other case. Designs from Kaspar Glarner and Birgit Wentsch brought a fitting (in a more meaningful sense, ‘faithful’) sense of vaudeville to proceedings, culminating in visual transformation from living room domesticity to the external, even metaphorical world of a crashed Ferris wheel. That definitely separated Hamm and Clov, only for Nell (at least in the guise of the reader of the opening Roundelay) to reappear at her mound at the close. 

There was, then, a strong suggestion something circular, similarly in the emergence of the new, differently apocalyptic scene as if through the looking glass of the dustbin lid. Like Soddy, Erath seemed keen, moreover, to emphasise the opera’s conversational qualities, very much including the crucial blind alleys, non sequiturs, and misunderstandings. Changes of perspective and scale incorporated such disruption, in some ways heightening the episodic sense discussed earlier, though perhaps also helping put things ‘back together’.

A key difference, one of relatively few, between Beckett and Kurtág is the treatment of Nell’s death. What passes unnoticed in the play, Nell unmourned, is signalled by a terrible cry of grief from Nagg and the orchestra in the opera. Soddy treated the latter in duly operatic fashion, whilst Erath hinted at the dislocation between the two genres. having a giant, video-founded Clov take out a body bag – presumably Nell – earlier. Dislocation was the name of the game, or at least of one of the games. Whether in Kurtág, as in Beckett, we can ‘know’ anything beyond the text, whether the question borders on the illegitimate, was a question not only posed but also given a provisional and unsettling answer.

Laurent Naouri’s Hamm is unlikely to have provoked any such controversy. His ready, communicative way with the French text and its musical expression seemed not only to serve Beckett and Kurtág, but also to act as an animating as well as controlling presence for the cast as a whole. Bo Skovhus’s Clov, powerfully physical, not only of gesture but of character too, contrasted with whimsical performances from Dalia Schaechter and Stephan Rügamer as Nell and Nagg, though I confess to missing the deeper and perhaps more deeply familiar tones of Hilary Summers in the former role for Stenz and Audi. That we are already in a position, though, to draw comparisons between different interpretations, even to form views on emergent performance practice, testifies not so much to the work’s stature – there are many fine pieces never heard again – as to its popular acceptance. Endgames may be more ominously apparent than ever in the world around us; this is anything but an endgame for opera.

Crowe/Sulayman/Drake - Mendelssohn and Liszt, 14 January 2025

Wigmore Hall

Mendelssohn: Abendlied, op.8 no.9; Erntelied, op.8 no.4; Keine von der Erde Schönen, WoO 4 no.1; Schafloser Augen Leuchte, WoO 4 no.2; Pilgerspruch, op.8 no.5; Frühlingslied, op.8 no.6; Das Waldschloss, WoO 17 no.1; Pagenlied, WoO 17 no.1; Romanze, op.8 no.10; Hexenlied, op.8 no.8; Todeslied der Bojaren, WoO 18 no.2; Ich hör ein Vöglein, WoO 18 no.1
Liszt: Tre sonetti de Petrarca, S 270/2
Liszt: Freudvoll und Leidvoll, S 280/2; Wieder möcht ich dir begegnen, S 322; Lasst mich ruhen, S 317; Ihr Glocken von Marling, S 328; Verlassen, S 336; Blume und Duft, S 324; Freudvoll und Leidvoll II, S 280b; Angiolin dal biondo crin, S 269/2; Go not, happy day, S 335
Mendelssohn: Volkslied, op.63 no.5; Maiglöckchen und die Blümelein, op.63 no.6

Lucy Crowe (soprano)

Karim Sulayman (tenor)

Julius Drake (piano)

 

An interesting recital of songs by Mendelssohn and Liszt raised questions concerning what we expect of and in a Liederabend. Contrasts are in general a good thing, yet might they impede the development of a guiding thread making the evening more than the sum of its parts? Can the contrary case also prove a problem? How do ideas transfer from paper to performance? Though we applaud versatility and adventure, complaining when performers and venues give us the same old repertoire over and over again, how much should a programme be constructed around performers’ acknowledged strengths? 

Often underestimated on account of his ‘Victorian’ reputation, Mendelssohn seems perpetually in need of reassessment. An assortment of songs, given in pairs by Lucy Crowe and Karim Sulayman, accompanied by Julius Drake, might have been just the thing, yet was the selection, ranging far from the beaten track, at least in some ways more interesting than satisfying? Crowe at any rate offered a nicely contrasted opening pair, though Drake’s piano parts at times sounded a little stiff. Although that in part have reflected the writing and there was benefit in laying bare the counterpoint ‘as written’, not least in voice leading, more overt advocacy might also have helped. Sulayman’s first pair, Byron settings (in translation), proved more ardent and imploring, revealing a beautiful lyric tenor, Crowe responding in Pilgerspruch with a well-placed ‘early Romantic’ approach emerging from earlier Classicism, yet in colouring extending beyond it. In general, where Mendelssohn become more ‘Romantic’, distancing himself from models that were perhaps more operatic, their fruits tending to sound a little fussy in the concert hall, the stronger the impression became. Narratives such as Das Waldschloss (Sulayman) and Hexenlied (Crowe) were cases in point. The highly unusual Todeslied der Bojaren also grabbed the attention, its dramatic starkness arresting and surprising, Sulayman imparting an almost visionary quality to it. In a charming Ich hör ein Vöglein, he hinted at waters running deeper, without trying to turn the song into something it is not. And the strangeness of the late Tennyson setting, Go not, happy day, was relished. 

In Liszt, the record was also mixed, perhaps more so. Crowe’s Sonetti de Petrarca, before the interval, received committed performances from her, although Drake might have offered a little more in the way of Romantic abandon. Whether they were quite her thing, though, lingered as a question. Whilst some way from strained, there were passages in which the longer, cantabile line proved elusive. There was a proper sense of a new world, new aesthetics, and so on, yet it was only in the third of the set, ‘I’ vidi in terra angelici costumi’, taken at a helpfully swift tempo, that the longer line truly emerged. Her second-half Angiolin dal biondo crin also benefited from being heard as if in a single breath, revealing perhaps unsuspected riches in a Liszt rarity (his first song, albeit in its 1850s revision). 

Liszt’s songs are not for everyone. Fischer-Dieskau, game to take them on, lacked some of the requisite Italianate quality (not the only one, but a sine qua non) for the Petrarch sonnets. Sulayman’s Liszt performances, bookended by two of his settings of Freudvoll und Leidvoll, tended mostly towards a world of reverie, the final of those Goethe settings offering welcome contrast in its tumult. If I did not especially mind, I wondered whether a little more contrast might have helped: a sequence of several slow songs, tending, as it were, toward the listless, lacked variety. That said, the desolation of Verlassen, the quiet ecstasy, piano bells and all, of Ihr Glocken von Marling, and the fragrance and flowers of Blume und Duft were all in themselves highly welcome. 

Perhaps anticipating potential criticisms, Drake announced that now, at last, we should hear the two singers together. In conclusion, Crowe, Sulayman, and Drake gave two vocal duets by Mendelssohn. Sensitively done and, especially in the case of the second, Maiglöckchen und die Blümelein, op.63 no.6, winningly animated, they arguably imparted a sense of what might have been, yet were nonetheless a delight. As an encore, we heard the unusual, intriguing Suleike und Hatem, a Goethe setting by Fanny Hensel. It had much in common with her brother’s songs: finely crafted, clearly in a Classical line, though perhaps not quite fully inside the Lied tradition. Whether that suggests we might revise our conceptions of the latter, founded (too strongly?) on Schubert, Schumann, et al., is a question worth asking from time to time.  

The Sixteen/Christophers - Purcell (Henry and Daniel), 13 January 2025

Wigmore Hall

Purcell: Sound the trumpet, beat the drum, Z335
Daniel Purcell: The Masque of Hymen
Purcell: The Indian Queen, Z630; Catch (To all lovers of music), Z262

This concert from The Sixteen (smaller than sixteen in vocal number, larger in vocal and instrumental number) and Harry Christophers brought Purcell’s The Indian Queen to the Wigmore Hall stage, along with an additional, slightly related act, The Masque of Hymen, by Henry’s brother Daniel; Henry’s 1687 welcome song for James II, Sound the trumpet, beat the drum; and a catch to words by the London music publisher John Carr, interpolated into the principal work on the programme. A full hall greeted these New(ish) Year performances with a warmth in welcome contrast to the temperatures outside. If I should still like at some point to see a (reasonably) faithful staging, with at least some of the play by Dryden and Sir Robert Howard that provides its actual dramatic content – one can dream – this concert performance was certainly preferable to the quagmire of self-indulgence into which Peter Sellars sank Purcell’s semi-opera nine years ago for ENO (and elsewhere).   

As often when I listen to period instruments, it took my ears time to settle. It seemed to take a minute or two for performances to settle too, the opening Symphony first diffident then abrasive, yet counterpoint remained clear and directed. Hand on heart, I should much prefer to hear modern instruments, but there is little point attending something else and moaning about it. Sound the Trumpet offered many vocal virtues, a declamatory opening, assisted by rich continuo (harp included), then fuller orchestra and choir. There was no mistaking the very English, even Anglican, sound, likewise for the tenor and continuo ‘Crown the year, and crown the day’, but the fullness of sonority was impressive for a choir of only nine. The duet ‘Let Caesar and Urania [James and Mary of Modena] live’ possessed the right sort of Purcellian catchiness, and there was a fine sense overall of Restoration grandeur, not least in the choral climax to ‘What greater bliss can Fate bestow’ and the ensuing Chaconne. 

If Daniel Purcell’s contribution was not always at the same level of inspiration – still less that of The Indian Queen proper – it was never less than competent and pleasant to hear, and some parts rather more than that. Catchy rhythms and melody came to the fore in the chorus ‘Come all, and sing great Hymen’s praise,’ and recorders offered welcome timbral variety later on. One soprano – I am not sure of her name – offered quite a spark in Cupid’s ‘The joys of wedlock soon are past’. Her reappearances throughout the concert proved consistent delights. 

The still greater maturity of Henry's final years shone through following the interval. There is surely little doubt that, performance issues aside, The Indian Queen contains some of his finest music; that is certainly once again how it felt here. The catch offered both audience amusement and excellent musical virtues, following instrumental music in which finely sprung rhythms seemed to act as agents of melodic and harmonic invention and its revelation. Each of the musical acts impressed. In the first, the composer’s inimitable combination of rigour and flexibility, so prophetic for twentieth-century admirers, came strongly to the fore in dialogue between the Indian Boy and Girl. The closing duet proved truly beguiling. The hissing of Envy and two followers in Act II, and the darker tones of Ismeron’s recitative in Act III – ‘the best piece of recitative in our language’ (Charles Burney) – offered in tandem with the air ‘By the croaking of the toad’ a panorama of Purcellian invention. Advent of woodwind and the plangent harmonies that introduced the Aerial spirits contributed further to that impression, those spirits themselves (and Christophers) giving a performance both pacy and aethereal. ‘They tell us that you mighty powers above’ in the fourth act proved a highpoint of the evening, as moving as it was mellifluous, whilst the fifth and final act went, if anything further, ranging from choral grandeur to a melancholy that verged upon the tragic. As he has been many times over the past three centuries, the English Orpheus was once again reborn.