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

Wigmore Hall

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

Lucy Crowe (soprano)

Karim Sulayman (tenor)

Julius Drake (piano)

 

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

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

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

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

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

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

Wigmore Hall

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

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

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

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

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

Overall concert and opera tally for 2024

... and the overall tally is as follows. A very Munich top trio:

14 Wagner

12 Mozart

8 Strauss

7 Schoenberg

6 Beethoven

5 Bach, Brahms, Mendelssohn, Schubert

4 Debussy, Ives

3 Handel, Haydn, Mahler, Rimsky-Korsakov, Salieri, Stravinsky

2 Birtwistle, Britten, Bruckner, Dvořák, Fauré, Peter Eötvos, Gluck, Lisa Illean, Ligeti, Liszt, Prokofiev, Puccini, Tchaikovsky, Jörg Widmann, Zemlinsky

1 Julian Anderson, Anon., Grażyna Bacewicz, Sally Beamish, Benjamin, Nicolas Bernier, Judith Bingham, Boismortier, Busoni, Byrd, Bob Chilcott, Clemens non Papa, Chopin, Peter Cornelius, Louis Couperin, François Couperin, Dallapiccola, Peter Maxwell Davies, Théodore Dubois, Dvořák, Johannes Eccard, Elgar, Cheryl Frances-Hoad, Beat Furrer, Benjamin Godard, Grisey, GF Haas, Jacobus Händl, Jonathan Harvey, Michael Haydn, Fanny Hensel, Hindemith, Honegger, Toshio Hosokawa, Humperdinck, Janáček, Eberhard Kloke, Lachenmann, Rued Langaard, Lassus, Ligeti, Elisabeth Lutyens, Kurtág, Missy Mazzoli, Cathy Milliken, Mussorgsky, Jacques-Christophe Naudot, Nono, Offenbach, Palestrina, Owain Park, Pärt, Plainchant, Poulenc, Praetorius, Prokofiev, Rachmaninov, Rameau, Anton Reicha, RaveI, Rossini, Saint-Saens, Smetana. Szymanowski, Vivaldi, Webern, Vito Žuraj

Concert tally for 2024

Very mixed, with no one composer featuring very highly. Had I not gone to the Salzburg Mozartwoche in January, Mozart would, to my surprise, have been almost nowhere at all. Schoenberg's ranking is pleasing in one sense, but given I went to everything I could and it was his 150th anniversary year, it is slightly depressing in another. As with the operas, though, it has been good to hear such a variety of music, from Anderson to Žuraj. Rules for counting here.

6 Beethoven, Schoenberg

5 Brahms, Mendelssohn, Mozart, Schubert

4 Bach, Ives

3 Haydn, Mahler, Salieri, Strauss

2 Birtwistle, Bruckner, Fauré, Debussy, Peter Eötvös, Lisa Illean, Liszt, Stravinsky, Wagner, Jörg Widmann, Zemlinsky

1 Julian Anderson, Anon., Grażyna Bacewicz, Sally Beamish, Nicolas Bernier, Judith Bingham, Boismortier, Britten, Busoni, Byrd, Bob Chilcott, Clemens non Papa, Chopin, Peter Cornelius, Louis Couperin, François Couperin, Théodore Dubois, Dvořák, Johannes Eccard, Elgar, Cheryl Frances-Hoad, Benjamin Godard, Grisey, Jacobus Händl, Handel, Jonathan Harvey, Michael Haydn, Fanny Hensel, Hindemith, Honegger, Toshio Hosokawa, Eberhard Kloke, Lachenmann, Lassus, Ligeti, Elisabeth Lutyens, Missy Mazzoli, Cathy Milliken, Jacques-Christophe Naudot, Nono, Palestrina, Owain Park, Pärt, Plainchant, Poulenc, Praetorius, Prokofiev, Rachmaninov, Anton Reicha, RaveI, Saint-Saens, Smetana. Szymanowski, Vivaldi, Webern, Vito Žuraj

Opera tally for 2024

As for several previous years, I have tallied my opera and concert performances by composer. There are always slightly difficult cases, but in general, I have included as opera something performed as such, i.e. staged, even when the work is not. Hence the Deutsche Oper's St Matthew Passion on Good Friday counts, but the St John Passion the day before in the Thomaskirche does not. One point per composer per  performance; so Il trittico would count as one, as would a lone performance of Gianni Schicchi, though Puccini and Ravel would both receive a point if there were a double-bill of Schicchi with L'Heure espagnole (which there wasn't). The Ring, however, counts as four, as did performances of two Gluck operas in the same evening. Concert performances of opera I have counted as opera, but obviously not as both. When a few opera excerpts by Salieri were used in a prologue to a performance of Rimsky-Korsakov's Mozart and Salieri, I counted them under 'concert', since it seemed too much of a stretch to describe them as an opera and they had to go somewhere; they arguably might have gone here, though.

No huge surprises for opera in the higher ranks. Two Rings, one at Berlin's Deutsche Oper, one at its Staatsoper, plus a visit to Bayreuth, ensured the winner. It was a pleasant surprise, though, to see Rimsky come so high with three different works, which must be the most I have ever seen in a single year. And there is a good array of single-performance composers.

12 Wagner

7 Mozart

5 Strauss

3 Rimsky-Korsakov

2 Debussy, Gluck, Handel, Puccini, Tchaikovsky

1 Bach, Benjamin, Britten, Dallapiccola, Peter Maxwell Davies, Dvořák, Beat Furrer, GF Haas, Humperdinck, Janáček, Kurtág, Ligeti, Rued Langgaard, Mussorgsky, Offenbach, Prokofiev, Rameau, Rossini, Schoenberg, Stravinsky

Concerts and overall to follow.

'Morning Star' - The Gesualdo Six, 20 December 2024

Wigmore Hall

Palestrina (arr. Willcocks): Matin Responsory
Lassus: Conditor alme siderum
Praetorius: Nun, komm der Heiden Heiland a 6
Sally Beamish: In the stillness
Jacobus Händl: Mirabile mysterium
Cheryl Frances-Hoad: The Promised Light of Life
Plainchant: Rorate coeli
Byrd: Rorate coeli
Poulenc: O magnum mysterium
Anon (arr. Praetorius): Es ist ein Ros entsprungen
Anon: Angelus ed virginem
Plainchant: Ecce advenit
Cornelius: Weihnachtslieder, op.8: no.3, ‘Die Könige’
Eccard: Maria wallt zum Heiligtum
Clemens non Papa: Magi veniunt
Arvo Pärt: Morning Star
Judith Bingham: In Mary’s love
Plainchant: Vidimus stellam
Lassus: Tribus miraculis
Owain Park: O send out thy light
Bob Chilcott: The Shepherd’s Carol


Alasdair Austin, Guy James (countertenors)
Josh Cooter (tenor)
Joseph Wicks (tenor)
Michael Craddock (baritone)
Owain Park (artistic director, bass)

The eve of the shortest day of 2024 was especially miserable in London: cold, wet, and dark. All the more need, then, for an aural glimpse of the ‘Morning Star’ that gave its name to this Wigmore Hall concert from The Gesualdo Six. Rather than concentrate on Advent, Christmas, or Epiphany, the programme took us from one through another to the third. Indeed, it perhaps tried to do too much in too many pieces, a succession of very different, generally short music in some cases more merging into one than showing affinity and connection, though there were certainly exceptions to that. A packed audience, though, clearly enjoyed its evening, nowhere more so than in an encore performance of Jingle Bells, arranged by Gordon Langford. ‘Style’ might seem an unduly pretentious attribute, but for me it pointed out what had sometimes been missing elsewhere, certain standout pieces offering welcome relief. Perhaps a church acoustic would have imparted a warmer blend, or perhaps I was simply not in the right mood, but there were times – and I realise this is a matter of taste more than anything else – when relief in the guise of female voices might have helped. 

I had reservations, then, but this was also an opportunity to hear a good range of repertoire from chant to Palestrina to the present day, in the guise of artistic director Owain Park’s own O send out thy light, gratefully written for the group, in which instance they were clearly very much at home. Palestrina had appeared at the opening, in the guise of David Willcocks’s well-known arrangement of a Nunc dimittis as a Mattins responsory. Many will surely have recognised it in one guise or another, and it made for a fitting opening, followed by well if slightly anonymously sung Lassus (how I felt about a later example too) and more florid Praetorius, Nun komm der Heiland, which to my ears gave a more arresting impression. Plainchant and ‘Anon.’ often fared best, I think, deceptive simplicity permitting performances and their reception to hone in on melody and words, the mediaeval carol Angelus ad virginem gathering voices in a warm conclusion to the first half. 

Other highlights for me included the extraordinary wandering chromatic lines of Jacobus Händl’s Mirabile mysterium. They are anything but easy to sing, yet intonation never proved a problem. Nor did it in Poulenc’s O magnum mysterium, which emerged a little later as fitting complement in stillness and movement, although this was one of those cases when I felt the loss of women’s (or even children’s) voices. The expressive accomplishment of Byrd’s Rorate coeli was highly welcome, perhaps a first-half counterpart to the second-half highpoint of Clemens non Papa’s euphonious and, no coincidence, more extended Ephipany Magi veniunt. It was preceded by Joannes Eccard’s Maria wallt zum Heiligtum which likewise benefited from a degree more warmth. 

None of the twenty-first-century pieces seemed concerned with straining at the edges of modernity, Sally Beamish’s In the stillness purposefully reticent, almost belying the skill with which verbal and musical cadences coincided. Cheryl Frances-Hoad and Judith Bingham ventured further harmonically, the former a rare if doubtless coincidental instance of seeming to take its leave from its predecessor (Händl), the latter another welcome case of painting on a slightly larger canvas, which if not exactly ‘Romantic’ was not exactly un-Romantic either. Arvo Pärt’s Morning Star, well crafted and performed with sympathy, readily laid bare idea and processes. A somewhat dour Cornelius ‘Three Kings’, sung in English, suggested that the nineteenth century was in generally better avoided; unless, that is, we count Jingle Bells.

 

BBC SO/Oramo - Elgar, 13 December 2024

Barbican Hall

Elgar: The Dream of Gerontius, op.38

Sarah Connolly (mezzo-soprano)
David Butt Philip (tenor)
Roderick Williams (baritone)

BBC Symphony Chorus (chorus master: Neil Ferris)
BBC Symphony Orchestra
Sakari Oramo (conductor)

Images: Mark Allan

This was to have been something entirely different: Berlioz’s L’Enfance du Christ, conducted by Andrew Davis. The death of the BBC Symphony Orchestra’s former chief conductor led not only to a necessary change of conductor, in the guise of the orchestra’s current chief conductor, Sakari Oramo, but to a change of programme, Elgar’s Dream of Gerontius, a work with which Davis was more strongly associated, taking the place of Berlioz’s oratorio, as a memorial. Having been a little nonplussed by the change, I soon realised that it made greater sense as a memorial, not least on account of the tangible commitment from a chorus and orchestra – a considerable Barbican audience too – to remembering their erstwhile colleague. I had a few reservations concerning the performance itself, none especially grievous; I hope it will not seem unduly curmudgeonly to share them, alongside the many estimable qualities to what I heard. For whatever reason, they did not seem to be shared by most members of a highly enthusiastic audience. 

The principal problem was arguably the hall itself and its constricted acoustic. For once, the Royal Albert Hall might not have been too poor a venue; large-scale choral works, many of which Davis conducted there at the Proms, tend to fare better than most. Brass in particular tended to blare, something it was difficult to ignore in the Prelude. I was a little surprised that Oramo, who must by now be used to the difficulties, did not do much about them: a pity, given the fine Elgar sound from the rest of the orchestra, strings in particular. Oramo certainly showed flexibility in his reading here, though some tempo choices and changes I found  puzzling. 

David Butt Philip’s entry, ably supported by Oramo and the orchestra, announced a surprisingly Italianate way with the music: more Puccini than Wagner or Strauss, let alone Brahms. Indeed, Oramo increasingly brought things I had either not heard or had forgotten, but which seemed very much to grow out of the score, a nice line in dance rhythms included. This was certainly, at least in the first part, an operatic reading: not necessarily how Davis would have done it, but then a tribute should not be an imitation. The struggle was dramatic, it seemed, rather than overtly theological, Oramo skilled at guiding crucial transitions. Many, I know, have problems with the work on the latter ground; it even had to be given with a revised text for early performances at the Three Choirs Festival. One could surely say the same, though, of its avowed model: Parsifal. Perhaps this was a way, conscious or otherwise, ecumenically to broaden its appeal. At any rate, if I sometimes felt a little loss on Newman’s side, there was an undeniable keen sense of joint endeavour, audience included, that appeared to offer ample, even quasi-religious compensation to many. Never showing the slightest sense of strain that occasionally accompanied Butt Philip’s often thrilling and full-throated approach, Roderick Williams proved a wise and faithful guide for the journey both underway and to come. The BBC Symphony Chorus, of which Davis remained President until his death, offered performances throughout of warmth, heft, and blend that worked with, rather than against, the difficult acoustic. 

The second part, quite rightly, took us to a very different place, ushered in by string playing of which any orchestra or conductor would be proud. Sarah Connolly’s Angel’s finely spun, infinitely compassionate performance was a jewel: rooted in Newman’s words, yet equally communicating beyond them through Elgar’s music. Choral and orchestral demons were a colourful, malevolent band, ‘angelicals’ in turn beautifully contrasted. Where sometimes – only sometimes – I had found the first part meandering, Oramo here seemed ever clearer in his mission to bind the work together, motivically, harmonically, and yes, theologically. In that, Wagner returned, as did Parsifal more specifically in the passage of approach to God. Brahms did too, above all the German Requiem, most keenly in the choruses. Moreover, I could not help but find something a little Liszt in an endeavour that, perhaps despite Newman, retained a little of the Faustian. Music once again proved a superior, or at least different, agent of synthesis to words.

And yet, it is not really a matter of either/or, but rather of combination, of that shared endeavour to which I referred above. ‘Farewell, but not for ever brother dear, Be brave and patient on thy bed of sorrow’: for some a necessity, for some doubtless an obscenity. Heard here from Connolly, at a darker time than many of us have known, it offered, however briefly, a semblance of consolation.

Horton - Debussy and Chopin, 11 December 2024

Wigmore Hall

Debussy: Préludes, Book II
Chopin: 24 Preludes, op.28

Tim Horton (piano)

With this recital of Debussy and Chopin, Tim Horton opened a Wigmore Hall series in which he will present various works by Chopin with music that influenced him and on which he in turn came to influence. It would always be a fitting thing to do, so long as well done, yet somehow it seems all the more so as the musical world continues to mourn the loss of Maurizio Pollini. ‘At seven,’ Horton writes in an intelligent, engaging introduction to the series, ‘my parents bought me Maurizio Pollini’s astonishing account of the Études. I could not believe that the piano could be played, or written for, like this. My obsession with music, the piano, and Chopin has lasted to this day.’ Indeed, with a series encompassing Bach, Mozart, Schumann, Debussy, Ravel, Szymanowski and Stockhausen, Pollini’s ghost might seem more than usually apparent. Once, he spoke of recording Gaspard de la nuit – imagine! – and Szymanowski was said to be a composer he played in private, though never, I think, in public. The others, Chopin too, featured alongside other composers in the five-concert Royal Festival Hall Pollini Project of 2011. Yet this recital in no sense imitated, nor even evidently paid homage: it announced a major voice in its own right, one with interesting and instructive things to say about and with this music, which I hope to follow in subsequent instalments.

Debussy came first, in the guise of the second book of Préludes, whose sense of a whole, tonal centres notwithstanding, was uncommonly apparent, as if the heir to an early keyboard suite. ‘Brouillards’ announced a number of oppositions and relationships that would persist and transform throughout the set and arguably the recital as a whole. Melting and muscular, the performance showed that atmosphere and precision were far from opposed, but rather mutually dependent. Clarity of thought was paramount and rightly so. Harmonic rhythm and rhythm more generally, sprung yet with telling rubato, played a guiding role in ‘Feuilles mortes’. ‘La puerta del Vino’ intrigued: darker and more dangerous than I recalled, at times verging on the brutal, yet certainly not without charm. Escamillo turned ‘impressionist’, one might say, not unlike the later ‘Général Lavine – eccentric’. There was likewise nothing fey to the fairies in ‘Les fées sont d'exquises danseuses’. Their light shone brought and colourful rather than flickering. I liked the way Horton’s performance of ‘Bruyères’ drew us in to greater intimacy at its heart, again without sacrifice to colour. 

Moonlight pervaded, as surely it must, ‘La terrasse des audiences du clair de lune’, yet there was great musical clarity in and beneath its rays. The same might be said for the waves of ‘Ondine’ and the being they enveloped. Grandiloquent yet affectionate, Debussy’s homage to Mr Pickwick, was admirable here in its clarity, harmonic progressions clearly generative. In some ways, it seemed to prefigure greater abstraction not only to the opening of ‘Les tierces alternées’, but also ‘Canope’ in between. Any false opposition between ‘poetry’ and ‘construction’ was rendered redundant; indeed, the former might well have had a more ‘poetic’ title of its own. The closing ‘Feux d’artifice’, music lying between as in the notes, painted a resplendent picture and climax. 

Hearing Chopin’s twenty-four Preludes after the interval retrospectively brought influence and affinity to bear on our experience. Again, there was great clarity throughout, not only in presentation of the notes but in demonstrating why they were where they were and how. In general, they were possessed with singularity of idea, not so very different from some of the Etudes, whether in the lightly worn yet expressive virtuosity of one sequence of minor-key pieces, or the sadness of some of its predecessors (E minor and B minor, for instance, the latter sharing elements of character with some of the sadder Mazurkas). Expressive qualities arose from the material rather than being imposed on it, the tumult of the E-flat minor Prelude seeming to be summoned by the piano keys themselves. The serene charm of the ‘Raindrop’, in D-flat, and its A-flat companion had them emerge as miniature tone poems, as with all the pieces heard and expressed as if in a single, variegated breath. The simple nobility of the C minor Prelude, movingly shaded, contrasted with an almost Brahmsian, dark-hued passion to the next-but-one in G minor, which in turn immediately contrasted with a leggiero F major, and finally Romantic turbulence and aristocratic pride in D minor. As in all the finest accounts of this book, Pollini’s included, tonal and expressive journeys were as one.

The Rake's Progress, Opéra national de Paris, 30 November 2024

Palais Garnier

Tom Rakewell – Ben Bliss
Nick Shadow – Iain Paterson
Trulove – Clive Bayley
Anne Trulove – Golda Schultz
Mother Goose – Justina Gringytė
Baba the Turk – Jamie Barton
Sellem – Rupert Charlesworth
Keeper of the Madhouse – Vartan Gabrielian
Voices from the Crowd – Ayumi Ikehata, Frédéric Guieu
Solo Voice – Laurent Laberdesque

Director, lighting – Olivier Py
Revival director – Joséphine Kirch
Designs – Pierre-André Weitz
Lighting collaboration – Bertrand Killy

Chorus of the Opéra national de Paris (chorus director: Ching-Lien Wu) 

Orchestra of the Opéra national de Paris

Susanna Mälkki (conductor)

Images: Guergana Damaniova / OnP

The Rake’s Progress seems, as Stravinsky admitted, almost ‘to have been to have been created for journalistic debates concerning: a) the historical validity of the approach; and, b) the question whether I am guilty of imitation and pastiche.’ Or so, once, it did—to me, at least, and I think to many others too. I no longer bother about such questions; I am not sure anyone else does either. That does not mean it has ceased to pose us questions. Far from it. Their nature, though, has changed and they tend to focus, quite rightly, on the musical drama rather than ‘legitimacy’ or even timeliness. If in some yet far from all ways, it marked the end of a line, or at least a high watermark, for the neoclassical Stravinsky, with distance, it seems far from the end of a musical line. More to the point, in its very artificiality and neither entirely like nor unlike Così fan tutte – their orchestras, as Stravinsky noted, similar in size – it seems increasingly to move audiences and indeed performers in ways all too readily missed by earlier generations. 

Entirely by coincidence, I had spoken a little about The Rake’s Progress in a session of my undergraduate class on Mozart’s operas earlier in the week, taking it and Der Rosenkavalier as two highly contrasted twentieth-century operas consciously written in Mozart’s wake. It was probably that that had lodged a further Stravinskian utterance in my mind: ‘If the Rake contains imitations, however – of Mozart, as has been said,’ Stravinsky owned, ‘I will gladly allow the charge (given the breadth of the Aristotelian word), if I may thereby release people from the argument and bring them to the music.’ That ‘if’, however is the point; it is actually rarely Mozart who comes to my mind, the coincidences being too obvious, whether in Stravinsky or in Auden (Da Ponte too, of course). If anything, that was even less so here, in a performance led by Susanna Mälkki which felt more remote both from such ‘debates’ and indeed from any performing tradition than another I can recall. There were things I missed:, the polemical Stravinsky, the ultra-referential Stravinsky, much of the archness and the bite, to which somewhat soft-centred playing from the Paris Opéra orchestra contributed (presumably at the conductor’s request). 

Other correspondences nonetheless arose: that of the balletic Stravinsky, not so much the ‘great’ scores of the early century as some closer in time to the Rake: the Scènes de ballet in particular, but also, at a somewhat greater distance, Jeu de cartes and even the Tchaikovskian Fairy’s Kiss. Such neoclassicism makes sense, of course, though it also draws into question the usefulness of the term, since it refers to and indeed means such very different things in different contexts and at different times, all the more so when unmistakeable ostinato kinship with Oedipus Rex (beyond that, also to Poulenc) reared its head. These may well have been as much my thoughts as anything intended; it is difficult to say. But what I did sense, quite strongly, was a more overt sense of sadness – partly tempi, which often felt slow – and even tragedy. It was as if the work, consciously or otherwise, were being assimilated into a more ‘operatic’, even Italianate, tradition such as Stravinsky himself spoke of, that of Verdi, but also at times that of Berg, the latter perhaps ironically, given the contrast Stravinsky himself drew with that tradition, eschewing ‘forms symbolically expressive of the dramatic content (as in the Daedalian examples of Alban Berg)’ in favour of number opera. But then should we ever take Stravinsky at his word, or at least at face value? 

That musical trajectory seemed to proceed broadly in tandem with Olivier Py’s production, here on the first night of its revival. Haunted by death, in the ‘person’ of Tom’s uncle’s skeleton, and also, at the front of the stage, by the memento mori of a skull and hourglass, it too seemed to say or accept that this was less an opera about opera than it was simply an opera. Anne bore Tom’s child, who had advanced a few years by the final scene. Again, there was loss, at least for me, not least in any sense of London, a major character not only in Hogarth but surely at least in Auden too. Perhaps, though, I feel that more keenly as a Londoner, and one should not be restrictive about such things. There was not so much either, though, of city life, even more generically. The production felt not so much abstracted as moving psychology to the foreground, almost to the exclusion of anything else. On its own terms, all was stylishly presented, Pierre-André Weitz’s designs showing a keen eye for colour schemes and correspondences. Dance, both in character and more abstract-interpretative, played a role, heightening that sense of kinship with the composer’s ballets. 

The cast was strong throughout, with a lovely central pair in Ben Bliss’s Tom and Golda Schultz’s Anne. Bliss’s performance engaged one’s sympathies through honeyed tone and acting alike. Schultz presented a stronger, more ‘present’ character than is often the case, and was all the better for it. Iain Paterson’s Nick Shadow was quite without caricature, a more rounded character in the conventional sense, in keeping with broader parameters of performance and production. Love her or hate her, you cannot ignore Baba the Turk, and that was very much the knowing showbiz strategy of Jamie Barton’s assumption of the role. I especially enjoyed Rupert Charlesworth’s auctioneer Sellem, perhaps the most vocally acted of all performances, manner and mannerism conveying so much with relatively little: highly Stravinskian, one might say. Other roles were all well taken, with a keen sense of theatre, chorus members and dancers included. If there were times when I felt the chorus, like the orchestra, lacked Stravinskian bite, that was doubtless in part a consequence of Mälkki’s interpretative stance than performance as such.   

Where, then, does that leave us? Going round in further circles? To an extent, yes; does it not always with this work? Yet the repertoire assimilationism did bring something new, surely to be welcomed, whatever my personal likes or dislikes. Once again, I was led to reflect on how much we, or at least I, might be steered by Stravinsky’s CBS recording, technically flawed yet in possession of qualities it is difficult not to think near-definitive. It is surely a sign of maturity that, however much that may be imprinted on some of our memories, the work and our reactions to it have multiple lives beyond any of its creators. I never sympathised with, say, Boulez’s condemnation to Cage: ‘Have you heard Rake’s Progress? What ugliness!’ though I understood why he might have thought so and perhaps in part wanted to agree. Right now, though, I am grateful to have gone beyond that, as surely we all should have, seventy years on. Debates change yet persist.

LSO/Volkov - Lachenmann and Beethoven, 28 November 2024

Barbican Hall

Lachenmann: My Melodies (Music for Eight Horns and Orchestra)
Beethoven: Symphony no.7 in A major, op.92

LSO Horns
London Symphony Orchestra
Ilan Volkov (conductor)

Images: Mark Allan

This concert was the latest casualty of François-Xavier Roth’s absence from the concert platform. Whilst Ilan Volkov, another conductor with considerable experience in both new and older music, made good sense as replacement, it was difficult not to feel losses of connection in programming concept and, to a lesser extent, between conductor and orchestra (if only through Roth’s long association with the LSO). 

First up was My Melodies by Helmut Lachenmann, who had celebrated his eighty-ninth birthday the day before. Eight horn players (Diego Incertis Sanchez, Timothy Jones, Angela Barnes, Jonathan Moloney, Katu Woolley, Annemarie Federle, Richard Watkins, and Ben Goldscheider) were seated at the front, encircling the conductor, in front of the strings. Volkov offered a brief introduction, with musical examples: welcome as far as it went, though it did not go beyond identification of a few musical figures. What we used to call extended techniques, which have long since passed into common instrumental practice, elicited baffling, uproarious laughter from sections of the audience, some of whom proceeded to leave, both then and throughout the actual performance. It is certainly not the case that Lachenmann and his music lack humour, but it is not really to be found there, at least not intrinsically. Perhaps that was why Volkov forewent further analysis, understandably if so. 

The LSO sounded in its element for the opening éclat, razor sharp, full of colourful, and ably guided by Volkov, if perhaps without quite the sense of what was going on beneath the surface Roth might have conveyed. (I wonder whether it may in part also have been the difficult Barbican acoustic, to which Roth would have been more accustomed.) Even when the horns played together, as often they did, forming a single ‘macro horn’, parts as well as sum were apparent through the necessary workings of sound. Passages of stillness in motion were equally given their due. I loved the interplay with the orchestra, seemingly incited and infected, and vice versa, ‘conventional’ sounds coming across all the more freshly: dialectically rendered anew, even in a single piano note or chord, or harp arpeggios. The impression of wandering in pitch, even when objectively it was not, fascinated and further incited. Sometimes, a horn echo sounded, miraculously, as if it from the distance, though again clearly it did not. This was a performance that could be heard and felt viscerally and spatially, lines darting across the orchestra, not unlike, say, Webern or Boulez, albeit less geometrically. It was exhilarating, confounding, and yes, inspiring; but equally, there was an unmistakeable quality of Romantic solitude, even loneliness. Through the horns in particular, Lachenmann showed himself once again an heir to Schumann and Caspar David Friedrich, as well as to Nono and the postwar avant garde.

To follow My Melodies with Beethoven’s Seventh Symphony made excellent sense then. Volkov’s reading had its moments, yet, save for an excellent Allegretto, did not quite seem to have settled. The first movement was a case in point, as indeed was its introduction: expectant, yet lacking a sense really of heading anywhere. Some of the LSO’s playing was strangely abrasive: by ‘period’ design, I imagine, far closer at any rate to the world of John Eliot Gardiner than that of Colin Davis. The exposition blazed rather than blared and had a stronger sense of form, as did the rest of the movement, though it still lacked that necessary goal orientation. The second movement, by contrast, was given as if in a single breath, with a keen sense of expanding from a chamber ensemble, and darkly developmental throughout. The scherzo and trio seemed to have exchanged characteristics: the former at times, again seemingly by design, turning strangely inward, save for on its more convincing second reprise; the latter possessed of considerable strength. The finale went where it needed to, yet never quite took flight, dogged from beginning to end. I have certainly heard worse, but I have also heard better.

Rossi/Kubota/BCMG/Paterson: Saunders, Anderson, Eötvös, Illean, and Birtwistle, 26 November 2024

Wigmore Hall

Rebecca Saunders: Stirrings
Julian Anderson: Mitternachtslied
Peter Eötvös: Secret Kiss (English version, world premiere)
Lisa Illean: Cantor
Harrison Birtwistle: The Woman and the Hare; …when falling asleep (London premiere)

Alice Rossi (soprano)

Meg Kubota (reciter)

Birmingham Contemporary Music Group

Geoffrey Paterson (conductor)

London visits from the Birmingham Contemporary Music Group are rarer than we might hope, though doubtless many would object, quite reasonably, that visits to the capital need not be its priority. At any rate, a city seemingly ever more starved of new music was here blessed by fine Wigmore Hall performances of six works from the last twenty-five years. 

‘The strokes now faint now clear as if carried by the wind but not a breath and the cries now faint now clear,’ is one of two quotations from Samuel Beckett Rebecca Saunders selected to accompany her 2011 ensemble piece, Stirrings: in this case from Beckett’s late Stirrings Still. Although the only vocal work on the programme, it seemed to set up much of what was to come, its title and perhaps not only that coming to life in the opening double bass solo and what it provoked. Nine players, most onstage, some behind us, took us on a captivating journey of extraordinary sounds that were never mere sounds, always music, ever evolving, as if this were a geological process. As before in Saunders’s work, I could have sworn I was hearing electronics, but I was not: simply nine musicians and their instruments who seemed  before our eyes and ears to have, in Gurnemanz’s vision – and Wagner’s – time become space. A sense of musical landscape already hinted at the music of Birtwistle to come, as did that of inherent musical drama. It is probably better to leave Beckett the last words, again as selected by Saunders, this time from Company: ‘Light infinitely faint it is true since now no more than a mere murmur.... In dark and silence to close as if to light the eyes and hear a sound. Some object moving from its place to its last place. Some soft thing softly stirring soon to stir no more. To darkness visible to close the eyes and hear if only that. Some soft thing stirring soon to stir no more.... By the voice a faint light is shed. Dark lightens while it sounds. Deepens when it ebbs. Lightens with flow back to faint full. Is whole again when it ceases.’

A recent (2023) setting by Julian Anderson of Zarathustra’s roundelay followed. Undaunted by Mahlerian precedent, composer and performers (here the Pierrot ensemble, joined by soprano Alice Rossi and conductor Geoffrey Paterson) made something new yet old, in that sense at least like Saunders and Birtwistle. It is tribute to their success that not once did I think of Mahler, save for the occasional resonance, perhaps via Schoenberg. Stravinskian inheritance seemed at least as strongly in play, not least in rhythm. It opened de profundis – how could it not? – yet soon moved on, even before Rossi’s entrance. If the pace was slow – again, how could it not be? – it seemed over too soon, like midnight or a Nietzschean aphorism. Much caught the ear. vocal and instrumental melismata seemingly inciting one another, building to a midnight climax both dark and refulgent, touching and perhaps ironic in the brevity of its evocation of eternity. 

To complete the first half, we heard the premiere of the English version of the late Peter Eötvös’s Secret Kiss (2018). Another arresting opening, this time from percussion, set the scene for a typical yet typically individual melodrama, words selected by Mari Mezel from Alessandro Baricco’s novel Silk. Five players, on flutes, clarinets, percussion, violin, and cello, were joined by reciter Meg Kubota and Paterson, seemingly bringing a silken world into existence before our ears. It was an instrumental as much as a verbal drama we heard, processes recognisably rooted in central European tradition – Webern, Bartók, et al. – yet reinvented in magically pictorial terms that were entirely Eötvös’s own, Bluebeard notwithstanding. My sole reservation related to what sounded like overmiking. I wondered whether it were simply a feature, if an odd one, of the piece, yet its persistence in the two Birtwistle pieces suggested otherwise. Maybe it was nonetheless an artistic decision; if so, at least to my ears, it proved a pity, detracting not insignificantly here and later from the ultimate coherence of otherwise spellbinding performances. 

Lisa Illean’s Cantor (2017) opened the second half, verse by Willa Cather separated by entirely different, yet no less exquisite, instrumental movements for somewhat augmented ensemble, more string-focused than anything heard previously (or afterwards). Whether it were simply Schoenberg on my mind, I am not sure, but I sensed his presence at a distance in noticeably un-Schoenbergian, postspectralist (?) music: a pattern from Pierrot here, a floating vocal line there. As with all pieces on the programme, rates of change, be they melodic, harmonic, or timbral, seemed just right in work and performance alike. 

The Woman and the Hare (1999) brought singer, reciter, ensemble, and conductor together in exploration of a post-Gawain landscape both alluring and threatening, unmistakeably English in its melancholy and in its vocal and instrumental reinvention of Morgan Le Fay. The two voices contrasted and complemented, embellished and elucidated, music not necessarily ‘autonomous’, yet unquestionably ‘itself’. Stravinsky was an abiding, yet intangible presence, as sure as in Punch and Judy, all the way down to Birtwistle’s musical bedrock. And like Stravinsky’s Pierrot, it was above all an instrumental masterpiece—and yet… 

To hear …when falling asleep immediately after (twice, the second time as an encore) was instructive and, it seemed, inevitable. The 2019 commission sounded less a homage to the earlier work, despite the return to responsorial combination of singer and reciter, than its distillation in a new yet related world. Rilke in English translation (Jochen Voigt) and words drawn from Swinburne’s elegy for Baudelaire here sounded more strongly in opposition, until they were not. Instrumentalists played on as as ever-changing voice of continuity, in this world and the evening’s music as a whole.

Hänsel und Gretel, Royal Academy of Music, 22 November 2024

Susie Sainsbury Theatre

Images: Craig Fuller

Hänsel – Anna-Helena Maclachlan
Gretel – Binny Supin Yang
Peter – Conrad Cahatterton
Gertrud – Ella Orehek-Coddington
Witch – Konstantinos Akritides
Sandman – Grace Hope-Gill
Dew Fairy – Caroline Blair

Director – Jack Furness
Designs – Alex Berry
Lighting – Ben Ormerod
Choreography – Rebecca Meltzer

Royal Academy Sinfonia

Royal Academy Opera Chorus

Johann Stuckenbruck (conductor)

Working as I do in education, I am probably more accustomed to trigger warnings, above all to what they are not, than many. It really does no harm to signpost what might be ahead to those who are vulnerable so that they can prepare and, in extremis, make alternative arrangements. Warnings are not and never have been a matter of avoiding, let alone prohibiting, presentation and discussion of difficult subjects; rather, they can offer a framework for that very presentation and discussion. In practice, we learn from experience, including from mistakes, and I have never found students difficult or unsupportive in difficult cases; we work together, and that is how it should be. That said, I was a little surprised when checking the Royal Academy of Music’s website for the starting time of Hänsel und Gretel to see a trigger warning: ‘This production contains scenes of a violent nature which some audience members may find upsetting, including the use of stage blood. Therefore, we recommend that audiences are aged 13+’. Not so long into this production, by Jack Furness, I understood why, although the age recommendation and general circumlocution seemed to be missing the point. Yes, there was a bit of stage blood, which might have led the ultra-squeamish (I count myself among them) at times to avert their eyes, but it was surely the sexual nature of the violence that presented the potential problem and might have ‘triggered’ audience members of any age. 

Hänsel (Anna-Helena Maclachlan)

This, then, was a serious Hänsel, such as many of us have always maintained should be the case. Perhaps not entirely coincidentally, the best previous example I had seen of such a production – and still, I think, the best all round – was that of Liam Steel for another of the London conservatoires, the Royal College of Music in 2016. It tackled head on issues of familial child abuse, without abandoning the story ‘itself’; far from it. Furness’s staging was probably more ambitious still, for better and for worse. It opened up a good number of questions, yet, at least (for me) on a first viewing, was sometimes a little confusing in their presentation, making it difficult (again, at least for me) to establish what had been intended.   

The setting was that of a fundamentalist (Amish-like) community, in which abuse was clearly rife, tapping into current Handmaid’s Tale and broader US fascist-Protestant preoccupations. Gretel dreamed, it seemed, of escape—and finally achieved it, though at what cost? Disturbingly, her sexual awakening, was not only represented and paralleled in various stage representations – her first period coinciding with the Dream Pantomime and concluding with chastisement from her father; serial sculpting of gashes; the Dew Fairy as alluring flower; the red cellophane membrane of the Witch’s gingerbread house – but also entwined with abuse at the hands of her father. So far, so distressing, her apparent assault being part of the dream, though presumably rooted in reality, but the role of starving children around was more unclear, more sometimes proving less. Learned behaviour was clearly exhibited between Hänsel and Gretel themselves, she first trying on her knowledge with her brother, he traumatised and only later attempting it, now to her horror, for himself. The mother had clearly opted for a policy of least resistance. Quite why, then, one would have a ‘larger than life’ cabaret-Witch en travestie was unclear; it seemed an odd thing for that abused girl to fantasise about and frankly jarred, though nonetheless it retained an imprint. 

Witch (Konstantinos Akritides), Gretel (Binny Supin Yang), Hänsel 

Johann Stuckenbruck’s conducting, impressively, seemed very much of a piece with the seriousness of the production. It began very slowly and, especially during the first and second acts, seemed inclined to highlight colder, disturbing aspects of the score, some of which I had never really imagined existed—or to come close to inventing them in tandem with Derek Clark’s orchestral reduction. There were occasions when the small Royal Academy Sinfonia was out of sorts, indeed out of tune, which highlighted the impression, but Stuckenbruck restored order on each occasion, and the greater freedom with which the third act proceeded further signalled a musicodramatic strategy; here, at last, Gretel awakened, was some Schwung. Clark’s reduction bothered me more than these arrangements tend to. There are good, pragmatic reasons for using them, though we need to be a little wary in the broader scheme of things, lest they ‘cost-effectively’ supplant the real thing, which here is truly a thing of wonder, its Wagnerian scale (in one sense) crucial to it. Some instances that sounded straightforwardly odd, yet I was also bothered in a more positive, dramatic way by its coldness: not unlike, then, the rest of the show. 

Our Hänsel and Gretel gave multifaceted performances, founded on highly accomplished acting. Binny Supin Yang’s facial expressions as Gretel were key to delineation of this realm of nightmares. Vocally, she came into her own, appropriately enough, in the third act, whilst also offering an animated performance earlier on. Anna-Helena Maclachlan’s Hänsel was properly awkward, all the more so in this setting, benefiting from a beautiful, unforced mezzo and signal attention to words and their meaning. A commanding Father in Conrad Chatterton and an intriguingly withdrawn, albeit finely sung, Mother in Ella Orehek-Coddington vocally completed the family, augmented by an alert team of choral extras. Konstantinos Akritides’s star turn as the Witch was despatched with vigour and verve; whether the concept were misjudged was a question for the production, not the performer. Grace Hope-Hill and Caroline Blair both impressed in their roles too, as Sandman and Dew Fairy. Whatever my reservations, then, this was a Hänsel to provoke insight and disturbance, which is as it should be.  

Takács Quartet: Haydn, Britten, and Beethoven, 12 November 2024

Wigmore Hall

Haydn: String Quartet in C major, op.54 no.2, Hob.III:57
Britten: String Quartet no.2 in C major, op.36
Beethoven: String Quartet no.16 in F major, op.135

Eduard Dusinberre, Harumi Rhodes (violins)

Richard O’Neill (viola)

András Féjer (cello)

It is always a joy to hear the Takács Quartet and, in my case, it had been a little while, so was all the more welcome. This Wigmore Hall recital opened with an outstanding performance of the second of Haydn’s ‘Tost’ Quartets, totally ‘inside’ the music from the off, presentation and subsequent development of Haydn’s ideas making that abundantly clear. Surprises duly registered, however often one might have heard them before: not through exaggeration, but through sound musical means, delivered as fresh as the day they were born. Haydn’s invention truly spoke throughout this first movement and beyond, structure becoming form in real time. A gravely beautiful Adagio and its flights of first violin fantasy as brought to life as Eduard Dusinberre cast shadows back into the Baroque and forward to Beethoven and beyond. It led directly into a spirited yet graceful minuet, its trio sternly impassioned as if developing sentiments from the slow movement as well as responding to its sibling. The finale’s formal experimentation again seemed to look forward to Beethoven, late Beethoven at that, its first and third sections elegant and heartfelt, full of harmonic tension and clear of direction. The brief Presto interlude achieved the paradox of skittish rigour, Haydn’s quizzical enigma enhanced. 

I have no doubt Britten’s Second Quartet received a performance of similar commitment and excellence, though the work itself pales beside Haydn (and Beethoven), suggesting, as the composer’s instrumental music often does, that words and, in many cases, a stage were necessary if not to ignite then to discipline his compositional imagination. It was certainly a very different tradition from Haydn’s that came to mind in the first two movements, that of relatively recent Russian music: Prokofiev at his more discursive more than Shostakovich, though the latter’s hysterical tendencies exhibited themselves from time to time. The Takács players imbued their performance with character and rigour, and the second movement at least did not outstay its welcome. For all the talk of Purcell – and indeed the overt attempt at homage – the chacony finale seemed lacking in his spirit or much of any other. This performance made as good sense of it as any, but to me it remained grey music, without much in the way of the Peter Grimes-like dramatic leavening of the first movement’s opening. 

Where the rot set in was Britten’s notorious verdict on Beethoven. Give me that rot any day, especially in so all-encompassing a performance as that of the Takács Quartet of his final quartet, op.135. Its opening was inviting, good-humoured, and mysterious in equal measure. That sense of productive, generative balance was typical of the first movement as a whole, imbued with the character as well as the tempo of an Allegretto, ever developing in a reading as spacious as it was intense. It very much felt as if it picked up where Haydn and also the Beethoven of the Eighth Symphony had left off. The ensuing Vivace similarly balanced control and freedom, regularity and the danger of careering out of control. Deeply felt and beautifully sung, the slow movement’s balance between introversion and extroversion was inevitably weighted toward the former, yet outward expression told in the moment, both at micro- and macro-levels. It was played and thus heard as if in a single breath. Following a questing introduction, sad and vehement, seeming both to confront the terrible, tragic truth of existence and yet also to move on, Meistersinger-like, to cope with it in complexity, the finale seemed to hark back to earlier Beethoven, the Razumovsky quartets in particular, yet also to know that it could not merely return. And yet, it persisted. Such, after all, is our lot. If our world is going to end, then let it be here.

Eugene Onegin, HGO, 8 November 2024

Jacksons Lane Arts Centre

Images: © 2024 Laurent Compagnon 

Eugene Onegin: Ambrose Connolly
Tatiana: Nicola Said
Lensky: Martins Smaukstelis
Olga: Katey Rylands
Prince Gremin: Wonsick Oh
Mme Larina: Erin Spence
Filipyevna: Hannah Morley
Zaretsky: Conall O’Neil
Monsieur Triquet: Quito Clothier

Director: Eleanor Burke
Associate director: Finn Lacey
Designs: Emeline Beroud
Lighting: Trui Malten
Movement: Alex Gotch
Fight director: Rich Gittens

HGO Chorus and Orchestra

Oliver Cope (conductor)

Eugene Onegin (Ambrose Connolly)

HGO’s new Eugene Onegin is not only one of the most impressive productions I have seen yet from the company; it is one of the most impressive of the work I have seen for quite some time too. It would be easy to dwell on what it is not: it is not a lavish big-house staging with big ‘names’; it has a tiny one-to-a-part orchestra; and so on. That focuses attention in different ways, to a certain extent intrinsically: one hears things differently in arrangements, of course, an intriguing case in point being the way one perceives the band almost diegetically during the ball scene. Acting at close quarters offers a very different, in many ways more intense experience too, visually and aurally; one learns much from the detail of facial expressions that would be missed by the greater part of an audience elsewhere Yet none of that would count for very much at all, were it not for the excellence of staging, performances, and ensemble. Almost as if one were attending a performance of, say, Schoenberg’s Society for Private Musical Performances, one begins to wonder whether one needs the ‘original’ experience at all. There is room for both, of course, and must be; HGO’s raison d’être is to offer singers at the start of their professional careers opportunities to sing in full-scale, interesting productions before London audiences. Yet it is testament on this occasion to the success of this first night, that I did not feel remotely troubled by having missed Covent Garden’s new staging and having gone to this instead. 

Eleanor Burke’s staging sets the work maybe 30 or 40 years ago: it could be just before or just after the fall of socialism, or whatever it is, but that is not really the point. Even in the final act, skilfully evoking with, as elsewhere, minimal resources, what might be some sort of St Petersburg art show, founded in new prosperity (for some), again the point is not so much political as the passing of time. Time and regret are crucial to the work, of course, as to the production. There is nothing pretty, let alone prettified, about the countryside in which this opens; one can well imagine its protagonists would feel some relief on leaving it—save if, like Lensky, they were dead; or, like Tatiana and Onegin, they endure other miserable fates.

 

These are lonely people, trying to pretend otherwise, trying to make their way in the world, and relying on various crutches – alcohol, drugs, sex, and above all each other – to do so. That again, does not in itself become the point, but rather contextualises the drama and permits it to emerge. Another such crutch lies in literature and in the world of art more broadly. Onegin initially hands Tatiana a book, later returned to him. She writes her letter in it, and that appears to mark some stage in growing up as well as more obvious awakening. Whether ultimately it helps them make sense of themselves and their situation is perhaps questionable, though. Tragedy lies in the consequences of what they do there and then; they cannot always simply learn from their mistakes, since it will often be too late.

 

Olga (Katey Rylands), Tatiana (Nicola Said)

For once, one does not find everything, or indeed anything very much, a metaphor for Tchaikovsky’s homosexuality. The strong direction gives the overt drama a new lease of life and one believes in these characters as themselves, Lensky and Olga as much as Onegin and Tatiana, the troubled community in which they grow up too, different characters sketched intriguingly, becoming a chorus when called upon, yet clearly having lives, problems, and personalities of their own. The most real connection – at least before it is all too late – may still lie between Onegin and Lensky, but the devastation felt by both, again realising that they too have destroyed what they had, something that cannot be put back together, seems very much to be what it overtly seems to be. That does not mean other paths might not be or have been followed. A splendid cabaret turn from Quito Clothier’s Monsieur Triquet – very well sung too – acts as a beacon of fascination, awakening, and perhaps liberation for the assembled company. What happens when he and Onegin disappear after the ball, returning for the duel, could doubtless be read in another way. Again, I am not sure that is the point, though, and it has not granted them neither enlightenment nor fulfilment. It merely points the way to the pill-induced disorientation, laced with probably unsatisfactory sexual experimentation, Onegin suffers in his time of wayfaring on the way to St Petersburg: a metaphor for whistling one’s life away, as much as the thing itself. 

M. Triquet (Quito Clothier)

Ambrose Connolly and Martins Smaukstelis presented a contrasted and complementary pair as Onegin and Lensky, dark and blond, introvert and extrovert, brooding and apparently fun-loving, capable of shocking, volatile exchange in the whirlwind transformations of the ball, here Tatiana's disastrous eighteenth birthday party. Onegin’s flirtation with Olga, cruelly mocking Lensky, can rarely have felt so overtly real, Smaukstelis in turn seeming to retreat in collapse to his childhood. This was accomplished by excellent acting and singing, their Russian (insofar as I can judge) matching their command of vocal line. Moving unmistakeably, yet not without regret, from girl to woman, Nicola Said’s Tatiana likewise matched dramatic, verbal, and ‘purely’ musical qualities to a degree that would have impressed on any stage. Katey Rylands illuminated Olga’s particular path, first fun-loving and yet ultimately as nagged with doubt and regret, to complete an outstanding central quartet. A Prince Gremin will almost always stand out, his aria such a Tchaikovskian gift. That does not negate the moving excellence with which Wonsick Oh presented it; far from it. Erin Spence’s Mme Larina and Hanna Morley’s Filpyevna were entirely convincing in their new setting, unquestionably more than stock characters; so too were Conall O’Neill’s dark and dangerous Zaretsky, and the broader chorus out of which he stepped.

Lensky (Martins Smaukstelis)

Oliver Cope’s musical direction was equally crucial to the evening’s success of the evening. To conduct such a performance is at least as stiff a test as with full orchestra; Cope passed with flying colours, as did his band of soloists, whose cultivated chamber playing metamorphosed seemingly without effort into statements, clashes, and tragic entanglements of full-scale Romantic emotions. Interplay between public and private was located above all here in the orchestra, not least given the fruitful scenographic limitations on such a stage. Pacing and balance were well judged, in the service of an excellent musicodramatic continuity impossible to divorce from what was unfolding ‘onstage’. Clearly a consequence of dedicated, intensive collaboration, all was more than the sum of its considerable parts. Highly recommended.