Frederic Rzewski’s 80th Birthday Concert – Levit: Rzewski, Mendelssohn, and Mahler, 13 April 2018

Wigmore Hall

 

Rzewski: Ages (2017, world premiere)

Mendelssohn: Songs without words: op.19b/1, 4; op.38/6

Mahler (arr. Ronald Stevenson): Symphony no.10, ‘Adagio’

Igor Levit (piano)

 

With Dallapiccola I made a serious mistake. ... I missed a lesson because I had gone to visit some friends in London, and when I came back from London I found a letter saying that Maestro Dallapiccola felt that I was not the kind of student that he wanted, needed to work with, and would I please go somewhere else. And I realised that I had made a serious mistake ... I must have given the impression of arrogance ... And now, it’s one thing I’ve always regretted, because I certainly could have gotten a lot from that man if I had approached him correctly.

 

With those rueful, rather moving words, spoken in a 1984 interview, Frederic Rzewski described the foreshortening of his lessons from Luigi Dallapiccola. Reading them when writing a chapter on the latter composer’s Il prigioniero for my book, After Wagner, sparked my interest. The other principal spark, slightly later, came from the now celebrated recording and performances (such as this) of Rzewski’s The People United will Never Be Defeated by Igor Levit. Now, a little under three years later, Levit gave the first performance, on Rzewski’s eightieth birthday, of a similarly lengthy new piano work by the composer: Ages, commissioned by the Wigmore Hall with the support of Annette Scawen Morreau.

 

Size is not everything; in many ways, it is nothing. (Ask Webern – although concision there is, of course something.) It would nevertheless be vain to insist – and I shall not try – that the scale of canvas, the generosity and ambition of work and performance were irrelevant, for they were not. Ages seems in some sense to play – although the composer insists that ‘the music does not “mean” anything – with ideas both of the ages of man and ‘“ages” in the sense of epochs, or periods, of history: stone, ice, digital and so on’. In five movements, it would almost have made a concert in itself – although I am very glad that it did not, given the equally outstanding performances of Mendelssohn and Mahler following the interval.

 

The first movement, marked ‘Solenne, maestoso’ (according to the programme, that is: I have not seen a score), opened, both as work and commanding performance, with an opening blow, on the case and keys of the piano. Then came silence, followed by slow, diatonic chords in sequence (if I remember correctly!) Not for the first time late Liszt, in spirit although hardly straightforwardly in language or other musical writing, came to mind. A long diminuendo and responding crescendo led into a typically gestural, post-Webern splash, responded to in what sounded almost akin to Shostakovich-style humour. (Not for nothing, perhaps, has the pianist recently been devoting himself to Shostakovich’s Preludes and Fugues.) An aspirant tango came into aural view. And so on. I thought, here and throughout the work, of  a vast wall frieze – except that it passed us by, rather than vice versa. Maximalism of a kind and something more minimal, if not quite the latter’s –ism, played with each other, with us. Such, I think, was familiar from The People United; yet it was never quite the same, never retreading old ground. Moreover, Levit’s fullness of tone, whether in Rzewski’s furious outbursts or ‘maestoso’ progress, had to be heard to be believed. At one point, a slow, quiet phrase – perhaps foretelling the monodic lines of the Mahler Adagio in the second half – threatened to morph into the subject of the Art of Fugue. It did not; indeed, nothing one predicted ever quite happened. BACH? I think so, as indeed I would continue to think so throughout; but again, who is to say that certain intervals must refer to what we think they do? In some pieces, it is clear: here rather less so. Toys and whistles came and went, even old-fashioned video game (I think) cries and boings. I could not help but recall a notorious caricature of Mahler.

 

‘Free; slow, espressivo’ is the marking for the second movement. It seemed at times, especially to begin with, almost to be in the mould of a Russian mesto movement. Textures were very different, slowly transforming. Liszt, even Mussorgsky (‘Bydlo’) came to my mind briefly in the bass, the figure, whatever it ‘was’, swiftly transforming itself into a melodic (near-)sequence. Many such ‘Romantic’ gestures were to be heard, without suspicion of mere pastiche. Levit proved himself a handy percussionist, knocking on the piano’s case, in the third movement, marked ‘Robotic’. Such knocks eventually provoked, from underneath the keyboard, pitch resonances, returning him and us to the keyboard proper. There was something menacing, even dead, here to the knowing clichés: robotic, one might say. A cyber clockwork orange, perhaps? Moaning cries from the pianists, one suggestive perhaps of an air-raid signal, had one audience member seek refuge outside the hall. Our passions, of whatever sense, seemed momentarily united in the chorale, ‘O Haupt voll Blut und Wunden’. Was that Shostakovich again, not cited but suggested? Allusion or not? Figures we might have heard previously – the lack of certainty perhaps part of the point – led us into a lazy jazz ornamentation of Purcell’s Music for a While, which had, perhaps, been hinted at earlier. Coaxing that wonderful melody into a later, more chromatic pianistic world, Rzewski and Levit developed it in various ways, always at least a little surprising, whistled fragmentation included. There was even an organ-style ‘prelude’ to be heard. (Yes, I know that pianists used to ‘prelude’ too, but here the inner parts suggested a particular organist brand of legato, at least to this renegade organist.) A reckless cry of ‘Yee-ha!’ could not help but have political resonances as our ‘leaders’ prepared to bomb Syria.

 

The fourth movement, ‘Each note an age; glacial’, seemed aptly to have been around for a while (music for a while…) before it fully dawned upon us. At a (relatively) glacial pace, the music had me think once again about the question of certain intervals, their potential references, and how they might or might not fit together: Purcell and Bach in particular. Is an interval sometimes just an interval? Almost certainly. Quirky figures, perhaps self-consciously so, announced the final movement, ‘Too fast to last’, presumably in some sense the ‘digital age’. Levit’s digits certainly had a good deal of work to do here. I thought of Mussorgsky’s ‘Baba Yaga’, again from his Pictures. The wild woman eemed eventually to speak freely, but was that my fancy, my illusion? If this were a broken toccata, as I thought of it, by whom it had been broken? Ages were telescoping, perhaps telescoped. Repeated notes, fast, decreasing in volume, took us – or did they? – to a disembodied, again somehow Lisztian final chord.

 

The second part of the concert opened with three Mendelssohn Songs without words, heard in performances more delectable than I could ever have imagined. The E major piece, op.19b no.1, showed Mendelssohn to be every inch, every note the equal of Schumann. Likewise its successor, the fourth from the same book, revelling in the dignity of its harmonic progressions. A feather-light final phrase was simply to die for. It was again Schumann, if not quite, that I thought of in the ‘Duetto’, op.38 no.6. A good-natured contest between the world of the former’s Faschingsschwank aus Wien and a Lutheran, devotional character ensued.

 

Ronald Stevenson’s transcription of the first movement from Mahler’s Tenth Symphony fascinated; in Levit’s performance, it both thrilled and satisfied too. The opening, Parsifalian monody sounded almost as if in search of another Song without words, although it was soon clear that we were almost, yet never quite, in the world of Schoenberg. Without strings, Mahler’s harmonies perhaps sounded all the more radical, all the more of our time rather than his. (There need not be any such opposition; that, perhaps, is the more important point.) It was, at any rate, interesting to consider how much of a difference equal temperament made, or did not. Marionettes from the ‘Rückert’ symphonies and the Ninth’s ‘Rondo-Burleske’ did their thing as enigmatically as ever. When the monody returned, it was perhaps more suggestive now of Tristan; was that Mahler’s doing, his transcriber’s, his pianist’s, or the listener’s? Who knows? Such, in a sense, is the magic of music. I relished the way dances of death turned from Mendelssohn to Rzewski and back. Or did they? Were they deathly at all? A grand tremolo, perhaps inevitably, was employed for that horrendous chord. What else, however, could Stevenson have done? And again, there was something almost Lisztian to the serenity experienced in the shadow of that trauma. As ever, Mahler’s Adagio proved both complete, especially in so well-shaped a performance, and not. The next century of musical history was both immanent – and not. Mahler remains.

Hardenberger/ORF SO/Storgårds: Schuller, Zimmermann, and Dvořák, 6 April 2018

Musikverein

Gunther Schuller: Seven Studies on Themes of Paul Klee

Bernd Alois Zimmermann: Trumpet Concerto, ‘Nobody knows de trouble I see’
Dvořák: Symphony no.9 in E minor, op.95, ‘From the New World’

Håkan Hardenberger (trumpet)

ORF Vienna Radio Symphony Orchestra

John Storgårds (conductor)

 

Much – not all, but much – of the United States’s Western art music tradition is (Austro-)German in origin. ‘You would say that, wouldn’t you?’ might come the reply to someone awaiting publication of his Schoenberg biography. And yes, I suppose I should – yet not only on that count. Consider the (new) worlds of performance, composition, musicology, musical institutions: less so, now, of course, and rightly so; their roots, however, will often be found embedded in Teutonic soil. To appreciate that, one only need consider the childish, often downright bizarre anti-German sentiment encountered today amongst certain anti-modernist composers and musicologists alike. ‘I’m so daring to write/analyse a tune; Wagner/Schoenberg/Adorno/Stockhausen would never have let me do that.’ ‘Yes, neoliberalism has no tunes; you truly cannot move for total serialism in the world of the Culture Industry…’

 

Not that the traffic has ever been one-way, of course; more complex interchanges have deep roots too. George Whitefield Chadwick, trained in Leipzig and subsequently director of the New England Conservatory, which he re-organised on European lines, for instance instituting an opera workshop, pre-empted Dvořák’s use in his ‘New World’ Symphony of ‘negro’ pentatonic melodies in the Scherzo to his Second (1883-5) Symphony. Interestingly, however, Boston audiences reacted far less favourably than New York to Dvořák’s Ninth Symphony, the critic William Apthorp notoriously decrying its use of ‘barbaric’ plantation songs and native American melodies, resulting in a ‘mere apotheosis of ugliness, distorted forms, and barbarous expressions’, He might have been a typical Viennese critic ten years later, fulminating against Schoenberg; racism, after all, is common to both attacks.

 

Here in Vienna’s hallowed Musikverein, home to more than one such attack in the past, we had a splendid opportunity to hear some of that more complex interchange. Gunther Schuller, born in Queens, to German parents, has always struck me, albeit from a position of relative ignorance, as an especially interesting example of a musician, both performing and compositional, able to straddle ‘jazz’ and ‘classical’ divides; not, of course, that such a ‘divide’ has ever been so clear as many, for varying, even opposed, ideological reasons, might have claimed. In the work heard here, moreover, he turned to Paul Klee (a Swiss painter, of course, whom many of us are fond, sometimes all too fond, of comparing to Webern). Seven Studies on Themes of Paul Klee was heard for the first time at the Proms three years ago (almost), under Oliver Knussen. It was a joy to reacquaint myself with the music, and not only to find my admiration for it undimmed, in so fine a performance as this, from the ORF Vienna Radio Symphony Orchestra and John Storgårds, but also to observe it so warmly received in the hall which, just over a century earlier, had played host to the notorious Skandalkonzert, at which anti-modernist protests against the Second Viennese School had landed some of the participants in court. (Would that… No, I had better stop there.)

 

The first movement, ‘Antique Harmonies’, certainly had an air of the undefinable antique to it. That can cover a multitude of sins and virtues, ranging from Debussy to Birtwistle; there is little point in attempting definition of such a ‘mood’ or ‘air’. Fineness of orchestral balance surely helped, though. The following ‘Abstract Trio’ seemed almost to take us from Schoenberg to Stravinsky; I even fancied that I heard premonitions of the later work of Boulez in its motivic working. Coincidence, doubtless, if indeed that, but intriguing nevertheless, for this Old World listener. The cool jazz of ‘Little Blue Devil’ seemed almost as distilled as Mahler does in Webern; it was also just as recognisable. Muted trumpet set up a connection with the Bernd Alois Zimmermann work to come. Febrile, seething, yes, ‘The Twittering-machine’ indeed, came next, with perhaps a little touch of post-Webern Klangfarbenmelodie. A flute solo from above (rather than off-stage in the conventional, unseen sense) beguiled in ‘Arab Village’: simple, yet never predictable, with a true sense of narrative, almost as in Mussorgsky’s Pictures at an Exhibition. ‘An Eerie Moment’ lived up to its name too, Webern perhaps distilling Stravinsky’s Rite, prior to the unsettling – did it or did it not unify what had gone before? – ‘Pastorale’, which again benefited from expert orchestral balancing by Storgårds and his players.

 

Zimmermann’s hundredth anniversary falls this year. (Click here for my feature on the composer in the New York Times.) There is jazz inspiration to his trumpet concerto too, of course, as well as that of the spiritual, ‘Nobody knows de trouble I see’. Zimmermann was adamant that the work, originally entitled ‘darkey’s darkness’ – thank goodness, from our twenty-first standpoint, that that was ditched – played with elements of progressive rather than ‘commercial’ jazz. I think that may be adjudged a perfectly reasonable claim. (We should always remain on our guard concerning what composers say their music may or may not ‘be’. Why might they be making such a claim?) So, at any rate, it sounded here, Håkan Hardenberger – who else? – joining the orchestra.

 

Varying ‘atmosphere’, almost as varying as that of the Schuller Studies, suffused this outstanding performance – played as the repertory work it almost is, and certainly should be. The long line, both for Hardenberger’s trumpet arabesques and for the orchestra, somewhere between ‘jazz’ and ‘symphonic’, was effortlessly maintained, or so it seemed – until, that is, it was no longer required. Controlled riot might then be the order of the day – or something else. Zimmermann’s later, more overt polystilism was almost there, already; perhaps it actually was instantiated, right there, right then. Rightly, neither score nor performance could be pinned down. And yet, there was ultimately, just as rightly, an almost Nono-like sense of bearing witness – even if one were never quite sure who, or what, the ‘subject’ might be. A hushed close did not comfort, nor should it have done.

 

And so, for the second half, we returned to the ‘New World’ Symphony, bastion of many a more conservative concert programme – despite its rocky initial reception in Boston. There was no routine comfort, however, to Storgårds’s performance. One really had the sense, as the cliché has it, that every note had been rethought – and it probably had. The introduction to the first movement sounded unusually dark, almost as if from Weber’s Freischütz Bohemian Woods. So did much of the rest of the movement, although the symphonic dialectic necessitating contrast, even at times negation, was not only observed but dramatised. Ultimately, a good deal of Brahms was revealed beneath the surface, although much that was not him, even opposed to him, too. Indeed, the contrast between first and second groups proved so great, especially in the exposition, as to sound almost Mahlerian. None of that was achieved at the expense of traditional lilt, which propelled rather than inhibited new worlds to come.

 

The second movement’s celebrated, all-too-celebrated cor anglais solo was taken beautifully, yet never just beautifully, likewise other solos. That Largo had all the time in the world to unfold, yet not a second more than necessary. It never forsook the quality of song, of Europeanised spiritual. Fast, insistent, almost brutally so, the Scherzo proved exhilarating, brought into still greater relief by (relative) woodland relaxation and charm. The finale proved a finale in the emphatic sense, as it must, with fury not only in the first but the second group too. Sometimes it can relax a little too much, but not here. Its dynamic telos was maintained until the end, as terse as the first movement, and yet, crucially, utterly different too. Brahms, again, remained, if never without ambiguity. This was a fine conclusion indeed, to an outstanding ORF concert. More soon, please!

 

Parsifal, Vienna State Opera, 5 April 2018

Amfortas – Jochen Schmeckenbecker
Gurnemanz – Kwangchul Youn
Parsifal – Christopher Ventris
Klingsor – Boaz Daniel
Kundry – Anja Kampe
Titurel – Ryan Speedo Green
Squires – Rachel Frenkel, Miriam Albano, Wolfram Igor Dentl, Peter Jelosits
First Knight of the Grail – Benedikt Köbel
Second Knight of the Grail – Marcus Pelz
Flowermaidens – Maria Nazarova, Lydia Rathkolb, Rachel Frenkel, Hila Fahima, Mariam Battistelli, Stephanie Houtzeel
Voice from Above – Zoryana Kushpler

Alvis Hermanis (director, set designs)

Kristīne Jurjāne (costumes)
Gleb Filshtinsky (lighting)
Ineta Sipunova (video)
Silvia Platzek (assistant set designer)

Children of the Vienna State Opera Opera School

Vienna State Opera Chorus (chorus master: Martin Schebesta)

Orchestra of the Vienna State Opera

Semyon Bychkov (conductor)

 

Parsifal continues its strange career in the opera house, both its ‘home’, Bayreuth, and beyond – the ‘beyond’ Cosima Wagner haplessly, hilariously attempted to prevent with her Lex Parsifal. (Note to pious New York Wagnerians: next time you appeal to the Master’s alleged intentions, consider your house’s role in confounding them.) Wagner’s desire, as expressed to Ludwig II, to protect the work from ‘a common operatic career’ is understandable. Indeed, Pierre Boulez, a highly distinguished interpreter and critic of the work as well as compositional successor, understood this very well when he approvingly noted Wagner loathing a system in which ‘opera houses are … like cafés where … you can hear waiters calling out their orders: “One Carmen! And one Walküre! And one Rigoletto!”’ Bayreuth has veered from the very best, indeed the very greatest, in Stefan Herheim, to the very worst, with Uwe Eric Laufenberg’s festival of Islamophobia, bizarrely released on DVD whilst its predecessor languishes in the (virtual) vaults. I do not think I saw Vienna’s previous Parsifal, directed by Christine Mielitz; at any rate, I have no recollection of it. This first revival of Alvis Hermanis’s production had me wondering, however, whether it could have been any more vacuous.

 

Hermanis would not be my choice to direct anything, whether for his avowed Islamophobia – how he must have cursed Laufenberg for getting there first – or for the limitations of his craft, such as it may be. His Salzburg Liebe der Danae combined the two to an uncommon degree. I am astonished any theatre or opera house would still enlist his services, following his storming out of Hamburg’s Thalia Theatre on account of its having extended a welcome to refugees. What we have here, at seemingly great expense, is a series of impressive designs – with which, to be fair, he is credited too – and very little that could really be considered a production at all. There is just enough – again, to be fair – to permit one’s mind to work, to posit connections between what one sees, essentially tableaux from Vienna 1900. Yet, whilst I am certainly in favour of us all having to do some mental lifting, I cannot, hand on heart, say that my psychoanalytical thoughts had their roots in what I saw, whereas they unquestionably have done in Dmitri Tcherniakov’s outstanding Berlin staging.

 

The conceit, if we may call it that, is that two Wagners, Richard and Otto, shared the same, well, surname. Therefore the action takes place at the ‘Wagner Spital’ – alias Otto’s Steinhof psychiatric hospital. I wondered whether there might be a nod to Nietzsche and/or Thomas Mann on Parsifal, here, but suspect myself, perhaps unusually, of undue charity. A model of the human brain grows larger, amidst some books on shelves: ‘Durch Mitleid wissend…’? There is a half-hearted attempt, which nevertheless made me think, at pschyoanalysis, Kundry on Klingsor’s couch, in the second act, although it quickly becomes unclear, rather than fruitfully ambiguous, who, if anyone, amongst the characters, is analysing whom. Bits of Wagner’s (Richard’s) poem are flashed up above the stage from time to time; having hired someone for video, it must, presumably, have been necessary to find something for her to do. (Not her fault in the slightest, I hasten to add.) As for the final scene, in which a few Vienna 1900 celebrities join the chorus, bedecked in the most absurd winged helmets you will ever have seen, even as devotees of ‘Against Modern Opera Productions’, I simply gave up. The stage direction itself might as well have been a wet Wednesday’s revival of Otto Schenk.

 

Fortunately, musical matters were considerably better. The orchestra sounded better than I have heard it in Wagner for some time. It will always play well for conductors it likes: I can therefore only presume that, quite rightly, it likes Semyon Bychkov. The seamlessness of Bychkov’s account showed that, once again, as in, say, his Lohengrin, his Tannhäuser, and his Tristan, he both discerns and can communicate the Wagner melos. Some passages were thrillingly dramatic, not least an overwhelming close to the second act. Others seemed, perhaps, to tread water a little, but that may just have been my difficulty in dissociating what I heard from what I saw. No one, however, could justly have been disappointed with what (s)he heard here, those hallowed Vienna strings not far from the top of their golden game.

 

However, rather to my surprise, I found Christopher Ventris slightly disappointing in the title role – certainly no match for his 2008 self for Herheim and Daniele Gatti. Ventris can still sing the role, often beautifully, but his stage presence seemed almost tired, whether compared with ten years ago in the same role or indeed with his Bayreuth Siegmund last summer. Perhaps he just needed stronger direction; one can certainly sympathise. Anja Kampe’s Kundry proved thrilling, increasingly so as time went on, her laughter at Christ erotically chilling. Kwangchul Youn’s Gurnemanz has gathered wisdom over the years; this may have been the finest I have heard from him, utterly at ease in the role, without taking a single note or word for granted. At times, I found Jochen Schmeckenbecker’s Amfortas a little underpowered, even monochrome, but again there was much to be savoured from his way with the text, both verbal and musical. Boaz Daniel’s Klingsor had one wishing, as so often with this role, that it were at least a little longer. Choral singing, from boys, men, and women alike was excellent: clear, transparent, and yet weighty, having my mind flit back to Wagner’s work in Dresden, whether on his own, strange Liebesmahl der Apostel, or Palestrina’s Stabat Mater (which he edited, less interestingly than one might have hoped). There was, then, redemption to be had, but in a strictly musical sense.

 

Dantons Tod, Vienna State Opera, 3 April 2018

Vienna State Opera

George Danton – Wolfgang Koch

Camille Desmoulins – Herbert Lippert
Hérault de Séchelles – Jörg Schneider
Robespierre – Thomas Ebenstein
Saint-Just – Ayk Martirossian
Herrmann – Clemens Unterreiner
Simon – Wolfgang Bankl
Young Man/First Executioner – Wolfram Igor Derntl
Second Executioner – Marcus Pelz
Julie – Alexandra Yangel
Lucile – Olga Bezsmertna
A Lady – Ildikó Raimondi
A Woman – Lydia Rathkolb
 

Josef Ernst Köpplinger (director, lighting)

Rainer Sinell (set designs)
Alfred Mayerhofer (costumes)
Ricarda Regina Ludigkeit (assistant choreographer)


Vienna State Opera Chorus (chorus master: Martin Schebesta)
Vienna State Opera Orchestra
Susanna Mälkki (conductor)

 

The major composer anniversary – in the strict sense, not including deaths – of 2018 is perhaps that of Bernd Alois Zimmermann. Zimmermann, alas, still needs all the help he can get, given a general silence from conservative, or rather reactionary, performing organisations. (I shall, however, shortly be reporting from an ORF Symphony Orchestra concert, including his Trumpet Concerto, ‘Nobody knows de trouble I see’.) Devotees of Leonard Bernstein will doubtless hear much of his music; whatever one thinks of it, it is hardly neglected. What, though, of other composers, still less celebrated? Anniversaries can prove genuinely useful in their case. Another hundredth birthday is that of the Austrian composer – often emphatically presented as such – Gottfried von Einem.

 

If hardly the most proselytising of houses for contemporary opera, at least since Mahler and Strauss, the Vienna State Opera certainly did its bit for Einem, including two world premieres. A staging of his first opera, Dantons Tod, written between 1944 and 1946 and premiered at the 1947 Salzburg Festival, thus has its roots in tradition: never a bad thing in Vienna – although ask Mahler for a second opinion on that. Offering works, whether entirely forgotten or just neglected, a new hearing is also never a bad thing. I am genuinely grateful to the State Opera for affording me, and indeed the wider world, the opportunity to see the opera in the theatre. Alas, I cannot say that I should rush to see, or indeed to hear, it again; yet far better that than the umpteenth revival of something whose place in the repertory remains a mystery to most of us in the first place. It has its cautious advocates, moreover, not least my friend and colleague Erik Levi, who, whilst voicing reservations, nevertheless ultimately describes it as ‘the most consistently impressive’ of Einem’s ‘operatic compositions’. If so, I am afraid I certainly should not rush to hear the rest. HK Gruber, another composer I have also so far proved incapable of ‘getting’, is one of many appreciative voices raised in the house’s handsome, invaluable programme documentation.

 

At the score’s best, there is enough imitation Hindemith and Stravinsky to keep the musical clock ticking over. I struggled, though, to discern an individual voice. Perhaps we become too hung up on that; this was, after all, a first opera. What I found more disconcerting, though – and not in a productive way – was the seemingly arbitrary musical progress. A bit of reheated Hindemith here, a slightly Stravinskian ostinato there, some competent if predictable choral exchanges there: what does it all add up to? It does not seem to be a declaration, avant la letter de Zimmermann, of exuberant polystilism. Nor do such changes, leaving aside a great deal of frankly nondescript writing, seem to have much basis in or relationship to the libretto, whose fashioning from Büchner by Einem and Boris Blacher again seems to dart all over the place for no particular reason.

 

It is not overly long, though: about an hour and a half. And there are a good few occasions to be impressed by a fine orchestra, chorus, and singers – which I certainly was. I cannot imagine – although how should I know? – that this would necessarily have been Susanna Mälkki’s first choice of opera to conduct, but she certainly did it proud, as did the Orchestra and Chorus of the Vienna State Opera. A full, warm sound did not detract from precision. Pacing seemed ideal, as did the attempt to integrate obvious influences within a dramatic flow. I cannot readily imagine it being performed better. The opera is similarly unlikely to have a better Danton than Wolfgang Koch, whose attention to musical line and words showed all the care, and ultimately the charisma, he would have brought to Wotan or Amfortas. Jörg Schneider’s Hérault de Séchelles impressed throughout too, as did the dark-hued, forbidding Saint-Just of Ayk Martirossian. Olga Bezsmertna certainly made what she could of Lucile (Desmoulins), who threatened to become a far more interesting character than ultimately the work ever seemed quite to permit.

 

Alas, Herbert Lippert, as her husband, proved less than ingratiating of tone, without obvious dramatic recompense. Thomas Ebenstein seemed somewhat hamstrung by a strange, foppish conception of Robespierre (both in work and staging, I think), yet he did what he could. I could not help, however, but wonder whether the opera needed something more interventionist than Josef Ernst Köpplinger’s seemingly non-ironic musical-style staging. It might actually have been a West End musical version of A Tale of Two Cities. There is nothing intrinsically wrong with setting the work where it ‘should’ be, but there was not a great deal to glean beyond (too pretty) period costume. Might it not perhaps have been more illuminating to consider the context in which Einem wrote the work? The initial inspiration, after all, seems to have been the failed assassination attempt on Hitler in 1944. That would surely have been something to work with – not least for a non-Jewish composer posthumously honoured by Yad Vashem as ‘Righteous among the Nations’.

Turnage: Coraline, Royal Opera, 31 March 2018

Barbican Theatre

Coraline – Mary Bevan

Mother, Other Mother – Kitty Whately
Father, Other Father – Alexander Robin Baker
Miss Spink, Ghost Child 1 – Gillian Keith
Miss Forcible – Frances McCafferty
Mr Bobo, Ghost Child 2 – Harry Nicoll
Ghost Child 3 – Dominic Sedgwick
 

Aletta Collins (director)

Giles Cadle (set designs)
Gabrielle Dalton (costumes)
Matt Haskins (lighting)
Richard Wiseman, David Bruitland (magic consultants)


Britten Sinfonia

Sian Edwards (conductor)

 

This was not quite the premiere: that had fallen two nights previously. In many ways, though, I was very happy to be there for a more ‘ordinary’ performance: as it happened, a Saturday matinee. For one thing, it was good to have a sense of how children received Mark-Anthony Turnage’s fourth opera, expressly written for children, Coraline, and presented at the Barbican by the Royal Opera. I was charmed, for instance, to hear in the bar beforehand, an adult telling a child, perhaps his own, to remember that, ‘in the opera, we listen; we don’t sing along.’ Whatever the rights and wrongs of that, to sense a somewhat different audience excited about the prospect of a magical theatrical occasion, rather than to hear Soprano X, in order to complain that it was not Soprano Y, was refreshing enough.

 

Still more, perhaps, was the behaviour of the audience, far better than that of the entitled bunches who often fill our opera houses. They were not silent, but when the occasional question was heard from another row, it was pertinent and genuinely added to the experience. There was certainly none of the idle chatter that so often detracts from a performance. That immediately leads to the caveat that this was not necessarily intended for me at all: again a salutary lesson. Nevertheless, I enjoyed the piece and found the objections I came up with on behalf of a young audience – was it perhaps a little too long? – apparently confounded. There was certainly no sign of such. We do well not to speak on behalf of others, especially when they are perfectly capable of speaking for themselves.

 

The opera is based upon a children’s novella by Neil Gaiman, converted into an opera libretto by Rory Mullarkey. I suspect the original and various adaptations – film, musical, comic book, video game – will have been familiar to a good few of various ages in the audience. Not to me, however, so I shall have to refrain from comparisons. One of the things that struck me about the story as we encountered it here, however, is how much it had in common with other children’s story tropes – nothing wrong with that, for what piece of literature or theatre is unconnected to anything else? – and yet also how one, or at least I, could appreciate it for itself. Dissatisfaction with the mundanity of home and parents, escape to an alternative life and ‘reality’ that promise everything and are thus clearly too good to be true, and a renewed appreciation for what one has, allied to an overcoming of personal fears, stand at the heart of the story. But so do ‘incidentals’: curious neighbours, fun machines, body parts that operate on their own, and so on. A world that is both close to ours and yet is not is created; an audience experiences that creation and even, to a certain extent, reflects upon it. Drama has always done that, and always will. The devil tends to be in the detail, and here the detail seems to me good.

 

This is also opera, of course. Turnage, operating within a broadly post-Stravinskian sound- and rhythm-world, generally tonal, but not in any reactionary sense, gives no sense of condescending to his audience. Indeed, like many composers, he seems perhaps to be liberated by the particular requirements of the commission. (You may wish for everything in the world, as the story tells us, but you do not necessarily want it; nor will you necessarily get it.) Typical, yet far from stereotypical, dance rhythms, propel an action that is not merely of the stage; so, too, do different instrumental combinations and colours, different harmonies, different tonal mises-en-scène, if you like. This is not a score of the complexity of Moses und Aron, but it is not trying to be, nor is there any reason why it should be. After all, its subject matter is entirely different. It steers away from the artifice of much opera; word-setting is rarely melismatic, although nor is it always syllabic. Perhaps that is no bad thing for children. Whether or not, however, they would have had a ‘problem’, with something with which they suspect we might, that does not in itself dictate how a composer should write. The history of opera, after all, is littered, often productively, with aesthetic debates, even wars, in which composers, librettists, impresarios, performers, audiences, theorists, and others have triumphed on both, or many, sides. Such debates will often stimulate; they will never, however, offer more than a provisional word on anything. Ask Richard Strauss.

 

With a splendid cast such as this – all fine actors as well as fine singers, an ensemble in the very best sense – combined with a fine orchestra and conductor, musical magic will nearly always have opportunity to emerge: which I distinctly had the sense it did for many in the audience, not all of them young. If I do not dwell on the performances as such here, it is not intended as any disrespect; all were first-rate. But I think it is sometimes, perhaps especially in a ‘children’s opera’, a good idea to step back and to ask other questions too.

 

How, in any case, could anyone truly dislike a show boasting a couple of ‘magic consultants’? A serious point here, though: this, I think, would really have made a good introduction to many children – perhaps not just to children – to the magic of the theatre. (Again, I emphasise the caveat that, as a non-child, or at least far-too-overgrown child, I may not be the best placed to see.) There are plenty of other options, available, of course, but another one does no harm, indeed does good. Aletta Collins’s staging does not shy away from showing that this is theatre, not television, not film: we see what theatre can suggest, whereas more realistic media will often (not always, I know) will find themselves merely portraying. Coraline walks to another door in the building, and we see the set move around: no big deal for us, nor perhaps for the children, but who knows?  Lighting and costumes likewise take part in a degree of play between the realistic and something else. Moreover, I heard, in the row behind me, an adult explaining at the curtain call, how it was that there were fewer people on stage than there had been characters. The child seemed both to understand and to sense some of that magic we can all too readily for granted. Need it have been an opera, as I have heard some ask? Maybe not. But why should it not have been? And what might come next? It is not always ‘about us’. And perhaps we too have fears to overcome in terms of surrender to the theatre, to opera, to art.

Polyphony/Britten Sinfonia/Layton - St John Passion, 30 March 2018

St John’s Smith Square

Evangelist – Nick Pritchard

Christ – Neal Davies

Anna Dennis (soprano)

Helen Charlston (mezzo-soprano)

Hiroshi Amako (tenor)

Ashley Riches (bass)

Polyphony

Britten Sinfonia

Stephen Layton (conductor)

This was the first time, I think, since having moved to London that I had attended a Bach Passion performance on Good Friday here. More often than not, I had been in Germany, either for a Passion in Leipzig (most recently in 2011) or for Parsifal (most recently last year). A change is as good as a rest, though – sometimes, at least. This proved an impressive, indeed moving, performance from a good cast of soloists, the chamber choir, Polyphony, the Britten Sinfonia, and conductor Stephen Layton. An eighteenth-century church, ‘Queen Anne’s footstool’, is a not inappropriate venue, of course; the warmth of the St John’s, Smith Square acoustic certainly helped balance a certain dryness in what one might characterise as an ‘period-ish’, rather English approach.

This was certainly not a Roman Catholic Bach in the vein of, say, Nikolaus Harnoncourt – but nor, after all, was Bach a Roman Catholic. Nor was it really a very German Bach we heard, or perhaps better, nor was it one of the many German Bachs we heard. What was more on my mind, than placing the performance within performance tradition, however, was the thorny matter of anti-Semitism. Such has, of course, been a preoccupation of British news reporting over the past few days. Moreover, having been working on the life and work of Arnold Schoenberg for quite some time now, musical and linguistic coding – as well as more overt violence – have been very much in my thoughts too. What do we do about a text, a sacred text no less, which, were it from anywhere other than the Bible, we might approach with greater apprehension? It is a particular problem with St John’s Gospel, and a particular problem within that, of the telling of the Passion. What, moreover, do we do about those turba choruses, in which Bach’s musical mastery, his extraordinary ability to characterise the crowd, add a further layer of discomfort? I do not know. I am certainly not saying that we should necessarily change the words, either of Bach’s work, or the Gospel; nor, however, am I saying that we should not at least consider making such changes on occasion. I do think, however, that, in a post-Holocaust age, in which the Church has been forced to confront long-standing anti-Semitism amongst its earthly sins, we cannot airily declare that there is no problem, that this is ‘just’ a work of art; nor indeed that a work of art, however ‘great’, is far too important to be implicated.

For those choruses truly proved the beating heart, Christian, (anti-)Semitic, or otherwise, of the drama that unfolded here. Taken generally, yet not unvaryingly, at quite a speed, there was fury in them? Whose fury, though? The (Jewish) crowd’s? Ours? If the latter, then what was our fury concerned with? Those who crucified Christ? And if so, what might that mean on earth as well as in theology? The changing role of Bach’s choir, after all, prompts us to consider our own relationship to it. When it sings the chorales – here, quite beautifully, and occasionally, arrestingly, a cappella – it seems to be ‘us’, as congregants and/or audience. We feel its pain, and/or it ours. It comments, like a Greek Chorus; and yet, also, like that Chorus, it participates. Not for nothing was it a crucial model, more so even than Handel’s oratorio choruses, for Schoenberg’s children of Israel in Moses und Aron.

Another particular strength, I thought, was a keen sense of soloists, almost as figures in an aural painting, coming on stage to portray and to reflect. That is what they do in their arias and other solos, of course, but it somehow came across both with particular differentiation and yet also interconnection on this occasion. I am not quite sure I can explain how or why; perhaps it was just that each of the soloists was on fine form. Lines were clean, yet far from un-emotional. There was, however, no attempt to impose ‘emotion’, least of all anachronistic or otherwise inappropriate, heart-on-sleeve emotion upon the music. All manner of approaches can work, of course, but this did – and it seemed, rightly or wrongly, to be something of a collective decision. Much the same can be said of the playing of the Britten Sinfonia, I think. I might sometimes have missed a little greater warmth, especially from the strings, but my ears adjusted soon enough, and I came to appreciate the performance very quickly for what it was, not for what it was not. Obbligato passages were always well taken, without a hint of narcissism. As voices seemed to emerge from the choir – even though they did not, at least literally so, in this case – so did instruments sound very much as if emerging from the greater instrumental collective. Guiding this all, with a determined dramatic presence, yet also due musical collegiality, were the wise presences of Nick Pritchard’s intelligent, finely sung Evangelist and, of course, Layton as conductor. 

This was, then, not just an observance, insofar as a concert can or should be; it also made me think. And all the time, I kept returning to the turbulence of that seething opening chorus – as, I think, does Bach. Wagner himself never wrote a finer, more complete, more troubling instance of music drama.

Britten Sinfonia (Voices)/Dougan - 'Easter Voices': works by Mozart, Stravinsky, et al., 28 March 2018

Milton Court

Andrea Gabrieli: Maria stabat ad monumentum

Stravinsky: Fanfare for a New Theatre
Mozart: Missa Brevis in F major, KV 192186f, interspersed with:
Stravinsky: Pater Noster and Ave Maria
Salonen: Concert étude, for French horn
Bruckner: Aequale no.1, for three trombones
Gesualdo: Two movements from Tenebrae Responsories for Good Friday
Stravinsky: Mass

Ben Goldscheider (French horn)

Britten Sinfonia Voices
Britten Sinfonia
Eamonn Dougan (conductor)

It was a little early, perhaps, to be hearing ‘Easter Voices’ in the middle of Holy Week. However, this was not especially an Easter programme – and, in any case, included two pieces from Gesualdo’s Tenebrae responsories for Good Friday. Given the continued vileness of the weather, a little foreshadowing of something warmer was in any case most welcome. (Yes, I know: I should hang my head in Lenten shame.)

Andrea Gabrieli’s Maria stabat ad monumentum functioned splendidly as an introit: Mary Magdalene weeping at the tomb, telling the angels ‘they have taken away my Lord and I do not know where they have laid Him’. It cautioned us against the adoption of anachronistic models of ‘expressiveness’. This is no heart-on-sleeve lament, nor was it in performance. Britten Sinfonia Voices, under Eamonn Dougan offered a warm, nicely flowing account, the choral sound recognisably ‘English’, no doubt, but there is nothing inherently wrong with that. Who on earth, or indeed beyond, knows what the composer’s ‘intentions’ were here, in any case? The very question most likely makes no sense. He would surely have been astonished to hear that the piece was being performed in a London ‘concert hall’ in 2018, let alone that someone was writing about that on a ‘computer’, that writing soon to be posted on a noticeboard on which, in theory, anyone on God’s earth would be able to read it, although most would not.

The same, of course, would go for Mozart, and parts of it would at least have been a stretch for Stravinsky. Their music formed the twin pillars of this concert, the rest of the first half given over to Mozart’s F major Missa brevis, KV 192186f, introduced by and interspersed with short pieces by Stravinsky, the second half offering pieces by Esa-Pekka Salonen, Bruckner, and Gesualdo, leading up to a performance of Stravinsky’s Mass. Both masses were written, ‘intended’ for liturgical performance, although Stravinsky would not have been so greatly surprised to hear of concert performance, however much he might have affected to disdain it, or indeed genuinely done so.

His 1964 Fanfare for a New Theatre heralded ‘the start of the concert proper’, according to Dougan, quoted in Jo Kirkbride’s booklet note. Written for the opening of the New York State Theater, it proved, as ever, blazing, uncompromising, in its forty-second-odd, post-Webern character, whilst at the same time having one wonder: might that actually be a passing reference to Monteverdi? Probably not: one just thinks of Orfeo anyway. In any case, no one time-travels quite like Stravinsky; no one ever remains so much himself. Stravinsky’s Pater Noster and Ave Maria, following Mozart’s ‘Gloria’ and ‘Credo’ respectively, spoke, almost unmediated – or such was the trick. The composer would surely have approved. Choral blend was impeccable, the words highly audible. (Both were given in their later, Latin versions, as per their 1949 revision.) The former sounded a little more Russian, perhaps, as if a neo-Classical remembrance of the world he had left, the latter whiter still, with a strong sense of a musical ‘object’, a Stravinskian icon.

Stravinsky notoriously affected disapproval of Mozart’s early masses: ‘Rococo-operatic sweets of sin,’ he called them, having discovered some scores in 1942: ‘I knew I had to write a Mass of my own,’ he continued, ‘but a real one’. Give me a fake one any day – as well, of course, as Stravinskian ‘reality’. Classical sacred music, whether that of Mozart, Haydn, Beethoven, Schubert, or others, less canonical, is woefully un-performed, with the signal exception of Mozart’s Requiem and perhaps, though only perhaps, the Mass in C minor. Granted, Beethoven’s Missa solemnis is not a work for every day. But many of Mozart’s and Haydn’s masses and other works are just that – or should be. Here we heard a small-scale performance of the Missa brevis: small choir, with soloists drawn from it, two violins, cello, double bass, chamber organ, and occasionally, those two Stravinskian trumpets.  This was, not unreasonably, the sound world, if hardly the acoustic, of the church sonata, slightly augmented. It worked well in a small hall with nothing of the ‘Rococo-operatic’ to it. One can always go to Salzburg’s churches for that.

Performances were again generally warm, if occasionally less so – an interpretative decision, no doubt – from the solo strings. Words again were crystal clear. I especially liked the rich timbre of Tim Dickinson’s bass, but all solos and ensembles were well sung indeed; a fine balance between solo line and blend. The culminatory nature of the ‘Amen’ in the ‘Gloria’; the learned counterpoint of the ‘Credo’, whose contrapuntal tag has one think, whether one likes it or no, of the Jupiter Symphony; the nimble ‘Osanna’ music; and the darkness of the imploring harmonies of the ‘Agnus Dei’, which yet hung over the concluding ‘Dona nobis pacem’: such were just some of the highlights of a lovely performance, well shaped, without interventionism, by Dougan.

Salonen’s 2000 Concert étude for solo French horn, a homage to his teacher, Holger Fransman, offered an equally refreshing opening to the second half, not least given the outstanding, indeed mesmeric quality of Ben Goldscheider’s performance. It acted here almost like a wordless second introit, Messiaen heard from another, related world. The twin requirements of a single line and, at times, multiple voices (various extended techniques, including singing a line in addition to that played) were handled beautifully and, more to the point, meaningfully. The first of Bruckner’s two Aequale followed from the gallery, rooted in tradition and yet, in both melody and harmonic implications, unmistakeably Bruckner.

Gesualdo’s weird chromaticism – is that the best way to think about it at all? – stood out, without undue exaggeration, in carefully unfolding performances of ‘Omnes amici mei’ and ‘Vinea mea electa’. The former proved, perhaps, more of an object, almost in the Stravinskian sense, the latter more developmental, opening in chaster fashion, yet blossoming. Is this how such music, such words ‘should’ be performed? Who knows? Again, the question is hardly the right one to ask. One could certainly imagine what might have fascinated Stravinsky in this composer’s music.

And so to his ‘proper’ Mass, with its non-string, wind orchestra. I was interested to read Dougan speak of ‘the more lush sound world of the winds and brass in the Stravinsky’, as compared to Mozart’s strings. I hear it the other way around – and did again. Although this was anything but a cold performance, an austere, even angular quality, with roots in Symphonies of wind instruments nevertheless manifested itself. We all have our own Stravinskys, I suppose; yet, as Boulez, once put it, Stravinsky demeure (the title of his Rite of Spring analysis).  Is there, was there, something ‘Oriental’, or at least ‘Orientalist’, in the opening wind and vocal arabesques of the ‘Gloria’? Or is/was that just recollections of Paris? Whatever it might have ‘been’, it was delightful. The ‘Credo’ perhaps spoke a little, yet only a little, more nostalgically, of a service from ‘home’ now once again viewed or heard as an ‘object’, its jangle of ecclesiastical Latin leading inexorably to a beautifully floated Amen. Intonation throughout was spot on, as it must be, truly permitting one to appreciate the originality of Stravinsky’s own heavenly host in the ‘Sanctus’ and the  imploring qualities of the closing ‘Agnus Dei’. As a surprising encore, another object of fascination, we heard Mozart’s Ave verum corpus motet, with accompaniment from the wind orchestra on stage: Mozart and Stravinsky, perhaps, united at last.

'Voices of Revolution, Russia 1917’: Abduraimov/Gulitskaya/Philharmonia/Ashkenazy: Mosolov, Prokofiev, and Glière, 22 March 2018

Royal Festival Hall

Mosolov: The Iron Foundry, op.19

Prokofiev: Piano Concerto no.3 in C major, op.26
Glière: Concerto for coloratura soprano and orchestra, op.82
Glière: Suite: The Red Poppy

Bezhod Abduraimov (piano)

Nadezhda Gulitskaya (soprano)

Philharmonia Orchestra

Vladimir Ashkenazy (conductor)

 

The title of the concert series is perhaps slightly misleading: ‘Voices of Revolution, Russia 1917’. It is perhaps also slightly belated, although one might argue that we are now living in the year following the centenary date itself of the October Revolution. No matter, as Martin Sixsmith, former BBC correspondent in Moscow and series advisor, explains, the intention is to explore ‘works by composers who had very different reactions to the Bolshevik Revolution of autumn 1917, with a selection of music that revolves around themes of idealism, propaganda and repression.’ Moreover, as Sixsmith and Marina Frolova-Walker proceeded, in an enlightening pre-concert talk, to discuss, the three composers on offer here certainly acted very differently in that respect:  Alexander Mosolov an archetypal figure of early Soviet modernism, Prokofiev an exile who eventually returned, and Reinhold Glière a purveyor of dubious ‘socialist realism’.

 

Glière simply wanted instructions from whomever was in charge so that he could get on with his (hack) work. As Frolova-Walker explained in the programme: “‘just tell us what to do”, … he said at one official meeting.’ When no ‘formalists’ were available for consideration, he passed the Zhdanov test and won the 1948 Stalin Prize, as he would again in 1950. He had also done so in 1946, for his 1943 Concerto for coloratura soprano, which struck me as rather more than hack work. Indeed, the conception itself, whilst not entirely original, remained unusual, even if the neo-Romantic language did not. Nadezhda Gulitskaya, a late substitution for Ailish Tynan, proved fully up to its demands, contributing more than a little glamour as well as necessary precision of a pitch to a work whose undeniable charms might otherwise have palled, however excellent the contribution of the Philharmonia Orchestra under Vladimir Ashkenazy (conductor of all four Philharmonia concerts). Let us be kind and say that the opening phrase merely displays a strong resemblance to a theme from Die Walküre (think of Brünnhilde’s ‘War es so schmählich’); there are only so many notes in the major scale, and there are in any case worse models for a melody than Wagner. The music proceeds somewhat in television-score-ish fashion, save for the imaginative vocalise, and certain moments beyond: for instance the soprano’s duetting with clarinet. The second of the two movements, a neo-Tchaikovskian waltz, seemed a bit odder, but it was a welcome opportunity nevertheless to hear a work hardly overburdened with performances.

The opening, quite un-Wagnerian theme

 

The Red Poppy, even in its suite version, is likely – I hope – to remain more of a rarity. Almost socialist realism avant la lettre, or at least long before its necessity, it was apparently the first Soviet ballet on a properly contemporary socialist realist theme: an imperialist one at that, Russian sailors venturing ashore to rescue victims of nationalist China’s capitalism. Bizarrely, and perhaps still more disturbingly, the United States later took it up, following the alliance between Roosevelt and Stalin, exchanging American sailors for Russians, and Japanese victims (of something else, I presume) for Chinese. It begins colourfully, cartoon-like, clearly being relished on at least one level by players and conductor alike. Yes, I suppose one would expect pentatonic writing – but really, it here soon extends here beyond a harmless joke. ‘I’m not racist, but…’ Glière was nothing if not eclectic – reactionary eclectic, though – and a bad Johann Strauss waltz entered to provide ‘balance’. It was all gorgeously played, solos as well as full orchestra, as I suppose they should be. The Naxos performance below is harder-edged, rather to the music's - and our - benefit, I think. This was fascinating to hear, once; but I cannot, even without its highly problematic Orientalism, imagine wanting to repeat the experience in a hurry.

 

Mosolov’s Iron Foundry is, of course, well known – if relatively little heard in concert – as a signal-bearer for Soviet musical modernism. The Philharmonia’s performance under Ashkenazy was every inch the match for the Glière items. For me, at least, the music, as well as the politics, are – and, in performance were – far more compelling. Riccardo Chailly once recorded it alongside (more) acknowledged works of international modernism, Prokofiev’s Third Symphony and Varèse’s Arcana. Here one could certainly here why. I thought also of the former’s Pas d’acier, the irony being of course that such high water-marks of Prokofiev’s own modernism were decidedly non-Soviet works. The size of the orchestra struck one visually, its volume aurally. Here was a factory of an in music, a worthy successor – indeed, a superior work, I think – to Honegger’s Pacific 231, replete, to quote Frolova-Walker, ‘with a kind of heroic “hymn to labour” in the horns’. Tremendous stuff!

 

So too is and, once again, in performance was, Prokofiev’s Third Piano Concerto, in C major – not in F major, as claimed in the programme leaflet handed out on the day. It is the most Classically proportioned of Prokofiev’s five essays in the genre, with three movements of more or less equal length, but in this performance as well as in this context, its relation to its own time sounded more than typically apparent. Bezhod Abduraimov’s pounding of the piano – and Ashkenazy’s of the orchestra too – reminded one just how radical Prokofiev’s percussive treatment of the instrument can, and most likely should, seem. Bartók is not the only pioneer in this respect. But Parisian neo-Classicism welcomed the work with open arms too; the C major ‘whiteness’ of the close also came strongly to the fore, alongside magical, silvery premonitions of Cinderella. That said, the finale’s status as complement to the first movement was also clear in retrospect. That first movement sounded as if taken at a relatively swift tempo: no bad thing. However, I am not sure that it actually was; the feeling was at least as much a matter of energy from soloist, orchestra, and conductor (who, of course, played the piece more than a few times himself). The central theme and variations proceeded briskly, again not too briskly, and again emerged all the stronger for it, rhythms nicely sprung: the basis, so it seemed, for much of the melody and harmony with which they worked. Its darker, almost cinematic, side was not neglected: again, I thought, an instance of ‘period’ interest in a strong rather than antiquarian sense. Shadows of Scriabin still registered too, in a truly brilliant performance. I hope to hear more from Abduraimov, even if his Schubert encore sounded closer, intriguingly so, to Prokofiev than to the ‘source’.