Barbican Hall
Monika
Eder (soprano)
Andrew Staples (tenor)
Florian Boesch (baritone)
London
Symphony Chorus (chorus master: Simon Halsey)
London Symphony Orchestra
Simon
Rattle (conductor)
Talk about a hard act to
follow: Sir Colin Davis’s final performance of The Seasons, available for all of us to hear on LSO Live (I had to
miss the performance on account of a wedding), a clear first-choice
recommendation on disc. Did Sir Colin’s knighted LSO successor-to-be have a
chance? Of sounding like that, no? But then that is not what Simon Rattle was
trying to do. Whilst I am more in sympathy, to put it mildly, with Davis’s
approach, that should not preclude me, or indeed anyone else, from finding much
of worth in Rattle’s Haydn. Whereas I have found his Mozart and Beethoven
well-nigh unbearably mannered, he has long seemed closer to Haydn’s spirit and
his advocacy of the composer – who, incredibly, still desperately needs such
advocacy – is gratefully received. I enjoyed this performance greatly, and had
the sense that my enjoyment was shared in the rest of the audience.
‘Spring’ opened in the
anticipated low- yet certainly not no-vibrato fashion. Rattle seemed eager to
draw from the LSO, and how, a keen sense of the sheer strangeness of Haydn’s
orchestral colours, even suggesting a kinship – perhaps via Haydn’s experience
of the Concert spirituel? – with Rameau. Split violins definitely helped the
sense of back and forth between firsts and seconds, but there were times when a
longer string line would have been, to my ears at least, desirable. The care
over orchestral detail, which rarely descended into fussiness, persisted into
Simon’s recitative, the orchestral crescendo following ‘Ihm folgt auf seinen
Ruf’ beautifully handled, keenly dramatic. All three voices in this opening
number, Florian Boesch, Andrew Staples, and Monika Eder, were shown to be well
contrasted and their contributions well characterised. The London Symphony
Chorus, celebrating its fiftieth anniversary, was on magnificent form, offering
verbal clarity and meaning, as well as great character, from its opening ‘Komm,
holder Lenz!’ onwards. Dynamic contrasts and concern for phrasing were to the
fore, without exaggeration; here, the LSO strings offered great polish. Simon’s
aria, ‘Schon eilet froh der Ackermann’, offered smiles in both the vocal line
and the orchestra. Rattle might not have sounded ‘like’ Beecham, but perhaps
there was a little of his spirit here nevertheless? Staples’s Tamino-like tenor
was welcome in the Farmer’s Prayer and much that we heard after too; the blend
between his Lucas, Boesch’s Simon, and Eder’s Hannah, was here heard to near
perfection. So was the sheer goodness of Haydn – as man and as composer. Hannah
sounded nicely in ‘character’, or at least in ‘type’, in the ‘Song of Joy’,
likewise ‘her’ Lucas; although the voices are different, there was more than a
hint of Adam and Eve from The Creation,
or Papageno and Papagena. Boesch’s reference to the breath of the Creator
reminded us splendidly of the particular
theology of this work.
Summer likewise opened with very
little lower string vibrato: fair enough, for Lucas tells us of the morning
light being veiled in grey mist. There was all the more contrast to be heard
then with the lustig singing of
Boesch in ‘Der munt’re Hirt’, and some lovely horn playing there too. The
chorus did not disappoint in its hymn to the sun, although I was a little
surprised by the Karajan-like
metal Rattle imparted to ‘Die Segen, o wer zählet sie?’ He is certainly not
predictable, which is mostly to the good. I greatly enjoyed the way the LSO and
Staples (and Rattle) polished Lucas’s Cavatina, ‘Dem Druck erlieget der Natur’,
a jewel, and here it sounded as such, of Webern-like quality. Olivier
Stankiewicz’s oboe solos in Hannah’s recitative and aria were as delectable as
anyone might ever dream of, perhaps more so, the LSO strings buzzing with
properly insect-like quality in the former number. The calm before the storm
was unnervingly apparent, not only in string pizzicato, but in Eder’s
apprehension. When it came, choral and orchestral terror had nothing to fear from
Beethovenian, even Wagnerian, comparisons. One could still hear, moreover,
Haydn’s part-writing from the LSC; this was no mere ‘effect’. (For all that I
love Karl Böhm’s VSO recording, the singing of the Wiener Singverein can be a
bit of a trial.) Either one loves the animals in the Trio and Chorus, ‘Die düst’ren
Wolken’, or one does not; even Haydn professed not to do so. Dare I suggest
that he was wrong, or that he might have changed his mind about ‘frenchified
trash’, had he heard the LSO players? And yes, the evening bell tolled surely,
above all lovingly. The closing chorus could have made an avowed city-boy such
as yours truly think twice about rejecting rural life out of hand.
The Introduction to ‘Autumn’
was not a high-point for me; I could not really understand why Rattle was so
keen to play down the LSO strings. One can certainly have prominent woodwind
without doing so; ask Davis, or Klemperer. Anyway, the Chorus in praise of industry
benefited greatly from Boesch’s easy Austrian way with the text. It got the
second half of the concert off to a rollicking start, rasping brass (clearly
Rattle’s choice) notwithstanding. The
Magic Flute came to mind once again in the Duet between Hannah and Lucas,
although so did Schubert in one especially ‘special’ modulation. Rachel Gough’s
bassoon solo was a delight in the neo-Handelian ‘Seht auf die breiten Wiesen
hin!’ As for the Hunting Chorus, now as politically correct as Monostatos, the
four horns and the men of the LSC performed it for all it was worth (a great
deal!) The drunken chorus thereafter was despatched with due revelry: far more
theatrical than with Davis, but none the worse for it.
The grave beauty of the
Introduction to ‘Winter’ set it quite apart from anything we had heard
previously; again, it was The Magic Flute,
this time its trials, that seemed closest, although the sadness to be heard as
the movement progressed was closer (and not just harmonically) to Tristan und Isolde. Boesch’s dignity
here was greatly valued. Eder seemed to come into her own in the Spinning
Chorus, presenting it as a cousin to its opposite number in The Flying Dutchman. The following solo
song with chorus, quite rightly, sounded closer still to Weber, Der Freischütz in particular. Boesch’s
way with that wonderful final aria, ‘Erblicke hier, betörter Mensch,’ presented
an almost Sachs-like (Wahn
monologue), psychoanalytical clearing of the mists. And finally, the great trio
and double chorus, harking back not only to The
Magic Flute but also to Israel in
Egypt: what a joyous farewell, especially from the LSC, we heard to the
eighteenth century!
The concert was recorded for broadcast in early May by Sky Arts.
