Saturday, 12 July 2025

Festival d'Aix-en-Provence (3) - Quatuor Diotima: Saariaho, Boulez, and Debussy, 9 July 2025


Villa Lily-Pastré

Saariaho: Terra memoria
Boulez: Livre pour quatuor, Ia, Ib, V
Debussy: String Quartet in G minor, op.10

Yun-Peng Zhao
Léo Marillier (violins)
Franck Chevalier, Alexis Descharmes (cello)


(picture: my own, taken from audience)

  

Whilst a concert of string quartet music on a balmy evening in the garden of a Provençal villa might sound idyllic, many would add that there is good reason for outdoor music being largely given by wind rather than string instruments. The Hôtel Maynier d’Oppède having become unavailable, this substitute venue nonetheless offered an excellent setting, the Quatuor Diotima seemingly unfazed by the acoustical and tuning challenges that must have confronted it. The screen placed at the back of the stage doubtless played a part, but so surely did the skill and sangfroid of this ever-excellent ensemble. 

Programming was canny, two composers strongly influenced in rather different ways by Debussy, one of whom we lost recently, the other whose centenary we celebrate this year, preceding Debussy’s sole string quartet, for which we are all thankful whilst understanding that the genre was not necessarily for him. Who knows what might have emerged from his ‘late’ style, had it not been abruptly curtailed by death? But then we can say that of so many. Here, on all three counts, we were grateful for what we heard. 

Kaija Saariaho’s 2007 Terra memoria marked her second work for quartet, not so much taking up where she had left off with Nymphéa of twenty years earlier as doing something quite different, whilst affirming her love for the expression born of intimacy that characterises so much writing for these forces. If conversation is a quality we attribute above all to the Classical heyday of the quartet, it re-emerged in different guises in all three works, here in comprehending performances that seemed to shape that conversation not only between players but between us and the ‘departed’ to whom the work is dedicated, and also the earth (terra) and memory (memoria) of the title, encapsulating both the composer’s shaping of material – always surprising, yet always apt – and the performers’ shaping of what she in turn offered them. Flashes, memories haunted and perhaps consoled us too. It was difficult not to think of Derridian hauntology, not least in figures flying off the bows that seemed both to owe their being to what we might think of both as spectralism and its spectres and yet confidently also to progress beyond them. 

Pierre Boulez was a regular visitor to the Festival d’Aix-en-Provence and led, as cellist Alexis Descharmes reminded us in his spoken introduction to the concert the creation of its Académie. Alas, I never heard him lead conduct here, though I did hear a splendid Berlin Philharmonic concert of Bartók, Ravel, and Boulez in 2009. If Boulez’s presence – haunting in the best sense – continues to mark various aspects of the Festival, it is surely right that in his centenary year we should hear his own music: in this case parts – or, as he preferred, feuillets, (leaves) – of the Livre pour quatuor, an essential Boulezian work-in-progress that, once withdrawn, is now experiencing a welcome renaissance in performance. I long to hear it all – whatever ‘all’ might mean in this context – one day, but in the meantime it would be beyond churlish to complain at the fragments given in scintillating performances such as this. Here, perhaps inevitably, I thought of Webern first, yet also, perversely or otherwise, the late Beethovenian inheritance one might have thought shaken off by the Second Piano Sonata, but which to my ears here endured in that connection, in fragility as well as in fury, of fragments that characterised both work and performance.   

Debussy’s ghost might have warned Boulez against such a path, yet he too could not quite escape such a reckoning in his Quartet. It is often slyly bypassed; it would, moreover, be absurd to fail to acknowledge both the charm and method of French, Russian, and other string quartet forebears in composition. Yet in a performance of often astonishing concision, sonata and other ‘old’/’German’ forms worked Debussyan magic not only in their haunting but also in their ambiguity. One could identify them, yet so what? What did they – or better, work and performance – express? For a Festival strongly yet far from exclusively devoted to the lyric arts, it was the melodic lines, their intertwining, and their corrosion of expectations that proved most immediate and, in retrospect, so prophetic of the Saariaho and Boulez works heard first that yet remained, in one sense, yet to come.


Friday, 11 July 2025

Festival d'Aix-en-Provence (2) - Don Giovanni, 8 July 2025


Grand Théâtre de Provence


Images: Festival d'Aix-en-Provence 2025 © Monika Rittershaus


Don Giovanni – Andrè Schuen
Leporello – Krzysztof Bączyk
Donna Anna – Golda Schultz
Donna Elvira – Magdalena Kožená
Don Ottavio – Amitai Pati
Commendatore – Clive Bayley
Zerlina – Madison Nonoa
Masetto – Paweł Horodyski

Director – Robert Icke
Set designs – Hildegard Bechtler
Costumes – Annemarie Woods
Lighting – James Farncombe
Choreography – Ann Yee
Video – Tal Yarden
Sound – Mathis Nitschke
Dramaturgy – Klaus Bertisch

Estonian Philharmonic Chamber Choir (choirmaster: Aarne Talvik)
Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra
Simon Rattle (conductor)




If I remember correctly, that splendidly grumpy old man Johannes Brahms averred that he would much rather stay at home and read the score than suffer yet another Don Giovanni disappointment in the opera house. Often, one sympathises—and more generally with Mozart, especially nowadays. It is, notoriously, a director’s graveyard; it has for a while also seemed to be a conductor’s graveyard too. In both cases, the Commendatore regularly calls time on all manner of easy perversities that too often masquerade in place of understanding, hard work, and genuine imagination and invention. I was nonetheless keen to see this new Aix production, the festival’s eighth and my first there. That was above all to see what Robert Icke, an almost universally admired figure of British spoken theatre – this season alone, I saw Oedipus and Manhunt (which Icke wrote as well as directed) – might accomplish in his first foray into opera. 

Having entered the theatre and quickly skimmed a page or two of the programme, I felt my heart sink when I read some of Simon Rattle’s words in the programme, regardless of the good sense many others made. ‘The “Mozart” [!] I grew up with as a child – the style of interpretation I once admired – has, for most of us, become unlistenable. We’ve all evolved without realising it.’ Perhaps, then, this would be a classic instance of one element working and one distracting, with the stage performances themselves as yet undetermined. For once, alas, my inner Brahms proved wrong. There was much to admire and to consider on all fronts. Not only was this to be a serious piece of theatre; it was, certain, despite inevitable reservations, to be the best Mozart and indeed to my taste probably the best performance of music before Wagner I had heard from Rattle. This, I think, was testament not only to his thoughtful, keen-eared approach, dismissal of Furtwängler, Böhm, Klemperer, Giulini, Davis, et al. (and their admirers) notwithstanding, but also to willingness to learn from his still relatively new orchestra, the Bavarian Radio Symphony, and to theirs from him. 



Interviewed in 2015, Icke declared his responsibility ‘always’ to be ‘to the impulse of the original play, to clear away the accumulated dust of its performance history. So much of great drama was profoundly troubling when it was first done. They rioted at Ibsen’s A Doll’s House, for goodness’ sake. Audiences shouldn’t be allowed to feel nothing.’ A ‘period’ approach similar to Rattle’s (at least in theory, if not in practice)? Hardly, as anyone familiar with his work would attest. That is, in part, the problem: such notions mean such different things to people in different contexts that misunderstanding – doubtless including mine concerning Rattle’s words – is rife. Enough, anyway, of this preamble. It may have been better to plunge straight into the action as Mozart does, if arguably to withdraw a little thereafter. I wanted, though, to try to give an impression or at least a self-assessment of my own accumulated dust, if only to help explain my own admiration – some anticipated, some less so – for what I saw and heard. 

Icke opens with the Commendatore, in a sense master of ceremonies, initiating his own private performance—on record, like so many of us, one might even say in neo-Brahmsian fashion. The sounds of an old, crackly performance will be heard again for Giovanni’s Tafelmusik as we approach the denouement and the Commendatore’s return. (In reality, he has never been away, conceptually or physically, as stage appearances make clear.) For there is here a strong relationship, probably identity, between the two. Does Giovanni’s murder of his nemesis thereby suggest the master of his own fate is indeed his own nemesis? Is the action that unfolds, whether from the standpoint of an old man sipping wine to a gramophone record of his youth or from hospital bed and a fatally wounded young man, drip-attached, staggering with increasing difficulty across the stage (n the second act), the Commendatore/Giovanni narrating his own story? How reliable a narrator might he be? And how reliable might live and recorded video images be? The work, even? These are not necessarily questions to be answered definitively, though nor are they trivially raised then neglected. This is – at least was for me – a call to active participation from the spectator and listener. That may be why some evidently did not care for it. 

The concept takes its leave, I think, from Leporello’s line, ‘Chi è morto, voi, o il vecchio?’ To ask his master who is dead, him or the old man, is generally taken not only to be (theatre of the) absurd – clearly it is – but as merely silly. (Thank goodness this was not a Don Giovanni played ‘for laughs’, a dramaturgical misunderstanding of the highest or rather the lowest order. The ever-irksome Glyndebourne guffaw was at least avoided.) If we lose the intrinsic master-servant dialectic, highly eroticised by Giovanni’s clothes- and partner-swapping libertinism, we gain an intriguing consideration of what relationship there might be between Giovanni and the Commendatore and what their secret(s) might be. Occasional sharing of lines between characters, not only them, speaks and sings of other connections, born of theatrical experience – they work to the extent one might not even notice – and possibility. It is a standpoint; no one would claim it to be the only standpoint, but it is a fruitful one. 



For we rarely ask who the Commendatore is. We arguably do not even ask who Giovanni is, though we think we do. His kinetic energy deludes, seduces us—as well as those onstage. There are neither masquerade nor masqueraders here, which is surely part of the point. Instead, the old man – or is it the young man – has summoned characters from the medical staff. Donna Elvira, the young man’s fellow inhabitant of the chameleon-realm between seria and buffo, di mezzo caraterre, is notably precisely who she says she is, her words generally disregarded: his wife. In the final reckoning, she returns to his bedside. Perhaps he is not dead after all, then: not in a banal, realistic way so much, but rather to reckon with the circularity of an abuse that is born of and returns to the family, a little girl who sees it all the counterpart, perhaps more than that, to Donna Anna. As survivors do – are we all, ‘in a very real sense’, survivors? – she teaches other women, onstage and on film. She should not have to, of course, but what choice does she and do they have? 

The idea of standing between life and death – in limbo perhaps or hell, even heaven – can be considered and expressed in many ways. Giovanni’s initial, disconcerting beatific gaze suggests one way, perhaps not taken—or is it? At any rate, the idea is one arguably explored in the work or at least one it might encourage us to explore. Claus Guth’s Salzburg production was admired by many, though it struck me as in many ways problematical—not least since it took the cowardly, decidedly non-Giovanni path of omitting the scena ultima. When I think about it again, though, it certainly occupied itself with this notion. Here, the heartbeat that punctuates the action – filmic yet theatrical, auditory yet visual – brings it home arrestingly, in more than once. 



Use of surtitles to convey concept rather than the text is by now a common dramaturgical device. Here, I admit I felt unease: was too much being skated over? Might not the conflict have been better brought out into the open? Did the ‘new’ words for the scena ultima threaten ironically to turn what we saw into too much of a conventional morality play? Perhaps that was the point; if so, it seemed a pity, also a little too much ‘leading’ for what we ought to have been able to grasp without. At least, though, I was led to ask the question, and it may have been my misunderstanding or simply a case of my preference/preconception not according with a valid alternative. 

Rattle’s musical dramaturgy surprised me: not only from what he had said, but from what I had been told. A friend who had attended an earlier performance informed me of swift tempi. Once past a shockingly fast alla breve, even by current standards, what I heard was anything but. Who knows? Maybe I too am an ‘authenticist’ without having known it. The point was not of course speed or even tempi as such, but rather a variegated approach, giving each number its due whilst attempting to situate it within a greater whole. I did not find everything entirely convincing; when does one ever? More often than not I did, though. I also found a welcome collaborative approach not only to the production but to the cast, without ever falling into the messy trap of having them all do their own thing. This work needs a musical as well as a stage director—and it received one: one, moreover, who was as alert as any I have heard, perhaps even more so, to the array of timbral possibilities, some historically derived, some less so. The Munich wind in particular must have thanked their lucky stars. 

The whole orchestra was on outstanding form, truly able to ‘speak’ dramatically: a quality Rattle associates with Nikolaus Harnoncourt and which I do with Mozart’s position between Gluck and Mozart. Again, maybe we are not so far apart after all; maybe we are ready at long last to put such ‘debates’ behind us. There were times when tension sagged a little, Rattle perhaps savouring, even loving, the score more than is ideal, however understandable. As ever, the familiar conflation of Prague and Vienna versions did not help. (For once, given aspects of the production, inclusion of the Leporello-Zerlina duet might have been an advantage.) But none of my reservations was grievous and I learned much from what I heard too. 




Andrè Schuen proved an outstanding Giovanni: properly adaptive to every situation, his very core shifting as necessary; suave and strong; yet troubled and tortured. Clive Bayley’s Commendatore, unusually and necessarily more acted than sung, imparted equal conviction in the concept. If (the mature) Donna Anna seemed somewhat sidelined by that concept, Golda Schultz’s vocal palette and sparkle left nothing to be desired. Krzysztof Bączyk was likewise faced with a production in which Leporello seemed less central than otherwise, but his performance remained estimable, a proper foil to his master’s (in either incarnation). Magdalena Kožená fully captured the world of a different Elvira, words and music harnessed with insight. Madison Nono and Paweł Horodyski presented a spirited, finely sung Zerlina and Masetto with an apt taste for light sadomasochism that was not confined to them. Amitai Pati seemed at times a little out of sorts vocally as Don Ottavio, but everyone is entitled to a (relative) off-night, especially in such cruelly exposed music. All the cast, small chorus included, contributed to the realisation of the greater whole: Icke’s, Rattle’s, and the broad intersection of the two.




Wednesday, 9 July 2025

Festival d'Aix-en-Provence (1) - La Calisto, 7 July 2025


Théâtre de l’Archevêché


Images: Festival d’Aix-en-Provence 2025 © Monika Rittershaus

 
Calisto – Lauranne Oliva
Giove – Alex Rosen
Diana – Giuseppina Bridelli
Endimione – Paul-Antoine Bénos-Dijan
Giunone, L’Eternità – Anna Bonitatibus
Linfea – Zachary Wilder
La Natura, Pane, Furia – David Portillo
Mercurio – Dominic Sedgwick
Destino, Satirino, Furia – Théo Imart
Silvano, Furia – José Coca Loza

Director – Jetske Mijnssen
Set designs – Julia Katharina Berndt
Costumes – Hannah Clark
Lighting – Matthew Richardson
Choreography – Dustin Klein
Dramaturgy – Kathrin Brunner  

Ensemble Correspondances
Sébastien Daucé (conductor)




Opera’s relationship to broader social and political movements is, like that of all cultural phenomena, complex, though sometimes clearer than in other cases. This holds at least as much for performance as for creation. Chance – the right person or persons at the right time, or indeed the wrong person(s) at the wrong time – can always play a role, albeit usually in combination with other factors. The world of seventeenth-century Venetian opera, of late Monteverdi and his pupil Francesco Cavalli, doubtless held a particular appeal for the Europe (and United States) of the Sixties and Seventies and changing social mores: women’s and gay liberation, repudiation of monogamy, and so on—just as the increasingly popular Così fan tutte did. Yet so did the singular figure of Raymond Leppard. Without him, it is difficult to imagine Cavalli having reached Glyndebourne when he did: first L’Ormindo (1967-8, on the back of Monteverdi’s L’incoronazione di Poppea, and receiving a subsequent guest visit to Munich in 1969) and then La Calisto (1970, 1971, and 1974, with guest appearances in the UK and continental Europe in the meantime). We should probably have approached Cavalli’s music at some point otherwise, yet this was the path taken. Leppard’s landmark recordings of those two operas, combined with editions and performances of other works, did much to establish them in a public consciousness that itself seemed ready for their decidedly un-Victorian (indeed un-1950s) morality. The final duet of Poppea is a locus classicus of ‘amoral’ conclusion, or rather elevation of ‘love’, desire, whatever you wish to call it, over all else; it was of course almost certainly not composed by Monteverdi and may indeed have been the work of Cavalli. At any rate, it sets the scene nicely for works such as La Calisto, given an intriguing, feminist directorial twist at its close here by Jestke Mijnssen. 

If the route has taken inevitable detours, Cavalli may now be heard regularly across the world. The Festival d’Aix-en-Provence gave L’Erismena in 2017, a welcome opportunity, though La Calisto is to my mind the more interesting and involving opera (and here received a considerably superior production and performance). That Glyndebourne Calisto was of course one of Janet Baker’s great triumphs, in the role of Diana. mercifully captured for the rest of us on record with Leppard, the London Philharmonic, and a generally splendid cast. We can hear there an absorbing conception of what Cavalli might sound like and once did, yet we should generally resist nostalgia and concentrate on what we might do today, a task rendered easier by what may well be the finest performance of an opera on period instruments I have experienced in the flesh. It also takes its place in that fraught yet fascinating history of why Cavalli’s works in general and this in particular might hold appeal to audiences at certain times, offering a far more erotic experience than any other I can recall, whilst still inevitably pointing to historical difference. The world of La Calisto is not ours, whether in morality or conceptions of gender, though it probably comes closer than it does to the worlds of La traviata or Tosca. 



Consciously or otherwise (it does not really matter), that tension came through in Mijnssen’s staging. Initially I wondered, without especially minding, why it had been updated to a sumptuous eighteenth-century, to a world of a decadent nobility redolent of Les Liaisons dangereuses, yet it became clear that this was intended to invoke – and did – a world of experimentation in sexual attraction as well as luxury and decadence almost for their own sake. Bored, cruel gods become bored, cruel aristocrats, perhaps thereby awaiting their comeuppance. With a set from Julia Katharina Berndt, whose impression of wood panelling conveys foundations of more than a century earlier, more general distance from and roots in that earlier period are readily apparent. Social differentiation is clear in the case of Endimione, a commedia dell’arte singer performing for the pleasure of his divine audience: at their mercy (or not). It seems, however, less clear in the case of Calisto, whose dress suggested equality with the gods. Perhaps that is the point, yet if that were the case, I am not sure why it not so across the board. It is nonetheless clear in her punishment by Giunone, transformed not into a bear, it seems, but a pauper in sackcloth: perhaps the ultimate disgrace, whether in lack of wealth or implied penitence. Hers, it seems, might actually be a Christian presence in a world ruled by depraved paganism.

Otherwise, games, disguises, transformation, and violence extend from beginning to end, especially at the hands of the shepherd Endimione’s sylvan persecutors: bookended by a prophetic funeral, gods in mourning, and a closing scene in which, to our shock and the gods’, Calisto turns on Giove and kills him. The scene frozen, funeral music sounds. Is this the death of Giove in human form – it seems more than that – or a fuller death enabled by his transformation into human form? If the chief of the gods dies – can die – what might the future hold? More awkward are questions of gender transformation. A production cannot be held entirely responsible for audience reaction, of course, and there was a certain element that would probably have found male assumption of female roles, let alone a male god assuming his daughter’s form, intrinsically hilarious, no matter what; I fear some such people might even have felt and reacted similarly to any suggestion of lesbianism. That said, especially in the case of gender fluidity, the production was not entirely innocent of encouragement. That may have roots in the work; it certainly has roots in the story of Cavalli’s Venetian operas. If, though, we could have a feminist twist, a broader gender twist might also have helped. Another plus, though: we had dancing, even when comedic, that listened to and responded to the music rather than merely inflicting itself upon it. Many thanks to choreographer Dustin Klein for that rarer-than-it-should be boon. 



Sébastien Daucé led the Ensemble Correspondances with flexibility, a keen sense of dramatic narrative, and an equally fine sense of sensuality: just what was called for—and without a hint of dogmatism. A splendidly varied – always with discernible reason – continuo group proved the foundation on which much else rested, including what may well be the sweetest toned ‘period’ strings I have heard whilst retaining capacity for delicacy, and cornetts that managed both to affect and to hold their tuning in the outdoor theatre of Aix’s archepiscopal palace. I only read this afterwards, but how refreshing to hear an early-music conductor take into account just what needs to be in performance: ‘On that basis – i.e. all these different scenarios that remain open in the score – we will come up with a theoretical line-up, an adaptation of the counterpoint, of the intermediate parts, etc., but without ever touching what already exists.’ 

That latter point may be thought conservative by some standards, yet it is far from absurdly so. More important, ‘this adaptation means that our version will sound less like the one performed in Venice in 1651 than the one that might have been performed instead of Ercole amante in Paris in 1661 [1662, but no matter],’ commissioned by Cardinal Mazarin in celebration of Louis XIV’s marriage to Maria Theresa of Spain.


The idea is to have a five-part score that makes greater use of the instrumentalists and is suitable for an outdoor venue with a capacity of around 1300. When it was premiered, there were an average of 100 people per evening. While we cannot simply apply a coefficient based on the number of spectators, because the acoustics also play a role in how the music is heard [Amen to that!], it is safe to say that there will be at least ten times as many instrumentalists, i.e. an orchestra of 60 musicians. We are not quite there yet, but that is the idea! …until we have tested them at the Archevêché, we won’t know if we have too many or too few of this or that instrument. 

It is refreshing not only to read those words, but also and all the more so refreshing, stimulating, and frankly overdue to hear their musical results in a world that still mostly insists on pitifully small forces quite unmatched to performing spaces, let alone to twenty-first-century ears. I hope to hear more from Daucé and his ensemble, who whilst not in any meaningful way sounding ‘like’ Leppard and his, seem more attuned to his and to the work’s creators’ creative, more properly historical anti-puritanism than the greater part of what we have heard over the intervening half-century. 'Inauthentic' yet atmospherically Mediterranean percussion leading us into the interval would surely have surprised Leppard, yet made him smile. Cavalli too, I should like to think.




A good number of the cast will be familiar to those who have seen earlier instalments of seventeenth-century Venetian opera, Monteverdi and Cavalli, in Aix, so much so that one can almost speak of an Aix Venetian ensemble with a mutable core, rather as once one could for Salzburg and Mozart. That experience tells, I think, as does its developmental nature. All singers seemed fully at home in Giovanni Faustini’s libretto, Cavalli’s response, and that of their twenty-first production and musical team too. Lauranne Oliva gave a touching performance of the title role, growing in steel, yet ultimately true to the character’s innocence, well supported as elsewhere by Hannah Clark’s costumes. Alex Rosen’s necessarily multifaceted Giove took in not only counter-tenor assumption of Diana’s form, but increasingly strong hints of something deeper than his fellow deities might have understood. Diana herself benefited from a comprehending, flexible assumption, divine yet what we know as human, from Giuseppina Bridelli, notwithstanding loss of opportunity to act as Giove. Anna Bonitatibus offered an imperious star-turn as Giunone, lifting every scene in which she appeared insofar as that were possible. Dominic Sedgwick’s Mercurio was quite the energising presence, indeed properly mercurial. My pick of the rest would have to include Paul-Antoine Bénos-Djian’s truly human, lovelorn Endimione and a strutting, peacock Satirino from his fellow countertenor Théo Imart. This premiere, however, showed that however clichéd the expression may be by now, this was a company performance, very much more than the sum of its appreciable parts from 1651 onwards.


Tuesday, 24 June 2025

Lash, Deutsche Oper, 20 June 2025


Images: © Marcus Lieberenz


A – Anna Prohaska
S - Sarah Maria Sun
N – Noa Frenkel
K – Katja Kolm
Live Camera – Nadja Krüger
Synthesiser, Piano – Christoph Grund, Ernst Surberg
Electric Guitar – Adrian Pereyra
Stage percussion – Thomas Döringer, Florian Glotz, Konstantin Tiersch, Laslo Vierk
Box operators – Nana Ajei Boateng, Zé de Pavia, Lennie Fanslau, Victor Naumov, Paula Schumm

Director – Dead Centre (Bush Moukarzel)
Designs – Nina Wetzel
Lighting – Jörg Schuchardt
Sound design – Arne Vierck
Video – Sébastien Dupouey
Dramaturgy – Sebastian Hanusa

Orchestra of the Deutsche Oper Berlin
Enno Poppe (conductor)




Having been an avid follower of Rebecca Saunders’s music since my first encounter at the Wigmore Hall in 2012, mostly in Germany (Berlin and Munich in particular) but also in London, I was excited to learn her first opera would be given at the Deutsche Oper—and still more excited to be able to visit for the premiere. Equally interesting and exploratory in vocal and non-vocal music and with an excellent track record in choice of verbal texts, Saunders seemed in many ways an ideal candidate for operatic composition. It would at the very least be interesting to see what that development entailed—and so it was. 

Lash—Acts of Love, to give it its full title, is not a conventional opera. No surprises there, one might say. Yet if it has elements of something more installation-like, more in Ed Atkins’s libretto (if one can call it that, Saunders also credited for conversion of the initial text) and general dramaturgy than in Saunders’s score, it certainly qualifies as an opera. The Deutsche Oper did it proud, with Bush Moukarzel of Dead Centre; video work by Sébastien Dupouey; a cast of three truly outstanding singers, Anna Prohaska, Sarah Maria Sun, and Noa Frankel, plus the equally excellent actor Katja Kolm, all clearly working together and filmed live by Nadja Krüger; and the house orchestra on fine form indeed, conducted by Enno Poppe. Each of the female voices, indeed their bodies more generally, is intended as the foundation of what we hear and largely succeeds in conveying that sense: four parts of the same woman, not only mirroring, often explicitly, but forming—themselves or rather herself, and the images around them. 

What a welcome change, moreover, it was to have so little of the male standpoint (and gaze). Indeed, if that could have been excluded more tightly still – one of many reasons, I fear, to have wished for a different libretto – the work might well have been enhanced. Not that there was any reason to be ungrateful for Enno Poppe’s unfailingly alert, comprehending, dramatically alive conducting, nor for the excellence of the Orchestra of the Deutsche Oper, male musicians included—and first among equals, those musicians onstage during the third act. Perhaps, though, less might have been more. The excellence of performance, the excellence of the composition also served, perhaps ironically, to point to a lack in Atkins’s text (or whatever we want to call it). 



Sex and death are and always have been inextricably interlinked. This presentation of ‘a woman … suspended in the immediate aftermath of a death,’ recounting ‘fantasies and memories of love and loss and fucking and sickness, kissing, eyeballs, genitals, fingertips, lips, and lashes—each scoured for consoling significance to hold back death’s meaninglessness,’ has a stated idea: ‘through the imminence of her own body, her own mortality, she rediscovers loss as the precondition of experience—of love.’ It is not experienced as a narrative; nor would one expect it to be. But Saunders’s writing, through three acts spanning almost two hours, draws it together, like a great symphonic poem with voices. It grows in intensity – judged, I think, by whatever parameter(s) – and gives the strong impression of binding the work together. It also becomes more instrumental/orchestral, both onstage and around the auditorium, but also in the proportion of writing—or so it seemed to me. ‘Organic’ is doubtless an epithet outdated by at least two centuries for such writing, but perhaps I might be indulged here, if only in the Hegelian sense of a musical owl of Minerva spreading its wings at the performance’s dusk.

That said – and with all the caveats concerning a single hearing/viewing – my expectations were only partly fulfilled. This is owed in no part to the difficulty and particularity of writing opera, even for otherwise excellent composers. With the best will in the world, Schubert, generally recognised to be one of the supreme vocal and instrumental composers in the Western tradition, was not a significant composer of opera, though his operas are far from without interest. I could not help but wonder whether Saunders’s musical and dramatic gifts were not so readily operatic, whether a large-scale concert-work such as YES were more her thing. My problems, though, did not really lie there. At the post-show reception, Intendant Dietmar Schwarz described Atkins’s text as ‘postdramatic’. I suppose so, if, as Hans-Thies Lehmann more or less intended the term, we look at what is held to fall under that umbrella rather than using it to define. Whether it works well, in this context or any other, is another matter. 



Ambiguity is often a good thing. That as to whose the ‘lash’ is – the woman’s, the creator’s (i.e. Atkins’s own private-public monologue), or anything else – has much to be said for it, though it does not really seem to lead anywhere, without that failure to lead anywhere making an evident point. Ultimately, the music and the performances seem to shoulder all the work, hamstrung by a stream of consciousness that is hardly Joyce or Beckett. Constant repetition of ‘fucking’ and so on may not be intended to shock, yet comes across as thinking itself edgier than it really is; hand on heart, I found it more than a little tedious, more akin to a little boy shouting ‘look at me’ than anything that might have been claimed for it (and doubtless will be). 

I felt ambivalent, then, and not a little saddened to do so. The Blue Woman, seen at London’s Linbury Theatre in 2022, struck me as an ultimately more successful example of what postdramatic, feminist opera (as opposed to postdramatic and/or feminist productions of operatic repertoire) might be—at least restricted to words, their dramaturgy, and to a certain extent their further implications, as opposed to musical quality (or performance). By the same token, I certainly felt a desire to revisit the work, to continue, like the woman at its centre, to piece together my experience, although perhaps not immediately. I shall only too happily find myself ashamed concerning initial lack of understanding. In the meantime, a handful of boos (grow up!) and a houseful of rapturous applause told a more straightforward story.


Thursday, 19 June 2025

Horton - Schumann, Stockhausen, and Chopin, 17 June 2025


Wigmore Hall

Schumann: Piano Sonata no.1 in F-sharp minor, op.11
Stockhausen: Klavierstück VII
Chopin: Nocturne in C-sharp minor, op.27 no.1; Nocturne in D-flat major, op.27 no.2; Mazurka in A minor, op.59 no.1; Mazurka in A-flat major, op.59 no.2; Mazurka in F-sharp minor, op.59 no.3; Piano Sonata no.3 in B minor, op.58

Tim Horton (piano) 

Dedicated to the memory of Alfred Brendel, whose death had been announced earlier that day, this latest instalment in Tim Horton’s Wigmore Hall Chopin series offered a programme which Brendel might not have given but of which he would surely have approved. It opened with Schumann’s early F-sharp minor sonata, described in Jim Samson’s excellent programme note as ‘immensely challenging’. Indeed, seems the appropriate response: certainly for the pianist but also, I think, for the listener—or at least this one. Know and love much of Schumann’s piano music as I do, this work I struggle with. Often one needs to wait for such music to knock on the door, which it has yet to do for me. Horton, though, gave a commanding account, properly ‘orchestral’, though unquestionably written for the instrument to hand. The strange ‘Introduzione’ to the first movement, turbulent yet controlled, was given with a sort of tragic dignity that already spoke of affinity with Chopin, as did more ruminative passages later on. Schumann’s unusual conception of sonata form here was given its due: communicated rather than ‘explained’. The ‘Aria’ came initially as Eusebian relief, soon complicated to an almost Brahmsian degree: all over far too quickly, leaving one longing for more. Infectious energy characterised the scherzo, duly balanced by its trio, prior to quasi-Beethovenian struggle in a finale whose range of colour could not help but impress. the ascent to final climax finely prepared and achieved. 

I suspect I may have been in a minority in the audience in finding Stockhausen’s Klavierstück VII less challenging; yet perhaps not, given Horton’s vividly communicative, comprehending performance. It captured both what (as with almost any piece) is ‘of its time’ and what has enabled it to endure as key work in the piano literature. Attack, duration, all parameters were inextricably connected in a ravishing poetic vision of piano resonance and overtones. One could not help but listen in a different, moment-oriented way; one likewise could not help but be rewarded for doing so. 

The second half was given over to Chopin. The pair of op.27 Nocturnes complemented each other beautifully, independence of hands explored in different ways in both. Both were finely shaped, evidently conceived in single, long, ever-varying breaths. Telling rubato made its point without distracting. Both sounded as miniature tone poems: surely what they are. The three op.59 Mazurkas worked equally well as a set and as individual pieces, a fine lilt to the first ushering them on their way. What rhythmic and harmonic subtleties there are here, and what subtle yet unmistakeable pride, which latter quality also helped usher in the Third Piano Sonata. The first movement’s originality may be less startling than that of its counterpart in the Second Sonata, but it was nonetheless palpable in a performance that unfolded with all the time in the world: certainly not slow, yet equally neither hurried nor harried. Will-o’-the-wisp fluttering of the scherzo, turned on its head in the trio, prepared us more in contrast than kinship for the darkness that born in harmony and harmonic rhythm for the slow movement. The fantasia-like quality Horton brought to the finale both surprised and crowned, in a sense presaging similar qualities in the encore, the F-sharp major Nocturne, op.15 no.2, whose tonality also connected us to the close of the Schumann sonata. I look forward to the continuation of this fascinating series.

 

Thursday, 12 June 2025

Belcea Quartet - Schoenberg and Beethoven, 11 June 2025


Wigmore Hall

Schoenberg: String Quartet no.1 in D minor, op.7
Beethoven: String Quartet no.14 in C-sharp minor, op.131

Corina Belcea, Suyeon Kang (violins)
Krysztof Chorzelski (viola)
Antoine Lederlin (cello)

Schoenberg must be one of the very few composers who, heard with late Beethoven, can emerge as the more difficult of the two. Whether intrinsically so is probably a silly and certainly a fruitless question; yet, in terms of overall programming, it made for an interesting and satisfying pairing from the Belcea Quartet, Schoenberg’s First (numbered) String Quartet followed by Beethoven’s C-sharp minor Quartet. 

Schoenberg’s work opened as if a sequel to Verklärte Nacht, not only in D minor tonality, but in motivic writing, melody, harmony, and much else. Quickly, its coil twisted in a supremely flexible performance which, as a whole, served more to question than comfortably conform ideas of its form ‘being’ the Lisztian four-movements-in-one. ‘Yes, but…’ was the fitting place to start—and continue. Schoenberg’s hyper-expressivity came to the fore not only in febrile instrumental lines but in their connection, division, and (re-)integration, the first Chamber Symphony rightly but a stone’s throw away, ripples soon reaching its world. Harmony and counterpoint created one another, putting me in mind of Schoenberg’s later recognition that Mozart had been his guiding star all along, long before he realised it (as in, say, the Fourth Quartet). Concerto-like violin solo, Brahms in ‘Hungarian’ mode taken surprisingly far east; post-Meistersinger fugato; Brucknerian unison; mysterious harmonics; themes poised between Brahms and Strauss, twisting as if the branches of a Jugendstil forest: these and more combined in a work of Beethovenian struggle poised between the composer’s own Pelleas und Melisande and Die Jakobsleiter. The Belcea’s – and Schoenberg’s – lingering goodbye, in essence an extended cadence, not only fulfilled and extended expectations; it also proved the ideal introduction to the concert’s second half. 

Beethoven’s Quartet emerged less as continuation than response, all the more touching – even Mozartian, albeit too ‘late’ in more than the chronological sense – for it. The fugue was shaped and built meaningfully without ever sounding moulded. The second movement in turn emerged tentatively from its shadows, soon establishing its own modus vivendi, fragility part yet only part of its character. Symmetries and onward development were the dialectic at play here, presaging those in fourth movement variations both rare and earthy. There was something exhilarating, arguably necessary, to the fresh air here: a woodland walk in the composer’s footsteps. The Belcea traced a path that took us somewhere stranger, disconcerting, even frightening, returning us safe and sound with a good dose of Beethovenian humanity. The scherzo’s relief had me smile and inwardly chuckle, its irrepressible qualities vividly told. A poignant, similarly noble sixth movement was disrupted by a seventh whose opening struck the fear of God into the hall, interiority of response no less disquieting. And so, that further dialectic was set up for the movement, without any sacrifice to the crucial element of surprise, to the eternal freshness of the work, and to the temporal freshness of this wonderful performance. It thrilled as it edified. 

As an unexpected bonus, we heard the slow movement from Beethoven’s final quartet, op.135. Its initial conception as an eighth movement, in D-flat major, to op.131 offered, if not an aural glimpse of what might have been, then a fitting choice of encore, tonally and otherwise. Its unfolding continued to surprise yet ultimately consoled.


Wednesday, 11 June 2025

Dido and Aeneas, Guildhall, 9 June 2025


Milton Court Theatre


Images: David Monteith Hodge
Dido (Karima El Demerdasch)


Dido – Karima El Demerdasch
Aeneas – Joshua Saunders
Belinda – Manon Ogwen Parry
Sorceress – Julia Merino
Attendant, Second Woman – Hannah McKay
Witches – Seohyun Go, Julia Solomon
Spirit – Gabriella Noble
Sailor – Tobias Campos Santiñaque

Director – Oliver Platt
Designs – Alisa Kalyanova
Movement – Caroline Lofthouse
Lighting – Eli Hunt
Video – Mabel Nash  

Chorus (chorus master: Henry Reavey) and Orchestra of the Guildhall School of Music and Drama James Henshaw (conductor)

This new Guildhall Dido and Aeneas, directed by Oliver Platt and designed by Alisa Kalyanova, was not the Dido of your expectations. I can be reasonably sure of that. Doors opened to reveal a club scene onstage, electronic music of a decidedly non-Stockhausen variety blasting through the small theatre. Dido eventually joined, dancing as if her life depended on it; perhaps, in retrospect, it did. Belinda too (if indeed these were there names). And then, suddenly everything changed. Purcell’s music was to be heard. In an unanticipated Dr Who-like shift – will the Queen of Carthage turn out to be the new Doctor heralded by Billie Piper? – we found ourselves in a very different world indeed. Its denizens took what they wanted from Dido’s handbag, re-clothed her, and left her generally shocked and bemused, apparently having no more idea what was going on than I did. 


Sailor (Tobias Campos Santiñaque) and Chorus

We now appeared to be in a rural English community, with straw figures, a maypole, and enforced country dancing, clothes suggestive more of the early twentieth century than Purcell’s time, let alone that of Dido and Aeneas. When Aeneas arrived, seemingly similarly abducted, he had no more idea what was going on. So far as I could discern, neither of them did throughout, brought together by the strange villagers, though again, neither did I. Punk-triffid witches did their thing. Aeneas eventually resolved to stay, Dido by then rejecting him, physically berating him, until he turned on her and seemed on the verge (at least) of sexual assault, until she stabbed him, after which she was led to the Maypole to be hanged. It was quite absorbing in its way and very well blocked and choreographed, but I really could not tell you what it was about or how it cohered. Was that the point? It may have been, given liberties taken – nothing wrong with that – for the missing music, but I suspect I was missing something. Was it perhaps all an unfortunate dream, arising from nightclub hallucination? I fear I shall simply have to admit defeat. 


Dido and Chorus

All in the cast, the excellent chorus included, threw themselves into this oddly compelling vision in wholehearted, committed fashion. Karima El Demerdasch’s Dido was first-rate, from wild abandon – difficult to imagine Janet Baker or Jessye Norman in this production – through fear and unease to final tragedy. Accomplished through the synthesis of words, music, and gesture that, put crudely, is operatic performance, this signalled not only great promise but great achievement. I am sure we shall see and hear more from her. Aeneas is, especially by comparison, a bit of a thankless role, but Joshua Saunders made a good deal of this bemused conception. Manon Ogwen Parry’s Belinda and Julia Merino’s Sorceress were both very well taken, as indeed were the other, smaller roles, Tobias Campos Santiñaque’s Sailor a winning ‘boozy’ moment in the spotlight. James Henshaw’s conducting complemented the punk-folk conception of the staging, more City Waites than Les Arts Florissants, let alone English Chamber Orchestra. It may not be how I hear it, but it is hardly how I see it either, and performance should always extend beyond ritual. There was, then, much to enjoy—and to puzzle over.


Tuesday, 10 June 2025

Saul, Glyndebourne Festival Opera, 8 June 2025

 

© Glyndebourne Productions Ltd. Photography by ASH


Saul – Christopher Purves
David – Iestyn Davies
Merab – Sarah Brady
Michal – Soraya Mafi
Jonathan – Linard Vrielink
Abner, High Priest, Doeg, Amalekite – Liam Bonthrone
Witch of Endor – Ru Charlesworth
Dancers – Lucy Alderman, Robin Gladwin, Lukas Hunt, Dominic Rocca, Nathan Ryles, Daisy West

Director – Barrie Kosky
Revival director – Donna Stirrup
Designs – Katrin Lea Tag
Choreography – Otto Pichler
Revival choreography – Merry Holden
Lighting – Joachim Klein

The Glyndebourne Chorus (chorus director: Aidan Oliver)
Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment
Jonathan Cohen (conductor)


Saul (Christopher Purves)

I found myself listening at home to Saul a few months ago (Charles Mackerras’s outstanding Leeds Festival recording with Donald McIntyre, James Bowman, Margaret Price, et al.). It made for often uncomfortable listening, the ever-problematical identification of Handel’s Protestant England with the ‘children of Israel’ all the more when daily we see the Philistines’ successors mercilessly slain in the name of a latter-day ‘Eretz Israel’, itself the product of the imperialism on which the new, fiscal-military state of Great Britain had been founded. Culminating in news from the Amalekite – David’s ‘Impious wretch, of race accursed!’ – that Saul has been slain and Israelite exortation to ‘Gird on thy sword, thou man of might’, it seemed both a work both for now and absolutely not. At least it was not Joshua or Judas Maccabeus, I thought; and indeed its central dramatic concerns are not necessarily those, however glaring they may stand out now. The work’s political dimension is important, but is one of several and arguably not the most important. In any case, it extends beyond war and empire to broader questions of kingship—not least given the precedent of the Whig establishment’s treasonous support for the Dutch invasion that had removed ‘the Lord’s anointed’ within living memory, and without which George II would stand nowhere near the throne. 



Barrie Kosky’s Glyndebourne production of Saul was first seen in 2015: what may now seem a very different world, prior to Britain’s fateful referendum, Trump’s election, Covid, the invasion of Ukraine, and of course genocide in Gaza. None of those things came out of nowhere, of course, but the world was different. He was – and is – perfectly entitled to explore other aspects of the drama, and it is neither his nor revival director Donna Stirrup’s fault that events have overtaken us. Kosky offers a typically pugnacious, persuasive defence of staging such works at all and of his particular aesthetic in the programme. ‘But when you put Handel’s oratorios on stage you know that there will be a flood of opera reviewers who’ll say these pieces were not written for the stage, so why are we staging them? Get real! Opera is not about rules and regulations. Handel’s oratorios are sometimes more dramatic than his operas. We know that because we can hear it. Their musical landscapes are often more radical than those of the operas.’ I agree with every word. Why, then, beyond the inevitable unease concerning aspects of the drama, did I have my doubts—as someone who has long thought it cried out for the stage? 

There are problems intrinsic to the work, of course, as there always have been, lying beyond the cul-de-sac of alleged intention. The chorus’s role is one: how to deal with it onstage? Kosky certainly makes the most (as, for instance, in his Komische Oper Hercules) of his opportunities in this respect. An opening festal tableau, gestures arrestingly frozen, draws one in, Kosky’s detailed direction of each member of a crowd that also combines with excellence en masse dovetailing with Katrin Lee Tag’s painterly vision.An eighteenth-century audience, so it seems, participates, mirroring the dual function of the chorus itself, roots in Greek tragedy apparent and brimming with dramatic potential. 


David (Iestyn Davies)

The problem for me comes with elements of the conception of the protagonists. Not all of it: much shows great insight. A brazenly opportunist David is the trump card: charisma born of body and battle, seemingly willing to do anything – or anyone – to further his clear yet unstated lust for power. Why bother to spell it out, when the crowd will for him? ‘Saul, who hast thy thousands slain, welcome to thy friends again! David his ten thousands slew, ten thousand praises are his due!’ There is, moreover, a creditable effort to make more of Saul’s daughters and their roles, though that also leads us to more difficult territory. In that programme interview, Kosky states his dislike of realism, but that seems to refer to aesthetics rather than to psychology. (I actually would not have minded more on the former side and less dance, however finely accomplished; but that is a matter of taste, no more.) It is a particular form of psychological realism that, though I can see the temptation, also leads the drama to become less interesting and arguably less coherent. If one portrays calculation in such realistic way, there is nothing ‘mad’ about Saul’s reaction. Michal and still more Jonathan must simply be in love with David, which is obviously part of what is going on but surely not the only or overriding dramaturgical concern. And the decision to present Saul for much of the time as if already in Bedlam – perhaps even as if a flashback – is ultimately reductive, again crowding out other concerns. 

Set against that, the darker turn following the interval makes an undeniably strong impression. There is a splendid star-turn (literally) from the revolving solo organist onstage. When Saul visits the Witch of Endor, Kosky offers a nice sense of Tiresias in Beckettland, to the weird, disconcerting extent that Saul feeds from one of the Witch’s breasts. The doomed monarch also voices Samuel’s words himself: possessed or merely delusional? If Kosky and Tag’s Beckettland looks surprisingly (or unsurprisingly) close to that seen for their Castor et Pollux (ENO and elsewhere) and Don Giovanni (Vienna), most production teams have recognisable correspondences over time. Richard Jones & Co. anyone? The important question is what one does with them. 




Jonathan Cohen’s conducting I found more difficult to get on with: not only aggressively ‘period’, but of a variety that too often skated over Handel’s strengths as a musical dramatist. There was little grandeur, if often much rasping noise. The Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment strings might surely have been permitted fuller tone at times. Excellent woodwind fared better: characterful and dramatically telling. Handel’s writing for bassoon – not only in the Witch of Endor scene – is worth an essay alone from someone. It certainly sounded so here. Greater variety of tempo was achieved as time went on, if there were still cases, especially in choral numbers, when breakneck speed disrupted ensemble. 


Merab (Sarah Brady), Michal (Soraya Malfi), and Jonathan (Linard Vrielink)

Christopher Purves’s Saul was superbly acted, if sometimes a little close to Sprechgesang (leaving aside purely spoken interjections further to enhance the impression of insanity). There was often, though, a thinness of tone to his delivery that complemented Cohen’s way with the orchestra, but which on ‘purely’ musical terms left me at least missing something more bass-like. Iestyn Davies’s David was outstanding in every respect: word, tone, and gesture a model of characterisation.  Sarah Brady and Soraya Mafi offered a haughty Merab and an attractive, calculating Michal, in fine dramatic contrast both with one another and with the honeyed, imploring sincerity of Linard Vrielink’s Jonathan. Kosky’s amalgamation of Abner, High Priest, and Doeg, into a single Fool-like character elicited sinister ambiguity from Liam Bonthrone, who also took on the ‘cursed’ role of the Amalekite, mysteriously hooded in the auditorium. Ru Charlesworth offered a darkly vivid portrayal for Kosky and Handel’s strange conception of the Witch of Endor. The Glyndebourne Chorus likewise responded to a varied set of challenges – Handel’s, Kosky’s, and Cohen’s – with fine musical and dramatic dedication. 

My reservations, then, were relatively minor. Audience enthusiasm suggested they were little shared. This was a highly enjoyable occasion, though might it have offered more dramatically? To my dismay, I could not help but wonder whether a concert performance, albeit differently conducted, might have come closer in that respect.


Friday, 30 May 2025

Shibe and friends - Dillon, Miller, and Boulez, 29 May 2025


Wigmore Hall

James Dillon: 12 Caprices (world premiere)
Cassandra Miller: Bel Canto
Boulez: Le Marteau sans maître

Sean Shibe (guitar)
Ema Nikolovska (mezzo-soprano)
Adam Walker (flute)
George Barton, Iris van den Bos, Sam Wilson (percussion)
Emma Wernig (viola)
Matthew Hunt (clarinet)
Mira Benjamin (violin)
Colin Alexander (cello)
Alphonse Cemin (conductor)




In this excellent Wigmore Hall concert for Boulez’s centenary year, Sean Shibe and friends, mezzo Ema Nikolovska first among equals, demonstrated once again the stature, challenge, and thrills of what arguably remains the composer’s signature work, Le Marteau sans maître. ‘Without feeling close to Boulez’s music,’ Stravinsky wrote to Nadia Boulanger in 1957, ‘I frankly find it preferable to many things of his generation.’ And we can certainly tend to think of it – almost unavoidably – in terms of music and musicians that had led up to it. Take its Asia-tilted percussion, strongly recalling Messiaen’s Trois petites liturgies (for which Boulez turned vibraphone pages at the 1945 premiere), here magically brought to life by George Barton, Iris van den Bos, and Sam Wilson; the crossing and continuation of lines between instruments, immediately apparent here in the first of the work’s nine movements, inevitably reminiscent of Webern, the serialist ‘threshold’; or the mesmerising, even Mozartian ravishment of the third ‘Commentaire’ on ‘Bourreaux de solitude’. (In the latter case, I am sure Così fan tutte did not actually play a role here, but I like to fancy that the older Boulez, recording that extraordinary, unexpected Ensemble Intercontemporain performance of the Serenade, KV 361/370a, alongside Berg’s Chamber Concerto, might nonetheless have subsumed it into his aesthetic realm.) Here, though, we looked, or rather listened, forward, if retrospectively, the first half presenting the world premiere of James Dillon’s 12 Caprices for solo guitar and Cassandra Miller’s 2010 Maria Callas homage, Bel Canto. 

Not having heard Le Marteau for a while – my most recent live encounter might actually have been eight years ago in Vienna – I experienced the joy of rediscovery, but also of that increasing sense in Boulez’s œuvre more widely of taking a place in the great modernist ‘museum’ to which he felt such ambivalent attraction. This is not ‘pointillist’ music, far from it, but using that as a starting-point for exploration, not least that connection of instrumental and vocal lines mentioned above, seemed fitting or at least not entirely absurd in the progress of this performance and the material on which it is founded. ‘Avant “L’Artisanat furieux”’ felt that way, anyway, its archetypal ‘exquisite labyrinth’ becoming ever more involved, conductor Alphonse Cemin and the ensemble equally ensuring there was no loss to visceral experience, no smoothing of the edges. Rhythm, as in Stravinsky, continued to drive. In similar spirit, flute and voice melismata (Adam Walker and Nikolovska) almost yet not quite combined in ‘L’Artisanat furieux’. As Boulez’s serial universe thereafter unfolded, an angrier presentiment perhaps of Pli selon pli, development seemed to occur as much retrospectively as in ‘order’. Relaxation had something splendidly disorienting to it, as if swimming uphill in waters unknown. Process in all its volatility could be felt, even if one could not – should not – put it into words. Throughout, one felt wholehearted commitment from the musicians: not only sure and knowing, but vividly exploratory guides to our ears. An invisible theatre, especially apparent in the two closing movements, welcomed to its stage ghosts from the past: a Pierrot-like line on Emma Wernig’s viola, or Debussyan arabesque upon arabesque incited and invited by Walker’s flute. This was above all music for now, resisting the museum even as it entered in. 

Dillon’s Caprices put me in mind, perhaps coincidentally, but the coincidence was strong, of Boulez’s own piano Notations, similarly aphoristic and twelve in number. Perhaps it was only this context that led me to think that way, but gesture and substance in the very first seemed to come from a related sound-world and mind. They then pursued their own path, of course, offering plentiful space for finely wrought, idiomatic guitar-writing and committed performance. Each caprice laid claim both to individual character in kaleidoscopic variety, and also to a strong sense of progression within the whole. Work and performance alike drew one in, in spellbinding fashion. Quoted in the programme as speaking of ‘a framing of the fugitive’, Dillon brought that Lorca-founded image to spellbinding if swiftly vanishing life, with outstanding advocacy from Shibe. 

In Bel Canto, Nikolovska and two mini-ensembles, one with her onstage, the other behind and above in the balcony, brought to life not only Callas’s ‘Vissi d’arte’, but the passage of time in her career: ‘not only’, in Miller’s words, ‘about the ageing of an extraordinary woman, but also about the listener. Time slows down to allow for an engagement with detail, for a submersion in the sound, and for meditative stillness.’ That is very much what we experienced, time slowing, even near-repeating, as if a record were stuck; and yet, it moved. There was something dream-like, even epiphanic to Nikolvska and the instrumentalists’ revelation, yet whatever one might have felt, there was nothing vague to it, their means as precise as, say, Berio’s layering in his Folk Songs or, indeed, Sinfonia, be they written or left to the performers’ judgement. The midway surprise of an unseen Romantic violin solo from behind (Mira Benjamin), vying in richness with Nikolovska’s voice, ever changing yet ever the same, registered as an invisible coup de théâtre, a prelude to sounds hitherto unimagined yet making perfect sense when they came. Not entirely unlike Le Marteau, one might say, although unmistakeably of the Mediterranean.